A Heater, a Hunch, and a Homecoming

Restoring rhythm. Receiving joy. Remembering what matters.

This week didn’t come with fireworks.

It came with clarity.

After the swirl of the holidays, travel to Houston, and a little too much post-December inertia, I finally landed.

And it wasn’t dramatic.

It was a whisper: Check your space heater.

Turns out the damn thing was slowly draining my energy.

I’d been walking around in a fog—tired, draggy—chalking it up to burnout or age or blood sugar or the news.

Nope.

Just low oxygen from a heater running too long in a closed room.

I turned it off. I put on two layers.

And almost immediately—my brain cleared. My energy rose. My sleep deepened. My joy came back.

That’s what listening to the soul does.

It doesn’t shout. It nudges. And if you’re willing to sit still long enough, you can actually hear it.

In Case You Missed It This Week:

📖 Clara’s stirring
No new chapter yet—but I haven’t published since Dec 10, and she’s ready to speak again. I’ll be working on the next piece in the coming days.

🌀 New Survival Series post
This space is turning into the heartbeat of the whole newsletter. If you haven’t explored it yet, start here:

🎥 I joined Substack’s $10,000 revenue club
I recorded a short video about it. Not just the number—but the fact that it snuck up on me while I was just doing what I love. That’s soul-aligned business.

🪷 A week of repair and renewal
I cleaned the studio. Prepped to finish Morning Glories. Bought giant birch panels for the big landscape painting I’ll be doing for my daughter and her husband.

And most of all—I fell in love again with my space. My things. My quiet. My rhythm.

Honestly? I don’t want anyone here. It feels like heaven.

(Greg can still come. He has a key.)

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A Final Nudge…

If you’ve been feeling off, tired, foggy—check your environment.

Not just your emotional one, but the physical space around you.

Sometimes the soul isn’t blocked by beliefs.

Sometimes it’s just suffocating from a heater sucking up all the air.

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Also: we spent some beautiful time in private chat this week talking about joy versus gratitude.

And I’ll say it again—I choose joy.

Not because I’m chasing happiness. But because joy cracks me open to a kind of gratitude that lives in my bones, not my checklist.

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Thank you for being here.

Thank you for reading, reflecting, and listening alongside me.

I hope something in this past week stirred something in you, too.

With love from this quiet little heaven of mine,

Monica

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You’re Not Here Because You Need More Emails

You’re here because something in these words has stirred something in you—a feeling that it’s time to start living a little differently.

Most spaces online are noisy, salesy, or surface-level. You’re tired of inspiration that doesn’t land and advice that doesn’t fit.

You want something real—quiet, rooted, personal.

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You’ve downloaded freebies, read the blogs, maybe even taken courses—and still felt untouched.

You’re not looking for more content.

You’re looking for something that supports your shift into this next season.

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A paid subscription isn’t just a transaction—it’s a quiet handshake.

It says, this space matters to me.

As a paid subscriber, you’ll receive occasional soul-based guides (like the Joy Ledger this month) that support your internal rewiring. The PDFs aren’t fluff—they’re field-tested, soul-built tools designed to gently rewire how they live, breathe, and respond to life. Each guide or resource comes directly from my own lived experience.

Nothing noisy. Just the right tools at the right time.

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