My mother died of HIV when I was 12. I never knew my real father, let alone saw a picture of him. My stepfather, I knew, and he was with me at the hospital at the time my mother was dying.
That same week, my stepfather leaves me with some family friends and goes to Haiti. Around two months later, I am told that his ex-wife murdered him.
That leaves my last living blood relative, my granduncle. He dies a few months later of Diabetes. Within a year I lose all of my blood relatives. I bring all that up to say this, those circumstances made me REALLY obsessively study relationships. Basically, what I needed to know is what made relationships fail or succeed. Every relationship I would then form would be in an extension of a family that I would never have.
I was the kid in middle school, high school, and college that conducted surveys and questionnaires on notebooks. Asking everyone and anybody to take it, to collect data I could analyze. I would interview married couples. I would take polls. I read books related to relationships, but more specifically intimate relationships. Why that focus? Well, I needed to repopulate the 'Mathieu generation'. I had a really strong desire to gain enough knowledge, that would help me form lifelong relationships, hoping to fill that void the effects of having no family had on me.
My research revealed that the #1 problem all relationships faced was poor communication skills. After realizing that, I made it my personal mission to understand everything I could about communication in relationships. And more specifically, communication in marriage.
I took that knowledge into Spoken Word Poetry and performed on and off for 10 years.
Now as a Speaker Poet | Marriage Communication Coach | Author, I help Christian spouses communicate effectively, quickly, without misunderstandings or disrespect. Basically, I help spouses argue less and talk more.
