Substack bestseller list. Then vertigo. Then the ceiling.

My body had opinions about my big day. Loud ones.

Pathway to Peace

When the Tide Goes Out

It’s Sunday morning and I feel like I have a hangover without ever having had a drink.

Yesterday I woke up to a new paid subscriber. Then I saw I’d landed on the Substack bestseller list again. YouTube numbers climbing. By every external measure it should have been a let’s-go, full-momentum, ride-the-wave kind of day.

And then vertigo hit.

Hard. The kind where you have to grab onto things just to get across the room. My body didn’t negotiate. It just said — we’re done — and I listened, because at a certain point you don’t have a choice. What started as a quick rest turned into a full day horizontal. Nothing created. Nothing written. Just the ceiling and the quiet and the particular indignity of success happening on the outside while your body stages a revolt on the inside.

This morning I’m sitting with coffee, a little foggy, noticing something I’ve been watching for weeks.

A pattern.

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For the past month I’ve been riding waves. Not metaphorical ones — actual felt waves in my body.

The surge comes in and it’s extraordinary. Clear, focused, certain. I know exactly what I want to say, what I want to create, what matters. I move fast. I record. I write. I paint. Everything feels aligned

Seascape

.

And then — not gradually, not politely — the tide goes out.

And I’m standing on what feels like a dry beach wondering where everything went.

Here’s the part that took me a while to understand:

The low energy doesn’t just take my motivation.

It takes my certainty.

And without that certainty, the thoughts get heavy. Maybe I’ve lost it. Maybe I was just on a temporary high. Maybe something is wrong.

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But I’ve been watching closely enough now to see what’s actually happening.

When the wave is in — the energy, the clarity, the momentum — it feels like control.

It isn’t.

It’s access.

Access to energy. Access to clarity. Access to momentum.

And when that access goes quiet, I don’t become a different person. I don’t lose what I’ve built or what I know or what I’m capable of.

I just lose the feeling that I know what I’m doing.

That’s a very different thing.

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I used to think the goal was to stay in the wave. Manage it, extend it, hold onto it.

I can’t. The tide goes out whether I want it to or not.

So the question isn’t how do I stay in the wave.

It’s what is the low tide for?

Practically — I already know. This is when I handle the things I ignore when I’m in flow. The small tasks, the tidying, the mundane maintenance of a life. None of it requires inspiration and all of it needs doing.

But emotionally — this is where it gets interesting.

Because I’m beginning to suspect that the wave builds something and the low tide settles it. The wave expresses and the low tide integrates. One without the other isn’t a rhythm.

It’s just noise.

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I used to trust myself only when I felt good. Only when I felt clear. Only when I was on.

What I’m learning — slowly, on Sunday mornings with foggy heads and cold coffee — is that the real trust isn’t believing in yourself when the wave is in.

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I don’t know if you call it: creativity or energy or mood or motivation.

But I have a feeling you’ve felt some version of this.

The days when everything clicks.

And the days when it just... doesn’t. When the thoughts are heavier not because they’re more true — but because you don’t have the same internal lift to counter them.

Maybe the question isn’t how to fix the low days.

Maybe it’s how to stop making them mean something about who we are.

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This morning I’m not in the wave.

I’m sitting here, a little tired, a little slow.

Writing anyway.

Not from urgency. Not from pressure.

From noticing.

And I’m starting to think that’s not the absence of the wave.

That’s a different kind of strength entirely.

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If something in this story stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.

I’ve been quietly building something called the Monirose Soul Circle for paid members. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.

We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.

If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.

You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.

Come see if it feels like home.

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

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