Sometimes You Need to Paint the Damn Sunflower Blue

Didn't I already live this day?

Sometimes You Need to Paint the Damn Sunflower Blue

Sometimes it starts with a single phrase:

Didn’t I already live this day?

Me in my pajamas. In my art studio. At 10AM on a Tuesday.

Same coffee. Same scrolling. Same internal debate about whether or not you feel like going out.

You look up and realize: this isn’t just a quiet season. It’s a loop. And it’s closed.

What used to be comfort becomes a cage. What used to be rhythm becomes rut.

And let’s be clear: not all ruts are dramatic. Some of them are dressed up as noble. Meaningful. Even necessary.

But deep down, you know—you’re not moving. You’re not creating. You’re trapped in someone else’s story, painting someone else’s grief, and calling it art.

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Here’s how I know:

I was painting sunflowers for Ukraine.

A local art group organized an exhibit—Sunflowers of Ukraine—to raise money for the people living through war. And I said yes. Of course I said yes. How could I not?

But I couldn’t bring myself to paint cheery, happy sunflowers—the Van Gogh kind, all golden and hopeful. Because the people in Ukraine weren’t living cheery, happy lives.

So I painted sunflowers that were defiant. Standing tall and proud against a gray, moving sky. Rigid. Unyielding. Refusing to fall.

I titled it The Mighty Sunflower of Ukraine

.

And people bought prints. Lots of them. The painting did what it was supposed to do.

But it drained me.

I kept imagining the moms and kids looking everywhere for relief. I kept seeing the gray sky I’d painted—and feeling it in my chest. My body felt rigid, too. Firm. Like those tall sunflowers. Uncomfortable. Betrayed. Afraid.

And as usual, my soul reminded me: Your life has to keep moving forward—even in the light of this horror. You have a responsibility not to give in to the deep sorrow you feel.

But I didn’t know how to move forward when a beautiful flower had been turned into a message about war.

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There was a specific morning—just after I finished The Mighty Sunflower of Ukraine—when I walked into my studio and thought:

I can’t do this anymore.

Not the painting. The feeling. The weight of it. The endless loop of doom and gloom that had wrapped itself around me like a shroud.

I saw three tubes of blue paint in my paint box.

And I grabbed them. Quickly. Without thought.

I put three rows of blue on my palette. One row of white. And I just started moving the color around.

No plan. No expectation. Just blue.

And I could feel the relief immediately.

Blue has always been my go-to. The color that wakes me up. The color that says: You’re still here. You’re still you.

I painted a sunflower. But this time? I made it blue

.

BLUE SUNFLOWER

Not defiant. Not standing tall against a gray sky. Just... different. Playful. Free.

And that blue sunflower sold immediately.

But the sale wasn’t the reward.

The reward was what happened next.

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Except “next” didn’t come right away.

Because life, as it does, interrupted.

I accepted a position managing a congressional candidate’s campaign in Central Virginia. For months, I was on the road—talking about the war in Ukraine, among other things. Talking about policy and loss and what we owe each other in dark times.

And I spent a lot of time driving. Through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Watching the vistas roll past the car window, losing my thoughts in the magnitude and majesty of those ancient peaks.

They felt like the opposite of the sunflowers I’d painted for Ukraine.

The sunflowers were rigid. Defiant. Standing tall against threat.

The mountains? They just were. Massive. Unshakable. Offering something I didn’t have a name for yet.

Sanctuary.

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My candidate lost his primary.

And a few weeks later, I started painting again.

I didn’t plan to paint the mountains. But they’d been living in my body for months—those vistas, that sense of being held by something larger than war, larger than politics, larger than my own fear.

I painted Sanctuary

SANCTUARY

Big. Bold. Deep. Blue and green and purple, all layered together like the ridges I’d been driving past for months.

And I knew—from the very first brushstroke—that this one was special.

It wasn’t just a painting. It was the answer to a question I’d been asking since I grabbed those three tubes of blue paint and broke the spell of the gray sky.

What does relief look like when you stop bracing?

