What My Sister Said That Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep
At 2 AM! The muse demanded attention
I didn’t come to Substack to build a brand. I came here to become someone I could live with. Someone who no longer needed to earn her right to speak. Someone who didn’t have to shape her story to make it more digestible.
Having already experienced personal transformation 14 years ago, I wanted to see how far I could reach, how much more of me is there to discover - AND! I wanted to reach other ladies who want their own transformation.
For a long time, I thought transformation had to be loud. I thought it came with a stage, a following, applause. But the truth is, real transformation is often quiet. It's subtle. It begins with the decision to stop performing and start telling the truth—even if no one claps for it.
My own transformation didn’t begin with a product launch or a perfect quote. It began with a painting. More specifically, it began with a question from my sister, Melba.
“Sis, if you’re going to make art,” she said, “make it from your heart.”
Up until then, I had painted what was expected of me. Landscapes. Waterscapes. Not quite realism, not quite impressionism—just a pleasant blend of the two. Beautiful, yes. But safe. Polished. Art that wouldn’t stir the pot.
Melba’s words wouldn’t let me sleep. And the beautiful thing about having a home studio is that when the muse calls, no matter the hour, you can respond. So I did. I got up. I went to the easel. And for the first time, I painted with no one else in mind.
Melba watched. I painted. She critiqued—and Lord, I do not favor that at all. The piece went through many iterations. At one point the trees were all pink, then purple. Eventually, I returned to the color I always come home to: blue. And while I painted, I imagined children laughing and running through the woods. I saw lovers wandering the paths, pausing to point out beauty to one another. I was not just painting. I was building a world.
That painting became what I now call a "silent conversation" between the artist and the viewer. A dialogue without words, an invitation to feel something that may have no language. When a woman purchased that painting and hung it in her home, I realized something had shifted. Not just in my work, but in me.
She would see it every day, sometimes without even meaning to. And every time she looked at it, she would hear me. My voice. My heart. My truth—quiet, but present. Thus my transformation into the authentic Monica began!
It was the moment I stopped trying to make art that looked like art, and started making art that felt like me. For the first time, I experienced the power of being fully seen without explanation. Like a young schoolgirl, I’d giggle just thinking about it; like a grown woman, I fretted—at least for a little while. All those useless, silly “what ifs” tried to pull me back. But I had tasted my own authenticity. And once you taste that? There’s no going back.
And here is what I discovered: we do not have to keep being the women we became out of duty, out of survival, or out of habit. We can choose again. We can take whatever tools we have—our creativity, our experience, our voice—and use them to build the life we've always longed for. A life that fits.
Have you considered what tools and skills you have honed over the past few decades? And further, would you consider these tools to be useful toward your own transformation?
What are the tools you already hold—what lived experience, what insight, what quiet strengths have you been honing for decades?
If so, come sit with me this Wednesday evening, April 23rd at 7 PM. No pressure. No polish. Just real women gathering on the virtual porch to tell the truth and breathe a little easier. And if you’re feeling that quiet nudge to begin again—to stop performing and start becoming—I created the BREAKTHROUGH Guide for you. Every prompt, every page was born from my own lived experience. It’s not just a workbook. It’s a doorway. And you don’t have to walk through it alone.
RSVP your spot for this weeks PROCH Convo by sending me a private DM