The Quiet Stuff Out Loud

Thoughts of Midlife Mama A Week Away from Turning 44

I’m about to move into a whole new trip around the sun in about a week, and I’ve been chewing on quite a bit in the last few months. This is going to read more like a wandering blog post than whatever Substack articles are supposed to be, but I just needed to say some things.

Our youngest child is the last one in the single digits. It’s been 10 years since I lost my mother, 10 years since I moved to a new city, 20 years since I married my best friend.

**from our anniversary getaway last week, just the two of us (even if my husband worked half the trip lol)

There was a whole decade of my life where I was either breastfeeding or pregnant, and I was caretaking for part of that. Other people’s needs constantly drove my decisions (and I’m not complaining—that was the era of life).

I still obviously have children who depend on me, but there’s a new era that quietly comes in, and I don’t see people talk about it enough. The one where the kids start being more independent, and you have to figure out who you are again.

And I suspect this will continue for a while.

Instead of making sure I consume enough calories to produce milk, I’m struggling to figure out how many calories (and macros) will help me feel like myself again. Instead of waking up every few hours to a hungry baby or little feet from a child who still needs two am snuggles, I’m trying to sleep through the night—because sleep is important.

There’s a laundry list of places in my own life I’m trying to find a foothold in again.

But there are a couple of common threads that I’ve fought my whole life, and in this upcoming year, I’d love to see them disappear forever. Or at least shrink into obscurity.

I really would love to stop filtering myself. I know—all the marketing gurus tell you to need to do this and that and be nice. But you know what I think should trump all of that? Authenticity.

And to be honest, I’m not very authentic because it scares me. I’m scared people will be like “No, that’s not what I signed up for.” Or worse, I’ll lose more of myself to people who see what I’m doing and want to (or can) do it better.

I’m scared of failing, because my ADHD loves to have a creative flair and then disappear on a whim. (If you experience this, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and because not enough people normalize this, it loves to masquerade as shame—not a cycle/process.)

I’m scared of success because that means people will see me and have opinions. Loud ones. There will be pressure, there will be expectations.

Some of these are absolutely limiting beliefs—but they come from experience. And I’d really like to get away from them because, to be honest, a solid income would be hugely beneficial to my family.

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When I started this Substack, I was so excited. There were so many possibilities of what I could do here (and there still are), and it felt a little like coloring outside the lines. I did a survey, and one written in comment was all it took for me to take a giant step back and rethink every step I took to get here. It essentially made me feel like I’m not special enough to warrant a Substack, and they’re here for the books, not anything else.

Should I have let it roll off my back? Probably.

This space isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine. Just like my books aren’t for everyone. Art is subjective in every capacity.

But I was going through the motions of the 10th anniversary of losing my mom (who I had a very complicated relationship with), and I was already struggling to keep my head above water. So I didn’t.

I let it drag me down, and for the last couple of months, I’ve immersed myself in whatever I felt like reading. Whatever genre, whatever tropes, no rules—and I started to feel alive again.

I feel like a broken record because I know I’ve said more than once that I’m always trying to play it safe with my writing. I’m a recovering people pleaser. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever recover from it. It’s so deeply ingrained that I don’t know how to make decisions without considering how people might feel about it. Or how they might choose to see me, or judge me.

And I’m tired, y’all.

I’m about to be 44 years old, and I’m really tired of caring about what people think.

I’m tired of holding myself back for the sake of “fitting in” and trying to adhere to niche boxes when I am just not that person. I want to be the “good girl” and do everything right and by the rules, but we get ONE life, and I feel like all I do is waste time trying to analyze how to avoid upsetting people by including this or that in a book. Or in a post. Wherever.

There are so many rules and expectations on social media between readers and authors, editors, and marketing professionals that it is literally exhausting.

In every way possible.

I’m tired of being tired.

Some people may roll their eyes when they read this next part (roll away) but I’m a huge Swiftie. I haven’t always been. Like most people who find themselves in love with her music, she clicked for me when I needed her songs. I can’t give you an exact moment, because I’ve listened to her for her whole career. I just wasn’t all in—until sometime in the second half of 2022.

I had a moment doing a 10 min cool down ride on Peloton to All Too Well. Later, she released 1989 Taylor’s Version, and I listened to that album on repeat while I wrote Sugar Cookie Christmas. (Which was written for the sole purpose of trying to appease an audience, and it ended up being a niche I didn’t want to write in. Ironic? A little.)

But I say all this to say, I watch all her interviews. I watched MANY Era’s shows on a grainy live stream. I saw her go through heartache, find love with Travis Kelce, and then watched her bloom into her own new era, unapologetically.

