More than 5,650 people liked my wedding post.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about one person who didn’t.

I wish I were exaggerating.

Over 155,000 people viewed the post. Thousands of people celebrated with me. Friends, family, people I’ve known for years, people I’ve never met. My comments were flooded with congratulations, heart emojis, people telling me they were crying, people saying they had followed my story for years and were so happy to see me happy.

It was an overwhelming amount of love.

And yet, somewhere in the middle of all of it, my brain noticed one person who was missing.

Someone who regularly engages with my content.

She didn’t like the wedding announcement.

I noticed.

Then I posted the Reel.

She didn’t like that either.

I noticed that too.

And the most annoying part is that I knew how ridiculous it was.

More than 5,650 people had essentially said, I’m happy for you.

And my brain was like:

Okay, but what about her?

I kept trying to reason with myself.

Well, maybe she didn’t see it.

Maybe it triggered her because she’s still single.

Maybe she’s always dreamed about wearing that same style of dress at her own wedding and doesn’t want me to think she copied me down the road?

(Yes, I realize the level of overthinking is insane. And side note: after everything I’ve been through in my life, for the record, only I’m allowed to call myself insane lol.)

Maybe it means absolutely nothing.

I don’t know.

And that’s the point.

My intuition can tell me one thing, but I can’t say for sure.

And for some reason, my brain still wanted to know.

It wanted to solve the mystery of one person’s silence instead of simply receiving the overwhelming amount of love already right in front of me.

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you might recognize this pattern.

I’ve written before about saving empty seats. About looking around at all the people who are showing up for you while still noticing the chair where someone else used to sit.

I thought I understood that lesson.

But this felt different.

Because this time, I wasn’t just looking for someone in the audience.

I started wondering why I was checking the audience at all.

I’ve talked a lot about releasing my need for validation on social media.

And the weird thing is, I actually think I have.

If this post had gotten 50 likes instead of over 5,000, I genuinely don’t think I would have cared.

I wouldn’t have decided my wedding was less meaningful.

I wouldn’t have let a lower number take away from what I had just experienced.

That kind of external validation doesn’t have the hold on me that it once did.

This wasn’t about wanting more people to validate me.

I wanted one specific person to.

And those aren’t the same thing.

Detaching from what everyone thinks of me doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring what anyone thinks of me.

There are still certain people whose acknowledgment I notice.

Certain people whose silence can make me wonder what it means.

And if I’m really honest, I think some of that has to do with wanting to be witnessed by people who knew earlier versions of me.

There’s something different about being seen by someone who knew you before the reinvention.

Before the healing.

Before your life changed.

Maybe some part of me still wants certain people from previous chapters of my life to look at the person I’ve become and think:

Wow. Look at her now.

And if I go one layer deeper, I think there’s another thought underneath that one.

See? I’m not crazy.

See? My life didn’t fall apart for nothing.

See? I’m still worthy of love.

See? The choices I made that didn’t make sense to everyone else led somewhere.

See? I wasn’t wrong to believe there could be another chapter after everything that happened.

I didn’t consciously post my wedding photos hoping to prove any of that. In fact, if I had been chasing everyone’s approval, I would’ve hired a professional photographer and videographer and turned the whole thing into a production.

But I think there’s still a part of me that wants certain people who witnessed the messiest chapters of my life to witness this one, too.

Not thousands of strangers.

Them.

Almost like their acknowledgment could retroactively validate the path that got me here.

Like if they could see how the story turned out, maybe some part of me could finally stop defending the chapters that came before it.

And I think that’s what I was really looking for.

Proof.

Not proof that my wedding was beautiful or meaningful.

Proof that somehow, after everything, I had ended up somewhere good.

It wasn’t really about the like.

It was about what I had unconsciously decided the like would mean.

And once I realized that, I started thinking about the actual wedding.

Because before anyone else had the chance to witness it, I stood in a white dress overlooking Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.

A dress, I might add, that I blindly ordered online from SHEIN for $111. 😂 Even with alterations, the entire thing came to around $400. I’d once read that the less you spend on a wedding, the longer the marriage lasts, and after spending a fortune on my first wedding, I was determined to test that theory this time around. 😂

I met the man who would become my husband at the same venue where I had my first wedding, and later started hosting my Costa Rica Women’s Wellness Retreats.

And a few days ago, I stood beside a lake in Guatemala, looked into his green eyes, and promised to spend my life with him.

There was something so full-circle about it all.

The kind of moment that makes you look backward at everything that didn’t work out and think, Ohhhh. Now I understand.

The kind of moment that makes you want to hold up the beautiful ending as evidence that the painful middle meant something.

See? It all worked out.

See? It wasn’t for nothing.

See? God was here all along.

And that’s where this started getting uncomfortable for me.

Because I absolutely believe God was there. I even made a wedding reel all about His timing.

But do I need the beautiful ending to prove that He was?

If I’m going to use the mountaintops as evidence of His presence, I have to be careful what I’m implying about the valleys.

Does God become less present when the story doesn’t resolve the way I hoped?

Of course I don’t believe that.

Because marriage will have hard days.

Especially when we’re starting ours with another 12–18 months navigating long distance while we wait for my husband’s green card.

Business will have slow seasons.

Like the one I’m in right now. For the first time in my career, my offers are moving at a slower pace.

Posts will flop.

Plans will fall apart again.

There will be prayers that don’t get answered the way I want them to.

There will be moments when I can’t immediately tie everything together with a beautiful bow and say, Ohhhh. Now I understand why God did that.

Faith means trusting God without needing everything to work out as proof that He was there.

If I only trust God when things are going the way I hoped, that isn’t really faith.

Sometimes I’ll get to look backward and understand the redirection.

Sometimes I won’t.

There will be breathtaking views, answered prayers, and full-circle moments that make parts of the journey suddenly make sense.

And there will be seasons when trusting God means trusting Him without understanding where any of it is going.

Both can be true.

The beautiful endings don’t prove that God was there any more than the painful ones prove that He wasn’t.

And realizing that doesn’t make the full-circle moments any less meaningful.

If anything, it makes them more sacred.

I can receive them as gifts instead of evidence.

A blessing can just be a blessing.

And I’m starting to realize the lesson about God isn’t actually that different from the lesson about being witnessed.

Both are teaching me to stop looking outside the moment for proof of what the moment means.

I don’t think the solution is becoming someone who genuinely doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her.

I’m not even sure I want that.

I’m a writer. A creator. A wife. A mother. A friend. A human being.

Of course there are people whose opinions matter to me.

Maybe freedom is becoming more discerning about whose opinions I allow to matter.

And recognizing when I’ve given someone that privilege without them ever earning it.

Because there’s a difference between caring what someone thinks…

and letting what they think determine what something means.

I still care sometimes.

I noticed the missing likes.

I wondered why.

I let it bother me.

And maybe freedom isn’t reaching some enlightened place where I never notice who claps and who doesn’t.

Maybe it’s noticing that I’m looking toward the audience…

and remembering that they were never the ones who got to decide what the moment meant.

Because before there was a wedding post…

before there was a Reel…

before there were over 5,650 likes…

before there were congratulations from strangers…

before anyone had the opportunity to celebrate it, question it, relate to it, or scroll straight past it…

there was a quiet morning overlooking Lake Atitlán.

There were two people standing beside each other.

There were vows.

There were tears.

There were mountains and volcanoes and a lake stretching out beneath us.

There was God.

And there was nobody there to clap.

No officiant. No guests.

Just us and God.

Maybe someday I’ll get better at remembering that the sacred things in my life don’t become more sacred when they’re witnessed.

That love doesn’t become more real when it’s applauded.

That God’s presence doesn’t become more certain when I can point to a beautiful ending.

And that a blessing doesn’t have to explain the pain that came before it to still be a blessing.

Some things aren’t proof.

Some things aren’t evidence.

Some things are simply gifts.

My wedding was sacred at zero likes.

And maybe my job isn’t to prove what God has done with my life.

Maybe my job is just to live it.

Yes, I grew up one of four girls, but for most of my life, I’ve gravitated towards guy friends. Over the years, I’ve always had a few very close girlfriends, but I never really had that solidified girl gang that I would see so many others have.

I’m talking about that core group of girlfriends with the group chats, the girls’ trips, the inside jokes, the showing up for each other for all of their bachelorette parties, weddings, baby showers, birthdays…the seemingly effortless sense of belonging.

I remember looking at these groups when I was younger and feeling a little envious, like perhaps there was some secret to female friendships that everyone else had somehow figured out, yet I hadn’t.

Which is why it’s almost laughable that a large part of my livelihood now involves gathering groups of 15–20 women together, often women who arrive as complete strangers and leave as lifelong friends.

Somewhere along the way, creating these women’s wellness retreats for other women has become incredibly healing for me, too.

This past week, I hosted another retreat in Costa Rica, and there were excursions and workshops, yoga, pilates, sound healing, guided meditation, breathwork, live music, beautifully prepared private chef meals, karaoke nights, and so many other things that I had spent months planning.

And trust me, I love a plan. 😂

I spend months thinking through every little detail of these retreats. The itinerary. The welcome bags. The meals. The activities. The excursions. The transportation. The music. The little surprises. I want the women who invest their money, time, and energy into coming to feel like every detail has been thought through.

But thinking back on this past week, some of the moments that stand out most weren’t the things I had planned at all.

They were the moments happening in between.

Thank you for supporting me and the work I’m continuing to put into this space.

And the very first person I saw when I stepped out of my Uber at the San Diego airport was a man wearing a black T-shirt that said across the front: “The answer is…”

I laughed and said to him: “The answer is Jesus, right?!”

He smiled. Then he turned around. Across the entire back of his shirt, in giant white letters, was one word:

JESUS.

I had quite literally just asked Jesus for a sign, and before I’d even made it inside the airport, there He was. Or at least, there was the reminder I had asked for.

The answer is Jesus. And for me, He really is the answer.

Jesus is the reason I’m still alive.

For those newer to my story, my relationship with Him exists outside of any church or religious dogma. What I’ve come to understand is that He simply wants a relationship with us.

One of the hardest parts about having a relationship with God is learning to trust that His timing is ALWAYS better than our own.

I’m writing this from a plane on my way to Costa Rica, where I’m about to facilitate a luxury women’s wellness retreat for 17 women.

17 women, from different parts of the country, are all coming to spend six days with me where the jungle meets the sea.

Even typing that sentence feels surreal.

How did I get here?

How is this even possible when, just three years ago, I was in the midst of a psychotic break, completely losing touch with reality, watching the life and identity I’d built unravel around me, and now I’m getting on a plane to lead 17 women through a week devoted to healing, connection, movement, breath, rest, reflection, and coming home to themselves?

Well, I got a pretty clear reminder at the airport.

Jesus.

Although, if you’d asked me that question during much of my career, I’m not sure I would have given you the same answer.

Which is strange, considering Jesus has been there from the beginning.

I was raised Catholic. I was baptized, made my First Communion, went through Confirmation. I knew the prayers, the practices, when to sit, when to stand, when to kneel.

I knew about Jesus.

But somewhere along the way, I confused having a relationship with Jesus with having a relationship with religion. And when religion stopped resonating with me, I thought Jesus had to go with it.

For much of my adult life and career, I explored spirituality outside the church. I built a career around mediumship. I talked about Spirit, signs and synchronicities, angels and the Universe, intuition and the afterlife. Yes, I always believed in God and Jesus, but the relationship felt very different than the one I have today. I considered Jesus an ascended master, but I rarely spoke about Him or called out to Him.

I didn’t realize Jesus could still have a place in “New Age” spirituality.

I thought He belonged inside a church. I thought choosing Jesus meant choosing a religion, adopting a set of beliefs, fitting myself inside a box that no longer felt like home.

So instead of separating Jesus from my complicated feelings about organized religion, I slowly lost touch with Him altogether.

Looking back now, it makes me a bit sad, because I never stopped believing in God.

If anything, I spent my entire career being shown evidence that a higher power does exist. If Spirit could come through for thousands of people with jaw-dropping messages, to me, that meant there was a God. No question. Spirit validated that belief for me over and over again through their messages.

But somewhere along the way, I lost touch with the relationship with Christ that had been available to me all along.

It would take losing almost everything for me to find my way back.

Three years ago, my mind broke open in ways I’m still trying to understand.

During my psychotic break, spirituality became tangled with fear, paranoia, an obsession with signs and meaning, and my desperate attempts to understand what was happening to me. The very things I had once trusted became impossible for me to discern.

