Monica Muñoz-Ramos on the occasion of her 35th birthday

00:01 All right, this is Poonam du ball. I am 38 years old and today is July 19, 2024. I'm speaking with Monica Munoz Ramos, who is my very good friend. And we are recording in Dallas, Texas on the occasion of her 35th birthday. Hi, Monica.

00:27 Hi, Poonam.

00:30 So Monica, I know a little bit about you already, so I'm gonna jump in.

00:36 Okay, go ahead.

00:37 All right. Now I know that you grew up in Miami. Miami is an interesting place.

00:42 Yeah.

00:43 What was growing up there like?

00:48 So I think Miami has a lot of energy and I am a pretty sensitive person and it took me a long time to figure that out. And Miami is not the most grounded place though. It's a great place if you want to kind of be disembodied and partying and like really care about the more materialistic, more hustle side of things. And there's something that I appreciate about that for sure, but I always felt out of place.

01:25 Interesting. So tell me a little bit about your parents. What were they like growing up for you? Where are they from? Just give us a little taste.

01:41 Yeah, well, it's like throwing like, I don't know, a big ass truffle in your mouth. Like, just like a lot of flavor in there.

01:52 Sounds delicious.

01:53 Yeah. My parents are both professionals. My dad is. Has been a banker for 35 years. He's now kind of retired. He does some kind of consulting. And my mom is a lawyer. My mom is of Cuban descent. My grandmother was eight months pregnant with her when they moved to Miami. And my dad was born in Panama. He came to the United States when he was five months old to Miami. His mom is Panamanian and Dutch and his dad is Mexican. Is from Texas, but Mexican.

02:36 Oh, wow.

02:37 Very interesting.

02:38 And what was your relationship like with them growing up?

02:44 I always felt out of place at home in Miami. At home in Miami thing was out of place. My parents very much represent the Miami. They embody what Miami is. My mom is very materialistic, you know, in her own ways. Like she, if there is an empty closet, she will use that space to fill it up with her clothes. She became a lawyer so that she could buy clothes that was like literally. And so that she could buy a little red Corvette, which she actually never got.

03:16 But she very prince of her prince.

03:20 Yes, that's where that came from. Yes. And my dad is not that way. But he is a very strong personality, very high expectations, not emotionally sensitive at all. Actually like hates the idea of emotions at all and thinks, you know, that we all need to have complete Control of them.

03:45 Wow.

03:46 Yeah. Even though he was very, very angry. Is. Yeah. And my. Sorry. My mom also is not very. She's not very nurturing. I wouldn't say she's. She.

04:02 We.

04:03 Our relationship is a lot better now because I don't really need like a mom in the role of mom today. But. Yeah, I didn't feel like I had that as a kid either. My dad was very present though. My dad, if he had a flight for work and I had a performance or something, he would cancel his flight to make sure he was at my performance and then he would go later or something. Wow. Everything always was there.

04:31 That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like they were. They're very different than, you know, how you show up now and kind of where you are now and likely were, you know, doing the best that they could.

04:48 Yeah.

04:49 I'm curious about with them coming from, you know, maybe different backgrounds, different countries. Were there certain traditions that you had that you remember growing up?

05:05 My dad sees himself as American. My. I think too, like, my grandfather was born in the United States and he act. He, like, in a lot of ways takes on like a very capitalistic right. I mean, he's a banker, so. View of the world. And the way however growing up in Miami is, I mean, for almost everybody who lives there is taking on some kind of Caribbean culture. And if you, like, tend towards the Latin side, then you're tending towards Cuban culture specifically. So both of my parents take, like most people in my life show up with Cuban traditions. So that looks like celebrating Christmas on Noche Buena, which is Christmas Eve, and cooking a pig in a cajacina. A whole pig. So on Christmas Eve, you could see people driving on the highway with a pig in a seatbelt, like in their passenger seat that they've gone to pick. Yeah. And like. And it's delicious. It's cooked so well. Yeah. I would say I never, like. It wasn't until I moved here that I was like, oh, the majority of the United States is not celebrate things the way that I do, because it was the majority where I grew up. So I really didn't have the experience of minority growing up, although I probably did in a resource way that I wasn't aware of because of the white flight that took place in Miami. How. There's actually a lot less resources in Miami in some ways. There's a lot of third world country type situations, like, medically interesting in, like.