And it’s inspiring.

It’s beautiful.

I cried while I watched the Era’s Tour documentary, and I’ve absorbed her speeches reminiscing about how far she’s come, and what she’s learned about the “haters” and what it means for her songs to find the right people. This particular quote really stood out to me.

As writers, we can only hope to meet people where they are in their lives. But you can’t ever orchestrate or force the encounter.

You just have to hope that in some exquisite happenstance you bump into them, on the same path at the same time. And somehow amidst the noise of life, a line we wrote or a melody that we crafted cuts through and they hear it and they feel something. That they get chills or feel lighter. They think of someone they love. Our goal is to elicit that glint of recognition in another human being because something that felt good and true to us feels good and true to them at the same time.

You know what she didn’t say? I write to appease the critics. Or anyone, really. She shares her experiences through her lyricism and gets met with a lot of hate.

But for people like me? I feel seen. I feel like someone understands me.

That’s who I need to focus on: the people who need to feel seen. The people who need to feel and need connection. Light after darkness, hope after loss.

I’ve been through a lot—experienced a lot of narcissism from different people at different phases in life. I’ve seen betrayal and experienced varying levels of grief. But I’ve also experienced some amazing humanity, seen some pretty cool places, eaten some great food, and been loved deeply by a person who loves me even when I’m weird.

And that is really what writing romance is all about. Finding love in the midst of life, whatever that looks like at the moment.

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We live in a world where negativity gets the spotlight. I don’t know if it’s always been that way, but that’s how it is now. It energizes the algorithms, so people lean even harder into it. They have hot takes, and those takes have hot takes, and all it does is divide people.

And honestly, it’s caused me not to want to interact online. Obviously, that’s not ideal when you need the internet to sell books, but I digress.

I was taught—whether through direct instruction or observation—to fade into the background and be what society presents as acceptable. If you don’t, there are consequences. I was also exposed to a lot of “glass half empty” mentality—always calculate the risks vs the reward.

And y’all, I want the reward.

I want to be on bookshelves. I want to be in those IG roundups where people are like “I’ll read whatever she writes” (and I never am). I want to fill the income gap while my husband’s business grows legs.

I want readers to find my books and love them because they’re different. And no, I’m not trying to be the “she was different than everyone else” trope that gets so much hate (also, why is there so much hate for that?)—I just want to write what I want to write, and when I try to fit that into a box, it all falls apart.

Maybe the point is to stand out. Maybe I’m not supposed to fit in.

Maybe it’s time I acknowledge and embrace that my future and the legacy I want to leave behind for my family is allowing myself to embrace the fear of stepping outside the norm and being different.

I don’t know.

I don’t know how to go full steam ahead with books sitting drafted on my computer, social media, here, and not get pulled back into the abyss of “you’re not doing what the successful people are doing, so you’re going to fail”. That one has a stronghold on me.

But I’m also tired of feeling like I keep circling something and running away when it gets scary—bigger than I know what to do with.

All I know is that I’m not getting any younger, and we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow.

My writing career so far feels very messy—I’ve made a lot of decisions that feel very public (and in the scheme of things, they aren’t because the vast majority don’t even know I exist lol) and that’s also scary. See, fear is a running theme here. And to be honest, it will probably continue to be a little messy as I get my legs completely under me.

But I’m going to try to stop letting the negative win: the loud hot takes, the algorithm, Amazon glitches, the silence. It makes the hard days even harder, and I don’t want to let those win.

If you stuck with me through this whole “train of thought” brain dump article as I navigate a new year in my 40s, thank you, haha! You are my people, and I hope you’re somewhere that’s getting more sun than rain so you can enjoy the summer with your people.

**A little everyday magic to reflect on: I met my husband because of this river (no filter) and have spent the last 26 years of my life (in some capacity) near this body of water. And now we get to share it with our kids! We went jet-skiing with them yesterday in between pockets of rain and I love that we get to pocket away memories like this.

Anyway, I have a ton of backlogged articles for this space (new chapters, new books, thoughts on where all this is going) and I’ve stayed quiet because too many little voices keep telling me I don’t belong here. I haven’t earned my place.

I think it’s about time I told those voices to shut up, don’t you?

Imagine all the songs we wouldn’t have if Taylor Swift (or any other big artist you might prefer) had listened to those voices that said he/she didn’t earn the space?

I don’t imagine I’ll ever be nearly that big—but maybe there’s someone out there who needs the story (or stories) I want to tell. I’ll never know if I don’t write them.

Talk soon—and drop me a comment about something magical in your everyday life this week.

Monique