Some of you may have noticed that Confessions of a Merry Monk has gone a little quiet.
Nothing dramatic has happened. No scandal. No publisher has whisked me away in a black car with tinted windows, though naturally I remain open to offers involving comfortable seats and snacks.
It is simply because the story has reached a point where it needs more space than a blog can give it.
When I first began writing these pieces, I was not thinking about books, structure, chapters, pacing, or whether a reader might need a small cup of tea and a lie down between one life event and the next. I was just trying to tell the truth, or perhaps more honestly, I was trying to begin telling the truth.
There is a difference.
For many years, I did not know how to speak openly about certain parts of my life. I knew how to survive them, avoid them, dress them up, laugh them off, explain them badly, or stay silent, but I did not know how to sit down and write plainly: this happened, I was there, I remember, and my life is not only the version other people tell about me.
The blog helped me begin.
Confessions of a Merry Monk began on my guru Om Swami ji’s blog os.me, where, by His grace, I first found the courage to write openly. Later, again by His grace, I began my own little corner of the internet and continued the story there. For that, I am grateful.
This little corner has carried the story a long way. It has held childhood, motherhood, mistakes, grief, longing, spiritual searching, silence, humour, and the strange business of trying to become holy while still being very much a human being who occasionally needs snacks, sleep, and a firm talking-to from herself.
But now I am writing the book.
That means something has to change here.
I am not removing everything because these posts matter to me. They were the first stones across a river I did not yet know how to cross, and even if they are raw in places, they were honest. They belong to the beginning of the journey.
At the same time, I have come to understand that not every part of a life should remain permanently exposed on the internet while it is still being shaped into something deeper. Some stories need more care. Some need distance. Some need protection. Some involve other people, including people I love, and although this is my story, it is not always only my story.
So some posts may remain here as they are. Some may be softened or revised. Some may quietly go away for a while. Not because I am ashamed of them, and not because I am taking back the truth, but because the truth sometimes needs a better container than a blog post.
The blog has brought the story to a tender doorway. The rest now needs to become a book.
That does not mean I will disappear from here. I will still write on The Merry Monk, but I imagine it will become more of a companion to the memoir than the memoir itself. A place for reflections, fragments, small truths, and the things I am learning as I write my book. There may be posts about memory, silence, truth, forgiveness, motherhood, grief, spiritual practice, service, loneliness, and what it means to look back at your own life, without either pretending you were wiser than you were or condemning yourself.
That last part is taking some work.
Writing a memoir is not the same as writing a series of blog posts. I am learning that now. A blog post can hold a moment, a wound, a realisation, or a confession. A book has to hold a whole life with more patience. It has to make room not only for what happened, but for the person who did not understand it at the time, the person who survived it, and the person sitting here now writing her truth with love.
That is the book I am writing.
Not a revenge story.
Not a spiritual success story.
Not a long list of terrible things followed by a neat little bow and a quote about healing.
Just a human story.
A story about a girl who kept looking for home in all the wrong places and some of the right ones too. A story about love, motherhood, addiction, faith, family, fame, success, loss, shame, silence, truth, and the long road back to herself. A story about what happens when life strips away almost every identity you thought would save you, and you are left wondering what, if anything, remains.
I do not know yet whether I will manage to write it well, but I know I have to write it honestly.
And I know why I am writing it.
Not to prove anything. Not to win. Not to make anyone else the villain so I can finally be the hero. Life is rarely that simple, and mine certainly has not been. I am writing it because, somewhere, there may be another person who thinks they are the only one who has carried certain kinds of grief, shame, longing, or loneliness. There may be someone who needs to know that a life can be messy and still meaningful, broken and still beautiful, wounded and still capable of Love.
That has always been the point, even when I forgot.
With Love and with His Grace,
Sushree Diya Om
🧡