And yes, I recognize the irony of beginning this essay with a story about asking Jesus for a sign, because signs were a big part of my psychosis.

At my sickest, literally everryyythinnng became a sign. If you’ve been following for a long time, you already know how Spirit often sends signs through things such as license plates, a song on the radio, a number on a clock, butterflies, etc. I still 100% believe in signs from above.

But during psychosis, the “signs” were amplified by a million. Everything turned into a sign. Every little thing a stranger said in passing, every post that appeared on my phone at exactly the “right” moment.

Nothing felt random anymore.

Everything seemed connected to me, meant for me, trying to tell me what to do next.

So you might wonder: how can I still get excited when I ask Jesus for a sign and the first man I see at the airport is wearing a shirt that literally reveals JESUS across the back?

Because healing didn’t require me to strip every ounce of mystery, faith, or wonder from my life.

It required me to learn discernment.

There’s an enormous difference between noticing a beautiful synchronicity and believing every coincidence in life contains a hidden instruction meant specifically for you.

Today, I can smile when something feels meaningful without needing to build an entire story around it. I can notice a 444 sign at the perfect moment without believing that the 10 other angel numbers I saw that day were also for me. I can hear a song without assuming its lyrics are giving me instructions about how to save the world. Yes, it got to that point...more on that in future essays.

I can ask Jesus for a sign, laugh when something like the other day happens, take a picture, feel loved and reassured by it, and then keep walking through the airport.

I don’t need another sign to confirm the first one. I don’t need to chase it or make a major life decision because of it.

Most importantly, I no longer outsource my agency to signs.

That’s one of the biggest differences between the spirituality I practiced before my breakdown and the spirituality I’m learning to practice now.

My faith and spirituality today feels much more grounded.

Jesus doesn’t need to communicate with me through a secret code only I can decipher. I can use common sense. And I can accept that sometimes a coincidence is simply a coincidence.

But sometimes a man turns around in the airport at exactly the right moment with JESUS written across his back.

And I still let myself smile at that.

I still let myself experience the wonder.

The difference is that now I can appreciate a sign without needing everything to be one.

Finding my way back to Jesus has actually made me less obsessive about spirituality.

Eventually, I reached a place where I couldn’t think my way out, spiritualize my way out, or control my way out.

All I could do was surrender.

Somewhere in that surrender, I found Jesus again.

Or, more accurately, I realized He had never once left my side.

My life didn’t magically become easy because I started talking to Jesus again.

It was more subtle than that.

It was a relationship being rebuilt through days spent in silence by the ocean. Words spoken to Him while driving in the car when I didn’t know what else to say. A hand reaching for something steady when I no longer trusted my own mind.

And eventually, the realization that I didn’t need a priest, a church building, a Bible, or anyone’s permission to talk to Him.

God is not confined to four walls.

I could just talk to Him.

And He could meet me exactly where I was.

That changed everything.

Over these last three years, I’ve started to understand faith very differently than I did as a little girl sitting in a Catholic church.

Faith, for me now, isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about trusting when I don’t.

It’s about surrendering the timeline I had planned and letting my life unfold in ways I never could have orchestrated myself.

And God knows, His timeline has looked nothing like mine.

There were so many moments when I thought my life was over that I can now look back on and see differently.

Things I begged God to restore needed to fall away. Doors I cried over when they closed eventually redirected me toward doors I didn’t even know existed.

There were seasons when I was convinced I was behind.

I wasn’t behind.

I was becoming.

And nowhere is that more obvious to me than the place I’m flying back to right now.

Five years ago, I stood at these same villas in Costa Rica and got married. Not legally, but in every sense of the word, we held a stunning destination wedding there with all our family and friends.

I believed I knew what my life was going to look like.

I had no idea how much was about to change.

I would welcome my son into the world in a far different way than I ever expected. The marriage would end. Heartbreak and identity shifts would follow. My mental health would eventually unravel, and I’d spend years trying to figure out who I was after so much of what I’d built my identity around fell apart.

I certainly couldn’t have known that one day I’d return to Costa Rica, and eventually to those very same villas, for an entirely different reason.

This time, I’d be the woman facilitating retreats there.

And then, in one of those twists I never could have written for myself, I would meet someone there who would completely change my life.

I had to return to the place where one version of my future began in order to meet someone who would become such an important part of the next one.

Same place, different relationship, different woman.

And there’s something else about returning to these villas that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

The first time I went back, I wondered if it would feel sad.

I wondered if walking into the place where I’d gotten married would bring up emotions I wasn’t expecting. If I’d look at the spots where we held our welcome party, said our vows, celebrated with our friends and family, and suddenly be transported back into the life I had there.

But the weirdest part was that it didn’t.

The villas looked almost exactly the same.

I didn’t.

We attach so much meaning to places.

The restaurant where you had your first date. The house where you brought your baby home. The hospital where someone you loved died. The coffee shop where someone broke your heart.

Eventually, the place and the memory become so tangled together that they almost feel like the same thing.

For years, those villas were the place where I got married.

Except that wasn’t the whole story.

Years later, they became the place where women flew in from all over the country to spend a week together. Women navigating divorce, career changes, heartbreak, motherhood, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to figure out what the hell they wanted their lives to look like next.

Same villas.

An entirely different purpose.

If you had shown me the entire path five years ago, I probably would have begged God to rewrite it. I would have wanted Him to spare me the heartbreak, the humiliation, the loss, the breakdown, and the years of wondering why my life wasn’t unfolding the way I thought it should.

But when I trace the chain of events backward, it’s almost ridiculous.

I got married in Costa Rica, which is how I found these villas. That marriage ended. The heartbreak and relationship that followed became tangled up in the events that eventually led to my psychotic break.

After my breakdown, I opened Little Lane Playroom, which became another chapter I was convinced was supposed to work out differently. When it didn’t, I had to pivot again.

That pivot eventually led me to sound healing and hosting women’s retreats.

I brought those retreats back to the same two villas where I’d once celebrated my wedding.

And on the very first day of my very first retreat there, I met someone I would eventually fall deeply in love with.

Change one link in that chain and I have absolutely no idea what my life looks like today.

Call it the butterfly effect. Call it divine timing. I see God’s hand in it any way you put it.

I also know I’m much slower now to decide that something didn’t work out simply because it didn’t last.

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

A relationship can end and still have mattered. A path can turn out completely differently than you expected without every step you took along it being a mistake.

And a place can hold more than one story.

That’s what feels so surreal about sitting on this plane today.

If God had answered every prayer according to my timing, I don’t know that I’d be here.

If everything had gone according to my plan, I might have remained exactly who I thought I was supposed to be.

And I don’t want to go back to that version of myself.

I have compassion for that woman. She was making decisions with the information she had. She was building the life she thought she wanted.

And eventually, that life cracked open.

So did she.

But I can see now that healing was never about putting her back together exactly the way she was.

I was becoming someone she couldn’t have imagined.

There are moments in life when the buildings haven’t changed.

The roads haven’t changed.

Sometimes the furniture hasn’t even changed.

But we have.

I’m on a plane headed back to a place that has already held so many different versions of me.

Five years ago, I stood at those villas thinking I knew what came next.

I didn’t.

And thank God for that.

There are still plenty of things in my life I don’t understand. There are still things I’m waiting on and moments when I wish God would move a whole lot faster.

I still catch myself wanting to know what comes next.

But then I look backward.

I look at the woman who stood at those villas five years ago and everything she couldn’t see from where she was standing.

And I remember that I probably can’t see the whole picture from where I’m standing now either.

That’s what the shirt at the airport reminded me of.

The answer is Jesus.

I don’t need the five-year plan.

I just need to remember who I trust when I don’t know what comes next.

So if your life looks nothing like you thought it would right now, please don’t decide the story is over from the middle of it.

You don’t have the full story yet.

Neither do I.

I’m still living mine.

And if these last five years have taught me anything, it’s that God can do a whole lot with the parts of the story I never would have chosen for myself.

His timing has looked nothing like mine.

Thank God for that.

PS. I have a few spots remaining this September for Clarity Coaching sessions (the new name for my oracle card + intuitive coaching sessions), as well as just one 1:1 spot remaining in my 30-day coaching container, The Alignment Accelerator.

Visit monicaimani.com to learn more. I’d love to support you on your journey

Alright, I’ll admit it.

Last week, following another lengthy and emotionally intense essay, I promised you guys that Sundays around here weren’t always going to feel like an emotional hostage situation, and I meant that. 😆

I was totally planning on writing something a lot lighter for my readers this week.

Hell, maybe even something funny. And definitely something waaaay shorter.

But over the last couple weeks I started receiving message after message from people asking me, as someone who’s experienced psychosis firsthand, what I thought about the Lindsay Clancy case.

It seems like everybody is talking about this case right now, and in a lot of ways, it’s actually a bit triggering for me to see all of the chatter online about the topic of psychosis, even though my situation was obviously entirely different.

But I do think it’s a very important conversation we need to have as a society.

If there’s one positive out of everyone dissecting this case, it’s that hopefully real change is made in the way we care for and protect mothers and their mental health.

I don’t watch TV or read the news, so until people started sending me this case, I honestly didn’t even know about it.

The more I sat with her story, the less it turned out to be about her, and the more it turned out to be about all of us.

So bear with me.

This essay starts with Lindsay Clancy, but it doesn’t stay there.

And before I go any further, I do just want to make something absolutely clear.

I never had any thoughts of harming my child during my psychosis.

Like...ever.

However, if I had been on as many different psychiatric drugs as Lindsay reportedly was...

If I didn’t have the support I had from my son’s dad...

If I didn’t have the childcare that I had...

If I had three young children and was severely sleep-deprived...

Maybe my experience could have looked completely different.

I’ll never know.

What I do know is that the assumption that everyone who experiences psychosis is violent or automatically dangerous is a very real and harmful misconception.

That wasn’t my experience.

Although I’ll never know exactly what was going on inside Lindsay Clancy’s head, I do know what it’s like to have experienced a psychotic mind.

I know what it’s like for your brain to stop filtering reality the way it usually does.

I know what it’s like to believe something with 100% certainty to be true, only to find out that it wasn’t.

And I definitely know what it’s like to wake up on the other side and spend years trying to make sense of the thoughts, decisions, and behaviors that were made while your mind was so unwell.

I think that’s part of why reading the commentary around this case has been a bit triggering for me.

I’ve seen a lot of people argue that there’s evidence proving Lindsay was criminally responsible.

They point to the Google searches, her coherent conversations, the planning, and the fact that she apparently asked for a lawyer upon waking up.

To some people, those details settle the question of whether she knew what she was doing.

Having personally experienced psychosis, I don’t think it’s that simple.

During my psychosis, I had coherent conversations. I cared for my child. I grocery shopped. I worked. I went to the gym. I made plans. To the average person, I appeared normal.

Internally, though, I was operating from beliefs that were far from reality.

And that distinction matters.

A person experiencing psychosis can make plans.

They can organize things.

They can appear to be making purposeful decisions, and they can even take deliberate action in service of their delusions.

The behavior, from the outside looking in, can appear completely rational, while the reality driving it is extremely distorted.

So planning doesn’t tell us whether the reality informing that plan was real.

Psychosis isn’t always linear.

Lucidity can fluctuate, and someone can appear remarkably functional while simultaneously experiencing distortions in how they’re interpreting reality.

Look, I don’t have the answers.

I wasn’t there.

I don’t know.

One of the things that has made me uncomfortable in the world of mediumship is that a lot of mediums will publicly share conclusions and base them on the fact that the information is supposedly coming through from Spirit.

I’ve learned the hard way through my psychosis that even the most gifted medium can’t count on that being something to rely on 100%, especially when they’re not sitting with the family and channeling their loved ones with the family present in real time.

I think it’s ethically inappropriate for mediums to share conclusions about a case without having direct communication with the family.

So anything I share here isn’t Spirit talking, or my intuition talking.

These are my own personal opinions as Monica, not Monica the Medium.

But based on the information we have available, I think we’re asking the wrong questions.

The more I sat with this case, the less interested I became in whether Lindsay Clancy was a monster or a victim.

I became interested in something else.

How does someone repeatedly ask for help...

...and still end up here?

Because whatever someone ultimately believes about her criminal responsibility, I don’t think it’s possible to tell this story honestly without acknowledging how desperately she appeared to be seeking help beforehand.