It looks like mountains. It looks like sanctuary.

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Sanctuary is now on its way to one of my readers. A woman who’s been walking this rewiring path with me, quietly, faithfully. She didn’t just buy a painting. She recognized something in it that matched her own shift.

Because that’s the thing about ruts: you don’t climb out with a 10-point plan.

You don’t meditate your way through it. You don’t vision-board it. You don’t wait for permission or the perfect moment or the right alignment of the stars.

You interrupt it.

One decision. One color. One honest answer to the question: What would feel different right now?

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Here’s what breaking the pattern actually looks like in my life right now:

I started brewing an afternoon pot of coffee. Two cups. Late afternoon, around 4 PM. I work on Substack until about 9 PM, and then I pour myself one small glass of sherry to wind down.

I’ve never done this before. The sherry thing. The intentional ritual of it. But it feels right—like a pattern I’m choosing instead of inheriting.

And the weirdest one? I refuse to get dressed most days.

I spend entire days in my pajamas. I paint in them. I work at my desk in them. I only get dressed when I have to go outside for an errand.

My friends wouldn’t be fazed. But my family? Oh, they’d think I’d lost it.

And you know what? Maybe I have. Maybe losing the old script is exactly what this looks like.

I also interrupted my pattern of sitting at my desk for three hours at a time. Now I get up. Do some weights. Wash the stack of dishes. Fold the lingerie. Then return to my desk.

And this week? I made arrangements with a neighbor to hitch a ride to the YMCA so I can swim and sit in the sauna. I haven’t done that in months. But my body’s been asking for it, and I finally said yes.

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The pattern I’m still working on breaking? Scrolling through the latest national news. Searching for something—but I don’t really know what.

And noticing what doesn’t feel good. Way too often. Way too much.

The super frigid weather has me feeling grumpy. Stuck. Like I’m back in that rigid, defiant sunflower energy again.

But here’s what I know now: when I feel that rigidity creeping back in, I don’t push through it anymore.

I interrupt it.

Sometimes that’s grabbing three tubes of blue paint. Sometimes it’s sherry at 9 PM. Sometimes it’s staying in my pajamas and refusing to perform “put-together” for an audience that doesn’t exist.

And sometimes—like recently at the local hair salon—it’s just being exactly who I am.

The owner of the salon announced to the entire room: “You gotta understand, Monica is WORLDLY!”

That’s because they’re all evangelicals and I’m not. And I toss out cuss words like they’re a dime a dozen.

I didn’t apologize. I didn’t shrink. I just laughed.

Because that’s what freedom looks like now. Not the big, dramatic breakthrough. Just the refusal to edit myself for people who need me to be smaller.

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Here’s your takeaway:

You don’t need a breakthrough. You need a break in the pattern.

One small thing. One weird choice. One moment where you look at the thing you’ve been doing—the routine, the performance, the invisible rule—and think: What if I just... didn’t?

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Not reinvention. Not transformation. Just interruption.

Because the next version of your life—the one that feels alive, spacious, yours—isn’t waiting on the other side of some massive shift.

It’s waiting on the other side of one honest choice.

So paint the sunflower blue.
Brew the afternoon coffee.
Stay in your pajamas.
Say the cuss word at the evangelical hair salon.

Do one thing in the next ten minutes that interrupts your usual routine.

Not theoretically. Literally. Right now.

Get up from your desk. Put on a song you haven’t listened to in years. Text the person you’ve been avoiding. Eat dessert first.

Just do something that makes your nervous system sit up and go: Oh. We’re doing this now?

And watch what happens next.

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If you’ve been circling the edge of this work, but haven’t stepped in yet… this is your moment.

Right now, I’m offering 20% off an annual subscription to The Daily RE-WIRE. When you subscribe, you’ll also receive my Breakthrough Guide—a soulful, no-fluff resource to help you listen deeper and move forward.

Only if it feels like a yes. Only if your soul is tired of waiting.

Because your next painting? Your next Sanctuary?

It’s already inside you.

You just need one stroke of blue.