The Day I Stopped Using Information to Regulate Myself

The call came from my eldest daughter. She wanted me to know about my grandson, a revservist in the US Army. He may be required to switch to active duty to retain his benefits. If he does, there’s a strong possibility he could be deployed to Iran.

That’s not neutral information.

That’s the kind of news that lands in a grandmother’s chest and just sits there.

We had a lovely Sunday morning conversation. We talked through it. We were steady - and I learned something about myself.

And then, almost reflexively, a thought flashed through my mind:

I need to tell Greg about this.

And just as quickly, another thought followed:

Why?

That question stopped me cold.

Why did I need to tell him? Was it because he needed to know? Was there something to decide? Did I need advice?

No.

It was something else entirely.

I realized I used to take dramatic, uncomfortable, emotionally charged information and move it outward — fast. I would share it. Emphasize it. Frame it. Sometimes even heighten it.

Not because I was malicious. Not because I wanted chaos.

Because I was regulating.

I was using information to steady myself.

If something big happened, I didn’t want to sit alone with the sensation of it. I wanted it witnessed. I wanted someone else to hold it with me. Sometimes I wanted to be the center of it. Sometimes I wanted reassurance. Sometimes I just wanted to feel relevant.

That’s where the old label came from.

Drama queen.

But what I see now is that it wasn’t drama.

It was dysregulation.

When your nervous system is constantly braced, information becomes currency. You move it fast. You broadcast it. You turn it into something that proves you are relevant, involved, needed, affected.

You don’t even know you’re doing it.

This morning, I didn’t do it.

The impulse rose. I watched it. And it dissolved.

Not because I don’t care. Not because I’ve become detached or cold or indifferent to my grandson’s life.

But because I can sit with the weight of something without flinging it outward to feel stable.

That’s new.

And it changes everything.

I woke up peaceful this morning. Leisurely. Made my bed. Got dressed. Took my time. No urgency to report something to someone so I could feel important or held.

Just space.

Later, my daughter said something that caught me quiet.

“We’re really looking forward to you coming. We hope there’ll be more of these trips in the future.”

We haven’t seen each other in a year. That year had distance in it. Tension neither of us named out loud.

And I understood something in that moment.

When you are self-contained, people relax around you. When you are no longer leaking need, people feel the difference — even when they can’t name what changed.

You don’t become harder. You become quieter inside.

And that quiet changes how people meet you.

Here’s what I think many of us were never taught — especially women who spent decades managing households, churches, families, reputations:

We confuse sharing with intimacy.

But sometimes sharing is just outsourcing regulation. Sometimes it’s a nervous system saying help me hold this and dressing it up as connection.

There’s nothing wrong with being witnessed. Being witnessed is human and holy.

But there is something deeply liberating about discovering you can hold it yourself.

I didn’t lose my compassion yesterday, nor do I expect to.

I lost my frantic need to distribute discomfort.

And in its place — clarity. Simplicity. Ease.

It turns out I was never dramatic.

I was braced.

And when the bracing stopped, so did the performance.

If you’ve read this far, I want you to know something.

I wrote this for you. Not for an algorithm. Not for a content calendar. For the woman who recognized herself somewhere in these paragraphs — the one who has been called dramatic, who has been braced for so long she forgot what it feels like to just be still.

You are not too much.

You were never too much.

You were carrying too much. There’s a difference.

And you don’t have to keep carrying it alone.

This is what women are saying when they find their way here:

This is your invitation.

Become an annual subscriber to The Daily RE-WIRE and join our inner circle — the Monirose Soul community of women who are done performing, done shrinking, and done waiting for a permission slip that was never coming.

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You Don’t Have to Live in Survival Mode

I didn’t know I’d slipped back into survival mode until I felt it.

That flatness in my chest. That dull hum that says: just get through the day.

Not sadness. Not fear. Just... grey….

And I thought: Oh shit. I’m back in it.

Here’s the Thing About Survival Mode

It doesn’t announce itself.

You don’t wake up one morning and think, “Ah yes, today I shall enter survival mode.”

It’s sneakier than that.

You’re still functioning. Still paying bills. Still showing up. Still getting shit done.

You look fine.

But inside? You’re braced.

Shoulders tight. Jaw clenched. Thoughts short and sharp.

Joy? Postponed until further notice.

You’re not living. You’re enduring.

And if you’ve been doing it long enough, you might not even notice the difference anymore.

I Noticed Because Something Changed

Six months ago, I started doing something stupid simple.

Breathing. On purpose.

Four seconds in. Hold for four. Exhale for six.

I set a reminder on my phone. Every hour. Because I kept forgetting.

At first, I did it once or twice a day. Then multiple times. Now I do it for 3-5 minutes, several times a day.

And here’s what happened:

My body stopped treating every day like an emergency.

“I’ve been doing this 4-4-6 breath practice for six months now. Sometimes multiple times a day. I even set it on my phone every hour to remind me. Because it’s that much of a life changer for me. It moved me out of survival mentality.”

What Actually Happens When You Stop Bracing

I started wanting things again.

Painting. Baking bread. Sitting in the sun like a lizard.

None of that was possible when I was braced.