07:03 Driving and literally in terms of kind of like community resources.

07:07 Yeah, it's.

07:08 It's more similar to Maybe like country of origins versus what we might expect to be in the United States.

07:17 Right.

07:18 Wow, that's fascinating.

07:19 Yeah, it was like when I moved here and I was like, I don't have to wait three hours at the doctor's, like, even with like my private insurance. It was just like that was how it was. And so like here it's like they get you right away and it's been really cool.

07:32 Queenly treatment. That's amazing. Tell me a little bit. You we had a conversation about this maybe a couple of months ago where you were telling me about your grandfather and the resistance in the Cuban revolution. And please tell me a little bit about that.

07:51 So I don't know all the details about this, but I know parts of it. What I have understood growing up, right. Like the first enemy that I can remember is Fidel Castro. Right. Like as a kid, that's like the villain of my life. And so if I understand correctly, like Cuba was pretty capitalist prior to the revolution, which was supposed to be socialism, which really like turned into dictatorship and communism and, and lack of, well, whatever. There's all embargo and. Right. Whoever is the actual enemy there. But what it was for, like family was having being able to own property and like make an income. And then I think my grandparents left before everything changed. But for the people who had stayed there, even like shortly after that, it was like one day they came, like they took inventory of everything in your house and it belonged to the government. And so like anybody who was going to leave the country for any reason, like they would come to your house and they would take inventory and if there was like an umbrella missing, they wouldn't let you. And like if you left, it was really because you had won some kind of raffle. Like you're not allowed to leave. Like it's communism. Right. So my grandparents were always against the revolution. A lot of people were. So they took the freedom flights is what they were called for the freedom flights. You could take one like carry on bag, I think, of all of your belongings. And when my grandmother was getting onto the plane, this is how I understand it. Eight months pregnant with my mom, with a three or four year old, my uncle, my grandfather almost couldn't get on the plane because he was like part of a plan to kill Castro.

10:01 Yeah, was actually part of a plan.

10:03 Yeah.

10:04 Wow.

10:05 And so they almost didn't let him leave because they wanted to imprison him. Just like, I mean, there were a lot of people in prison at that time just for being against the revolution. You can be imprisoned there today for saying, like, I'm against the regime or whatever. Wow.

10:20 But he made it.

10:21 He made it somehow. My grandmother was very scared, but he got into a fight. My grandparents were the first ones in the family to come to Miami. And so there were times in that they had 11 people living in their house because they were really the house that brought everybody in.

10:36 Wow. That's like, what a privilege and a burden, you know, to be in that role.

10:42 Yeah.

10:43 That's super interesting. Do you have any favorite memories from childhood or favorite stories that are, like, told about you?

10:52 Yes, there's a good one. My mom always tells this story. Well, there. There's two. So one is that I always talked about angels, and I've always felt really connected to angels. I don't always know exactly why, but my mom said, you know, like, I never talked to her about angels, but she was always talking about them. Right.

11:14 Fascinating.

11:14 So I love that I have always been kind of connected spiritually in that way. My mom also likes to tell this story. And I think it's funny about when I was three, three or four, we were on the way to my best friend's house. His name was my mom's best friend's son, and he lived in a four or five story house in a place called Coco Plum in Miami.

11:42 Wow.

11:45 And, like, I remember getting lost in that house. I loved going there and. But she was like, you need to eat your McDonald's meal. And there were, like, there were a few chickens that I liked, and then there were a few that were oddly shaped, and I felt like they tasted. So I never wanted to eat those. But I needed to finish the whole thing if I wanted to go to an animal's house. So I said, mom, I'm really hot. Can you put the window down, please? And so my mom puts the window down, and then she hears me going, mmm, this is so tasty. And then throwing the chickens out the window. I just think it's funny. Like, they're as honest as I believe that I'm pretty honest also. Like, I'm going to survive. Like, I will find a way anyway, no matter what.

12:36 You will not make me eat that chicken, right? If I don't want to.

12:39 Yeah. Especially if I think it's stupid. Like, if I think a rule doesn't make sense, then I'm gonna find the way around it for sure. And, like, act like, you know, that checks out. Yeah.

