I know I am not the best writer in the world but I love it nonetheless. That being said, I never actually wrote for myself until most recently, I was in a funk and needed to vent. I opened up a “new post” and went nuts, I basically purged all my thoughts and feelings into a blog post. Now this post was obviously never published, but I felt amazing after. I felt like a new person. It was therapeutic. I got the idea from Angelique Giron, a life coach that uses writing to help people.

A student of hers reached out to me a while ago and told me all about Angelique, that she inspired him and that she basically changed his life. I needed to hear her whole story. I met Angelique at Beechwood cafe on a beautiful summer day. As I saw her approaching my table the sun hit or beautiful curls… and she looked well, angelic.

What’s your name? Angelique Giron.

What do you do? I am a life coach that uses writing as the gateway to helping other people.

Can you elaborate? Of course. Just for me, writing has always been really important. I have a degree in Creative Writing and I always journal to feel centered and to feel normal and to feel good again. I do other writing, but I knew how powerful it was and I was a teacher here for eleven years at Ferris High School. And there is where I really saw how much it transformed the kids being able to tell their stories and a lot of trauma. I just saw how powerful it was and I mean, I already knew from my own experience and taking my own classes, but I knew what a tool it could be just connecting to people and allowing them to open up and to sort of just be themselves and have their voices heard.

I loved teaching but I knew I could make more of an impact outside of teaching. So I decided to leave and venture on my own. I miss the kids like crazy. I miss teaching them, but I knew my impact could be more without the bureaucracy and the red tape. So then I just ventured out and it’s been about a year actually.

So you’re doing life coaching?  I’m doing life coaching, I do it online, I do group classes, webinars, phone calls, [and] I have a couple of private clients, and just keep trying and reaching out.

So it’s all through writing? All through writing.

What’s it called? It’s called Write for Healing.

What would a new client do? If you’re a private client, I would try to see what you want to work on and then I would give you exercises guided towards whatever it is you want to focus on. Like you want a new relationship or you want to let go of some past thing that has been bothering you just all that stuff that keeps you centered and connected. The same way if you took yoga or if you took something else, it’s all though writing. We would talk, it wouldn’t be that we weren’t talking at all, we’d skype or talk on the phone. A lot of the work would be done on your own and share the work together and see where we go from there.

Can you tell me any stories? I have a couple of group classes going on now, and one is called “Let’s Write a Book,” and their writing their transformational, sort of, personal narratives about some really traumatic things that happened to them. A couple of them it’s been about abuse and rape. It’s a very trusting environment, like everybody shares their work with each other and they’re very supportive. Even when I’m not there and running the class, I have an online forum on Facebook, in a private group, where they’re giving each other feedback. They want to share their stories and write this book so they can help other people who’ve been going through the same thing. And it’s really awesome to be a part of that.

Did you go through anything traumatic in your life? I grew up with a functioning alcoholic. Both my parents aren’t alive. My mother, in hindsight, of course, love her to death, she did the best she could. Functioning alcoholic, the basic needs were taken care of but emotionally, not so much. She didn’t know how, but she also taught be how to be creative and independent. And my dad, totally nonfunctioning, we think he might have been schizophrenic, but alcoholic and drug addict. Super talented musician. The stereotype of the musician is tortured. I didn’t grow up with him, but his family. So that was the crux of my life.

I know people who’ve had it worse, but it was also something that I went to therapy for a lot of years and it helped me so much. I’m so glad I did it and it really brought me to this place to be able to do this. As you probably see, I have arthritis since I was seventeen.

My big thing is not expressing myself and always trying to conform to what other people wanted me to do rather than speaking my own truth and being fully who I am. Now I’m forty-three and I’m finally, not that I wasn’t, I was, I do everything I want to do and I don’t realize I’m actually doing it until, “Oh, I did that.” My whole motto is “Don’t give a crap what anybody thinks,” and that’s so important to me. It took me so long to figure it out and that’s what I tried to give my students when I was a teacher, I was that voice, they all came to me and talked to me. I’m trying to give that clients now and spread that.

One of your students told me to reach out to you. Was he one of the ones you connected with? He’s so awesome. He’s one of my first students. He was really important in my life. When he was twenty-two, his mother kicked him out of the house because he was gay and she’s very religious. They’re totally past that now, they get along. But at the time, he’d just lost his job and he got kicked out, so he lived with me for about a year and a half. It was a great experience for both of us. So he was like my adopted child. My kids call him their older brother, it’s really cool. I have connections like that with a lot of my students, but he was one of my closest ones.

What kind of guidance do you give people as a coach? It encouragement. Tips that people already really know. With coaching, you know the basics of what you want, most people, not everyone. It’s just that you get in your own way. So it’s just me trying to clear the space for them to get out of their own way. Obviously, these are, you know, don’t sit down and if you’re stressed out, try to do something because then it’s going to be crap and you’re going to be stressed the whole time. I do a meditative writing thing, which is really cool, where you just sort of ease into feeling better. If you feel really crappy, you honor it, you acknowledge [it], and move to whatever the next best feeling is. If you’re depressed, to anger, anger to relief, relief to feeling even better. Sort of writing your way to that. So I do a lot of that with them in the coaching and reminding them that it’s all a process. The writing exercises I give them, just the free writing sort of thing, so that it’s all out and we go back and fix it together. That’s the technical part.

Do you hold classes in Jersey City? I want to. I lived here forever, we were gone for a year and a half and I just moved back like two month ago and I really want to get a space. In the meantime, I know I want to start looking at places I can just do drop-ins.

How long have you been in Jersey City? Fifteen, sixteen years?

What is your favorite Jersey City hangout spot? I love Taqueria because I grew up in California. But I love all these new places, it’s so awesome.

How do you feel Jersey City has changed in the past couple of years? It has changed a lot, even in the past six months. I love it, it’s got this energy that you can feel it. Even when I moved here downtown like 1996 you could feel it emerging, but it was so slow with all the red tape to getting anything open. But it’s really like that now. ‘Cause I have friends who grew up here, family that grew up here, and they’re like that type where “Oh… it’s changed so much…” but then they see it, they see the benefit. And they’re like, “Oh! I can walk and go anywhere!” don’t have to go to the city or Hoboken because that was the norm back then. I love it a lot.

Anything else you’d like people to know about you or Write for Healing? I love helping people but that’s about it. I’m in that bubble of I’m making it become bigger and I want it to become bigger because I want to help more people and get people to feel really good…. I am hosting a free online class: “Tell Your Story” on July 22nd at 5:00PM you can register on my website!