Because bracing doesn’t leave room for wanting. It only leaves room for handling.

Regulation gave me my wants back.

How You Know You’re Stuck in Survival

Check your body right now.

Are your shoulders up near your ears? Is your jaw tight? Are you holding your breath?

That’s bracing.

And if you’re braced, you’re in survival mode.

Even if nothing’s actually wrong. Even if you’re “fine.”

Your body doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and the low-grade panic of too much to do and not enough time.

So it braces. All day. Every day.

And you wonder why you’re so goddamn tired.

The Pivot Is Simpler Than You Think

You don’t need a retreat. You don’t need therapy. You don’t need to quit your job and move to Bali.

You need to regulate your nervous system.

Four seconds in. Four seconds hold. Six seconds out.

Just breathing like you mean it.

Because when your body feels safe, everything else becomes possible.

You’re Not Broken. You’re Braced.

And bracing can be unwound.

One breath at a time. One soft moment at a time.

Not dramatically. Physiologically.

Because this isn’t a mindset problem. It’s a nervous system state.

And you can shift it.

Right now. Today. This hour.

Set a reminder on your phone.

Four seconds in. Four seconds hold. Six seconds out.

Do it every hour for a week. See what happens.

The Second Half of Life Isn’t About Surviving Better

It’s about finally—finally—living without armor.

At 60. At 70. At whatever age you are when you say:

I’m done bracing. I’m ready to live.

You don’t have to wait for circumstances to change.

You just have to breathe like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

If you just checked your shoulders and realized they’re up near your ears—if you recognized that flatness, that bracing, that grey hum of just getting through—you’re ready for what we do here.

Welcome to the Monirose Soul Circle.

This is where women who are done enduring and ready to live gather every week.

Not to perform wellness. Not to pretend we’ve got it all figured out.

But to actually do the work of unwinding the brace. Of regulating our nervous systems. Of coming back to life.

Right now through February 23rd, I’m offering 20% off annual subscriptions.

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Two years ago, I painted five faces as part of what I called the “Faces of Fear Project.”

Five portraits reflecting the pain of domestic violence. The wide eyes. The clenched jaw. The look of someone who’s been holding it together for too long.

I couldn’t cry it out. I couldn’t scream it out. So I painted it out.

All of those faces was mine.

I couldn’t cry it out. I couldn’t scream it out. So I painted it out.

Complete, honest, messy frustration. The kind that builds when you’ve been performing strength for so long that something inside you has quietly begun to collapse.

And when I finished those paintings, I had a choice: show them to the world, or hide them forever.

Because here’s what I was holding together at the time:

My entire life. My reputation as an artist in Lynchburg. The possibility that going public with these paintings might help other women—or destroy everything I’d built.

What if people thought I was “too much”? What if galleries stopped showing my work? What if my art life here—fragile as it was—couldn’t survive the truth?

But what if staying silent meant abandoning myself all over again?

I sat with that question for weeks. And every time I tried to decide, my chest tightened. My breath got shallow. My mind spun in circles.

Until I finally stopped trying to THINK my way through it—and started breathing instead.

Not as some spiritual practice. Not because I’m enlightened or “good at meditation.”

But because I was so cracked open from painting those faces that stillness was the only thing that could bring me back together.

So I sat. Just one minute. Eyes closed. Hand on my heart.

Four counts in. Four counts hold. Six counts out.

And for the first time in weeks, the noise stopped.

Not the fear. The fear was still there.

But the NOISE—the spiraling, the second-guessing, the voices telling me what I should do—that stopped.

And in that quiet, I heard something else. Not a grand revelation. Not a cosmic download.

Just a whisper: Show them.

So I did.

This is where the story gets real.

Not just about the front page or the missed opportunities—but about what I built after. The foundation that came from breathing through disappointment. The life that became possible when I stopped abandoning myself. If you’ve been reading quietly and these words keep finding you—this is your invitation.

The Daily RE-WIRE is where I share the rest of the story. The practices that work. The moments that matter. The honest truth about what it takes to build a life that’s yours.

What you get as a paid subscriber:

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The Difference Between Survival Mode and Soul Mode (A True Story)

Last December ( 2024( should have been one of my best months.

If you’re a painter, December is when things usually move. People buy art. Gifts happen. Momentum builds. And instead of leaning into that, I gave it all up.

I agreed to run a six‑week fine art market for twenty‑six other artists.

I believed in it. I believed in them. I believed that if we created visibility, if we showed up, if we marketed hard enough, it would work. The building owner gave us the storefront for free, and my income was supposed to come from a percentage of sales.

We did everything right on paper.

Great social media. Two packed grand openings. People coming through the door.

But sales lagged.

And I found myself working retail five days a week, sometimes six, doing everything short of cartwheels online to get people to come in. And when they did come in, most of them weren’t buyers.

They were other artists.

Artists who wanted wall space. Artists who wanted exposure. Artists who wanted me to fix what wasn’t selling.

I was exhausted.

By the end of those six weeks, I was cooked. Not just physically tired, but spiritually drained. And then came the part that really hurt.

Some of the artists wrote me afterward.