12:48 Checks out with what I know of you. So you had a child, your beautiful daughter Sophie, when you were 18 years old.

12:59 Yeah.

13:00 And then you went on to college and to get a PhD in psychology. What was that like? Who supported you? What were the hardest parts? What were the best parts?

13:12 Yeah, though that period of time, I just feel like the only thing that I could describe is like being on fire and like running, like trying to run from the fire that is literally on your ass or like trying to catch you. Right.

13:27 What was the fire specifically?

13:30 It was survival. It was knowing that I was in a really bad relationship was one piece that I needed to find a way to get out of that I needed to make sure I had my. So who's gonna listen to this story? There was like a really hard night in that relationship that I in that moment knew that I couldn't get out of that relationship that day because I didn't have the finances to. I was. Sophie was a few months old and I was in college and I was like, okay, my four year plan is that, you know, if I get a job, a full time job, right now I was working, but I wasn't working full time. I was going to school full time, wasn't working at that time. I started working later. Daycare costed more than I would make being an 18 year old and trying to go to school. And so I set out the plan to. I think this is like the chicken nugget story, right? It's like, okay, what is the. How do I get what I need to get here? And one of. And that was how do I get free from this relationship and be able to provide for this like the most amazing thing that I've ever, you know, seen or had in my whole life, which was my daughter. And it was that I needed to finish college because if I finished college, I would make enough money to pay for whatever schooling or daycare that she needed for me to continue. So I did that. That was the fire, I think. And. And I knew that I wanted to be a psychologist. I just took it, you know, one step at a time. That was the first step.

15:17 Yeah. And who supported you through all that?

15:20 My grandparents. My. Both of my parents helped in some ways.

15:25 Right.

15:25 My. I knew that I was never gonna starve. They both helped me financially. They didn't, they didn't pay for everything, but they. I knew that if I needed something that they were there and they helped for sure. My grandparents actually took care of Sophie while I was in school. So when I would go to school and then I had a good friend, Claudia, I would still consider her a good friend who lived right next to my campus. And so for my night classes, I would just take her to. She had little kids as well, and we were. And she was awesome. And so she would watch Sophie for, like, that class. And so. And then there were other people who would help, like people from church that I would pay to babysit. But my grandparents watched her consistently, and I feel like she gave them life. I feel like this is a really long story. Like, I could do. We could do several of these in this story, but ultimately, I knew what I wanted. I knew I really wanted to be in musical theater, but I knew that that wasn't feasible for this life or like, to be. To study that, and that I really needed to work and do something that I enjoyed as well and provide for my daughter because I knew that I would probably be single. So that is what transpired.

16:49 Wow. I love that you still had that lens of I need to find something that I still love doing, and that that was an important filter for you when you were thinking about what you wanted to do.

17:00 I would say that's also like, ADHD brain, too, where it's like, if I don't love it, then I can't do it.

17:05 That's fair. Yeah. Yeah.

17:07 Absolutely.

17:08 Survival. Yeah. Who would you say has been the biggest influence on your life? Or maybe a couple.

17:17 Hard question. There's so many people.

17:19 Maybe. What are important lessons that certain people have taught you?

17:25 I've learned something from everybody, I think, from every single person in my life. I. What I think the values that I carry are that it's important to be kind, and I don't mean nice, although I can tend towards being nice, which is not my actual value.

17:39 Mm.

17:43 That it is important to be diplomatic to some extent, even though I don't always believe in that, that I got that from my dad. I don't always believe that diplomacy is a good thing, but I think it's a necessary thing.

17:59 It has its moments.

18:00 Right, Right. Exactly. A time to challenge and a time to be diplomatic. That it's important to enjoy life, to plan, to hold both of those, to fight for the right thing, to care about people, to care about the planet.

18:25 Who has taught you some of these things? Who are the people that you associate with these lessons, if anyone.

18:30 Oh, my God. I don't know. It's. Some of it I've learned through being angry at people. Right. Who have not done it well. And some of it I've learned by seeing really good examples of it. Some of it I've learned, like, for example, my mom is really really free spirited. But. But I don't. She's not a planner. And so it's like some of your free spiritedness keeps you from being able to be as free spirited as you want to. Because now you don't even have this resource because you didn't take care of it. Right. And so it's like, oh, you can actually enjoy life if you plan enough. Right.