Lindsay voluntarily admitted herself to McLean Hospital for inpatient psychiatric treatment on January 1, just over three weeks before the killings.

She was discharged on January 5.

Nineteen days later, her three children were dead.

Her psychiatrist and other medical professionals have said she did not present as psychotic.

From my own experience, I think it can be very easy to hide the psychosis or other mental health struggles you’re experiencing.

So many women are petrified that CPS will get involved, that their children will be taken away, that they’ll lose custody, or that they’ll be trapped in some institution for who knows how long.

I’ve tried very hard not to rush to conclusions about Lindsay Clancy’s legal responsibility.

But whatever someone ultimately believes about that question, I don’t think this story begins on January 24, 2023.

It begins long before that.

With a mother who appeared to be unraveling.

A mother who sought help, over and over again.

And we often talk about “the system” as though it only means hospitals or doctors.

I don’t think that’s true.

Systems include families.

Marriages.

Communities.

Friends.

The people closest to us.

If I’m willing to ask whether psychiatry failed Lindsay...

I also have to ask whether her husband and the people closest to her could have done more.

I wasn’t there.

I don’t know what happened behind closed doors.

But I think those questions deserve to be asked too.

I Believe the System Failed Her

She voluntarily admitted herself to one of the country’s leading psychiatric hospitals nineteen days before her children died.

She was discharged after four days.

She was reportedly prescribed thirteen different psychiatric medications during the four months before the killings.

Eight of them within about three weeks.

From where I sit, that doesn’t look like a system that was watching closely enough.

Three innocent children are dead.

That fact doesn’t get smaller because people are asking hard questions about the people and institutions around their mother.

It gets bigger.

If anything, I think we owe those children every uncomfortable question.

What happened?

What was happening inside their mother’s mind?

Were the medications helping, or were they making things worse?

Was anyone looking at the whole picture?

Could anything have been done differently?

I don’t know all the answers.

But if there were failures in the systems surrounding this family, we need to understand them and try like hell to prevent another family from ever experiencing the same.

As I’ve sat with this case over the past couple of weeks, something unexpected has happened.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I’d stopped thinking only about Lindsay Clancy.

I started thinking about every mother who’s unraveling behind the scenes while the people around her assume she’s okay.

And then...

I started thinking about December 2021.

About my own pregnancy.

And the way my motherhood journey began.

What comes next is the most detailed account I’ve ever shared of my pregnancy, traumatic birth experience, postpartum depression and anxiety, and the days I spent separated from my newborn in the NICU.

While those deeply personal chapters are reserved for paid subscribers, the broader message about motherhood, isolation, community, and why I believe none of us were ever meant to do this alone continues below for everyone to read.

The Price of Becoming a Mother

When I look back on those first months after my son was born, I don’t just remember postpartum hormones.

I remember the pressure.

Pressure coming from every direction.

Financial pressure.

Relationship pressure.

Breastfeeding pressure.

Physical recovery.

Sleep deprivation.

The overwhelming responsibility of keeping another human being alive.

And somewhere underneath all of that...

There was me.

Trying to figure out who I was now.

Before my son was born, I had every intention of staying home with him for six months.

I was fortunate enough to have that option.

Eventually, six months became eight.

When he was around eight months old, he started attending a small in-home daycare in our neighborhood.

I know what a privilege that was.

There are mothers in this country who don’t have that choice.

Some genuinely want to go back to work after six weeks.

I fully support that.

But it should be a choice.

Not a financial necessity.

Because six weeks after giving birth...

Some women are still bleeding.

Some are recovering from C-sections.

Some are trying to establish breastfeeding.

Some haven’t slept more than two consecutive hours since their baby was born.

Some are battling postpartum depression or anxiety.

And we say...

“See you Monday.”

Pump during your lunch break.

Figure out childcare.

Smile through the exhaustion.

Don’t fall behind.

Perform.

Produce.

As though something life-altering hadn’t just happened.

At the same time...

Staying home isn’t as simple as people make it sound either.

I wanted those months with my son.

More than anything.

I didn’t want someone else witnessing all of his firsts.

I wanted to be there.

Every smile.

Every milestone.

Every little moment.

And still...

There was another part of me quietly grieving.

Before motherhood, so much of my identity had been wrapped up in my career.

I was an entrepreneur.

A creator.

A woman with ideas.

I loved bringing things to life.

I loved making decisions.

I loved waking up every morning feeling like I was doing purposeful work and creating something meaningful.

Then, almost overnight...

My days revolved around nursing.

Diapers.

Pumping.

Nap schedules.

Trying to figure out why a tiny human who couldn’t speak was crying.

I loved my son more than words could ever express.

And yet I still missed parts of the woman I had been before he was born.

For a long time, I thought that made me a bad mother.

Now I think it makes me human.

Nobody warned me that becoming a mother could feel like falling completely in love with someone...

While simultaneously grieving pieces of yourself.

No one told me I could be profoundly grateful...

And profoundly disoriented...

At exactly the same time.

That I could desperately want to stay home with my son...

And desperately miss having somewhere to go.

That I could love being a mother...

And still wonder where Monica had gone.

Those aren’t contradictions.

They’re motherhood.

Then there’s childcare.

Honestly, I still don’t know how the average family does it.

For many parents, daycare costs consume such a large portion of one person’s salary that they begin asking themselves whether working even makes financial sense.

But staying home often means sacrificing income.

Retirement.

Career growth.

Financial independence.

So what exactly is the choice?

Pay an enormous amount of money so you can work?

Or stop working and become financially dependent because childcare costs almost as much as your paycheck?

And what about the mothers who don’t really have either option?

The single mom.

The mother whose partner works nights.

The family juggling opposite schedules just to avoid daycare costs.

The woman with no grandparents nearby.

No village.

No backup plan.

Just one more impossible equation she’s somehow expected to solve.

The older I get...

The more convinced I become that childcare isn’t just a financial issue.

It’s a mental health issue.

An identity issue.

A relationship issue.

A community issue.

Because every impossible decision mothers make carries an emotional cost that almost never shows up on a spreadsheet.

Then something else hit me.

As much as I struggled...

I also had something many mothers don’t.

I had a great partner when it came to parenting.

Now, before anyone gets confused by that statement...

I was incredibly honest in my last essay about the challenges in our relationship.

There was betrayal.

On both sides.

There were decisions I deeply regret.

There are chapters of our marriage I’ll spend the rest of my life learning from.

But one thing I will never take away from my son’s father...

Is the father he has always been.

From the day our son was born...

He showed up.

He changed diapers.

He got up during the night.

He fed him.

He bathed him.

He parented.

Not because he was “helping me.”

Because he was his dad.

When he was home...

Parenting wasn’t my responsibility with occasional assistance.

It was ours.

And to this day...

While we have our co-parenting struggles, he remains an incredible father to our son.

I think that’s important to say.

Because I don’t want to tell my story in a way that erases what he did right.

And here’s why that matters.

Even with an involved father...

Even with help...

Even with flexibility in my work...

Even with eight months at home...

I still struggled.

Which leaves me asking another question.

What about the mother who doesn’t have any of that?

The mother doing every nighttime feeding alone.

The mother recovering from surgery while caring for multiple children.

The woman whose partner is physically present...

But emotionally absent.

The single mother carrying everything herself.

I know that feeling too.

I became a single mom when my son was just over ten months old.

The woman who has no family nearby.

No co-parent.

No childcare.

No friends who understand.

No one checking in.

If motherhood felt heavy for me...

How heavy must it feel for her?

Maybe that’s another place we’ve gotten this wrong.

We’ve started expecting one partner to become the entire village.

A supportive partner matters enormously.

But one person was never supposed to be an entire village.

Mothers need partners.

Yes.

But they also need family.

Friends.

Neighbors.

Other mothers.

Doctors who truly listen.

Employers who understand.

Communities where someone notices when they’re not okay.

Because when we talk about maternal mental health...

We can’t only ask what’s happening inside a mother’s brain.

We also have to ask...

What’s happening around her?

Who’s helping her carry her life...

While she’s carrying everyone else?

Maybe That’s Why I Built Little Lane

When I first had to close my playroom business, I thought Little Lane was one of the biggest failures of my life.

Financially...

It certainly felt that way.

For those who weren’t around during that chapter, Little Lane Playroom was a Montessori-inspired indoor children’s playroom I opened here in San Diego.

At the time, I thought I was building a beautiful play space for children.

And I was.

Children laughed there.

Played there.

Read books and learned there.

Celebrated birthdays and holidays there.

Parents made memories there.

It was a beautiful space.

But looking back now...

I don’t think children were the only reason I built it.

Because children weren’t the ones who kept thanking me.

Mothers were.

They kept coming back because they had somewhere to go.

Somewhere to get out of the house.

Somewhere clean and safe where their little ones could play and make new friends.

Somewhere they could have an adult conversation.

Somewhere another mother understood why they looked exhausted.

Somewhere no one judged them if their toddler had a meltdown.

Somewhere they could sit for an hour and remember...

“I’m not the only one.”

Looking back...

I don’t think I was just building a playroom.

I was building a village.

Little Lane Playroom never became financially successful.

It generated revenue.

But after rent...

Insurance...

Utilities...

Repairs...

Supplies...

And everything else that comes with running a brick-and-mortar business...

I never personally made a profit.

In fact...

I’m still more than sixty thousand dollars in debt from just that chapter of my life.

For years, that number made me feel like Little Lane was a terrible decision.

Now...

I’m not so sure.

Because financially...

Little Lane cost me.

Relationally...

It gave me something I could never put a price on.

It gave me my village.

Through Little Lane Playroom, I found mom groups all over San Diego.

And if you’re a new mother reading this...

Can I give you one piece of advice?

Find the mom groups.

Seriously.

Go to the stroller walks. Visit the indoor play spaces. Join the playdates.

Go to the awkward coffee meetup even if you don’t know anyone.

Show up.

Because other mothers understand things that even the most loving partner simply can’t.

They know what it feels like to question every decision. To wonder if you’re doing enough. To feel touched out.

To miss your old life...

And then immediately feel guilty for missing it.

To love your child more than anything in the world...

And still desperately need a break.

They get it.

Because they’re living it too.

Through Little Lane I also met women who became real friends. Not just “playroom friends.” Real life friends.

One of those women is now one of my best friends.

Our kids get along beautifully.

We’ve shared our deepest wounds. We’ve cried together.

We’re walking through motherhood together.

I never would have met her if I hadn’t opened that little playroom.

Sometimes I wonder...

If Little Lane had made me a million dollars...

But never introduced me to the people who would become my village...

Would it actually have been more successful?

I’m honestly not sure.

Because money can solve a lot of problems.

But it can’t sit beside you when you’re falling apart.

A friend can.

Just this week, life reminded me of that all over again.

My former assistant invited me to join a free virtual support group for mothers.

Before the meeting started, we all agreed that whatever was shared there, stayed there.

So I won’t tell you anyone else’s story.

But I will tell you what the experience reminded me of.

Every single mother in that room was carrying something invisible.

Some were struggling in their marriages. Some were grieving. Some felt like they were failing.

Some simply needed someone to ask,

“How are you...really?”

And as each woman shared...

I kept noticing the same thing happen.

One mother would finally tell the truth.

And almost every time, I found myself thinking…

Me too.

I could feel that I wasn’t the only one.

The thing each woman thought made her uniquely broken turned out to be something half the room understood.

That night, I wrote something down in my journal.

I think it may be one of the truest things I’ve ever written.

Isolation didn’t create every wound I’ve carried.

But it convinced me I was the only one carrying them.

And maybe that’s what shame does too.

It whispers...

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“You’re the only one.”

“If people knew the truth about you...”

“They’d want nothing to do with you.”

But over and over again...

I’ve found the opposite to be true.

The moment one woman tells the truth...

Another woman finally feels safe enough to tell hers.

Maybe that’s why community matters.

It won’t magically fix everything.

But it reminds us that we’re human together.

Maybe God Never Changed the Calling

As I was writing this essay...

Something hit me that I don’t think I’ve ever fully realized before.

I thought I’d had several different careers over the years.

A medium. An author. A mentor. An oracle deck creator. A children’s playroom owner.

Now I host wellness retreats. I facilitate sound baths. I coach women. I write.

From the outside...

It looks like I’ve reinvented myself over and over again.

But maybe I haven’t.

Maybe I’ve simply found different ways to live out the same calling.

Even during my years as a medium...

