Grief Doesn't Discriminate

Grief is indiscriminate of categories as to how life ends, our race, religion, gender, or any other box asking to be checked off for validation. Grief counterparts like denial, guilt, rage, craziness, plus so many other bright colored ones, will at some point fit perfectly into a box on what I call The Human Application. The most appropriate box name for this human commonality should be Griever.

Imagine being able to check this box off. It would tell the world that you were in need of a time out. It would tell the world you were in need of additional financial help because of this time out. It would tell the world you needed mental health or spiritual care "now". This box would tell the world you needed more today than ever before. The existence of this box would also tell the world that at some point each and every person taking up space on this planet would need the same things with plus or minus variations. Our grief would at least be heard in ink at a basic human level.

What I heard after the two and a half month time out I took courtesy of frozen shock, after my son's sudden-out-of-no-where -suicide.... was silence. My ears could only hear my amplified shallow heart beat. My eyes recorded a world that had moved on without me and with great ease. With my ears and eyes in contrast of each other my only reliable sense was my internal hard drive. It fought to keep me safe from watching laughter leave the mouths of humans that stood in front of me in line at the grocery store. When their heads flew back forcing more of this horrid sound out, my internal hard drive directed me to abandon my shopping cart and head towards the entrance of the store and into my car. I found my own voice once inside. I screamed! It was my job to buy food for my family and I was returning home empty handed. Grief's counterpart shock, had just worn off without warning. Where was the application? I needed someone in the parking lot to know I had check off the Griever box and needed help right now. My grief was invisible. My internal hard drive got me home without harm. Home is where I stayed for another time out.

Regardless of my story, grief could not discriminate my case. Grief is goal oriented. If our grief tissue detached and escaped our skin, its new host could only be its own kind-another griever. Grief's not interested in demographics or economic structure, it's got one magnificent agenda and that is teaching us to accept death.

Grateful For Grief - The Poem

Grief came for me
It took my mind away from me

Grief came for me
It stole the air from my lungs
After my only son.......hung...... then swung

Grief came for me
It ripped through my soul with guilt
Dug tunnels with no hope of ever being rebuilt

Grief came for me
Hard, immediately and repeatedly
Working to transform me

Grief came for me
Suggesting two highways of geography
One path filled with a lifetime of torture
The other with universal prosperity

Grief came for me
Without much fight left
To live, I knew I had to trust my higher consciousness

Finally, with my submission and permission

Grief changed me
Its magnificent power completely devoured me
As if it couldn’t live without me

Grief changed me
Into a writer in love with pen and paper
Desperate to unleash my thoughts
Where they were sacred

Grief changed me
Into a sponge absorbing spiritual suicide knowledge
Instead of old religious colic

Grief changed me
Into a fearless investigator of the unknown
A world of new experiences brought me home
To new truths about death and life
That now lives
Under the direction of my how I speak and write
Profound sonnets delivered directly to me
By the highest expression of my God Me

I cry when I need to
I scream when I have to acknowledge how much I still miss you
You chose what was best for you
I choose to live abundantly without you

I now follow the soft whisper
That encourages me to give praise and homage
For a season that almost killed me
Then added fuel to what now propels me
To constantly be
Grateful For Grief
© Copyright 2011 Monique Antoinette, All rights reserved.

The Bridge Between Two Destinies'

After falling in love with my grief after the suicide of my only son I knew the greatest part of my life was no longer my own. The year 2007 delivered Monique Antoinette's Dessert's; my first life purpose. This new venture involved my love for food, commercial problem solving and profit margins. What a surprise this was after building a career as an artist in love with Faux Finish Painting. With much on my plate, the journal entries made during my grief recovery made their way to the pages of my memoir Grateful For Grief:Seasons of Transformation and to the people in the fall of 2010. A new published Author/Life Coach was now my second life purpose.

Three years of discovering and developing two different parts of me simultaneously often stirred my center. I questioned the variances between them. I asked outside myself, “Is this right, how do these two parts of me relate to each other, and am I crazy”? I took these questions with me through the busiest year of my life.

A spring time hysterectomy required healing time that exceeded my doctor’s advice. That healing time was overshadowed with work until the week after my new book was released. I was out of gas, and in pain. As my pain peaked with numbness my mind arrived at a place of peace with what was. It, my mind, found the courage to express gratitude for the now pain. It, my mind found the nerve to delight itself with pleasure in knowing that it remained strong in its curiosity. With flesh finally surrendered, my spirit carried to the levy of my mind a message. The message was the answer to my 2010 repetitive question about my two life purposes.

“Monique Antoinette the Entrepreneur and Monique Antoinette the Author/Life Coach will build a bridge to serve grieving people. The combination of these life purposes will deliver comfort and healing. The Cobbler Cookie Collection, a new specialty dessert will live inside a new product called “The Comfort Basket”. “In this basket will also live my new book and a variety of additional healing products created to meet the need of every grieving consumer, i.e., a Poetry CD, an eBook, an Audio Book, an Affirmation CD with Musical Interludes, a Inspiration Gift Certificate (to chat with me about grief) and a Spa Certificate to help relieve the physical stress that grief attaches to the body”.

What also seeped in was the name of my new charity. Yes, I would be the founder of a charity called……Grieve Through Art. How appropriate was this name. Cooking and writing were expressions of art that had saved my life. Two things I had been in love with forever. I burned my first pancake at five and wrote my first story before kindergarten. “Of course this was right”, of course these two parts of me bridged healing, and I wasn’t crazy”!

The enormous answer was delivered while in the perfect position- horizontal.

