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Heart-to-Heart Conversations

❤️ I'm Monica. Romanian by birth, Portuguese by choice, a mother of two, and someone who's spent years professionally studying how people think, learn and make sense of their lives. Naturally, I'm still figuring out quite a few things myself. 😅 ☕ Heart-to-Heart Conversations is my weekly letter about the things life makes us question: work, relationships, identity, motherhood, growing older, changing direction, and all the wonderfully complicated business of being human. 💌 Expect personal stories, uncomfortable questions, honest opinions, occasional sarcasm and conversations that might stay with you long after you've closed your inbox. No five-step formulas for fixing your life. I haven't found one that works for mine either. Pull up a chair. There's always room for one more at the table.

Featured Post

👯‍♀️ Have you found your people?

If yes, lucky you! I’m genuinely happy for you and slightly jealous at the same time! 😅 And if they’re nearby, please take them out for a coffee ASAP. (I promise today’s newsletter will explain this rather unusual opening of mine.) So, how are you? How’s your week been so far? Mine has been quite something, especially when it comes to calls and conversations. I’ve had quite a few conversations this week that, although they started in completely different places, somehow ended up touching on...

Hey Reader, It’s been a while since I wrote here, and apparently I’ve decided to make my comeback by deleting half of my social media presence. 😅 Instagram is officially gone. Facebook is next, as soon as it finishes giving me back the digital suitcase containing years of photos, posts and whatever else I left scattered there. And it feels (soooo) good 😌 Not dramatic-good. Not new-life-new-me-burn-everything-and-move-to-Bali good. More like finally clearing a cupboard you’ve been avoiding for...

Hey friend, How are you? I hope life has been kind since we last spoke, or at least manageable, which is sometimes the more honest thing to wish for. I’ve been thinking about villages lately. Not the romantic kind. The real kind. The one you actually need when a child is sick and you’re running on three hours of sleep and your closest people are four countries away. This one took me a while to write. I hope it finds you at a good moment. ✨ There’s a specific kind of loneliness that doesn’t...

Hey Reader, How have you been lately? I hope life has offered you at least a few quiet moments since our last conversation. Not the perfectly organized kind, just those small pauses where you can breathe for a second and notice what’s actually happening in your life these days.I’m writing this on a Saturday morning, sitting with a cup of coffee that, for once, I’m actually drinking while it’s still warm. Saturdays have slowly become a small ritual for me. In the morning the kids are off...

Hey Reader, I’m back. Back with our weekly newsletter, back in this little corner where we sit down and talk without filters, and before anything else, thank you for still being here, for opening these emails, for making space for them somewhere between your own responsibilities and your own inner noise. I honestly thought I would stay longer in the pause. I imagined I’d disappear into newborn days and not feel the pull to write for a while, that I would just let myself dissolve into...

Hi Reader, how are you, now that Christmas has passed? I mean after the full tables, the long meals, the conversations that lingered longer than your nervous system wanted them to, or maybe after the quiet of being by yourself when everyone else seemed busy being together. Maybe you had little ones whose routines were completely thrown off, too much noise, too many arms, too many expectations. Maybe you have teenagers who tolerated the gatherings but didn’t quite belong in them. Or maybe you...

Hey Reader, how are you these days? But really, how are you feeling? I’ve been moving a little slower lately, and I can feel that specific end-of-year heaviness mixing with something softer, something that almost feels like relief. And yes, the end of pregnancy adds its own weight to everything. December has a way of holding both truths at once. The world outside speeds up while something inside asks to quiet down, and maybe the real work is learning not to shame ourselves for being out of...

Hey Reader, How are you? How was your week since our last conversation? For me, this week something shifted in me this week in a way that didn’t make any noise. It wasn’t a big moment, nothing dramatic, just a quieter kind of truth that arrived the way winter always does, not suddenly, but by slow degrees. I think that’s why I felt it so clearly the other evening when we took a walk through town to see the Christmas lights. They weren’t grand or perfectly arranged, just simple and warm, a...

Hey Reader, How are you? And how are things on your side these days? I’ve been moving through this week with that strange November feeling where the world outside seems to accelerate while everything inside me wants the opposite. You know that contrast when nature is slowing down, the evenings arrive a bit too early, the air turns heavier, and somehow everyone around you starts rushing as if the year needs to be finished in one breath. Work places that push to close projects, parents juggling...

Hey you, How are you feeling today? Each day, the days are shorter and the nights longer, which often invites to introspection in very funny and unexpected ways. To me it happens when doing dishes or laundry. And I’ve been noticing something in myself these past few days, that I want to bring into our heart to heart conversations. I think you'll relate to it as well. Is something familiar, like an old door creaking open even if I don’t touch it. It’s that place where thinking stops being...