I’m Not a Mystery. I’m Deliberate.

A manifesto on power, autonomy, femininity, and choosing a life that cannot be consumed.

I’m Monica Craiyon. Not a mystery in the way people mean when they say that word. Not a provocation designed to bait attention. Just a woman who decided—very deliberately—not to explain herself in advance.

I’m Afro-Latina. I name myself that way without apology or performance. I’m a woman, and I believe in gender and sexual fluidity not as branding, but as a refusal to be constrained by categories that were never built to hold the full complexity of desire. I’m Ivy League educated, with graduate training that taught me how power actually moves—quietly, structurally, long before it ever announces itself.

I spent years in the corporate world. Long enough to understand how money is made. Long enough to see how often freedom gets confused with prestige. On paper, I had everything people are told to want: money, travel, access. What I didn’t have was autonomy.

I met my partner, Mi Rey, in business school under circumstances I don’t discuss. That silence is intentional. Some things aren’t mysterious because they’re hidden—they’re private because they’re not for public consumption. What matters is this: he is the right man for me. Not because he completes me, but because he doesn’t try to contain me. He gives me space when I need it, attention when I ask for it, and presence when I don’t. He’s an excellent provider, though I’ve always been able to provide for myself. He’s an excellent lover, which matters more than people like to admit. We’re not married, and I don’t want to be. I’ll explain why—carefully, honestly, without defensiveness—when the time is right.

I don’t have children born from my body. I’ve never wanted that life for myself. What I do have are stepchildren from his prior marriage—children I love deeply and clearly. I’m not trying to replace their mother.

I occupy a different role: present, affectionate, trusted. When they need their mom, I’m the first one to make sure the phone is picked up. That clarity took years to build, including years of patient work to establish a functional, respectful relationship with Mi Rey’s ex-wife.

Adult relationships are not tidy. They are negotiated.

What has shaped me more than anything is my lifelong fascination with power. Not power as spectacle, but power as structure.

Power in families. Power in relationships. Power in institutions. Power that shifts depending on context, geography, culture, and the body it inhabits. You cannot look at someone and accurately assess their power. A five-foot-one woman can be more dangerous, more influential, more commanding than a six-foot-four man. Having lived in Asia long enough to learn this viscerally, I’ve met women who could make entire rooms go silent without raising their voices. Anyone who still believes power announces itself loudly simply hasn’t traveled far enough.

Corporate life rewarded my competence while draining my curiosity. It prized endurance over imagination. Mi Rey, like many powerful men, repeatedly encouraged me to stop working. In his world, a visible marker of wealth is the availability of one’s partner—someone who can be found whenever desired. He’s no exception to that conditioning. He also knew from the beginning that this was never going to be my life. Compromise was possible. Ownership was not.

Writing changed everything. Not because it was profitable at first, but because it was mine. This was never a pet project. It was my work. My voice. My responsibility. Once that boundary was clear, we found a balance that allowed both of us to thrive. I stepped away from corporate toxicity, built businesses on my own terms, and gained something far more valuable than status: time.

Time to write. Time to think. Time to love.

Writing erotic literature that is psychologically intense has an unexpected side effect: it makes you comfortable with discomfort. It trains you to sit inside the things people prefer not to name. Once you lose your fear of discomfort, an entire world opens up.

I write from a place of clarity about what the world is doing to femininity—how committed it has become to flattening, policing, and punishing it.

I also write with full awareness of my privilege. I don’t pretend otherwise.

Education, beauty, multilingualism, wealth, security—these things grant me a license that many do not have. I use it intentionally. I say what others can’t because I can absorb the consequences.

People ask if I’m real. I am.

Valuing privacy is not the same thing as nonexistence. My persona is curated by a team because serious people don’t spend all day online performing accessibility. I have books to write. A man to love. Children to help raise. Work that matters. What gets published is in my voice—sometimes typed by my own hands, sometimes shaped through collaboration—but always anchored in my thinking, my language, my intent.

I’m not here to be liked.
I’m here to be precise.