I Spent $5,000 Chasing Hope.

Now? I Live in Knowing.

Now I Live in Knowing.

I’ve been cleaning out my old email archives, and what I found in there hit me harder than I expected.

Receipts. Logins. Course confirmations. Lesson #1s from people with big promises and slick marketing.

All of them promising me the same thing in different packaging:

“You can sell your art online—without burnout, without marketing, without having to actually talk to people. Just follow this system.”

I bought it. Over and over again.

And when I say “bought,” I mean it literally. I dropped over $5,000 on programs, memberships, PDF toolkits, and platforms that all swore up and down that if I followed their steps, I’d wake up to art sales in my sleep.

Want to guess how many of those teachers are still in business?

Almost none.

They made their money selling the dream. And then disappeared when the dream didn’t deliver.

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The first one was a $2,000 marketing program that promised to build me a professional website and teach me how to sell my art “like the big box stores.”

I fell for their slick marketing. Hard.

They told me I’d learn how to push second and third-tier products—calendars, gift cards, prints. They told me it was all about building an email list and following their proven funnel.

But here’s what they didn’t tell me: they had no idea why people actually buy fine art.

Because fine art isn’t a calendar. It’s not a product you upsell or bundle. It’s a soul transaction.

And these guys? They were two bros having fun getting dopamine hits about how good they were at marketing. Every single video was the same damn message, dressed up in different fonts.

I killed the website within a year.

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But I didn’t stop there.

Because I was motivated by sheer determination. I knew it was possible to make a living with my art. This was post-COVID. Everything was shifting online. Retail was exploding. I just needed to figure out the system.

So I kept buying.

The worst one? The guy who promised $3,000 in art print sales in 48 hours.

He had a whole con going. And I fell for it completely.

He taught us how to build and publish an “effective sales funnel” to sell prints. Not art. Prints. Through automated emails and landing pages and countdown timers that created fake urgency.

I bought it. And I worked it hard. Round the clock for four months.

I even convinced two artist friends to do it with me. They paid me to build their funnels.

Total. Flop.

The only people who made money were the platforms hosting the funnels and the guy who sold us the original idea.

It was a scam. An internet scam. And I fell for it because I wanted a foolproof system for showing and selling my art—something I could follow that would finally, finally work.

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Here’s what I learned from spending $5,000 on empty promises:

You can’t automate a soul transaction.

You can’t funnel someone into buying something that requires them to feel something first.

And the people selling you the dream? They’re not evil. They’re just tired. They can’t sustain the illusion. And they don’t know what else to sell once people start asking for something real.

So they disappear.

And you’re left holding the receipts, wondering what the hell you were thinking.

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But here’s the thing I didn’t expect:

While I was busy chasing those systems, I painted something that changed everything.

I called it Hope Valley

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HOPE VALLEY

It’s a soft pink path winding through distant mountains. Gentle. Quiet. The kind of place you walk when you’re not sure where you’re going, but you trust the ground beneath your feet.

At the time, Hope Valley represented hope beyond my knowing. The belief that somewhere—just beyond what I could see—there was a way forward.

And for a long time, that’s where I lived. In hope.

Hoping the next course would work.
Hoping the next teacher wouldn’t disappear.
Hoping I’d finally crack the code and everything would click into place.

But here’s what I know now:

I’ve moved beyond Hope Valley.

I don’t live in hope anymore.

I live in knowing.

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Knowing feels different than hope.

Hope is soft. Gentle. It keeps you moving when you can’t see the path yet.

But knowing? Knowing is steady. Satisfying. Relieving

.Knowing is waking up and not wondering if this will work—but recognizing that it already is working.

Knowing is a phoenix in house slippers. A sermon in paint strokes. A memoir still unfolding on a page.

Knowing is understanding that I don’t need a foolproof system. I need my own voice, my own rhythm, and the willingness to show up as myself—messy, unpolished, real.

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So here’s what I’m not going to do to you:

I’m not going to sell you a fantasy.

I’m not going to promise you “easy” or “effortless” or “in your sleep.”

I’m not going to teach you a funnel, a framework, or a five-step system that will solve all your problems if you just follow it perfectly.

Because I’ve been on the other side of those promises. And I know what they cost.

Not just the $5,000. But the depletion. The loss of capacity to want more for yourself. The slow erosion of trust in your own instincts because you keep handing your power to someone else’s blueprint.

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What I am going to offer you is this:

An invitation to define your life.

Not manifest it. Not hustle for it. Not perform it.

Define it.

Because that’s what I’ve finally come to believe: The most powerful thing any woman can do—especially in the second half of life—is to choose how she defines what comes next.

Not how the church defined it.
Not how your ex defined it.
Not how your kids, your boss, or your social feed defines it.

You.

You get to define what success looks like now.
You get to define what rest feels like now.
You get to define your visibility, your pleasure, your work, your boundaries, your beauty, your joy.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

My life is a living RE-WIRE—a soul-led reclamation of truth, power, and beauty after collapse.

It is not linear. It is not polite. It is not performative.

My life is:

• A phoenix in house slippers

• A sermon in paint strokes

• A memoir still unfolding on a Substack page

• A bank account filling while my body rests

• A breathing testimony that it’s never too late to come home to yourself

That’s what I mean by define your life.

Not as an abstract concept. But as a lived, embodied, daily practice of choosing what’s true for you—and building everything else around that center.

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And here’s why this matters more in the second half of life:

At this stage, we don’t have the capacity to give a fuck about much of anything else.

We’re staring at life straight on, without any decoration.

We’ve watched the generations of women before us become less and less as the years go by—because that’s exactly what they expected from life.

But we? We’re different.

We’ve lived long enough to know that hope isn’t enough. That courses and coaches and foolproof systems won’t save us.

What saves us is the willingness to define ourselves. On our own terms. In our own time.

Not because it’s easy. But because it’s the only thing that’s ever been ours.

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“If you’re ready—if you’ve walked through Hope Valley long enough and you’re ready to step into knowing—you have three paths forward:

Path 1: The BREAKTHROUGH Guide
Start on your own terms. This is what I’ve learned through life hurdles, relentless determination, and turning phrases into something that lands. No fluff. No empty promises. Just what’s real. [Link]

Path 2: Three 45-Minute Sessions with Me ($150)
We’ll map out where you are, what you’re trying to define, and the right first steps toward rewiring your life. Not a course. Not a system. A conversation.

Path 3: Become an Annual Subscriber
Get daily essays like this one, full access to everything I’ve written, and the ability to reach out to me directly via DM or email when you need guidance. Plus, you get the Breakthrough Guide immediately. 20% off through [date].

I don’t make promises. I don’t sell ease. I offer what’s real.

And your next chapter isn’t waiting in a course login portal.

It’s waiting in the moment you finally trust yourself enough to write it.

I’ve spent $5,000 on programs that weren’t right for me. I’m not going to let you do the same.

I don’t make promises. I don’t sell ease. I offer what’s real.

And your next chapter isn’t waiting in a course login portal.

It’s waiting in the moment you finally trust yourself enough to write it.

—Monica