Personal, provocative, and practical information from real people with real-life stories to tell.

Meet Monique: Finding A Self To Be Proud Of. Life-Purpose: To change perspectives for human doing and being. Kinsmen / Scintillator / Healer Profile boss: Healer

Monique remembers that from a very young age, all she wanted was peace -- and for people to be nice to each other. Unfortunately, Monique's family carried a significant legacy of dysfunction and pain. There had been suicide on one side of the family; there was alcoholism and pain on both. While neither of her parents were alcoholics, they bore the scars of being raised in homes where the standard physical punishment was severe, and emotional abandonment was typical. Although better than their parents, Monique's parents were harsh disciplinarians, who expected a lot from their children. Monique's family was plagued with crises. A younger brother died when Monique was 3 . A brother was born into the still-mourning family when she was 4. Her maternal grandfather died when she was 5. Another brother was adopted into the struggling family when she was 7.

It was at this time that Monique started to eat compulsively. To take care of herself, she ate. The more pain and stress, the more she ate.

They moved from the house she had grown up in about six months later, and Monique found she didn't fit in at the new school. The bright little girl who had depended on her intelligence and sociability, found that she couldn't make friends. More things rocked the family: a maternal aunt and uncle died in a tragic car crash when Monique was 8. Another maternal aunt was an alcoholic whose disease was progressing to levels where it endangered her and her ability to work. The family dealt with alcoholism by keeping it secret.

Monique, with no one to confide in, wrote. "I wrote the happiest, sunniest poems. They reflected what I wanted my life to be, what I thought it could be, and what I thought everyone should have." And she escaped into books with brave heroes where the good guys always won. Her reading skill rocketed; reading was safer than her family, her schoolmates or her life.

Then, her parents separated. Monique and her two brothers moved to another home with their mom. Now, she was also pseudo-parent, who saw to her brothers in everything from breakfast and getting them off to school, to ensuring they got home okay and starting supper. She developed chronic insomnia. She gained a lot of weight.

However, Monique kept putting one foot in front of the other. "I was trying to carry the whole family and all their pain. It hurt so much. Everytime I was punished for not knowing something, or not doing enough, it was as if someone had pierced me through with a sword."

Her parents got back together again. Things settled down. They moved to an area where Monique made friends easily. Life got better. Her insomnia disappeared. Her weight stabilized. "We didn't suddenly become the Cleaver family", Monique laughs, "but we did a lot better." She finished high school and started university.

Then, Monique's father died, suddenly and unexpectedly. She was 21.

She struggled through her grief to finish her degree. Then, as she finished, a major depression ensued. "I didn't think I could cope with life. I suppose on some level, I thought if my childhood had been so difficult for me, then adult life was going to eat me up. Life just seemed so hard. I longed for it to be 'lighter' and easier." She gained weight again.

When Monique had finished her Master's degree, she landed a job in a consulting firm. Her career thrived. Her life took on a new stability, and a new peace.

While she thrived in the business world, her childhood traumas showed up in her relationships with men. "I wanted them to protect me. I was afraid to be alone. When I was alone, I could feel the pain inside me." Over and over, she broke her heart.

Tired of bad relationships, she started some personal growth work. "Suddenly, one morning, I woke up and said to myself, I can live a great life alone, but if I don't marry, only I will have failed myself." She was 35.

Six months after that revelation, she met her Mr. Right. "But it only worked because I had done some of the hard work," she says. "It wasn't because I'd suddenly got thin either. I was still heavy but my weight was stable. And I was determined to accept myself, and find someone who liked me just as I was. I was tired of making apologies!" In seven weeks from their first meeting, they were engaged. In another six months, they were married.

Then her marriage hit some crises. Monique laughs. "Oh, first he wanted to go back to school -- we'd only been married for a few weeks! Then, when he graduated, he had a hard time finding work. During that whole period, I'd been in a job I hated, but I stayed put -- to provide him with some stability. I felt as if I was dying under the stress of work, and the weight of my life."

Then she found the Ansir test. "I found the test on the Web, and I was intrigued. I did the test, and the results said a lot to me, but it didn't seem quite right," she says. "I came out Kinsmen-Healer-Empath. While it told me a lot about myself, it just didn't seem to take into account my 'closet comedian'. My test results seemed to be another thing that was too heavy. On some level, I knew that my personality was less serious than it appeared. But, because my results answered a lot of questions, I went with them." With this new knowledge in hand, "I decided to take a 'perfect' job for my 'profile'". She laughs. "It was the least perfect job I could have picked! Three months later, they terminated my contract. Then I suppose, my discovery of the real me really started." That was February, 2000.

Now that she was out of work, she did the test again. "Now, that was another 'aha'," she says. "I came out Kinsmen-Scintillator-Healer. Suddenly, I understood why I'd never wanted to work that hard -- I wasn't lazy, I was wired differently. What a relief!" She laughs. "I also realized why it had hurt so much growing up -- all that daily conflict in my family and on the school yard. I knew now why I thought I would be 'eaten up' by life all those years before. It hurt me physically. That just made so much sense. Plus my emotional investment in people seeing another way; it all fit."

She thought about her profile. She thought about her need to do less work, and have more time to do other things. She thought about her need to influence others, and expand other's view of the world. She thought about how important time with her family was to her, and how much she loved to make her home a 'nest'. She thought about what she loved doing.

"What Ansir did for me was life-changing. The Instant Feedback (Profile InDepths™) provided me an outside objective source, who confirmed that the characteristics of mine which had been problematic or misunderstood (like my need for time alone) were, in fact, 'correct' and natural in light of who I am. Also, though I'm intuitive, I hadn't trusted that at various times in my life, and the Ansir affirmation helped me do just that."

After a couple of months, she started her own consulting company. "Ansir helped me see myself clearly, for the first time. That was the greatest gift. I'd always thought I was fundamentally flawed -- that there was something wrong with me and that was why life had been so hard. When I did the Ansir test again without the influence of a stressful job, or bad relationship, I saw the true me. And, for the first time, I liked her. Somehow, seeing her through Ansir's eyes, she seemed just fine exactly the way she was."

On the day she launched her company, she found out she was pregnant. "Oh, my!" she giggles, "The timing of it all!" But she trusted her intuition that her new endeavour was the right thing, and stuck with it. Her natural enthusiasm and sociability worked to her advantage. She was soon busy on proposals and business development.

Which leads to what Monique calls her 'banner year'. "Its the year 2000. This year, I turn 40 -- a milestone birthday. This year, I've started my own company, successfully. I landed a plum contract with a Fortune 500 corporation -- on my own steam! I'm working less hours, and making more money. This year, I will have my first child. I'm seven months into my pregnancy and have only gained 11 pounds! For the first time in my life, I am actually proud of my weight! And I remember thinking about turning 40 when I turned 20 in 1980 Wish I'd written down what I thought. I'm sure I never would have believed all these firsts!"

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