19:13 Gotcha.

19:17 Caring for the planet. I think I see from being. I've gotten from. There's like, there's a lot of like psychodrama has a lot to do with this. I think some of my, my teachers. My psychodrama teachers and psychodrama itself, like what it stands for and some of the ideas. And so like when I have enrolled as the ocean. Right. Like, yeah. Then being the ocean, I can think about how important it is to take care of it. Just being able to. Which the concept is I take my eyes out and put them into yours and you. Whatever sockets. It doesn't say that. And then you take your eyes out and give them to me. And when we can see from each other's perspective. Right. Then we can really understand. And I think that helps me to care about everything.

20:14 Wow. Talk about like empathy to the max.

20:17 Yeah. Which could be the ocean.

20:19 Yeah. Right?

20:20 Yeah.

20:22 Tell me a little bit about psychodrama. Just a little taste.

20:26 Yeah. Psychodrama is like a huge part of my life. I. It's just been a place where I can be completely myself but also gain perspective into all kinds of roles which these rules for me are what make life full. Being able to have access to all of the different parts and flavors and spices of life and just being able to see things from a broader perspective and then like the personal work that it has been for me and playing out scenes in my life, seeing how we're so much. We're also much more connected than we are. I don't know, disconnected. But then also understanding how different we all are at the same time and how one thing that impacts me is, you know, you could have had the same experience and that may not have even impacted you at all. And then, you know, same thing with something else. And so just really getting to see the vastness of humanity.

21:40 Wow, that's pieces sounds like a path to wisdom and insight. Like knowing yourself and knowing more about the world and the people who inhabit.

21:51 It and seeing people heal is like amazing.

21:56 It's one of your favorite things.

21:58 Yeah, yeah. Watching like the light bulb turn on.

22:01 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

22:04 So, yeah, sorry, I'm gonna go back this way. Some of. So, like, I do have some people, but so it's. It's all of the people, but like famous, more famous kinds of people. So, like, Martin Luther King Jr. Is one of my influences. Yes, got it. Huge influence. And like Sister Carol, when I was in elementary school.

22:32 I don't know who Sister Carol is.

22:34 Should I go back to telling you about that?

22:36 If you want to.

22:39 So when I was five, this is a story. So when I was five years old and I started kindergarten, I started at a Catholic school. And the first day of school, all the kids were crying. And I was just like, why is everybody crying? You know? Like, I just, like, I was like, hey, it's gonna be okay. Like, I promise you're gonna be fine. Like, this isn't that. It's not as scary as you think that it is. And Sister Carol came and saw this five year old consoling the other five year olds. And she just. She thought I was special, I think. And so she took me to every single classroom in the school that went up to eighth grade and was like, this is Monica, you know. And I think just being seen, that was somebody who really impacted me. And then I broke my arm when I was five and she gave me a little guardian angel to put on my cast. And then she died the following year. And I called her my angel.

23:36 That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's really special. When in life have you felt most alone?

23:50 All of it.

23:51 Okay. Going back to that. I don't fit in Miami. I don't fit in in my family.

23:56 I think aloneness is really part of, like, the definition of a lot of my brokenness, which I don't identify so much as being broken today because now it's part of my wholeness. But I just always felt, yeah. Out of place. Like, I never really felt like I got all the humans around me or that they got me interesting. Especially not that they got me. Like, I could see where they were coming from in some ways. And I was like, I don't know why you're doing it this way. Right? Like, it's just. This doesn't feel right. And. And then I was very alone. Like, my parents were really not home. Then my parents divorced and my mom was really the one who was never home. I had. I've always had, like, a best friend or. And then, like, as I got older, more friends. And now today, like, I don't feel alone at all. I feel like I have a lot of. I feel like I have an abundance of people who I love and who love me. And like, I could use alone time sometimes and I don't get a ton of that. Yeah. Again, like, also, like, I had Sophie when I was 18. Right. And I think there's something really powerful about that of like, okay, you've felt alone all this time, now you're not gonna be alone, you know, so powerful. Yeah.

25:26 Yeah. And you've surrounded yourself with people truly who do love you. Yeah.

25:31 Thank you.