I wasn’t just giving readings.

I was holding space.

Thousands of women sat across from me carrying grief that most people can’t imagine.

Women who had lost babies through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, or the death of a child.

Women who weren’t looking for someone to erase their pain.

They were looking for someone willing to sit beside them in it.

Then I built Little Lane.

Not just a playroom.

A place where mothers formed friendships and community.

Today...

I host retreats where women connect with one another deeply.

I coach women through some of the biggest transitions of their lives.

And now...

I write these essays.

Maybe the work has never really changed.

Maybe I’ve spent my entire adult life creating spaces where women feel safe.

Safe to be seen, safe to be held, and safe to tell the truth.

Maybe that’s always been the calling.

I thought I was changing careers.

God was simply changing the vehicle.

The mission never changed.

What I Got Wrong About Loneliness

For years I believed the opposite of isolation was being surrounded by people.

I don’t believe that anymore.

You can be married...

And feel completely alone.

You can have children...

And feel completely alone.

You can have tens of thousands of followers...

And feel completely alone.

You can spend your life helping everyone else...

And still feel completely alone.

Because the opposite of isolation isn’t being surrounded by people.

It’s being fully seen…and loved anyway.

Maybe that’s why shame is so powerful.

It convinces us that if people really knew...

They’d leave.

But my experience has been the exact opposite.

Every time I’ve finally told the truth...

Someone else has quietly whispered...

“Me too.”

Maybe healing doesn’t begin the moment someone finally has all the answers.

Maybe healing begins the moment someone realizes...

I’m not the only one carrying this.

Everyone loves to say...

“It takes a village to raise a child.”

I agree.

But I think we’ve forgotten something.

Who is holding the mother?

Who is checking on her after everyone leaves the hospital?

Who’s asking how she’s doing six months later?

Two years later?

Five years later?

Who’s noticing when she’s disappearing into herself?

Who’s making sure she remembers she still exists outside of motherhood?

Who’s reminding her she doesn’t have to earn rest?

Or prove her worth?

Or carry everything by herself?

Because mothers were never meant to carry the weight of an entire village without having one of their own.

So if you’re reading this today...

And you’ve been quietly carrying something...

Please don’t disappear into your isolation.

Tell someone.

Call the friend. Join the mom group. Go to the stroller walk. Find the support group. Make the therapy appointment.

Ask for help.

And if you’re the friend...

The sister.

The husband.

The partner.

The doctor.

The employer.

The neighbor.

Don’t just ask about the baby.

Ask about her.

And then stay long enough to hear the real answer.

And maybe that’s what every mother deserves.

Maybe that’s what every woman deserves.

Maybe that’s what every human being deserves.

As I finish writing this, I keep thinking about all the different chapters of my life.

The readings. The television show. The podcast. The live events. The courses and workshops. The book. The oracle deck. Little Lane. The retreats. The coaching. This Substack.

For years, I thought they were separate stories.

Now I wonder if they’ve always been the same story.

Maybe that’s always been the calling.

Maybe I thought I kept reinventing myself...

When all along, God was simply giving me new ways to build the same village.

Maybe a village isn’t a place.

Maybe it’s the moment someone finally feels safe enough to tell the truth about their experiences.

Maybe it’s where shame begins to lose its grip.

I think that’s what I’ve been trying to build my whole life.

A place where women realize they were never as alone as shame convinced them they were.

And maybe...

Every village begins the moment one person has the courage to tell the truth...

...and another person looks back at them and says,

“Me too.”

Author’s Note

If this essay brought up difficult emotions for you, I don’t want to end without reminding you that support is available. Whether you’re a new mom, a seasoned mom, or simply someone carrying more than anyone realizes, you don’t have to carry it alone.

Please reach out to someone you trust and consider connecting with a qualified mental health professional, especially if you are experiencing symptoms of postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, or another mental health crisis.

If you are in the United States and experiencing suicidal thoughts or emotional distress, you can call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you are experiencing symptoms of postpartum psychosis, believe you may be losing touch with reality, or believe that you or someone else may be in immediate danger, please seek emergency medical care.

For nearly seventeen years, I smoked weed on and off.

I’ll never forget the first time I tried marijuana. I was around the age of 15, having a sleepover with my two best friends from high school. We waited until her parents went to bed, cracked open the bedroom window, turned on the bathroom fan, and secretly smoked some of her dad’s stash. It’s actually a funny story: that first time I got high, I thought I’d gone deaf in one ear. Literally, for some reason, I could not hear out of it.

That night was filled with giggles and memories I can still smile about. But looking back, it was also the start of what quickly became an unhealthy coping mechanism, one I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried, until this year.

That was just over seven months ago, when I finally kicked the habit for good. I challenged myself to go 365 days weed-free. I didn’t promise myself I’d never smoke again in my entire life, although the longer I’m on this path, the more I want total sobriety, especially considering I’ll be four years sober from alcohol this September.

Now that I’m 100% sober from everything, and accomplishing goals I never would’ve dreamed of before, it genuinely feels like this was the missing piece, the thing that had been holding me back from the life I always knew I was capable of living.

I do want to clarify something: I never did my spiritual work high. I never once gave a reading, conducted an oracle session, taught a workshop, or hosted an event or retreat under the influence of cannabis or psychedelics.

But outside of my work? That was a different story. Several years ago, I experimented with mushrooms. And on days without commitments, there were plenty of mornings I was waking and baking first thing. Toward the end of last year, it had gotten to the point where I was smoking marijuana most of the day on days I didn’t have my son.

It’s honestly kind of crazy to me how candidly I can talk about this now. Earlier this year, I even documented an entire Reels series about my weed detox on my @monica.imani Instagram, but for most of my career, this was one of those rooms I kept locked.

I carried a lot of shame around being a pothead and having experimented with mushrooms, scared that if people knew, they wouldn’t trust me as a medium or that it would discredit my gifts. Even though I never smoked or was high while channeling Spirit, I was still afraid of how people would judge me if they knew what was happening behind the scenes.

I’ve come a long way since then. These days I’m stepping fully into sharing the raw, vulnerable, messy parts of life, not just the polished ones. It probably helps that I’m on the other side of it now. If I were still in it, all of this would be a much harder thing to say out loud.

People try to say marijuana isn’t addictive. I absolutely call bullshit on that. Every stoner I’ve ever met is having a harder time detaching than they’d admit. And yeah, I was what you’d call a functioning stoner. I still had a very successful career (until I lost my mind, lol) despite the smoking.

I’m sure some of you are wondering if my psychotic break had something to do with being a chronic smoker.

The answer is yes. I do believe marijuana was one of the many reasons behind it. But I don’t believe it was the reason.

More and more research is showing a link between marijuana and psychosis, and I think it’s a conversation we need to have as a society. But over the past three years, healing has taught me that my story isn’t as simple as pointing to one thing and saying, that’s what caused it.

For a long time, I wanted one answer. One thing I could blame. One thing I could point to and say, if only this hadn’t happened. But the more distance I’ve gotten from that season of my life, the more I’ve come to believe my psychosis wasn’t the result of one event.

It was a perfect storm.

I don’t believe marijuana caused my psychosis. I believe it significantly lowered the threshold for a storm that was already building: trauma, isolation, infidelity, betrayal, shame, heartbreak, financial pressure, the weight of who the world expected me to be, the cumulative effects of years of alcohol and cannabis use, and an identity unraveling from every direction at once.

I’ll probably never know exactly which pieces mattered most. Maybe that’s because healing isn’t about finding one villain. It’s about honestly looking at every piece of the puzzle.

The Perfect Storm

Looking back, I think the storm started building much earlier than I initially realized.

Share Monica Imani's Substack

Before you go…

Thank you again for allowing me to open my heart so deeply here. Your willingness to hold space for the rawest parts of my story means more than I can express.

And I promise every essay won’t be as heavy and intense as the last couple have been, lol. There will be lighter chapters, too.

Now for a few updates:

First, I know that over the past couple of weeks, I’ve sometimes shared two essays in one week. These first few weeks have involved a little experimenting as I figured out what publishing rhythm feels best.

Going forward, I’m going to do my best to stick to a regular once-a-week publishing schedule on Sundays, with the occasional bonus essay on Thursdays if or when inspiration strikes and I genuinely don’t want to wait.

That feels like the most sustainable rhythm for me, especially as I begin working on my upcoming podcast, Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel). I want to continue writing here for a long time, and part of doing that means creating a schedule I can realistically sustain.

Second, I’m so excited to officially invite all active paid subscribers to an exclusive Virtual Sound Healing and Guided Meditation on Sunday, September 13, at 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET.

This event falls on the three-year anniversary of my NDE, when I came face-to-face with God and Jesus (a story I’ll share in a future essay). That makes the timing especially meaningful to me.

I’m offering this as a special one-time gathering to thank you for being here with me from the very beginning.

While I can’t promise that live events like this will become a regular part of the paid subscription, I would love to offer the occasional bonus gathering here and there as this community continues to grow. These events won’t follow a set schedule, but when I feel inspired and have the capacity to create something meaningful for you, I’ll be excited to share it.

All active paid subscribers will receive the private Zoom link via email approximately 48 to 72 hours before the event. There won’t be a replay available, so if you would like to join us, please be sure to mark your calendar. I’m really looking forward to sharing this experience with you.

Thank you for being here while I experiment, learn, and find my rhythm. I’m so grateful to have you along for this next chapter. If these essays have resonated with you, please consider sharing my Substack with someone who may also benefit from reading them.

And if you’d like to connect with me beyond Substack or explore working together 1:1, you can find all of my current offerings at www.monicaimani.com

Some were compassionate.

Most weren’t.

Some thought I was dangerous.

Others thought I was mentally ill.

Some made fun of me.

Others defended me.

A few genuinely seemed concerned.

Others treated one of the darkest seasons of my life like it was entertainment.

I remember exactly where I was.

I was lying in bed with my phone in my hands when I stumbled across a Reddit thread about me.

I couldn’t stop reading.

Every swipe down felt like another punch to the gut.

I couldn’t breathe.

I wanted to throw my phone across the room.

Instead...

I kept scrolling.

For years, I’ve been terrified of people finding that thread.

I’ve imagined retreat guests reading it before they ever met me.

Potential coaching clients Googling my name and quietly deciding I wasn’t someone they could trust.

Future podcast listeners stumbling across it before ever hearing my story.

I’ve wondered how many people already have.

What I’m about to say is probably the last thing anyone expects me to say.

I believe that Reddit thread saved my life.

Not because everything they wrote was true.

It wasn’t.

Some of the timelines were wrong.

Some of the assumptions were wrong.

Some people confidently filled in blanks they couldn’t possibly have known.

Some of what they wrote was just flat out wrong.

But buried underneath all of the gossip...

all of the criticism...

all of the people trying to diagnose me from behind a keyboard...

were a few observations that eventually broke through something my own mind couldn’t.

To understand why, you have to understand where I was mentally at the time.

I wasn’t reading those comments as the woman writing this essay today.

I was reading them while I was still living inside psychosis.

At the time, I believed I was receiving messages directly from God almost every day.

I believed I was communicating with Spirit just as I had for years, but this time I was seeing them outside of myself as opposed to in my mind’s eye like I had always done prior to then.

I believed I was receiving messages through what I interpreted as automatic writing, including through my phone’s predictive text feature.

I believed the Universe was speaking to me through AI.

I believed I was communicating with extraterrestrials.

I believed I was seeing their aircraft in the night sky from my backyard.

I believed I was communicating with Kobe Bryant...

Robin Williams...

Mac Miller...

Kate Spade...

Joan Rivers...

Avicii…

Kirstie Alley…

tWitch…

Mister Rogers...

…and a growing list of other deceased public figures, as well as people I had personally loved and lost.

None of it felt irrational.

It all felt completely real.

That’s one of the hardest things to explain about psychosis.

People imagine someone who’s confused.

I wasn’t confused.

I was 1000% convinced.

And that’s a very different thing.

I’m sure people are wondering…

“How could you not tell the difference?”

The honest answer?

Because my gifts have never been a black and white process.

Unless you’ve experienced mediumship yourself, it’s difficult to explain just how nuanced the process can feel.

For well over a decade, I sat with thousands of people and their loved ones on the Other Side.

I shared names.

Memories.

Personalities.

Family dynamics.

Causes of death.

Physical descriptions.

Belongings that had been left behind.

Signs they still send.

Again and again, I’d hear things like:

“Yes, that was my dad’s nickname.”

