It Was Theft, Plain and Simple. (My Voice. Six Days. Two Thieves.)

Two people talked. Neither one of them was in the room past a few minutes. Both of them stayed for six days.

Somebody Stole My Voice for Six Days. This Week I Filed the Report.

Two people talked. Neither one of them was in the room past a few minutes. Both of them stayed for six days.

For most of the week, blame landed in the wrong place. Not one thought made it all the way through. Not on the page, not out loud, not even to myself. The screen stared back. So did the wall. So did my own coffee cup.

Dangerous questions started creeping in. Have I wandered off? Am I doing something wrong? Have I lost my mojo?

Wrong questions. Every one of them.

A man I care about said something that cut deeper than I expected. Then a situation with one of my daughters stirred up an old fear I know all too well. Neither moment lasted very long.

But their voices did.

For six days, uninvited, old conversations set up camp and refused to leave. Replayed. Edited. Defended. Reimagined with a better ending, over and over, like rehearsing for a trial that was already over and already lost.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It was a hijacking. A quiet one — the kind nobody sends flowers for, because nobody else even knows it happened.

Here’s the part that took six days to see: those two voices had gotten louder than mine, inside my own head, without my permission and without a lease.

My creativity didn’t disappear. It got locked out. Every quiet moment normally spent wondering got converted into a courtroom, arguing a case nobody asked me to try.

My own life wasn’t the one being lived that week.

Somebody else’s was. Two of them, actually, splitting the rent on space that was never theirs to begin with.

No wonder everything felt flat. There wasn’t room left for curiosity when two unpaying tenants had taken the whole floor.

This morning, eviction started. Sat down in front of the window, looked out at the blue sky, and asked one simple question.

Monica Rose — what are you thinking?

Not HIM

Not HER

You.

At first there wasn’t much. The room had been rented out too long to answer right away.

Then upon implementing my go-to breath practice, something extraordinairy happened.

My own voice started answering.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t arrive with fireworks. It simply said,

“This is YOUR life.” “Not his, not hers “

And with that one sentence, the locks got changed.

Not confidence.

Not certainty.

Ownership. Which, it turns out, is the only deed that actually matters.

Freedom isn’t only about retirement. It isn’t only about having more time. Freedom is holding the only key to your own head, and using it.

This probably isn’t happening to only one woman. So here’s the real question.

Whose voice has been renting space in yours this week?

An ex-husband? An adult child? A sister? A boss who retired ten years ago but somehow still has a key?

Or maybe it’s someone who’s been gone for years, still paying no rent, still redecorating. Maybe it’s one sentence, said thirty years ago by someone who probably doesn’t remember saying it, still running the whole building. Still setting the thermostat. Still deciding which rooms get used and which ones stay locked.

Three decades is a long time to let a stranger’s sentence make the rules.

Here’s what’s known now. The week wasn’t spent wandering in the desert. It was spent letting squatters run the place.

Those are not the same thing. One means being lost. The other means being robbed.

Today, the locks are mine again. Useless wondering of my mind, usually rooted in fear are locked out.

Turns out, I’d forgotten how much I like the woman who lives here.

Paid subscribers get the articles that don't make it to the free list — the ones that go further into rooms like this one. This week, new paid members get 20% off. Join before the offer expires.

How do you know you can trust yourself?

It took some wrestling with all the preconceived or inherited practices in my life to unearth my own true voice.

Relief doesn’t begin to cover it.

Even with the week I just lived, there’s comfort in knowing my own voice can be trusted.

Last week, twenty women asked for a copy of my booklet, Building Trust With Yourself. That’s confirmation this isn’t only happening in my own life.

So for all new paid members this week: a copy of Building Trust With Yourself is yours. Send a request to monica@monirosesoul.com and it’ll come straight to you.

In case you missed it, Mike Searles and I recorded another podcast this week. It’s now on our Youtube channel:

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.