, 

Hello, hello, happy Monday, December 10th, 2018. It's Monica. And today I want to share with you a conversation I had and it was pretty interesting.

I was talking to this man I never met before and he was like, “Wait, you did what?”

And I was like, “Well, when I was 23 or 24, I moved to Los Angeles and I didn't know anybody there.” He's like, “You moved from Missouri to Los Angeles without knowing anybody? Weren't you scared?”

I was like, “Yes, I was.

So I know it was 2000… my brain's gonna work, or maybe my brain's not going to work, but it was the year that the twin towers fell. My mind is not working well enough to remember the year of that right now, which is really kind of embarrassing. I'm sorry.

But I know because I moved on my birthday and I had to come back to Missouri to get my truck and drive back to Los Angeles. I was in a hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona. That's where I spent the night. I made it from Missouri to Flagstaff. I'm a marathon driver…

I made it to Flagstaff and I woke up and I remember flipping through all the channels and I ended up on HBO or something on a movie. I was getting ready to leave and my aunt called me and she's like, “Did you hear?”, “About what?” She's like “Turn on the news.”

And I just sat on the bed in this hotel. And I was like, “Okay, I'm on my way back to Los Angeles where I know no one.”

I found people later that I knew, but at that point I knew no one. I had no emergency contact. When 9/11 happened and the twin towers fell, people didn't know if there was going to be another attack. And there I was driving to Los Angeles, which is a major city. I mean, nobody's going to attack my little small town at Black Friday, I think I was living in St Louis at the time, but still then that's not a major target or at least we didn't think so.

So I remember sitting there thinking, “Do I turn around and go home?”

And I was like, “You did not turn around and go home. You've made it this far. You are in Arizona. You're not going back to Missouri. You're going to go.”

At the time I was living in Santa Monica because I figured, St Monica would protect me because we had the same name. I know. Brilliant logic, right? But that's where I literally got an apartment unseen. I called the lady from a Craigslist listing- was it Craigslist or West Side Rentals? It might've been West Side Rentals, but I just saw pictures of this place and I rented it unseen.

And the reason that I did all that is because I needed to move. I had to get out of Missouri to see what else is out in the world.

Once I realized that I was going onto other things, I had to go. So I remember sitting in that hotel in Flagstaff and I was terrified to drive to Los Angeles because I was going to drive through downtown. So what if they decided to bomb downtown while I was driving? I didn't really think that they do that to Santa Monica because it wasn't as big of a population some other city center areas. But still, you know, I would be there. My parents would have no way of finding me. What if the telephone systems went down?

All kinds of fear. I was just scared.

But I decided my dreams were bigger than my fears.

So I got in my truck and I kept going. Now, as you know, they did not do anything to Los Angeles. But the next few days we're still pretty scary.

I don't really believe that we can be fearless altogether. That's not something that I really think can happen. I actually think we can be courageous.

You can. You're always going to have fear. 

There's always gonna be something you're afraid of, but if you think about what you want and usually it's on the other side of that fear, so you have to get through it. 

Be fearless for just a few minutes; but really… just be courageous. Like I did. Driving out to Los Angeles when I wasn't sure if it was going to get bombed.