“Oh my God. How did you know that about my brother?”

“That’s exactly how my mom died.”

“Yes!! I have her necklace in my pocket.”

“Nobody could have known that.”

It wasn’t just me deciding I was right.

There was another human being across from me.

Sometimes crying.

Sometimes laughing.

Sometimes holding my hands.

Saying,

“Yes, Monica. That’s my person.”

That distinction matters.

Because during my psychosis...

there was no one across from me.

(Well, except for all the dead people I was convinced I was seeing sitting around my kitchen table.)

There was no external validation.

There was only me.

Thoughts arriving faster than I could question them.

Automatic writing.

Ideas that felt every bit as real as the experiences I’d trusted for over ten years.

Looking back now, I can see that what I believed was Spirit communication was different than the way I’d experienced it throughout my career.

Much of what I believed was guidance through my phone’s predictive text wasn’t guidance at all.

It reflected a mind that was struggling to separate internal thoughts from external messages.

Today, I don’t automatically trust something simply because it feels undeniable.

I’ve learned to look for humility.

Reality.

Independent validation.

I didn’t understand that before.

I do now.

So when I first found that Reddit thread...

it hurt.

It deeply embarrassed me.

It made me angry.

It made me feel exposed.

It felt like the entire internet was watching the worst chapter of my life unfold in real time.

But here’s the part that still blows my mind.

It didn’t wake me up.

Not right away.

For a while...

I kept posting.

I kept sharing.

I kept believing many of the things I believed.

I know how impossible that probably sounds.

I’ve thought the same thing myself.

How could I read thousands of comments from people questioning my sanity...

and still keep going?

Because that’s the thing about psychosis.

It doesn’t disappear the moment someone tells you you’re experiencing it.

If it were that simple, none of us would need help.

Recovery didn’t happen all at once.

It happened slowly.

Painfully.

One little crack at a time.

I’d close Reddit...

and then twenty minutes later...

I’d open it again.

Sometimes because I wanted to prove everyone wrong.

Sometimes because I wanted to convince myself they were the crazy ones.

Sometimes because I was desperately hoping someone...

anyone...

would understand what I was experiencing.

Every time I opened it...

there was another opinion.

Another theory.

Another diagnosis.

Another person trying to piece together my life through Instagram stories and posts.

Most of it made me furious.

Not because people were questioning me.

But because so many of them were so confidently wrong.

They got timelines wrong.

They got facts wrong.

They misinterpreted so much of what I was feeling and saying.

They filled in blanks they couldn’t possibly have known.

Some people took tiny pieces of truth...

and built entire stories around them.

Some of it made me feel deeply misunderstood.

Some of it broke my heart.

And some of it made me feel so hopeless that I honestly didn’t know how I was ever going to come back from this.

I remember lying there thinking...

This is never going to go away.

Every person I ever meet is going to Google me.

Future event ticket holders.

Future students.

Someone I might fall in love with one day.

People who haven’t even met me yet.

They’re going to find this.

My life is over.

How am I ever going to provide for my son?

How am I ever going to come back from this?

For the first time I wasn’t just afraid of what I was experiencing.

I was afraid that even if I got better...

no one would ever let me.

Maybe your story looks nothing like mine.

Or maybe it does.

Maybe yours wasn’t psychosis at all.

Maybe it was an addiction.

An affair.

A bankruptcy.

A public mistake you regret.

Or something you’ve spent years hoping nobody would ever find out.

But if you’ve ever believed your worst chapter became your identity...

I know exactly what that feels like.

I think that’s one of the cruelest things shame does.

It convinces us that healing won’t matter...

because people will have already decided who we are.

That was the lie I believed for years.

There were nights when that hopelessness became so overwhelming that I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to keep living.

It wasn’t because I wanted to die. (Actually, if I’m being completely honest, a part of me did want to die. But if there’s one thing all my years as a medium has taught me, it’s that suicide isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. I believe whatever we refuse to face here will have to be faced on the Other Side.)

It was because I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life being defined by the sickest version of myself.

There have been so many times I’ve caught myself thinking...

I wish it had been cancer instead.

Not because cancer is easier.

Far from it.

I would never wish cancer on anyone.

But when someone has cancer...

people know they’re sick.

They understand they’re fighting for their life.

They don’t expect them to keep functioning like nothing’s wrong.

They don’t question every decision they’ve ever made because of it.

They rally around them.

Mental illness is different.

Sometimes you’re smiling.

Sometimes you’re posting on social media.

Sometimes you’re at the playground with your child.

All while your mind is quietly unraveling.

People don’t always realize they’re watching someone who is desperately ill.

And for a long time, I didn’t realize it either.

Looking back now...

I understand why people couldn’t see how sick I was.

The truth is...

I couldn’t see it either.

And then one day...

I read a comment that stopped me cold.

Someone compared my behavior to a woman from a Netflix documentary who believed she was communicating with Robin Williams before her story ended tragically.

I’ve never seen the documentary, but it was a moment that changed everything.

I remember staring at my phone.

Because I believed I was talking to Robin Williams too.

I don’t remember how long I sat there.

I just remember this feeling...

like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

Then one thought hit me.

What the fuck am I doing?

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want my son to grow up without his mom.

What is happening to me?

That wasn’t the moment I suddenly snapped out of psychosis for good.

I wish it were.

It wasn’t.

I still believed things that weren’t true.

I still wasn’t fully back.

But something had deeply shifted.

For the first time in months...

I asked myself a question my mind hadn’t been willing to ask before then.

What if they’re seeing something I’m not?

Looking back...

I think that question saved my life.

Not because it immediately changed everything.

It didn’t.

But it created the first massive crack.

And once that crack existed...

certainty didn’t feel quite so certain anymore.

To be clear, I don’t give Reddit credit for my healing.

Healing took years.

That thread didn’t heal me.

It interrupted my thought patterns. It disrupted my certainty.

It forced a question into my mind that psychosis had never allowed me to ask.

What if I’m wrong?

Looking back now...

I don’t just see a woman who made confusing decisions.

I see a woman who was incredibly sick.

A woman whose mind was fighting a battle almost nobody else could see.

When I picture her now...

I don’t feel embarrassed.

I feel heartbroken.

She wasn’t trying to destroy her life.

She wasn’t trying to hurt the people she loved.

She wasn’t trying to become someone strangers would one day dissect on the internet.

She was sick.

She wasn’t beyond hope.

She wasn’t beyond redemption, no matter what the people hiding behind keyboards believed.

Somehow...

she found her way back to herself.

Even now, that still feels like a miracle to me.

I don't believe God authored that Reddit thread. I don't believe He orchestrated the cruelty, the gossip, or the misinformation. I believe He redeemed even this part of my story.

There was a time when I genuinely believed I’d never think clearly again.

I thought every person who Googled me would make up their mind before they ever met me.

I thought I’d never rebuild my reputation or my career.

I thought I’d never feel like myself again.

I thought I’d never find love again.

I was wrong.

God wasn’t finished with me.

For years, I carried so much shame about that Reddit thread.

I stopped Googling myself because I couldn’t bear to see it staring back at me.

In many ways...

it’s one of the reasons I legally changed my last name to Imani.

I wanted a chance to breathe.

A chance to start over.

A chance for people to meet me...

before meeting the internet’s version of me.

The part that still gives me chills is that during my psychosis, I believed God was asking me to change my last name to Imani.

It was only afterwards that I found out what Imani means.

Imani means Faith.

There are many things from that season that I now recognize came from a mind in crisis.

But this...

this is one I still hold differently.

Because somehow...

before I had any idea what the next few years were going to ask of me...

I was given a name that would become the very thing I’d need to survive them.

I’ve gone back and forth about publishing this essay more times than I can count.

My next Costa Rica retreat is only a few weeks away.

Part of me wonders…

What if one of the women attending reads this and changes her mind about me?

What if she finds the Reddit thread, goes down the rabbit hole, and no longer feels safe spending a week with me?

But then something occurred to me. These women have invested over $5,000 to travel to Costa Rica and spend a week with me. They already know I’ve experienced psychosis. I’ve spoken about it openly on Instagram. I’ve written about it to my email list.

They’re not signing up despite my story.

Some of them are signing up because of it.

I tell the people I coach to trust themselves. I ask the women who come on my retreats to be brave enough to confront the parts of their stories they’ve been hiding from. To have faith. I can’t keep asking other people to be brave while making my own decisions out of fear.

I have to be brave too.

Maybe that’s why I’m finally ready to tell this story.

Not because I’m no longer afraid.

Trust me...

I’ll probably still flinch the next time someone tells me,

“I Googled you.”

Maybe I always will.

But fear doesn’t get to make this decision anymore.

I do.

So if you’ve been reading these essays...

If you’ve laughed with me...

Cried with me...

Questioned with me...

Or simply cared enough to keep scrolling down the page...

I’m going to ask one thing of you.

Please don’t read that Reddit thread.

Before you let strangers tell you who I am...

let me.

Not because I’m asking you to ignore what happened.

Or pretend those years didn’t exist.

They did.

They’re part of my story.

But they aren’t the whole story.

For years...

I believed strangers on the internet had already written the ending for me.

I don’t believe that anymore.

That Reddit thread wasn’t the end.

It wasn’t even close.

It was one chapter.

And thank God...

it wasn’t the final one.

This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever written.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to tell this story publicly.

If you’ve found value in these essays, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.

Your subscription makes it possible for me to continue writing honestly about the chapters that are often left out of conversations around mental health, spiritual gifts, healing, faith, identity, and rebuilding a life after it falls apart. It’s also what will allow me to launch my new podcast, Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), this fall.

My next essay will be for paid subscribers only.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for trusting me with your time.

And thank you for allowing me to tell the story in my own words.

I blocked two of my three sisters.

I told them they would never see me or my son again for the rest of my life.

When people hear the word psychosis, they usually imagine the obvious things.

The public humiliation.

The things you said online.

The damage to your career.

The embarrassment of looking back at things you believed with complete certainty that you no longer believe today.

(And yes, we’ll go into all of it in future essays and on my upcoming podcast, bit by bit.)

Those things were painful.

But they weren’t the hardest part.

Not even close.

People think the hardest part is surviving psychosis.

For me, it wasn’t.

The hardest part has been living with what came after.

Before everything happened, my three sisters were my best friends.

We talked every single day.

We had a family group chat with my mom that was constantly buzzing.

We celebrated birthdays together.

We took trips together.

We got together with my dad and step-mom for holidays.

Our kids were supposed to grow up together. Even living in different parts of the world, we would have made the effort to see each other in person as often as we could.

If you had asked me back then what my future looked like, I never would have imagined a version where we barely spoke.

People don’t talk enough about what psychosis does to the people who love you.

When you’re inside psychosis, your reality feels completely real.

You’re not pretending.

You’re not trying to manipulate anyone.

You genuinely believe what you’re experiencing is one hundred percent real and true.

Which means the people trying hardest to help you often become the people you trust the least.

I remember my mom calling me what felt like a million times in a single day.

I didn’t answer. I blocked her.

I then posted on Instagram demanding that my entire Costa Rican family stop sharing my content with my mom and stop contacting me with their concerns, or I was going to block every single one of them.

I had already blocked my mom on Instagram.

Eventually, two of my three sisters were blocked too.

Their numbers.

Instagram.

Everything.

I’m pretty sure it stayed that way for well over a year.

I screamed things at one of my sisters that still haunt me to this day and that I wish I could take back.

I called her names I never imagined I’d say to another human being, let alone my own sister.

I told her she was dead to me.

I told her I’d never speak to her again for the rest of my life.

Those words still echo in my head. But there’s also a lot that happened that I’ve sort of blacked out. It hurts too much to stir it up.

At the time, I believed she was trying to destroy my life.

I carried so much anger because my family was trying to have me 5150’d and hospitalized, which could have easily turned into having CPS involved. I was beyond terrified that everything I loved was about to be taken from me, most importantly, my son, who was only 20 months old at the time.

(Side note: If you're wondering whether what I experienced was postpartum psychosis, I've wondered the same thing, especially because of the postpartum depression I experienced after my son was born. I guess I always pictured postpartum psychosis as something that only happened within the first year after giving birth, but maybe the window is wider than I thought. It's definitely something I want to explore more later. At the same time, I also feel like there were a lot of different factors that contributed to my mental break.)

Anyway, the fear felt real.

The anger felt justified.

Looking back now, I can also see something I couldn’t see then.

