The Reddit Thread That Saved My Life

Thousands of strangers were trying to make sense of my life.

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.