She Didn't Want to Feel. She Wanted to Fix
with Monikka · Stallworth
About this episode
Monikka Stallworth didn't set out to make an exhibition. She set out to stop hiding. In 2016, within moments of her mother's death, a sentence arrived that she couldn't shake: life is for living. It took years to understand what that sentence was asking of her, and years more before she could show anyone the photographs she'd taken of the woman she had spent decades keeping secret. In this conversation, the artist behind Met Mo For This talks with Dr. Nicole about the long middle: the marriage she tried everything to save, a habit she hid from nearly everyone, the night she cut off more than a decade of locs while on the phone with her mother's best friend, and a poem that came to her at the least poetic moment imaginable. Along the way, she makes a case you don't often hear about transformation. Before anything can change, she argues, you need somewhere safe enough to let it, the way a caterpillar finds a protected place before it ever becomes a chrysalis. This is an episode about the difference between fixing and feeling, what grief sets in motion without asking permission, and what it means to reclaim the parts of yourself you were taught to be ashamed of. Monikka also reads her poem "Feel" in full.
Show Notes
Guest
Monikka
Stallworth
Monikka Stallworth is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and mother of four whose work spans film, photography, writing, education, and visual art. Across mediums, she explores faith, identity, memory, belonging, and the deeply human desire to know and be known. A graduate of Howard University with a B.A. in Communications and Chapman University with an M.F.A., Monikka is drawn to storytelling as a means of connection—an opportunity to look inward with honesty, encounter others with curiosity, and illuminate the experiences that connect us. She is the creator of Met Mo for This, a collection of writing and visual art that grew from a single poem into an immersive exhibit inside her Los Angeles home. As the exhibit continues to evolve, Monikka is exploring ways to open the space for collaboration, conversation, and the work of other artists. She is also developing documentary and narrative film projects while continuing to write, photograph, and create visual art. At the center of Monikka’s life and creative practice is her faith and a principle that has guided her for years: to know God and to be known by God. Her work is rooted in the possibility that when we encounter another person’s truth—even when that truth is difficult—we may recognize something of ourselves within it. In that recognition, connection becomes possible: compassion for one another, greater tenderness toward ourselves, and perhaps the courage to show up a little more fully as who we already are.