They weren’t trying to punish me.

They were terrified too.

They were watching someone they loved slipping further and further away, and they didn’t know what else to do.

I don’t think I fully understood how frightening it must have been to love me during that season.

I only knew how terrifying it felt to be me.

Recovery has meant learning that those aren’t competing truths.

Both can exist at the same time.

One of the biggest misconceptions about psychosis is that people immediately assume it means someone can’t be a caring, functioning parent.

Look, I can only speak for my own experience.

But I never stopped loving my son.

I never stopped being his mom. I never stopped providing the utmost care and attention.

Not for a second.

He was well fed, well dressed, bathed, and taken care of just as he always had been. We still went on fun outings. We went to the pumpkin patch, the mall, play spaces, restaurants, Barnes & Noble, all the things we still do to this day.

Looking back, I can also understand why the people around me saw things I couldn’t fully see.

Both of those things can be true.

What nobody prepared me for wasn’t surviving psychosis.

It was surviving the aftermath.

Because recovery isn’t just about your mind.

It’s about relationships.

It’s about rebuilding trust.

It’s about living with the memory of words you wish you could take back.

It’s about wondering whether the people you love will ever look at you the same way again.

And sometimes…

they don’t.

Some of my family relationships have come a long way. For nearly two years I didn’t speak to several family members. We’re now at the point where we occasionally text or even speak on the phone every once in a while.

I saw my dad and step-mom in person a little over a year and a half after my psychosis, and my mom two years after.

I’m grateful for that.

But if I’m being honest, the majority of my family relationships never returned to what they were before. And I still haven’t seen my sisters in person.

The hardest part isn’t that my family shut me out.

The hardest part is that they didn’t.

They would have welcomed me back long before I was ready to walk through the door.

It was me.

I carried so much shame over the things I had said and done that I couldn’t bear the thought of showing my face or talking about the elephant in the room, which was everything I had been through.

I thought the hardest part would be surviving psychosis.

It wasn’t.

The hardest part was everything that came after.

Watching everyone in my family move forward in their lives without me.

Missing years I can never relive.

Carrying words I’ll always wish I could take back.

And the most heartbreaking part wasn’t that my family slammed the door in my face.

It was that I became so consumed by shame…

that I couldn’t bring myself to knock.

Holiday after holiday went by.

For the first couple of years it was just me and my son, or even just me, since I share 50/50 custody of my son with his dad.

Those holidays became the biggest reminders of everything that had changed.

I kept thinking…

Maybe next year.

Maybe next Christmas.

Maybe after a little more time.

Then a few months became a year.

A year became two. And now this September marks three years since everything happened.

Before you know it…

your nieces aren’t little anymore.

Your nephew is suddenly four and a half.

Your own son is four and a half too.

And you realize they’ve spent the last three-plus years growing up apart. They haven’t been together in person since my son was around a year old.

That’s the part that hurts me the most.

I grieve it so deeply.

The birthdays.

The Christmases.

The summer barbecues.

The random afternoons that don’t seem important until you realize they never happened.

The memories they’ll never have.

We’ve had FaceTimes.

And I’m grateful for every single call.

I really am.

But FaceTime isn’t childhood.

And no matter how much healing happens…

no one can ever give those years back.

If you looked at my life today, you’d probably think I’m healed.

I’ve rebuilt so much.

I found love again.

I’m engaged.

I’m thriving as a mom.

I’ve rebuilt my career.

I’ve made incredible friendships and have found community.

I’m completely sober (unless you count caffeine as a substance, I do still love me a morning cup of iced espresso).

I’m happier than I’ve been in years.

In so many ways…

my life is beautiful.

But the deepest wound is the one most people don’t see.

I almost never talk about my family.

Because it’s the part that still hurts the most.

Every other part of my life I’ve rebuilt.

But my family wounds are still so, so deep.

They’re the one thing that still feels unfinished.

And they're the one thing I pray for more than anything.

The irony isn’t lost on me. For years, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from mediumship is that the dead almost always say the same thing: they wish they had forgiven sooner. They wish they hadn’t wasted precious time on earth estranged from the people they loved.

I’ve heard that message come through thousands of times. And yet here I am, still struggling with the very thing Spirit has been trying to teach me all along.

I think aside from the shame, another reason I struggle with this is because as devastating as the distance has been, it's also given me a huge sense of freedom.

When you’re estranged from certain people that you’ve always wanted approval from, you stop bracing for their reactions. You stop filtering every decision through the lens of how they might view you or what they’ll think about you.

A year after my psychosis I opened a children's playroom business called Little Lane Playroom. While the business had to close a year later (brick-and-mortar is a beast of its own), it was one of the most beautiful chapters of my life because for the first time, I got to explore a side of me detached from the limiting beliefs of those around me.

There was a strange kind of freedom in realizing I could become whoever I wanted to without hearing my family’s opinions or expectations.

Even sharing my story and writing this Substack feels possible because of the distance. I worry that the moment I fully let them back in, I’ll suddenly start filtering myself again.

But freedom and wholeness aren’t always the same thing.

I don’t want to build a life that only feels free because I stayed away. I want a life that feels free because I learned how to be myself, whether the people around me understand me or not. I’ve realized now that so much of my identity had been shaped by my own fear of being understood.

So yes, there was freedom in the distance. But there was also a grief that freedom couldn’t touch. It gave me room to grow, and yet, it never touched the ache of what was missing.

The first draft of this essay was written after I drove home from a silent piano concert overlooking the ocean in Del Mar (where the concert’s theme was freedom, which feels like a sign in itself).

During the concert, everyone listened through headphones as the sun disappeared into the Pacific.

At one point, I opened my journal and wrote a letter from my future self one year from now.

I wrote about my upcoming podcast, Psychic or Psychosis?

This Substack.

My next book.

Sharing my testimony and speaking on stages.

Still being sober.

Being in love.

The life I trust God is leading me toward.

And a whole section about coming back together with my family and spending quality time with them and my son.

And when I got home and read the letter back, one line stood out more than all the others.

It wasn’t about the podcast.

It wasn’t about the memoir.

It wasn’t about speaking on stages.

It wasn’t about success.

At the bottom of the page, I had written:

“P.S. I promise healing family relationships will be the best choice you make.”

I sat there staring at those words.

Because I realized my future self wasn’t most proud of the career she had built.

She was most grateful that she found her way back to the people she loved.

Maybe that’s why I needed to write this essay.

Because I still don’t have a perfect ending. The ending is still unwritten.

As humans we want things to feel complete, but the reality is we’re all in the midst of messy, uncomfortable parts of our journeys.

Life looks a lot better than it once did, but I’m still rebuilding this part of it. And I’m finally ready to stop letting shame make my decisions.

For years, shame convinced me there would always be another holiday.

Another birthday.

Another trip.

Another conversation.

Another chance.

But if I’ve learned anything as a medium, it’s that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. You may think there’s more time, until suddenly there’s not.

If you’re reading this while carrying the weight of something you wish you could undo…

Maybe this is your reminder too.

Don’t let shame steal another year.

Go knock.

If these essays have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support this next season of my work, I’d love to have you as a paid subscriber. Your support makes it possible for me to keep writing and finally launch my podcast, Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), this fall.

Paid subscriptions are currently 25% off for your first year through tonight.

A couple weeks ago, I had a dream that has stayed with me ever since.

In the dream, I was at a concert. I’d arrived early and found a great seat near the front. Shortly after I sat down, two women next to me asked if I would save their seats while they ran to the restroom.

“Of course,” I told them.

What followed was so frustrating. I held those seats for more than thirty minutes. When other people tried to sit there, I stopped them. When someone suggested the women weren’t coming back, I defended them. Maybe the bathroom line was long, maybe they’d stopped for snacks, maybe they’d be back any minute. I felt responsible for those seats.

Then the concert started, and the women never returned.

Suddenly I realized something: I’d spent all that time protecting seats for people who weren’t coming back.

When I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it mirrored my own life.

Over the past few years, I’ve gone through one of the biggest identity shifts of my adult life. I stepped back from mediumship as the center of my work. I legally changed my last name to Imani. I started showing up on Instagram more regularly, started writing again, and I’ve begun speaking more openly about faith, mental health, sobriety, the things happening in our world that have been weighing on my heart, and the questions I’ve been wrestling with behind the scenes for years.

And in all honesty, part of me has worried about how some people would respond. There was a woman who’d followed me since the early days of my television show, someone I genuinely considered my number one fan. She sent handwritten letters. Care packages in the mail. Birthday messages every single year without fail. She was always the first to like a post, the first to comment, the first to show up for whatever I was building.

Sometime over the past year or so, she stopped. No more messages. No more likes. She quietly unfollowed.

I don’t know exactly why. For a stretch of time, I was posting a lot of content about the children in Gaza. I’ve eased up since then because I know these things can be heavy for a lot of people to consume on a regular basis, though I still share stories about those families from time to time because to me it feels like the right thing to do (and to this day, I still communicate with and donate to several Palestinian families on an ongoing basis). For me it was simply grief, the same grief I’d feel watching any child suffer anywhere, and I couldn’t stay silent about it just because it might cost me an audience. If that’s what it cost me, I’ve made peace with it.

It also could have been the shift from Monica the Medium to Monica Imani. It could have been my relationship with Jesus, which for me exists completely outside the context of religion, or some current belief of mine that no longer matched hers.

Or it could have been something I said or did during psychosis that she never forgot, even if it’s not something I’d stand behind today. I was unwell in ways I’m still finding language for, and I know a lot of what came from me during that season hurt people who loved me.

Honestly, it could have been something that had nothing to do with me at all. For a while, I caught myself replaying every post from that stretch of time, trying to pinpoint the exact moment she left, as if identifying the cause would somehow bring her back.

At some point I had to admit I couldn’t keep doing that. I can’t spend my life auditing every belief, every opinion, every piece of who I’m becoming, against the fear of losing one more person who used to sit in the front row.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: why am I still protecting empty chairs?

The more I sat with that question, the more I realized it didn’t just apply to my audience. I think we all do this. How many empty chairs are we protecting? How many decisions are we making around people who left years ago?

It might be an old friend, someone you haven’t spoken to in years, yet their opinions or judgments somehow continue to shape your choices long after they’ve stopped being a part of your life. And it’s not even their actual opinions. It’s the ones you’ve imagined. The stories you’ve created.

I had a best friend for fifteen years. We had a falling out during my psychosis, and we haven’t been part of each other’s lives since. I still sometimes catch myself thinking, “I wonder what she’d think about this,” as though her opinion still has a vote in decisions she has no idea I’m even making.

Or it could be a former partner. Someone who moved on long ago, yet somehow still occupies real estate in your mind. You still wonder what they’d think. You still edit parts of yourself around a version of them that isn’t even in the room anymore.

Family dynamics add another layer to this experience. The empty chair can look like outdated expectations, an idea of success or the “right path” handed to you at a young age that you never took the time to question. Maybe nobody is actively demanding it from you anymore, but you’re still carrying it.

Sometimes the empty chair is a career, a title, an identity, a version of yourself that once fit perfectly but doesn’t fit anymore. For thirteen years, mine had the name Monica the Medium attached to it. Every time I’ve considered stepping further into this new chapter, a voice whispers: but what if people expect me to stay the same? What if they liked Monica the Medium more than they’ll ever like Monica Imani?

I’ve come to learn that much of our suffering stems from our attempts to hold onto things that have already ended. This is not a sign of weakness but rather a sign of loyalty. We convince ourselves that letting go means betraying what once mattered.

But letting go isn’t betrayal. It’s honesty. It’s admitting that someone isn’t coming back, and choosing to call that acceptance instead of loss.

In my dream, I wasn’t protecting occupied seats. I was protecting empty ones. That’s what made it so freaking exhausting. The effort wasn’t serving anyone, because the people I was waiting for weren’t even there.

And maybe that’s the part that struck me most: the concert doesn’t stop for the empty chairs. The music still plays. The show goes on, with or without the people we saved a place for.

Some of the people I was afraid of losing were already gone before I even noticed. Some left years ago. Some only ever liked one chapter of my story. Some were attached to an older version of me, the one who channeled messages from Spirit for thousands of people a year and rarely talked about Jesus, sobriety, my healing journey, or the parts of my story I’m still finding the language for.

And that’s okay. People get to leave. They’re allowed to outgrow us, the same way we’re allowed to outgrow who we used to be.