Not to thank me. Not to acknowledge the work. But to tell me everything I did wrong. To tell me they should have sold more. To make their disappointment my responsibility.

Mind you, the ones who complained had sold. Just not enough.

That’s when it became painfully clear.

I had been operating in survival mode.

Survival mode doesn’t always look like panic or chaos. Sometimes it looks like over‑functioning. Like saying yes when your body says no. Like sacrificing your own work to hold space for everyone else. Like believing that hope will carry you through without actually trusting yourself.

At that point in my life, I didn’t have the kind of faith I have now.

I had hope.

And I’ve learned something about hope.

Hope carries doubt inside it.

And in my nervous system, doubt always beats hope.

Every time.

Faith is different. Faith isn’t wishing. Faith is relationship. Faith is listening. Faith is being in constant conversation with your soul.

I didn’t have that then.

If I had, my soul would have never agreed to that setup. Never agreed to that schedule. Never agreed to me giving up my own art in December to keep a storefront warm , when nobody is walking the streets looking to buy anything.

People asked us to keep it open. Artists wanted a place to show their work. Offers were made for me to paint in the window.

But the truth was simple.

I don’t live by clocks. I don’t live by calendars. I don’t live by schedules.

I live by listening.

And at that point, I wasn’t listening.

When it ended, everything stopped at once.

The store. My art sales. My income momentum.

I went straight back into survival mode.

And then I lost my best friend.

In our very last conversation, she said one thing to me.

“Monica, you love to write. You should look at Substack.”

That was the last thing she ever said to me.

How did I survive those weeks when rent felt terrifying?

Toe tapping. Facebook posts. Selling a few pieces here and there. Doing just enough to keep the lights on.

Not elegant. Not inspired. But enough.

And then, on January 11th, I wrote my first post.

But here’s the distinction I want you to hear.

Running that art market was survival mode. Writing now is soul mode.

Survival mode is when you override yourself. Soul mode is when you trust what you hear.

Survival mode is loud, busy, exhausting. Soul mode is quiet, clear, and oddly efficient.

So how did I shift?

Not all at once. Not with some breakthrough moment or perfect plan.

I started with my breath.

In for four counts. Hold for four. Release for six.

One minute at a time. That’s all I could manage at first. Just sixty seconds of regulating my nervous system so I could hear something other than panic.

Now I do five minutes at a time, at least twice a day.

Because here’s what I learned: You can’t hear your soul when your body is in survival mode. Your nervous system has to feel safe enough to let you listen.

So I breathed. And then I started asking my soul before I moved. Before I said yes. Before I made decisions based on hope instead of faith.

I stopped treating my inner voice like background noise and started treating her like the most credible advisor in the room — because she is.

I stopped hoping things would work out and started having faith that if I listened, I’d know what to do next.

That’s it. That’s the whole practice.

Regulate your nervous system. Listen. Trust what you hear. Move from there.

There's a little more to it, but that is exactly where I began. With this simple breath practice.

I don’t confuse the two anymore.

And when I feel myself slipping back into survival mode, I know exactly where I am. Not because I judge it. Because I’ve lived it. Because I know the way back.

And maybe, if you’re reading this, you recognize it too.

Maybe you’re standing right at that edge — the one between hoping it works out and trusting what your soul already knows.

If that’s where you are, you’re not alone.

If this landed:

The 20% discount on paid subscriptions ends December 31st.

Soul mode doesn’t require you to have it all figured out. It just requires you to start listening.

And sometimes, the best place to practice listening is in community with women who get it.

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P.S. A new kind of compass is coming in January.

Not the kind that tells you where to go — but the kind that helps you listen deeper, question everything, and reframe the stories that have been running your life. It’s not about finding direction. It’s about remembering you already have one. Stay close. And get read to MAXIMIZE YOUR LIFE!

What Hurricane Laura Destroyed (And What It Set Free)

In 2020, Hurricane Laura tore through my hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Officially a Category 4, though anyone who lived through it knows better.

It wasn’t rain that devastated the city. It was wind. Violent, unrelenting, tornado-like wind that ripped things out by the roots.

Including six enormous oak trees on my property.

If you’re from the South, you know the kind.

Ancient. Sprawling. Romantic. The kind that feel permanent. The kind you imagine will outlive you.

They didn’t.

They were thrown across my yard like toys, roots exposed, dignity gone. Two of them were tossed upon my car- bending it in half.

And something in me cracked open watching them lie there.

I’ve always believed trees are more than plants. They’re witnesses. Timekeepers. Guardians.

Seeing them uprooted felt personal. Intimate.

As if the storm had reached into my own life and said, pay attention.

At the time, I was already standing in uncertainty.

Alone. Caring for my elder sister. Wondering whether I had the strength or the desire to rebuild yet again.

And suddenly the question wasn’t just about the house.

It was about me.

Here’s what I’d been carrying:

My dream was never the traditional one.

I tried the marriages. Three of them. I raised my daughters. I did the expected things.

But the dream that lived quietly inside me was about freedom. Creativity. Curiosity.

Living in the center of things. Making art. Letting my soul lead instead of obligation.

I had been rebuilding other people’s versions of my life for decades.

