Doing was how she proved she belonged. Doing was how she stayed safe.

The idea of simply being, without earning it first, feels like standing at the edge of something with no railing

Make Friends With the Void

The Red Lady In Joy celebrating the void

There’s a particular kind of morning where nothing happens and somehow that’s the whole point.

Coffee on the balcony. Quiet music. Below, downtown coming alive — people hurrying toward courthouses and office buildings, backpacks slung over shoulders, coffee going cold in their hands. Everyone moving with purpose and a touch of stress.

Not one person strolling.

The question arrived almost on its own: sweetheart, who’s keeping score?

It’s a question worth asking anyone still living by the old scorecard — the one nobody hands you but everybody signs anyway. Productive people win. Busy people win. The more you do, the better you’re doing.

There’s a woman whose shape I keep thinking about. Maybe you’ll recognize her too — in someone you love, or in yourself.

She spent her working life as a caretaker. First professionally, then for her own family. She survived things most people never have to face — the kind of days that ask everything of you and leave nothing back for yourself. She got through them the way so many women do. By staying capable. By staying needed. By never, ever sitting still long enough for anyone to wonder if she was alright.

She’s safe now. Genuinely safe, for the first time in years.

And she still can’t sit still.

Not because rest is impossible for her. Because rest was never something she practiced. Doing was how she proved she belonged. Doing was how she stayed safe. The idea of simply being — without a task, without someone needing her, without anything to prove she was worth the space she was taking up — feels like standing at the edge of something with no railing.

That edge has a name.

The void.

Not because it’s empty. Because it’s quiet enough, finally, to hear something underneath all the noise most of us have been running from for years.

The void isn’t a place to arrive at once and master. It’s something to make friends with slowly, the way you’d make friends with someone you weren’t sure you could trust yet. A little time. A little proof that nothing terrible happens when the doing stops. A little evidence, gathered patiently, that existing is allowed without earning it first.

Yesterday was Tuesday, the usual publishing day, and there was nothing to say. Years ago that would have meant forcing something onto the page simply because the day demanded it. Instead, the balcony again — birds, the rushing crowd below, stillness without an answer required.

No answer about what to write arrived.

Something better did. Permission to wait until something true showed up, instead of performing something false because a deadline insisted.

I want to give you proof, not just theory.

Sitting there with my coffee, no agenda, no demand for an answer, a single sentence simply arrived — the way a stray cat arrives at a back door, uninvited, unannounced, already at home.

Who’s keeping score?

I wasn’t trying to write an article. I was just sitting there, doing nothing, letting the birds and the rushing crowd be enough.

The void didn’t delay the work.

The void wrote it.

That’s what I mean when I say something arrives. Not a plan. Not a solution. A small, specific thought that shows up only because you finally got quiet enough to hear it. It might be a sentence. A memory. An image. A question you didn’t know you were carrying.

You won’t know what yours looks like until you sit there long enough for it to show up.

Later that same day, a disappointment that wouldn’t resolve. The old instinct would have been to keep turning it over until a solution forced itself loose. Instead — a bathtub filled with hot water and a long soak. No solving. No fixing. Just a pause.

Nothing got solved in that water. But something loosened. Room opened up for something wiser than a frantic mind to finally speak.

This is why the void matters so much at this stage of life.

Somewhere underneath the busyness, the obligation, the decades of staying useful to survive — there’s a dream that never got its chance. Not a literal ambition necessarily. Something quieter. A feeling you used to chase. A thing you were curious about before life arrived and asked something else of you.

That dream didn’t disappear. It went quiet, the way everything goes quiet under enough noise.

You cannot retrieve it by trying harder. You cannot think your way back to it with a list or a plan. The only way it resurfaces is the same way that sentence arrived on my balcony — uninvited, unannounced, the moment there was finally enough silence for it to be heard.

The void isn’t just where rest lives.

It’s where the dream has been waiting the whole time.

If you are the woman who survived by staying useful — and so many of us are — this is for you.

Rest doesn’t need to be earned.

Stillness doesn’t need a task list to justify it.

A life that is finally, actually safe doesn’t require constant proof that you belong in it.

The void will not swallow you. It is not punishment for slowing down. It is where your own voice finally gets a chance to speak after years of being talked over by obligation.

Understanding it isn’t required. Mastering it isn’t required.

Just sitting there long enough to let it become familiar.

Make friends with it.

It has been waiting far longer than anyone has been avoiding it.

If this piece stirred something in you — if you recognized that woman, or recognized yourself in her — I want to offer you something.

Learning to sit in the void, to stop earning your right to exist, to finally hear what’s underneath all the noise — that starts with one foundational thing. Trust in yourself.

I wrote a small booklet called Building Trust With Yourself for exactly this moment. It’s my gift to every woman who becomes a paid member of The Daily RE-Wire.

Today is also the last day for 20% off an annual membership. Not a reason to rush. Just a good reason to stop waiting if you’ve already been thinking about it.

Become a paid member and send your email to monica@monirosesoul.com or DM me here on Substack — I’ll send the booklet back to you personally.

The void has been waiting. So have you.

Become a paid member — 20% off ends today

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.