25:33 If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what age would you talk to about Monica? What version of Monica would you talk to and what would you say to her?

25:49 I do this all the time in psychodrama.

25:51 I bet you do.

25:52 So it's like, oh, there are several, there are a lot of. There are several different ages. But I would say lots of things too. Like the five year old who broke her arm, I would tell her, you don't have to be afraid. You can keep going on the monkey bars. Don't worry about what other people. You know, don't worry about what your grandmother says. Like she's just really anxious and you can keep being really active.

26:18 Yeah.

26:21 To the 8 year old who was really overweight and got made fun of both by like family and kids at school, I would say that, you know, you're beautiful and like this situation is one, not a constant. And two, does not affect, doesn't, has. No, it's not a representation of anything that has to do with like who you are as a person and how love. Lovable you are. Yeah, that's a big one.

27:05 Actually.

27:06 I didn't really realize that. Like, I wish that she knew that she was lovable regardless of how she looked and that she didn't have to go looking for to be loved or thinking that that was, you know, gonna impact that forever.

27:22 Wow.

27:23 Yeah.

27:24 That is super powerful.

27:26 Yeah. And I would, I would have told many versions of myself that I'm worthy of love. Like just like consecutively.

27:34 Yeah.

27:34 Till like I was 30 every year.

27:36 Until through the present day.

27:38 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I know that now.

27:41 Yeah, absolutely. Tell me about a moment where someone's kindness made a difference in your life. I know you've talked about sister Carol, but is there anyone else?

27:58 I know that there are a lot. Yes. So this was a big one. So when I was 18 and pregnant, I went to a store and like must have dropped my wallet. I remember I had like $200 in cash in there and like maybe some gift cards and you know, but that was a lot at that time, especially That I was, like, I've always been pretty frugal and, like, not so much today, but, like, through all this time, I was. And financially responsible and, like, I needed everything that I could get at that point. Right. Like, I knew what I was saving up for, and, man, losing my wallet sucked. And then I got this note in the mail that said, like, I have your wallet.

28:47 Oh, wow.

28:47 I didn't want to send it in the mail because I didn't want anybody to take anything from it. And she gave me her address. I went, oh, yeah. I went over there and I picked it up and I invited her to my baby shower, and she would come with her daughter, and she gave me more money at my baby shower. Right. Like, as a gift. And it was like, yeah, that was always, like, my just, like, feeling really blessed. My hope for humanity and, you know, knowing how important it is to be kind. Like, yeah, that's beautiful.

29:25 Making me tear up. I'm so glad that you had that.

29:28 Yeah.

29:30 How have you experienced God or a higher power, and how has that maybe evolved over time?

29:37 Yeah, it's evolved a lot. I come from a pretty. I don't even, like, religious, but very spiritual family as well, where, like, we experience the miracle of having a. A cousin, my mom's cousin, he healed from AIDS in the early 90s because of, you know, a religious experience. There were. There was medical intervention, but at this. At that time, he was ready to die. He had two T cells left, had a spiritual experience, and was literally healed. Like, yeah. No, no longer. Yeah. And gosh, I always felt really close to God, especially as a child. I don't even. I don't know that I know how to explain it beyond, like, a real knowing, like, that is who I felt connected to when I didn't feel super connected to, like, people and. Wow. And I. But it was hard to integrate everything that I felt with, like, the church, especially not the Catholic church. Oh, my gosh. I never felt God in the Catholic church, except for there was one that we went to that was kind of charismatic. And I felt I could feel him there, but I never felt him any rest. When he started going to an evangelical church, I definitely felt him a lot more there. Just like the real, like, just felt more experiential, I guess, which is probably how I found psychodrama. And, you know, it's interesting because I have spent a lot of time, like, trying to find what it really looks like for me. And in psychodramatic body work, die by fire, I started to experience, like, the spirit I want to say again, I think I had some experience as a kid. I would even say my knowing of God didn't even feel as strong as what it has felt like since then. It's not all the time, but there are moments that I could be woken from my sleep not with my eyes open. Like, I'm awake, but my eyes are closed. And now I'm experiencing God. And, like, I can remember every single thing that happens. But if my eyes were open, open, I wouldn't be able to experience it because it's too much like visual information and abstract information.

