Mom (And Candidate) Gets Makeover For Lunch Break Gala

By Elizabeth Wulfhorst

RED BANK – In the nearly empty main room of Lunch Break at 121 Drs. James Parker Blvd., normally filled with the bustle of a busy restaurant, Dominique Faison sat quietly, still as a statue as Lauren Vena applied glamorous potions and powders to her face, eyes and lips.

Hairstylist Cindy Bento and clothing store proprietor Melanie Gibson waited in the wings to finish Faison’s makeover with a beautiful wig and dazzling dress, all in preparation for Lunch Break’s annual fall gala, We Rise Together: Restoring and Rebuilding Lives, hosted by Jon Stewart Oct. 15 at County Basie Center for the Arts. Faison, a mother of nine children ranging in age from 10 to 28 and grand- mother of five – with one on the way – said there was a time when she and her five youngest children were homeless “off and on for two years” and needed to use Lunch Break’s services.

During that time she said she did her best “to stay strong and then still keep my kids grounded.” Faison explained how Lunch Break helped her through those tough times. “I would bring my children here for lunch,” she said, mentioning how the pantry also supplied her family with good food, even accommodating the dietary needs of her youngest daughter who wasn’t eating meat at the time. And when she couldn’t afford clothes for her children she was able to take advantage of Lunch Break’s Clara’s Closet, which provides new and gently used clothing for men, women and children from a store downstairs at the facility. “It’s frightening to think that people like Dominique, hard-working, trying, really intelligent, and when life throws you a curve, and you fall on a hard time, you’re faced with: What am I going to do? At least we’re here to fill the gaps,” said Ellen McCarthy, the communications and public relations coordinator for Lunch Break. She said she was happy the organization can help people like Faison, so they can pursue their life’s ambitions. And Faison’s ambitions are, well, ambitious.Before the pandemic, she was working in accounts payable at the Matawan-Aberdeen School District and running a small business making scented candles, soaps and sprays. When COVID hit, she said she didn’t feel comfortable, even with precautions, making and selling things from her home. The virus hit her family especially hard. “My three youngest children lost their father to COVID April of this year,” Faison said. During the pandemic she said she was “looking at every- thing that was happening in the world” and “decided to run for office.”

Faison is now on the ballot under the Green Party as a candidate for assemblywomen from Legislative District 11, although she considers herself an Independent. She is approaching her campaign the way she has everything else in her life. “I’m coming in with the energy and intentions of just wanting to genuinely help people because I know what it’s like,” she said. “There’s nobody that speaks for me. I haven’t seen anybody in any office speak for me, or people in my situation. So I wanted to be that person to speak for the people in my situation.” She said because of her experience, “I could tell people, out of all the programs I’ve been to, I can tell you where the shortcomings are.” Faison knows campaigning is difficult, but said she is “both feet in with politics.” “I have a plan. In my mind I have already won,” she said. “I’ve visualized winning and even if I don’t win, I have ideas of just creating a new party consisting of people from whatever party – you can be Democrat, Republican, liberal, whatever, as long as you align with the intentions of helping.” “I want the best of the best with the best intentions. I want the astrophysicist, the scientist. I want the people that just know what’s going on in the world and have an agreement to help, no other alternative motive,” Faison said. “I have hundreds of ideas. And I just wanted to put that out there.”

McCarthy emphasized some of the new programs Lunch Break is growing to help clients even more. “We have a nutrition policy in the works… trying to get more plant-based, healthier options for our clients, trying to educate them about it.” “We’re making steps in doing a lot more than just feeding people. We’re preventing disease, we’re actually bringing them to self-sufficiency, which is the theme going forward,” she said. McCarthy talked about how the pandemic highlighted need, bringing even more clients to Lunch Break who might never have thought they’d need those services. “We have to support each other as a community,” she said. One of Faison’s sons is now a freshman at Monmouth University and a daughter, a junior at Academy Charter School in Asbury Park, is excelling academically. “My daughter actually had to write an essay for college,” Faison said, “and she spoke about our homelessness, the experience, from her point of view.” “I knew she was going through things and that was the first time I got to hear her voice about it.” The struggles have “definitely brought us closer together as a family,” Faison said, noting that at one point there were “six of us in one room with two beds.”

Her children are now her “biggest supporters,” she said. “They go out there, they canvass with me, they put up the signs. They pass out my palm cards, they talk to their friends.” Her children also let her know how proud they are of her. Faison said her oldest son, 28, and now the father of three, says, “Mom, I don’t know how you did it.” Vena was also impressed with Faison, even though they just met. A makeup artist for 20 years, she wrote a somewhat autobiographical book called “My Mom, the Best Mom Ever” about what she calls a “hot mess mom” who doesn’t really have her act together but whose kids love her anyway. To coincide with the book launch last October she asked followers on social media to tell her why their mom was the “best mom ever” and to nominate mothers for makeovers. The winner would get their hair and makeup done, a new dress and a photo shoot. Vena though she would get a handful of nominations. Instead she got over 100. “The stories that came in were just beyond emotional,” Vena said. She picked four women to receive makeovers. Other organizations tapped her to do makeovers as well and community businesses reached out to see how they could help. “So now I’m like, if I could do this, make this a thing, and have small businesses be a part of it as well, we have something here,” she said. “Giving back to a whole other level. Vena, whose father is a cancer clergyman, referenced the Jewish concept of “tzedakah,” the ethical obligation to be philanthropic in which it is though the donor actually benefits more from the act of charity than the donee. “People ask me, ‘Why do you do this?’ ” Vena said, “and I’m like, because it feels good! You should do something for someone else. It really feels good.”

Faison said she felt like the whole experience was “being gifted to me because I’ve stayed strong through all the moments in my life and the universe is kind of returning to me, ‘Well, this is your reward.’ ” She said the makeover, while ephemeral, wasn’t superficial. “It’s helping me in all aspects. It makes me feel like… all that I went through was for a reason to get me here.” And she knows the benefit to her political aspirations of attending the gala and being on a stage in front of hundreds of people, speaking with Jon Stewart. “Being in the spotlight, you know, it draws to my campaign. It could draw on the right people that want to align with what I want to do.” Faison hadn’t told her any of her children where she was going that day when she left the house to get the makeover or what her plans were for the evening. She FaceTimed some of them after her hair and makeup were finished and the reactions were priceless, with one daughter just asking, “Mom?” which made Faison laugh. “So, I look back on everything and my kids made it,” Faison said. “We made it through the storm.”

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 21-27, 2021 print edition of The Two River Times.