What isn’t okay is shaping our lives to cater to an audience that’s no longer there. It’s not okay to shrink ourselves for those who have stopped engaging with us, to protect seats for absent friends (or followers), or dull our beliefs in the hope that one specific person might come back and sit in the front row again.

Because while we’re busy guarding empty chairs, we risk missing the people who are actually in the room. The ones who are here. The ones who are growing alongside us, excited to meet whoever we’re becoming instead of waiting for us to go back to who we were.

Maybe that’s the invitation. Not to become careless or indifferent, and not to stop loving the people who were part of earlier chapters. It’s to stop arranging our lives around their absence. To bless them, thank them, appreciate the role they played. And then let the seat open up for someone new.

I think about her sometimes, the woman with the handwritten letters and the birthday messages, the one who showed up before almost anyone else did. Wherever she is, I hope she’s well. I’m still grateful for every card, every package, every year she chose to stay. But I’ve stopped auditing myself in her absence, and I’ve stopped saving her a seat.

Because somewhere along the way, I realized the people I was waiting for were never the only people in the room. The concert had already started, new faces were already sitting in the seats I kept looking past, and all that time I spent guarding a handful of empty chairs was time I wasn’t fully present for the people who’d actually stayed.

Support My Work:

If you’ve been enjoying these essays and would like to support this next season of my work, paid subscriptions are currently 25% off through this Sunday.

Paid subscribers receive early access to the deeper chapters of my story, along with occasional members-only essays and reflections before they’re shared more widely. They’re also able to comment on every post and join the conversation.

If you choose to become a paid subscriber, your support helps make it possible for me to continue this writing and finally bring my upcoming podcast, Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), to life this fall. If you join before the launch offer ends, you’ll also lock in today’s standard membership pricing for as long as your subscription remains active, even if prices increase in the future.

Whether you’re a free reader or a paid subscriber, thank you for being here.

This essay is about learning to stop focusing on the people who left and to appreciate the people who stayed. If you’re reading these words, you’re one of those people.

I’m grateful you’re here.

For most of my life, I kept a mental list of things I hoped no one would ever find out.

I believed that the safest version of me was the version that kept certain rooms locked. Not hidden entirely, just closed. Off-limits. The kind of doors you walk past every day and stop noticing, until you realize you’ve built your whole house around avoiding them.

I figured if people only ever saw the parts of me that were working, they’d never have a reason to look away.

So that’s what I did. I hid what I needed to hide. I managed what I could manage. I got good at it…good enough that most people would have told you I seemed like someone who had it all. I let people meet the parts of me I was proud of, the parts that made sense, the parts that photographed well. And I quietly closed the door on the rest, telling myself I was protecting something. My son. My family. My reputation. The people who loved the version of me they already knew.

It’s exhausting, if I’m honest, keeping that many doors closed at once. You start to forget which version of yourself you’re supposed to be in any given room, and which parts you’re supposed to keep out of sight. After a while, managing the image takes more energy than actually living the life underneath it.

What I didn’t expect is that the very things I worked hardest to hide would eventually become the things I now feel most called to speak about.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I’ve started to believe it’s closer to a pattern.

The Pattern I Keep Noticing

I’ve lived enough of my adult life in public to start noticing something.

The seasons that felt the most shameful while I was living through them have become the very seasons other people seem to need to hear about most. It’s an odd thing to sit with, that the very chapters I once prayed no one would discover are the ones people lean toward the hardest once I finally share them.

My struggles with mental health and postpartum depression following a traumatic birth experience. My sobriety journey. Infidelity. The unraveling of my marriage (see footnote). A season of psychosis that I'm still learning how to talk about, let alone fully explain. Decisions that changed the course of my life. Regrets I'm still making peace with. Mistakes I made that deeply hurt people I loved. Relationships that didn't survive who I was becoming. Chapters I'm still finding language for today.

The strange thing is that none of those chapters became lighter because I kept them hidden.

If anything, they became heavier. Every year I carried one of them in silence, it seemed to gain a little more weight, a little more power over how I saw myself. Silence has a way of convincing you that a story is worse than it actually is, simply because no one else has ever been allowed to hear it and tell you otherwise.

Shame thrives in silence.

I still believe some things deserve to stay protected, at least for a while. Timing matters. Other people’s privacy matters. There's a difference between guarding a story until it's ready to be told and burying a story because you're ashamed of it. For years, I couldn’t tell those two things apart. I told myself I was waiting for the right moment or permission from others to share certain parts of my story, when really I was just afraid of what would happen the moment I stopped waiting.

The harder I looked at that belief, the more I realized it was fear wearing the costume of patience. Yes, other people's privacy mattered. But somewhere along the way, I began using that truth to justify keeping parts of myself hidden. I told myself I was protecting other people, when really, I was protecting an image, and paying for it with a loneliness nobody on the outside could see.

And eventually, I reached a point where carrying these stories alone became more painful than telling the truth. The exhaustion of managing so many closed doors finally outweighed the fear of what might happen if I opened them.

That’s when I began to realize that the pain I had spent years trying to conceal might actually be the very thing I was meant to share.

I’ve also come to realize that truth often comes in layers. There are stories we can only tell after we’ve lived with them long enough to understand what they were trying to teach us.

Every one of those chapters felt like something I needed to survive and then bury, not something I'd one day speak about publicly, let alone build into work I feel proud of.

Author’s Note

This essay marks the beginning of paid subscriptions on this publication.

For the foreseeable future, the majority of my essays will continue to be completely free.

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing some of the stories I’ve spent years trying to find the courage and language to tell. While many of those stories will eventually be explored publicly through my upcoming podcast, Psychic or Psychosis?, paid subscribers will receive early access to the deeper chapters of my story, along with occasional members-only essays and reflections before they’re shared more widely.

If you choose to become a paid subscriber, your support helps make it possible for me to continue this writing and finally bring the podcast to life this fall.

As a thank-you to everyone joining during this launch, all paid subscribers who subscribe within the next 7 days will receive 25% off their first year of membership. You'll also lock in today's standard membership pricing. Your 25% launch discount applies to your first year, and after that you'll continue at today's standard membership rate for as long as your subscription remains active, even if prices increase in the future.

Whether you read as a free subscriber or decide to support this work financially, I’m genuinely grateful you’re here.

Thank you for being part of this next season of my work.

Talking to dead people is what made me special, what made me successful, what gave my life a clear sense of purpose. For many years, I never questioned it. Why would I? My career was thriving, the opportunities kept growing, and people would often share with me that messages I delivered literally gave them the will to keep on living.

I felt deeply fulfilled. And in a lot of ways, I was living the dream I’d spent years building.

I had two seasons of a television show, a published book and oracle deck, a top-charting podcast in the Spirituality category, a thriving online course, sold-out Messages from Above events across the country, and an engaged audience. People often recognized me while out and about. Mediumship wasn’t just something I did. It was the thing people knew me for.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that somewhere along the way, I had stopped seeing mediumship as something I did and started seeing it as who I was. There’s a subtle difference between those two things, but it changes everything. Because when something becomes your identity, any change to it feels like a threat. You’re not just risking a job. You’re risking yourself.

Looking back, I think that’s part of why I stayed attached to certain versions of myself longer than I needed to. Not because they were wrong, and not because they weren’t meaningful, but because I couldn’t imagine who I would be without them. And if I’m being completely honest, part of me was terrified to find out.

The last four years forced me to confront that fear anyway. My mental health journey, my sobriety, my marriage falling apart, motherhood, my growing relationship with God and Jesus, the questions I started asking and the things I started caring about. Little by little, I began changing. The conversations I wanted to have were changing. The work that energized me was changing. The way I viewed success was changing. Even the things I prayed for were changing.

And yet every time I felt myself moving in a new direction, there was a voice in the back of my mind asking the same question: but what will people think? It’s going to devastate them if I walk away from what so many see as my life’s purpose. What so many people had longed for from me for years. (I had tens of thousands of people who would literally jump at the opportunity for a private reading, which is exactly what made the idea of stepping back feel so impossible.)

I also had another thought that was even harder to admit: that’s literally all I’m good for. I don’t matter unless I’m sharing my gift. Looking back, that belief breaks my heart, because no human being should have to earn their worth only by what they have to offer. And yet I know I’m not the only person who has felt that way.

It’s funny how often we stay in familiar spaces because we’re afraid of disappointing people we’ve never even met. I worried people would think I was abandoning my gift and the Spirit World, that they’d think I was confused, that they’d think I’d lost my way. (In fact, I literally received a message from someone telling me I sounded like a confused teenager.) But the reality was much simpler than that. I wasn’t losing myself. I was finding parts of myself that had been waiting patiently for me to notice them, parts that existed long before television, long before Instagram, long before “Monica the Medium.”

There have been times in my life where I believed clarity came before action. I thought you were supposed to know exactly who you were becoming before you let yourself start changing. What I’ve learned instead is that clarity often arrives after the first brave step. You don’t always get a five-year plan. Sometimes you just get a nudge, a quiet feeling, a sense that something no longer fits the way it once did. And then you have a choice: stay where it’s comfortable, or trust where you’re being led.

Lately, I’ve been choosing the second option more and more often. Not because it’s easier. It’s not. Some days it feels incredibly uncomfortable, even terrifying. There’s a deep grief that comes with outgrowing identities, even beautiful ones. There’s grief in closing chapters that once felt permanent, in becoming unfamiliar to people who only knew the older version of you, in taking a step back from something that brought you purpose and meaning and success even when you know it’s time.

But there’s also freedom. Freedom in realizing your worth was never tied to a title. Freedom in realizing you’re allowed to evolve. Freedom in realizing that the thing that once defined your life doesn’t have to define the rest of it.

Because the truth is, this isn’t just a story about mediumship. It’s about every version of ourselves we’ve ever outgrown.

Maybe you’re the stay-at-home mom whose children are becoming more independent, and you’re starting to wonder who you are outside of being needed every minute of the day. Maybe you’re the executive who spent years climbing the corporate ladder only to discover you’re standing at the top of a mountain you no longer want to be on. Maybe you’re the person leaving a marriage, a career, a church, a city, or a dream you once felt certain about. Maybe you’re someone who spent years becoming the person everyone else expected you to be, and are only now asking yourself what you actually want. The details may be different, but the feeling is often the same.

There’s a strange space that exists between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming, a space where the old identity no longer fits but the new one hasn’t fully formed yet. If you’ve ever found yourself there, you know how uncomfortable it can be.

Human beings love certainty. We love neat explanations and clearly defined paths. We want guarantees that if we let go of something familiar, something better will be waiting on the other side. But life rarely works that way. Most of the meaningful transitions I’ve experienced haven’t come with a roadmap. They’ve come with a whisper, a nudge, a persistent feeling I couldn’t ignore. And almost every time I’ve followed it, I’ve eventually discovered that what I thought I was losing was actually creating space for something deeper. Not always bigger, and not always more impressive, but more aligned.

When I look back on my life, the chapters that changed me most weren’t the ones I planned. They were the ones that forced me to surrender my timeline, my expectations, and sometimes even the identity I’d built my life around. At the time, those moments felt like endings. Looking back, they were invitations to become someone I couldn’t have become any other way.

I think that’s where I find myself today. Not at the end of the story, and not with all the answers, but standing in the doorway of a new chapter, learning to trust that God knows what He’s doing even when I don’t. I’m learning that faith sometimes looks less like certainty and more like willingness: a willingness to follow where I’m being led, to release what no longer fits, to become a new version of myself. To return to the woman I came here to be.

Look, you’d think as someone with intuitive abilities that I’d have my life all figured out. That I’d know exactly where I’m headed. But I don’t have every answer about where this next chapter is leading. In a lot of ways, I’m figuring it out as I go. What I do know is this: the older I get, the less interested I am in protecting an identity, a reputation, or a version of myself I’ve outgrown. I'm far more interested in becoming who God created me to be, even if that journey surprises people. Even if it surprises me.

And maybe that’s the invitation for all of us. Not to cling so tightly to the labels that once served us, or to build our entire sense of self around a role, a relationship, a career, or a title, but to remember that underneath all of those things is something deeper. Something that existed before the success, before the achievements, before the expectations, before the identity. A self that was worthy all along, one that doesn’t have to prove itself in order to matter, one that can evolve without being lost.

Because sometimes the most beautiful chapters of our lives begin the moment we’re willing to stop maintaining an identity that everyone else expects us to be and start becoming who we were created to be.