32:14 Wow.

32:15 It's almost like a dream state, but I could feel it from my head to my toes. That started in psychodramatic bodywork. And I get, like, this, like, really cool messaging about the collective unconscious or the collective conscious and, like, the intertwining of humanity and, like, a lot of things.

32:39 Sounds incredible. It sounds incredible. Is there, like, what. What is like, maybe one vision, one lesson, one, like, message from that?

32:51 Yeah, I've written them down. As soon as it sort of, like, over, I'll open my eyes and I'll write everything down. One of them was that we are all part of the collective unconscious, or I don't even know how I wrote it, but consciousness, we're all part of the collective consciousness. We are all, like, really, we're all one. So whether we're awake or we're not, I mean, awake, whether we're aware or not, we still are part of it. And so our lack of awareness actually impacts the way that we can move within the collective. Right. Which I think so if we were all aware of it, we would take much better care of each other. We would take much better care of the planet. We would take better care of our own spirits. Right. Like, there would so many things would be so different, but since we're not all awake, it impacts everything else. But we. But we are all part of it. Wow. So that, you know.

33:53 That's beautiful.

33:54 Yeah. And I. It was. Yeah. It's so profound. That's. I think that's why it's like, I can't have my eyes open because it would be lost.

34:01 That makes sense. And even I'm sure putting it into words is like, how do I distill this, like, pure, beautiful, profound message into something like language and words?

34:13 Yeah, for sure. But the imagery.

34:16 Thank you for trying.

34:16 I think, in imagery anyway.

34:19 Yeah.

34:19 So it's always hard to put things into words.

34:21 Absolutely, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about. You know, we've talked a little bit about, like, relationships, friendships. Tell me about our friendship. What makes us such good friends?

34:41 It's funny to tell you. So it's like, I tell you this all the time, Poonam, but I know that it's the perfect recorded, recorded history.

34:49 For all of history to hear.

34:53 Okay, I'll pretend that I've never said this to you before.

34:55 Okay.

35:00 So I actually, like, I remember like our first kind of not encounter period, but like emotional encounter was like, you know, in your divorce. And I was, and I was just kind of taken aback by your ability to be vulnerable. Not only be vulnerable, also grieve. I was like, what is this? Why aren't you just pushing it down, just stuff it away? But I really didn't feel that way. I really saw it as like, this is really brave, like, wow, you're willing to feel all the things right now. I think that awoke something in me and then I think it was like through the divorce, actually. You also, early on in our friendship, you said you could always reach out to me. Like, I will be there for you and for somebody who's like, always felt so lonely, you know, I was just again, like, who is this person? And you did, right? And I think we relied on each other. But then, like, since then, what has evolved is just like a place where I can completely be. Like, there are beautiful things that you've said to me that I hold with me that, like, I only want you to be yourself and I actually don't want to experience you in any way that isn't completely you, you know, And I, and that I feel that, like, I just feel really seen by you. And even if you don't, if you don't understand you, you are stay curious until you can. And then, and I hope that I am that to you too, right? I hope that I can like, be as safe to you as you are to me. But really like, safe relationship, which I don't think people have a lot of that, like, in general, I don't know that a lot of the people that I like talk to just, I think too, like my culture, it's a very group thing, culture. And so it's like there's no safety because you have to be like everybody else, you know, and if you think any differently, then that's, you know, that's not okay. And so I've never, like, it's changed my life. My friendship with you has changed my life because I've been able to find myself and for that to be loved and accepted. So yes, that makes sense.

37:37 It does make sense.

37:38 There's a lot more to this.

37:39 But that was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And yes, I would say very much the same that I've encountered with you. Love and acceptance and an invitation to show up more fully and more authentically. And a sense of safety around showing those vulnerable parts of myself. I sometimes will show myself very vulnerably, even if it's not appreciated or accepted. And with you it is. I'm really grateful for that. Tell me about, let's see, how did you meet your partner?

38:22 Yeah, this is. I'm glad to put this at a story core. I've told this story a billion times. Lewis and I went to college together. We met my last class in college, which, mind you, I wasn't supposed to go to the college I went to. I was supposed to go to Florida State, but my dad said that I needed to stay in Miami because I was pregnant.

38:42 Uh huh.

