I missed an opportunity that could’ve changed everything

Hello Reader,

I hope you have found moments of joy, because a lot is happening right now. This is a long email, but worth it.

It feels like everything is shifting at once. The pace, the expectations, the ground beneath what we thought was stable. And I keep hearing the same thing in different ways. People are tired. Stretched. Trying to keep it together while also figuring out what comes next.

You already know my philosophy.

When the world feels chaotic, the answer is not more noise. The answer is focus. A return to what actually matters to your life and your version of success.

This week, I wrote something personal on Substack. Not from a place of teaching, but from a place of truth.

There was a time in my life when I lost my focus. I stopped listening to my intuition and started believing that other people knew better than I did about my own life. I abandoned myself and my vision because I had been fed a very specific story about how success was supposed to happen. And if I’m honest, there was a part of me that believed I wasn’t worthy of that success unless I followed that path.

The piece is called:

I had to learn the difference between being strong and abandoning myself.

If you’ve ever pushed past your own knowing, if you’ve ever stayed the course even when something didn’t feel right, you’ll understand it.

You can read it here.

This week also feels special for another reason.

I’m releasing a new episode of Black Women Amplified on Thursday with Elaine Meryl Brown and Rhonda Joy McLean.

This interview was five months in the making. And when I say that, I mean it. Every email, every follow-up, every moment of patience to get into a room with women of this caliber.

Elaine Meryl Brown is a Daytime Emmy Award–winning writer, executive producer, and former HBO executive who has led global campaigns and created content that reached audiences at scale. Her work spans television, publishing, and leadership development, and she has spent decades shaping how stories are told and who gets seen.

Rhonda Joy McLean is the President and CEO of RJMLEADS and the former Deputy General Counsel of Time Inc., where she advised major global brands including Time, Fortune, People, and Essence. She led at the highest levels of corporate law and media, guiding strategy and decision-making for nearly two decades.

These are women who have not just built careers. They have shaped industries.

And what makes this conversation powerful is not just what they have accomplished, but how honest they are about the journey. The pivots. The rooms they had to navigate. The decisions they had to make when things were shifting around them.

This season of the podcast is called She Moves Different for a reason.

Because we are in a time where many are being pushed, disrupted, and asked to redefine how we move. And what I appreciate about this conversation is that it does not pretend things are easy. It acknowledges the reality and still points to what is possible.

Make sure you’re subscribed to Black Women Amplified so you don’t miss it. And if you’ve been listening, share it with your people. Let them know what we’re building over here.

I also want to ask you something. How are you doing, really?

Every conversation I’ve had lately has some level of stress underneath it. People are trying to hold things together, trying to make sense of what’s happening, trying to stay steady in the middle of all of this.

I’m not going to tell you just to be strong. I used to say that.

But sometimes you need support. Sometimes you need clarity. Sometimes you need to sit with yourself long enough to understand what your next move actually is.

What is happening right now is real.

So your response has to be real, too.

We live in a vast world with more opportunities than we’ve ever had access to. But you can’t see it clearly if you are overwhelmed or disconnected from yourself.

So I want to invite you to take a moment.

Not to escape. Not to numb out. But to be honest with yourself.

I created a guided journal called Move Different. It’s not self-help. It’s not surface. It’s a private conversation with yourself. The kind that helps you get clear on what is actually next for you.

I’ve included it below for you to get and download.

Take your time with it. Sit with it. Let it do what it needs to do.

Because the opposite of confusion is clarity, and this is a time where clarity matters more than ever.

Have an amazing day.

Stay hydrated. Breathe.

Monica Wisdom

Move Different Workbook: ​Finding Clarity When Life Is Asking You to Pivot

Move Different is a guided reflection workbook created for women who sense that something in their life is shifting but… Read more