Standing in front of those uprooted trees, the question became undeniable:

Do I stay and rebuild what’s been lost?

Or do I finally pull up my own roots?

I packed what I could fit in a small van and left.

With help from a few locals who hadn’t fled—thousands had—I loaded what mattered.

Paintings I’d saved. A few belongings. Some furniture.

And I said goodbye to my sister.

I knew, standing there, that I would likely never see her again.

I was right. She passed away two years later.

I drove to Virginia where my daughter lived.

No plan. No safety net.

Just the stubborn belief that I couldn’t rebuild someone else’s life one more time.

What followed wasn’t pretty.

Within months, COVID hit. I got sick. Three months in bed. Savings drained. Three months behind on rent facing eviction.

By this time, my daughter and her family had packed up and moved two hours away.

But even then, flat on my back, something was different.

The life I was trying to build—however unstable—was mine.

Not a reconstruction of what had been. Not a version that fit someone else’s expectations.

Mine.

So I kept going.

I started painting daily. Small works. Then larger. I put them online. I sold a few.

I started writing. Not because I had a platform. Because the words needed somewhere to go.

I began sitting with my soul. Two minutes at a time. Learning to listen instead of manage.

Slowly—so slowly it was almost invisible—things started organizing themselves.

Not through hustle. Not through a plan.

Through coherence.

Four years later, here’s what’s true.

I live simply, downtown, surrounded by light and my own paintings.
I write every day, and the work has found its people.
I sell my art. I support myself through what I create.

More than anything, I wake up inside a life that feels natural. Effortless. Aligned.
Whatever “normal” is supposed to mean, this is mine.

The joy I feel now is different from any joy I knew before.

It isn’t conditional. It isn’t borrowed. It isn’t built on anyone else’s approval.

It’s steady. Daily. Mine.

The kind that comes from knowing—finally, at 70—that you’re living the life your soul imagined long before you had language for it.

Hurricane Laura destroyed six ancient oak trees.

But it also destroyed the last excuse I had for not choosing myself.

And for that, I will always be grateful.

If this story landed, you’re welcome to stay.

Beginning in January, I’m opening a full series on
Re-Imagine. Reclaim. Reinvent.

It’s everything I learned going from 68 and broke to 70 and thriving.
How to create a sense of safety when nothing feels certain.
How to follow the quiet whispers that don’t make logical sense.
How to rebuild a life that finally feels like yours, even when it looks nothing like the plan you once had.

If you’d like to be part of that, annual subscriptions are currently 20% off.
$64 through December 31. Regular price is $80.

That includes the full January series, every essay, Clara’s story, and everything I create in 2026.

No pressure. Just an open door

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Grab the 20% discount for a whole year!

Why Stillness Isn’t Laziness — It’s Recovery

This past weekend, for the first time in my life, I spent two full days being still without fighting it.

No guilt. No bargaining. No voice in my head saying you should be doing something productive right now.

I simply rested.

And when I came out the other side, I understood something I’ve been circling for years.

Stillness is not laziness. It’s recovery.

Let me show you what I mean.

The Cabin: When I Stumbled Into Soul Stillness

Almost three years ago, my daughter and her family took me to a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia while they went skiing.

No Wi-Fi. No distractions. Just a kitchen, walking paths through the woods, a hot tub, and hours of silence.

Every day, they left to ski. Every day, I stayed behind.

At first, I occupied myself the way I always did. I walked the paths. Studied the trees. As a landscape painter, my mind went to color and brushstroke, to the way light hit bark. I carried a sketchpad and pencils.

But one day, I simply sat.

I didn’t plan to. I just ran out of things to do.

I sat in that cabin for nearly two hours with nothing demanding my attention.

No phone. No noise. No agenda.

At first, it felt awkward. Exposed. Like time was pressing in on me.

And then, about forty-five minutes in, something shifted.

It became easy.

Calming.

I wasn’t meditating. I wasn’t seeking insight. I wasn’t doing anything I would have labeled as spiritual.

I was just there, listening.

To the quiet. To the world outside. To something inside me that didn’t need words.

At the time, I didn’t understand the significance of that moment.

I didn’t know how to repeat it intentionally. I didn’t know how to bring it home with me.

All I knew was that, for the first time, sitting with myself didn’t feel like a problem to solve.

That was soul stillness.

Not the kind where your body is still but your mind is planning dinner.

The kind where time dissolves and you forget you have a body at all.

The Search: Trying to Find It Again

When I came home, I tried to recreate it.

I would sit. Try to quiet my mind. Wait for that feeling to return.

It didn’t work.

My body could be still, but internally I stayed braced. Scanning. Managing. Thinking.

I had tasted something real in that cabin, but I didn’t have a practice to access it.

I just had a memory of what it felt like when it happened by accident.

The Practice: Learning to Recreate What I’d Found

About twelve months ago, I discovered a simple breathing pattern.

Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for six.

I committed to sitting for two minutes at a time. That was it. Two minutes.

Not to achieve calm. Not to receive insight.

Just to sit and breathe.

At first, two minutes felt long.

But I stayed with it.

Over time, something remarkable happened.

The noise softened. Thoughts slowed.