38:44 So my last class in college, I met Luis I walked into the door and I saw him and I was like, oh, he's cute. And I'm gonna sit right by him and wait for him to talk to me.

38:55 Yep.

38:56 And so, like, within a few classes he did. And then we talked the entire class, every class from there. He's a really good listener and I'm a really good talker. And he asks good questions, especially like at the outset. Like, he can really ask you, like, all the things about your life.

39:13 Mm. Especially if you're a very cute person named Monica. Then he's very interested.

39:19 Yes. We were both in relationships at the time, but we, you know, it wasn't anything like that. Anyway, I was emotionally out of my relationship because I was with Sophie's dad. But I, you know, we did nothing ever like, extended anything. I just knew that I liked him. We essentially, like, after college, went our separate ways. When I started grad school, at some point we, like, connected again. We went on all these dinners. I can't even call them dates. We went skydiving together. Both of us had broken up with our significant others at this point when we reconnected and. And then nothing. Nothing transpired. And then a couple years after that, I was here in Dallas. I was actually kind of resentful that nothing had ever transpired. So I was here in Dallas and I had gotten over that. I was resentful and was curious about how he was doing. I saw him on Facebook and I said, hey, how's everything going? He's like, good. Are you a doctor yet? And I was like, well, no, I Almost. I moved to Dallas for my internship. And he was like, no way. I moved to. And he had moved to Fort Worth. You know this story?

40:41 No, I don't. I don't remember, though.

40:44 And he said, no way. I moved to. And he had moved to Fort Worth. I literally, like, didn't believe him like, that. It couldn't compute in my mind. We had moved a month apart. I moved in. Wow, August. And he moved in September. And this was February. So we had both been here the same amount of time. It was actually like. Like February 7th. And he was like. Or 8th. And he was like, let's meet next week. Because I was gonna go to the stockyards. I really was already gonna do that. And then it happened to be February 14th, the day that. Oh, my gosh, we met at the stockyards. And I want to say, like, the rest is history, right? Like, there are things there. Like, we talked for a while and whatever, but, yeah, kind of kismet, I guess. We call it the red string. We did a red string at our ceremony. Do you know the red string?

41:35 No. Tell me.

41:36 It's like this idea that we are. We're tied together by a red string. And no matter where we go, no matter how far, no matter if, like, somebody else comes into our life in the meantime, we'll always come back to each other.

41:49 Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. So, last couple of minutes. Monica. What? You know, you're someone who's reinvented yourself many times and you're always showing up in different ways. What is. What is the next model of Monica? What's next for you? What do you hope?

42:10 Like, what's right now?

42:11 What do you hope for? What do you dream for?

42:13 I just dream, you know, I don't believe that we actually become like that. There's this thing that I'm. That there's a true self that already exists and that I'm just like, cleaning off the dust to get to that. Sure, right. I think that we create that. And so getting closer to ourselves or like finding ourselves is really the idea of creating ourselves. And so. But I would like to be just continued happiness. I think confidence is a really big one. But not too confident because you know how I feel about people who are overly self assured. And we. How can we actually be sure of anything but sure enough that. That I'm okay. That everything will be okay. Controlling things less, letting everything go, kind of. It's more like a daoist kind of, like, idea of, like, beautiful. That things will be as they are supposed to. And it's not my job to control them. I'd like to move that way, especially having a 16 year old and a Mateo. Mateo. But I still feel like he's little. Right. So I still feel like I have a lot of control there, which I guess I still have to. Well, who has control over Amateo, right?

43:37 Yeah. I mean.

43:39 Yeah.

43:40 That feels like a farce.

43:41 Yeah. But Sophie is starting to drive, and you're teaching her how to do that. And she's gonna start driving lessons. And it's like letting. Just trusting. Trusting that for me, that there is a God and spirit and all of these things that also have her back. And that it's not my job to control everything, because I can't. And just knowing that everything will be okay. So I'd like to get whatever it looks like to get closer to that and everything will be okay.

44:13 May it be so.

44:14 Mmm. Thank you.

44:16 Thank you for sharing your story, for being my friend.

44:21 Thank you. Thank you for doing this.

44:22 Yeah.

44:23 Incredible.

44:25 I love you.

44:25 I love.