Returning Home
Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
by Isla Hope Monroe
There are nights when the moon feels impossibly close. Not just overhead in some silent, ancient sky—but just beneath the skin, glowing gently behind the ribs, steady as breath. I think women have always known this.
We’ve watched the moon not only with our eyes, but with our bodies. We’ve followed her cycles not as science, but as rhythm. As memory. We’ve allowed her to mark the seasons of our becoming—grief, joy, stillness, desire. She has been a clock, a compass, a quiet companion in the long work of healing.
When I write, I feel something similar. A pull toward the center. A returning. The world tells us to go outward, to perform, to produce, to prove. But writing—for me—is an act of resistance. It’s how I come back. Back to the soft underlayers, to what’s true beneath the noise.
I don’t write to teach or to shine. I write to remember. Not the details of a day, but the shape of what it means to belong. First and always, to myself.
There are so many ways a woman can become lost: in roles, in care, in expectations that never quite fit. And there are just as many ways she can come home. Sometimes it’s through silence. Sometimes through rage. Sometimes, gently, through words.
I believe healing begins when we stop running from ourselves.
When we let slowness in.
When we listen to our own breath.
When we notice the moon rising and say:
"Yes. I feel it too."
This space is my slow return. A place to share what I’ve forgotten and what I’m learning to remember. A place for women who are tired of the noise and hungry for depth—for presence, truth, and the sacred quiet beneath it all.
May this be a home for your stories, too.
You're welcome here.