Recently, during an Instagram Live session, Monica answered questions from her fans. Someone asked how she coped with divorce. And Monica gave a very in depth answer about the realities of her situation specifically and then spoke about relying on God to bring you through a test.
See what she had to say below.
“Whoa. After divorce, it’s one day at a time. You don’t know what you’re going to feel day by day. You have to wake up and just flat out see what that’s gone be, see how you gone feel. And for me, respect is key. I try to always keep the respect in tact. We’re a good ways outside of it. We split in 2018, that’s when I decided to leave. And the divorce was final, October 24, 2019.
But one of the key things is to keep your space clean. Keeping your space clean means you have to be conscientious of who you keep around as you’re healing. My name was linked to a lot of people but I wasn’t dating anyone. Nobody was touching me. I was by myself, still by myself in here. I would just come home and get in the bed with my kids.”
Are she and Shannon still friends?
For sure, she’s seven years old, she’s going to need her parents to be mature adults all across the board. And just to be really honest, what I do love about my ex-husband is that he knows that everything is about my kids for me.
Monica explains the delays in her album due to personal tragedy. And living in a hotel after her divorce.
When people ask what takes so long, honestly, real life just kept happening to me. I was in a hotel for a while. It was a nice one, don’t get me wrong this isn’t a complaint or me whining. God is amazing and He keeps covering me so don’t take it the wrong way. Two aunts died in one day, one from both sides. And then double back to my Uncle Larry, really being murdered for lack of better words.
If you know me, you know my brother and I are like this crosses fingers. And my mother and her brother were like this. They’re only 18-19 months apart. So that took me completely off my course. I didn’t work on anything after his death for a while. My aunt said he had been in an accident but nobody explained to me, he had a flat tire and he was walking and a car hit him and killed him. So I wasn’t thinking about music, guys…I don’t want to focus on that, I want to focus on my mama, I want to be the daughter I need to be. I need to be the sister I need to be. Those are the things I had to try and take care of.
And then all of that, I was going home to a hotel. That’s why I’m saying no matter what you’re going through, life is not meant to break you. It is meant to make you and create character within you. So I was losing people physically and I was losing people who were right there in my face. They weren’t there for me. People were hurting me that were supposed to be there for me. I was dealing with a lot at one time. So I’m telling you one red coin, no award, none of this stuff around me keeps me at peace. None of it holds me at night, none of it dries my tears. None of it!
When I was in the middle of dropping “Everything to Me” and “Love All Over Me,” I was dead smack in the center of a breakup, hurting. Going through it. I’m talking about, up through there. So I just ask for a little grace in the process.
By the time I got to the making of this album and I thought it was going to be simple, I decided to get divorced. That scratched the whole year 38. But these are not things that I could forsee or I was planning.
Later Monica talked about adjusting to her new house after living in a hotel
In the hotel [Laiyah] she was sleeping in the bed with me. And to come into this kind of space, she’s slowly working herself into staying in her room and I’m definitely not pressuring her in any way. God is always on time because coming from tight quarters like that, into this, you just never know where life may take you.
I will say this about the hotel, the smaller space it helps you to really get reacquainted and to be really in tune with each other. I got back into all of their favorite shows.
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I’m just going to say this to anybody who’s in transition. Be patient. It’s a process. All of it is a process…I’m processing the move, processing life changes all together, just processing everything.
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I’m just showing y’all the space to say you never know what’s on the other side of what’s been troubling you. I was hard on myself during that time. I was in a rental house first and we had a breach of security over there. And I had to hurry up and move the kids out and we went back to the hotel after we had a little bit of peace. Stuff just kept happening and I said whatever this test is, of my faith and of my patience, God I know you’re watching me. I know you hear me. But I wanted to pass that test, let Him know that I knew He was real. Let Him know that I knew that He had me even though I couldn’t figure out why so much was happening.
You can listen to Monica’s comments in the video below.