And eventually, there were moments when there were no thoughts at all.

I had found my way back to what I’d stumbled into in that cabin.

Now, sometimes I can sit for thirty minutes like that. Breath moving. Mind quiet. No effort.

And here’s what surprised me:

The inspiration didn’t come during the stillness. It came afterward.

In the hours and days that followed, ideas would surface fully formed. Clear. Unforced. Creative. Alive.

Stillness became fertile instead of frightening.

The Real Work: Learning to Allow It

And yet, even with all of that, I struggled.

This is the part people don’t talk about.

Even after learning how to BE still, I still argued with the NEED to be still.

I would say things like: I’ll take a day off. I’m tired today. I just don’t have the gas.

And then I’d judge myself for it.

I treated stillness like something I had to justify. Like a temporary indulgence. Like something I was allowed only if I’d earned it.

For the past year, that has been my real work.

Not learning how to be still.

Learning how to allow it without guilt.

This Weekend: The Shift

Which brings me back to this past weekend.

For the first time, I spent two full days being still without struggling against it.

No internal bargaining. No story about falling behind.

I didn’t need to explain it to myself.

I simply rested.

And that’s when I understood what this season has really been teaching me.

Stillness is not laziness. It’s recovery.

Recovery after decades of hustle. Recovery after a life spent proving. Recovery after believing rest had to be earned.

Stillness isn’t the absence of life. It’s where life quietly reorganizes itself.

I’m not afraid of it anymore.

I know now that when stillness shows up, it’s not asking me to stop living.

It’s asking me to let my nervous system catch up to the life I’m building.

Movement always returns.

But when it does now, it comes without urgency. Without panic. Without the need to prove anything.

It comes from coherence.

And that’s how I know the stillness is doing exactly what it came to do.

It’s not teaching me to stop. It’s teaching me to trust.

If You Need This

If you’re exhausted right now—truly exhausted—try this:

Two minutes. Just breath.

Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for six.

Don’t expect insight. Don’t expect calm. Don’t expect anything.

Just sit.

Your nervous system will thank you.

And if two minutes feels too long, start with one.

That’s enough.

Give the Gift of Permission to Rest

If you know a woman who’s exhausted from proving, hustling, and earning her right to breathe—give her a year of The Daily ReWire.

Daily reminders that stillness isn’t laziness. That rest is recovery. That she doesn’t have to keep bracing.

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The Truth About Loneliness vs. Solitude
How to survive the ache of being alone without slipping into despair

I didn’t understand the shape of loneliness until the night everything went still.

Four years ago, when Hurricane Laura damaged my house, my neighborhood, my history, and the rhythm of my life in one violent sweep, I thought the worst part was the physical loss. Walls. Furniture. Books. Paintings. The familiar creaks of a home that had held my entire adult life.This was my parents home that I bought after both had passed away.

But the real loss didn’t hit until later.

I landed in Lynchburg with a small van of things I managed to save and a broken spirit, and a nervous system so blown out it vibrated even in the quiet. My daughter and her family were here then. Close. Present. Their nearness softened the edges of everything. I told myself I’d rebuild. I told myself I was fine. And for a few months I was. In fact, I thought I’d found Nirvana! I painted like there was no tomorrow. And quickly joined local art clubs, even gave lectures on painting. Phew.

Then! Nine months later my daughter and her family packed up and moved away.
One month after that I got COVID and went down hard. Three months in bed. Unable to do anything but shuffle between the kitchen for soup and the bathroom for relief. Unable to market my art- my only means of income. Unable to make art. I had an emergency savings account but after the third month, it was empty.

That was the moment the floor fell out from under me.

.

I remember lying in this very room too sick to stand too tired to cry, the air thick with that strange post-COVID heaviness, thinking, so this is what alone feels like. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was dense. It pressed against my ribs like a question I didn’t want to answer.

There was no one to tell me “You’re strong. You’ll bounce back.”
But the kind of quiet that followed wasn’t something you bounce back from.
You learn to sit inside it. Or you disappear under it.

At first I mistook all of it for loneliness.
Of course I did.

I had been stripped of my old life.
My family was gone.
My body was fighting for breath.
My home didn’t feel like home yet.
And there I was, a sixty-something woman, starting over in a city where no one knew me well enough to knock on the door and say, “Hey, you alive in there?”

That winter here stretched on forever, made worse by the collection emails and phone calls from the landlord. They wanted - and rightly so - their rent! I was now 3 months in arrears.
The nights were the worst.

I’d sit on the edge of the bed listening to the quiet and feel that hollow ache in my chest, the one that tells you you’re untethered from everything that used to hold you up. I didn’t know the word for it, but it felt like grief mixed with freefall. Like living suspended between what was gone and what hadn’t yet arrived.

But one night something shifted. A tiny small voice nudges me with an idea. Take your current inventory of paintings and put them on a go-fund me page. Offer one painting to each $100 donation. It took nearly three days to complete the go-fund page- something that should only take a matter of minutes. But that’s how hard it was for me to sit at my desk. I could manage about three minutes at a time. Just long enough to add a painting’s image to the go fund me page.