If you want to keep following my journey, be sure to visit my new website at monicaimani.com, where I'll be sharing more of what's next. Alongside this Substack, my Instagram (@monica.imani), and my upcoming podcast, my website has become the new home for this next chapter.

It's been my Instagram handle, the title of my TV show, the premise of my book and my former podcast, and the thing people recognized me for in airports, coffee shops, and grocery stores. It was the go-to answer when someone asked what I did for a living.

For the last 13 years, mediumship shaped my identity in ways that were both beautiful and complex.

So when people notice that I’m talking less about mediumship these days, and sharing more about faith, healing, sobriety, motherhood, purpose, and personal growth, it’s only natural for them to have questions.

The truth is, this shift didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual unfolding, a series of realizations that piled up over time until I could no longer brush them aside.

While there are many reasons I’ve decided to take a step back from mediumship, they all seem to point to one deeper truth: I’ve changed. And the things that once felt perfectly aligned don’t quite fit the same way anymore. It’s not because mediumship isn’t beautiful anymore. It’s just that I am not the same person who first walked through that door.

My Mental Health Journey Changed Everything

This is probably the most significant reason of all.

In 2023, my life completely fell apart. What started as a spiritual awakening eventually spiraled into a psychotic break that made me question nearly everything I thought I knew about myself, spirituality, intuition, reality, and God.

There were months where I couldn’t tell the difference between insight and delusion, where the same sensitivity that had made me so good at my work became the very thing I couldn’t trust anymore. That’s a strange and lonely place to live. You spend over a decade being told, and believing, that you have a gift for perceiving things other people can’t. And then one day you’re not sure if you can trust your own mind or the connection to Spirit you’ve always leaned on.

Experiencing psychosis was terrifying. Humbling. Confusing. And ultimately, transformative.

Recovery required me to slow down and be brutally honest with myself. It pushed me to confront questions I had spent years dodging: about discernment, about ego, about certainty, about where intuition ends and projection begins.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers now. In fact, I probably have fewer answers than I did before. But I’ve got better questions. And I’ve become much more at ease living inside of them.

My Relationship With God Changed

This is probably the toughest part to articulate.

My relationship with God and Jesus has changed more than any other part of my life. I had a near death experience (it wasn’t a traditional NDE where I was in a car accident or something, so feel free to think of it more as a supernatural experience if you wish) in 2023 where I came face to face with God and Jesus. I already know what you’re thinking: that was around the same time as my psychosis, so it couldn’t possibly be real. But I know with every fiber of my soul that what I experienced was real. More on that to be shared in my new podcast, “Psychic or Psychosis?” launching this fall.

I want to be honest that my perception of God and my perception of Jesus feel different to me, almost like two distinct presences I relate to in different ways. And yet, I also believe they are one and the same. I understand that paradox in a way that’s meaningful to me, and that’s something I hope to unpack more in the future.

The relationship I have with God today is nothing like the one I had five years ago. Or three years ago. Or even just a year ago.

As I’ve gone deeper into my healing, Jesus has become more central to my life. Not in a religious sense whatsoever. No institutions. Just a direct relationship with Jesus.

For much of my life, I searched for guidance in countless places: teachers, books, readers, mediums, astrology, spiritual tools, signs, synchronicities. I still appreciate many of those avenues. But everything shifted when I stopped treating Jesus as one option among many and started placing Him at the center of my existence.

That shift has touched every part of my life. Including my work.

The Pressure to Constantly Prove Myself Became Exhausting

This one is also hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

When your work involves things that can’t be measured or scientifically proven, there’s a constant pressure to validate yourself: to prove you’re accurate, that you’re gifted, that you’re legitimate, that you’re not just making it up.

Even after years of evidence, two seasons of my own television show, a podcast, television appearances, a book, thousands of readings, and countless clients sharing raving testimonials, there was always someone else who needed convincing. Another skeptic. Another critic. Another test of whether or not I was the real deal.

Eventually I realized I was worn down, not because I doubted my own experiences, but because I no longer wanted my life to revolve around convincing other people of them. Having your worth and acceptance feel tied to what you can do can honestly mess with your head.

These days, I’m far less interested in external validation. I'd rather answer to God than to an audience.

The Clients I’m Called to Serve Have Changed

Mediumship attracts a very different type of client than who I feel called to serve today.

Many people seeking mediumship are navigating profound grief and loss, desperate for answers or closure. While it’s been an honor to hold space for people during some of the hardest moments of their lives, over time I realized how emotionally heavy that work had become for me. No matter how much cleansing, grounding, or energetic maintenance I did, I found myself carrying a weight that wasn’t mine to carry.

I No Longer Felt Aligned With Parts of the Industry

As I spent more time in the mediumship space, I started noticing certain practices, delivery styles, and approaches that didn't align with my personal values. Not everyone, of course. I’ve met some remarkable people in this field, full of integrity, humility, and a genuine desire to serve Spirit and their clients to the best of their abilities.

But the longer I stayed in the industry, the more disconnected I felt from parts of its culture. The conversations often felt repetitive. The focus, at times, felt too narrow. I found myself hungry for something with more room in it: for humanity, suffering, ethics, discernment, and the harder questions facing our world. More nuance. More complexity. More space for uncertainty. More space for God.

Slowly, that hunger pulled me toward different rooms entirely.

My Calling Has Evolved

Sometimes we assume that if something felt right at one point, it should feel right forever. But life doesn’t always work that way. Some chapters are meant to last. Others exist to teach us something before we move on.

Mediumship gave me so much. It opened doors I didn’t know existed, brought incredible people into my life, pushed me past my comfort zone, and helped me grow in ways I couldn’t have predicted. I’ll always be grateful for that.

But these days, when I think about the conversations I most want to have, mediumship isn’t the one at the center anymore.

I’m less interested in talking about the dead.

I’m more interested in helping people fully LIVE.

I find myself drawn to their healing. Their purpose. Their relationships. Their faith. Their present-day lives. For many people, receiving a message from a loved one is incredibly healing. I’ll always be grateful for those moments. But lately my heart is being pulled in a different direction. I’m more passionate about helping people come home to themselves, trust God, heal what’s keeping them stuck, and create a life that feels aligned with who they’re becoming.

And more than ever, I find my soul being called to share what it means to rebuild a life after it’s fallen apart.

Those are the conversations pulling at me right now. And I’ve decided it’s okay to follow that pull.

This Isn’t Goodbye

For those of you who’ve followed my journey because of mediumship, I want to be clear: this isn’t some grand farewell where it disappears from my life entirely.

I’m still captivated by the messages and jaw-dropping validation that Spirit brings through. Mediumship will likely always be part of my story. In fact, I’ll be hosting a cozy Messages From Above experience at my upcoming retreat in Costa Rica, and I plan to keep offering occasional events on Zoom down the line.

But it’s no longer the center of my work. Mediumship was a doorway, a deeply meaningful one. But it was never the final destination.

The real journey has always been about becoming more authentically myself, and these days, that includes wellness retreats, intuitive coaching, sound healing, writing, sharing my testimony, and preparing for my upcoming podcast.

If you want to keep following that journey with me, be sure to visit my new website at monicaimani.com, where I'll be sharing more of what's next. Alongside this Substack, my Instagram (@monica.imani), and my upcoming podcast, my website has become the new home for this next chapter.

I laughed.

Not because I thought God was sending me secret instructions through a license plate.

(Though, to be fair, there was a period of my life when I absolutely might have thought that. We can save that story for another post.)

And not because I believe every sign needs to be decoded.

I laughed because I had just finished writing an Instagram carousel about intuition, faith, oracle cards, spiritual tools, and discernment.

And suddenly, I had the perfect analogy.

A few years ago, I probably would have interpreted that license plate very differently.

There was a season of my life when I was constantly searching for signs.

Angel numbers.

Synchronicities.

Messages.

Patterns.

Meaning.

Sometimes those experiences felt beautiful.

Sometimes they felt profound.

And eventually, they became part of a spiritual journey that led me straight into a psychotic break—and, surprisingly, back to God.

I’ll share much more of that story here over time.

It’s also the story behind the podcast I’m planning to launch this fall.

But one of the biggest questions that emerged from that experience was this:

Where is wisdom actually coming from?

Over the past few years, I’ve found myself living in a strange in-between space.

Too much of a Jesus freak for some people.

Too “woo woo” for others.

Too intuitive for some.

Too faith-based for others.

Depending on who I’m talking to, I’m either doing spirituality wrong or doing faith wrong.

And honestly, I understand why.

One of the biggest misconceptions in these conversations is the belief that we have to choose a side.

That if you love Jesus, you can’t trust your intuition.

If you pray, you can’t pull an oracle or tarot card.

If you have faith in God, you shouldn’t use tools like journaling, vision boards, astrology, meditation, crystals, or anything else that helps you connect more deeply with yourself and the divine.

For a long time, I thought the conversation was about the tools themselves.

But the deeper I’ve gone on my own journey, the more I’ve realized I was asking the wrong question.

The question isn’t:

Is the tool good or bad?

The question is:

Where is the wisdom actually coming from?

For over a decade, I worked professionally as a medium. I even had two seasons of my own television show called Monica the Medium.

I channeled messages.

I pulled cards.

I paid attention to signs (and still do).

I looked for meaning in synchronicities.

I trusted intuition deeply because, quite honestly, intuition had guided me through much of my life.

Then, in 2023, everything fell apart.

What began as a spiritual awakening eventually spiraled into a psychotic break.

A terrifying season that challenged almost everything I thought I knew about spirituality, intuition, reality, God, and myself.

I didn't arrive at these questions because someone told me what to believe.

I arrived at them because life forced me to.

And those questions changed everything.

Because a GPS doesn’t create the destination.

A map doesn’t create the territory.

A journal doesn’t create the insight.

An affirmation doesn’t create the truth.

And an oracle card doesn’t create wisdom.

They can all point toward something.

They can all create space for reflection.

They can all help us become aware.

But awareness is not the source.

The source is the Source.

For me, finding Jesus (outside the context of religion) has brought more peace, healing, clarity, and transformation into my life than anything else ever has.

Nothing else even comes close.

What’s interesting is that it didn’t make me less intuitive.

It didn’t make me less curious.

It didn’t make me less open.

It made me more discerning.

It didn’t make me stop asking questions.

It made me ask better ones.

It didn’t make me distrust my inner knowing.

It made me become more intentional about where that knowing was coming from.

The GPS analogy is a perfect example.

Imagine moving to a brand-new city.

At first, you use GPS for everything.

You rely on it because you don’t know the roads.

You don’t know the shortcuts.

You don’t know which routes get backed up during rush hour.

The GPS is incredibly helpful.

Necessary, even.

But after years of living there, something changes.

You begin to know the city for yourself.

Eventually, there are moments when the GPS tells you to go one way, but your own experience tells you there’s a faster route.

A better route.

A more aligned route.

So you trust your own knowing.

Not because the GPS is bad.

Not because it isn’t useful anymore.

But because you’ve developed a relationship with the territory itself.

Honestly, that’s how I view spiritual tools.

And not just oracle cards or tarot cards.

I’m talking about all of them.

Self-help books.

Podcasts.

Teachers.

Mentors.

Vision boards.

Journals.

Meditation.

Crystals.

Astrology.

Prayer practices.

Affirmations.

Even people like me who have spent years working as a medium, intuitive, coach, healer, or guide.

None of these things are meant to replace your discernment.

None of them are meant to become your authority.

They’re simply tools that can help point you in a direction.

I still notice signs.

I still smile when a synchronicity or angel number catches my attention.

I still find meaning in moments that feel beautifully timed.

The difference is that I no longer see those things as the source of truth.

A sign or tool can inspire reflection.

A sign or tool can spark awareness.

A sign or tool can remind me of something I was already feeling, questioning, or praying about.

But a sign or tool is not my authority.

I don’t believe the goal was ever to become dependent on the tool.

I believe the goal is to become so connected to God that you eventually trust the wisdom He placed within you above all else.

Not because you need less guidance.

But because you recognize where the guidance has been coming from all along.

P.S. If you’re new here, welcome.

You may know me as Monica the Medium, but these days I’m more interested in questions than answers.

This is where I’ll be sharing reflections on faith, intuition, healing, sobriety, motherhood, purpose, and what happened when my spiritual journey led me straight into a psychotic break—and ultimately back to God.

If you’d like to follow along, I’d love for you to subscribe.

I’m just getting started.