I marinade in this confirmation with radiant joy. I close my eyes peacefully with a vision of me standing on a bridge thinking these words out loud, “Every one of you enlisted before this journey began, I call to you, reach out to you letting you know I am here. Together we will

co-create with deliberate intent to reach with comfort and help to heal the masses of grieving people”.

Monique Antoinette~

Broken Open

Privately being strangled by my own grief, in blackness, I moved around the very people who survived "our loved ones suicide" in total SILENCE. I can remember standing next to a relative or friend when Brett's name was being mentioned. What came next was a quick are you okay look, or are you going to break look. The distortion of grief prevented them from being able to see me giving them the same look. As if somehow my mothers’ badge gave me grief preference. It didn’t. Grief was tearing through them as well. How could it not, they were all in love with the very same person I was in love with. He was one of us; he belonged to all of us! When I got “the look”, I stood up straighter, fake-smiled brighter, and moved in closer in hopes one of us would find the courage to initiate a deeper conversation about our suffering. That dialogue never came.

Our silence is finally over. It's been twenty days since the release of my book Grateful For Grief Seasons of Transformation. I am proud to say the book has created an outburst within the first demographic I aimed for. That would be my Tribe (my family and close friends).


THEY ARE BROKEN OPEN!

There are tears.............finally
There are assumptions.......finally
There are questions.........finally
There are answers...........finally
There are hugs and kisses...finally
There is laughter...........finally

Finally…………There is no more grief silence
Finally …….......WE ARE HEALING TOGETHER!

“I affirm that my book and more healing is on the way to the entire world who I consider an extension of my tribe. Surviving grief isn’t enough; it’s time to heal from grief.” ~Monique Antoinette

Marie Osmond is my sister!

After mailing 6 copies of my book to Oprah Winfrey and 3 to Tyler Perry yesterday, I returned to my tivo. Marie Osmond speaks out about her son's suicide is the caption. A wave of OMG rolls in. Really, is this really happening? Without another pause I mash down on the play button.

Marie's wet eyes are filled with vulnerability and a plea for Miss Winfrey to be gentle in how she extracts "the story". My heart rate slows down to a low rhythm, previously recorded on my cardiovascular tivo six years ago after surviving the suicide of my only son.
My entire insides remember the difficulty of allowing a simple thing like air travel where it need be in order to deliver human speech.
"It's been 8 months”, leaves her mouth.
At my 8 month mark, I was still in zombie land.

She continued speaking and my body continued remembering. Marie's mommy voice pierced my cold belly-go-numb-reflex spot. That's the spot that never leaves you, no matter how long it's been since the day you received what your mommy body already knew was true; your child died, and you weren’t there.

I rage with an extreme impulse to slam my body into the glass of my large living room window when Marie tells us she prepared her son's body for his funeral! Someone or something puts weight on my shoulders which keeps me glued to the couch before this impulse has an opportunity to live. I continue watching without sound in my ears. I remember visiting the mortuary and burial arrangements. I mash down on the stop button. I inhale, and then exhale slowly. That’s it…..I’m done!

I know that regardless of Marie and me never meeting each other, we are forever members of the same club. We are exactly the same, in this exact time and space because of grief. She is my sister! She is my family!

I love you Marie Osmond. I pray for your hurting, healing spirit as you carry yourself through this enormous storm! You are loved!
~Monique Antoinette

Joy!

Today is a day of sheer joy.

I write because I’m happy.
The journey has been long and there is still more land to travel.
This year has brought another layer to my life’s work.
My desire to get my book published turned into something much higher than I ever imagined.
A published book wasn’t enough.
Getting the message to a much larger group of people seems to be the platform where I am headed.

My book Grateful For Grief Seasons of Transformation has turned into the pursuit of becoming a talk show host.
The first goal was to launch a series of seminars called "Let's Talk About Grief from a Higher Point of Consciousness".

The turn of event occurred after not 1 or 2, but after 3 people strongly suggested that me publishing and promoting a book was cute but me promoting and marketing my myself and my message would much better serve a larger group people; the world!

So, here we go!
We are currently shooting footage for webisodes.
In the meantime we released a short intro unto You Tube.
Getting the world involved is the awareness of this message is thus far my highest occupation.

Privately, I think back to when I knew the book was on the way to the market place regardless of my privacy issues, and there was no way to stop it.
I mean I could have, I am operating out of free will.
But, I dare not interfere with a plan that was devised before I entered my earth suit.
My fearful conscious mind loves giving me a hard time when I try to Capricorn rationalize this.
My fearless unconscious soul remembers exactly what it is here to do.
Thank god, my soul is on auto pilot.

Peace filled,
Monique Antoinette

Shocked!!!

I raced before sunrise to my cell phone to the check the responses to my new grateful for grief face book page, many had confirmed and left messages about "what I was thinking yesterday", I wrote, I found the answers to why my son killed himself only after surrendering to grief. I received one comment that said, "it almost made her cry", another one said, "he was sorry for my loss and hoped I was feeling better".

At first I thought wow! Then my brain on it's own started adding the numbers of the club members for organization like, "Suicide Survivors". I believe the total of members were near a staggered one million.

This meant a staggering million people were directly or indirectly dealing with suicide related grief. My heart raced in needing to know what the numbers are for people dealing with the other kinds of grief not related to suicide?????

I know it doesn't matter-grief-is-grief. The heart doesn't know the difference.

I was shocked and overwhelmed in knowing that I may have written a book that may actually help bring some of these people help.

God please help me-help these people!
These are my people!

Monique Antoinette~