Long story made short, I finally released the go -fund me via FB and the friends did what friends do best, they showed up. And I generated enough money to secure my home all the rent and late charges to boot!

But that did not change what was still lingering within me: this solitude that felt like a massive weight tied around my ankle.

If you have someone in your life who would benefit from following a real woman’s journey out of survival and into soul-led living — especially during the holidays when so many of us feel invisible or overwhelmed — consider gifting them a subscription.

I’m offering a special holiday discount through December 31 for anyone who wants to join us inside this unfolding.

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The Noise Was Drowning Me. So I Turned It All Off.

I was sitting at my kitchen table one morning, still weak from three months of COVID, staring at my phone like it held the answer to everything.

The apartment was silent. Not the peaceful kind. The hollow kind. The kind that happens when you’ve been alone too long and the walls start to feel like they’re watching you.

Outside, Ninth Street hummed with ordinary life. Cars passing. Someone’s dog barking. The coffee shop across the way opening its doors to the morning rush.

But inside, I was frozen.

My thumb hovered over the phone screen, the glass reflecting my face back at me in that sickly blue glow. I could see the shadows under my eyes. The thinness of my cheeks. The way my hair fell limply around my shoulders like it had given up trying.

And that’s when I heard it.

My own breath.

Quick. Shallow. Uneven.

The breath of a woman still bracing for impact that wasn’t coming.

My chest felt tight, like someone had cinched a rope around my ribs and pulled. My shoulders were up near my ears. My jaw was clenched so hard I could feel the ache radiating into my temples.

I set the phone down—not gently, but like it had burned me—and pressed both palms flat against the cool surface of the table.

The wood grain felt real under my fingers. Solid. Grounding.

And out of nowhere—not taught, not instructed, not part of any program I’d stumbled across in my desperate late-night scrolling—my body tried something different.

A rhythm that felt strangely ancient, like I had known it all along but had forgotten.

I closed my eyes.

Inhaled through my nose for four slow counts.
Held it—my lungs full, my chest expanded—for four more.
Exhaled through my mouth for six long, deliberate counts.

The first cycle wobbled. My breath caught halfway through like it didn’t trust the pattern yet.

The second cycle loosened something I’d been carrying for months. A knot somewhere deep in my belly began to soften.

By the third, something unlocked.

Not in my mind. In my body.

As if my nervous system—ragged and frayed from months of fighting just to stay upright—finally believed it was safe in that quiet kitchen.

My shoulders dropped.
My jaw unclenched.
The rope around my ribs loosened, just slightly.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn’t bracing anymore.

For months before this, I had been drowning.

Not in water. In noise.

After I made that crooked bed—the one that gave me my first spark of myself again after lying flat for three months—I thought I had reached the quietest point a woman could reach.

But I hadn’t.

Because even after that bed ritual began, even after I could finally stand long enough to heat soup without collapsing, the inside of my life stayed unbearably loud.

Not from sound.
From pressure. From expectation. From every voice except my own.

When the COVID fog finally began to lift—when the fever broke and the weakness started to recede and I could breathe without my lungs rattling—I realized my nervous system felt like it was running on broken wiring.

I woke each morning braced. Tight. Jittery.

As if life itself were something I needed to defend myself against.

The world outside my window looked normal. People walked their dogs. Went to work. Carried groceries. Laughed on street corners.

But inside my apartment, inside my body, I was still fighting.

And because I didn’t know how to steady myself yet—because no one teaches you how to land after you’ve been in freefall for months—I did what most women do when they are scared beyond reason.

I reached for noise.

The news before my feet hit the floor.

I’d wake up—groggy, disoriented, still not sure if I was safe—and grab my phone from the nightstand before I even sat up. The blue light would flood my face in the dim morning room, and I’d scroll.

Headlines screaming.
Case counts rising.
Experts contradicting each other.
The world on fire in a thousand different ways.

I told myself I was staying informed. Being responsible. Keeping up.

But really, I was just filling the space where my own voice used to be.

Then came the advice channels.

YouTube gurus promising clarity if I followed their seven steps.
Podcasts with spiritual teachers who sounded so certain, so calm, so unbothered by the chaos.
Instagram accounts full of soft lighting and hand-lettered affirmations that only made me feel like I was failing to feel inspired.

I consumed it all like a woman starving.

Not because it helped.

But because noise feels like company when you’re frightened.

Noise feels like control when everything is slipping.
Noise feels like progress when you’re too overwhelmed to move.

So I clung to it.

I let other people’s certainty fill the apartment. I let their voices drown out the quiet hum of my own intuition—the one that had carried me through every loss, every heartbreak, every collapse before this one.

I didn’t trust myself anymore.

So I trusted everyone else instead.

But that morning, sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee I didn’t even want, something different happened.

My phone sat next to me on the table, glowing like a lifeline.

The news app had a red notification bubble. Seventeen unread articles. The world demanding my attention before I’d even brushed my teeth.

My hand reached for it without thinking. Pure habit. Pure fear.

My thumb hovered over the screen.

And my body stopped me.

That quick, shallow breath.
That tightness in my chest.
That sense of bracing—always bracing—for the next thing to go wrong.

I looked down at my hand, trembling slightly, and thought: What am I doing?

That’s when the breath came.

Not a thought. Not a decision.

Just my body—exhausted, depleted, but somehow still wiser than my frightened mind—offering a way through.

Four counts in.
Four counts held.
Six counts out.

I closed my eyes and followed it.

The kitchen fell away. The phone stopped glowing. The hum of the refrigerator faded into the background.

There was only breath.

In. Hold. Out.
In. Hold. Out.

By the third cycle, I could feel my heartbeat slowing. The frantic drumming in my chest easing into something steadier. Something almost calm.

And that’s when I heard what my nervous system had been trying to tell me for months:

The noise wasn’t helping me survive.

It was drowning me.

Drowning out my instincts.
Drowning out my clarity.
Drowning out the part of me that knew—had always known—how to find solid ground even when everything else was falling apart.

If you’re finding value in this series and want to support my work, I’m running a simple Christmas offer this month. You can send someone a year of my paid subscription, or use it for yourself if your soul needs a place to land. It helps me keep writing these free series with the depth and honesty I offer here

Send her something that feeds her spirit every single day.

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Survival Series: Part Three

There’s a moment in any collapse where you realize something awful and liberating at the same time:

The old identity is gone. And the new one isn’t here yet.

That’s the raw middle.

Not poetic. Not inspiring. Not cinematic.

Just a woman in pajama pants standing in her own home, looking out the window at Ninth Street, watching people walk past with their coffees and their dogs and their grocery bags—all acting like the world was normal.

But my world wasn’t normal.

My roles weren’t intact. My sense of self wasn’t intact.

Was I still the brave one? The strong one? The woman who uprooted her entire life and moved to a new town at seventy, believing she could start again?

Or was I the woman who had just spent three months terrified on her couch, too weak to stand, crawling through the dark?

I didn’t know.

And that uncertainty—that standing in the terrifying middle with no map, no signposts, no sense of who I was supposed to be next—that’s the part nobody prepares you for.

People love to talk about reinvention like it’s glamorous.

Like you have some big epiphany, burn your old life down, and rise from the ashes with a new wardrobe and a five-year plan.

Let me tell you the truth:

Reinvention starts with something embarrassingly small.

Mine started with making my bed.

Not because I was virtuous. Not because I was motivated. Not because I was “turning my life around.”

I did it because everything else felt too big.

Write a new business plan? Too big.
Figure out my purpose? Too big.
Call someone and explain what I’d been through? Way too big.

But making my bed?

That I could do.

So I did it.

One small, crooked, not-even-close-to-HGTV bed.

The sheets were wrinkled. The blanket was uneven. It looked like a seven-year-old had done it.

But the moment I stepped back and looked at it, something shifted.

Not the room.

Me.

That tiny act created the smallest spark of order in my body—a spark that lifted my energy just enough to change how I was thinking.

I wasn’t the woman who had fallen apart on the couch anymore.

I was the woman who could take one clear step.

And here’s what nobody tells you about energy:

Once it shifts—even slightly—your mind follows.

That spark of physical energy created a spark in my thoughts. And that mental spark allowed me to feel something I hadn’t felt in months:

Possibility.

Not certainty. Not clarity. Not confidence.

Just the faintest whisper of maybe.

Maybe I could heat soup without collapsing.
Maybe I could open the blinds.
Maybe I could take a shower tomorrow.
Maybe—eventually—I could figure out who I was becoming.

The fear quieted. The next thought came in cleaner. The next step felt possible.

I couldn’t have told you that morning who I was or where I was going. I had no grand vision, no five-year plan, no sense of direction.

But I had made my bed.

And that crooked little bed—and the energy it sparked—was the first proof that the new identity, the one I hadn’t met yet, was already forming.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you what that next thing was.

Unfancy. Unspiritualized.

Exactly what actually worked when all I had left was myself.

P.S.

I just realized something while writing this.

I still make my bed first thing every morning.

Sure, I used to make it before—eventually. After the first cup of coffee. After scrolling Substack. After the bathroom trip.

But now?

I hop out and make the bed before I do anything else.

Not because I’m disciplined. Not because I read some productivity guru’s advice.

But because my body remembers.

It remembers that morning when I didn’t know who I was anymore and making that crooked bed was the first proof I was still here.

That tiny spark became a ritual. And that ritual became the foundation of who I am now.

Some survival skills don’t leave you once you learn them.

They just become part of how you show up for yourself—every single day.

If you’re finding value in this series and want to support my work, I’m running a simple Christmas offer this month. You can send someone a year of my paid subscription, or use it for yourself if your soul needs a place to land. It helps me keep writing these free series with the depth and honesty I offer here

If you enjoy my work and want to see my art, you can browse it here:

Monica’s Art

If you’re in the mood to send a little Christmas magic, here’s a digital card I designed that you can email, text, or drop into a DM.

Happy Holidays Digital Greeting Card

The strangest part of that season is how quiet it was.

I had just moved to Lynchburg, thinking I was coming to be closer to family, only to watch them pack up and leave a few weeks later. One minute I belonged somewhere. The next minute I was a newcomer in a strange town with no community, no connections, and no real idea what came next.

And then COVID hit me like a freight train.

I wasn’t one of the lucky cases. I went down hard, and I stayed down. Three months flat. No strength. No breath. No voice. Just me and the four walls of an apartment I’d barely had time to memorize.

My business collapsed right along with me. So did my savings. Every bill felt like a countdown.

I remember lying there on the couch one afternoon, too weak to sit upright, and hearing the email ding—the notice that my rent had gone into collections. They were preparing eviction papers.

And there I was, unable to stand long enough to wash a dish.

Hope wasn’t even in the room with me. She wasn’t in the building. She wasn’t in the zip code.

There were days when the only sound in the whole apartment was the rattle of my own breathing and the old refrigerator humming like it was trying to keep me company.

I didn’t feel brave. I didn’t feel resilient.

I felt abandoned by life in a place where I didn’t know a single soul.

I learned to measure progress in inches, not miles.

Standing long enough to heat soup. Crawling back to bed before the blackout hit. Opening the blinds even though the light made me dizzy. Letting the shower run because I didn’t have the strength to get in it.

There was no inspiration. No epiphany. No glimmer of anything.

Just the stubborn fact that I was still here.

Some days I couldn’t even lift my phone to text someone from back home. I didn’t want to hear myself say the words out loud—I’m sick, I’m broke, I’m alone, and I might lose the only roof I have.

But every morning, my feet somehow found the floor.

Not with intention. Not with courage.

Just because gravity insisted.

And that became my rhythm: Let the body go where the heart can’t yet follow.

People talk a lot about hope.

But in that season, hope was too loud for me. Too bright. Too far away.

What kept me alive wasn’t hope.

It was motion. The smallest, slowest motion imaginable.

And here’s the thing—I’ll tell you later how I saved that apartment, how the tide eventually turned, how life found its way back in.

But in those early days, none of that was visible yet. I couldn’t even imagine it.

All I had was breath, the hum of a refrigerator, and a stubborn little spark in me that refused to vanish.

Sometimes survival looks exactly like that.

A woman in a new town, lying flat on her couch, inching forward in the dark until her heart finally remembers the way.

If you’re finding value in this series and want to support my work, I’m running a simple Christmas offer this month. You can send someone a year of my paid subscription, or use it for yourself if your soul needs a place to land. It helps me keep writing these free series with the depth and honesty I offer here

If you’re in the mood to send a little Christmas magic, here’s a digital card I designed that you can email, text, or drop into a DM. Happy Holidays Digital Greeting Card

If you enjoy my work and want to see my art, you can browse it here:

Monica’s Art

.

Survival Series: Part One

The Moment You Realize You Haven’t Been Living

It happened on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon — the kind where the sky can’t decide if it wants to rain or just stay moody. I was standing at my kitchen counter, eating soup straight from the bowl like a woman who’d forgotten she owns utensils.

I wasn’t sad.
I wasn’t overwhelmed.
I wasn’t even thinking anything dramatic.

I was just… blank.

Halfway through the bowl, I pulled the spoon out of my mouth and thought,
Huh. I don’t taste a thing.

That was the moment.
That tiny, ridiculous moment with the spoon.

I felt something familiar slide across my chest — that old, low hum that says, “Keep going. Keep pushing. Don’t fall apart.”
And I realized I’d slipped back into survival mode without even noticing.

Not the loud survival mode — the kind where everything is on fire.
The quiet kind.
The one with the flat days and the going-through-the-motions and the faint sense that life is happening around you, not with you.

I leaned back against the counter and looked at my kitchen like I was seeing it from underwater.

The light was beautiful, slanting across the table like a little blessing I hadn’t earned.
But I didn’t feel it.
I didn’t feel anything.

And that was the tell.

It hit me then, soft but clear:
Oh. I’ve gone numb again.

Survival mode always sneaks in like that — through the tiny cracks.
When you stop noticing the warm mug in your hands.
When you stop humming to yourself.
When you stop lifting your face toward the sun because the sun feels like too much effort.

Nobody teaches us to look for that.
We just push through it, proud of how strong we are.

But here’s what I’ve learned living this long, wild life of mine:

The moment you notice you’re in survival mode is the moment you’re already stepping out of it.

Awareness is the first crack in the armor.

I didn’t fix anything that day.
I didn’t make a list.
I didn’t vow to overhaul my life.

I just stood there, bowl in hand, and whispered to myself,
Honey… you’re allowed to feel alive again.

And something softened.
Barely, but enough.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the tiny two-minute thing I do when this happens — the thing that pulls me back into the land of the living every single time.

But for today, just this:
Notice the flatness.
Notice the part of you that wants more.

That’s where the revival begins.

If you’re finding value in this series and want to support my work, I’m running a simple Christmas offer this month. You can send someone a year of my paid subscription, or use it for yourself if your soul needs a place to land. It helps me keep writing these free series with the depth and honesty I offer here.

.

If you enjoy my work and want to see my art, you can browse it here:

Monica’s Art

If you’re in the mood to send a little Christmas magic, here’s a digital card I designed that you can email, text, or drop into a DM.

Happy Holidays Digital Greeting Card