Leaving Social Media Behind: How Karla Monterrosa Found Clarity, Peace, and Real Growth
This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 94. You can listen in here!
If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a big pivot — knowing something needs to change, but not quite sure what or how — this episode is for you. We sat down with Karla Monterrosa, author, podcaster, and Writing Off Social alum, to hear how she stepped back from the social media treadmill, got honest about what wasn’t working, and built something she’s genuinely proud of.
Her story isn’t about overnight success or some magic formula. It’s about following the breadcrumbs, trusting the process, and giving yourself permission to work in a way that actually fits how God made you.
A Lifelong Skeptic of Posting Online
Karla came to the question of social media with eyes wide open. From the moment she began writing and sharing her work, the standard advice was to be everywhere — Instagram, Facebook, all of it. But what she found when she started following other creators left her deeply unsettled.
“Women and moms were taking private moments from their lives with their children and posting them to promote their content,” she explains. “That just did not sit well with me at all.” Beyond the discomfort, she had real safety concerns about her daughters’ privacy, and an instinct that the whole performance of going live and curating a feed simply wasn’t authentic to who she was.
She considered hiring someone to manage it for her. She quickly realized that wasn’t feasible. Then, she says plainly, “I almost went completely silent — until I found Writing Off Social.”
The Pivot She Didn’t Know She Needed
Karla came into the Writing Off Social Course in the middle of a significant transition. She had been doing trauma coaching — work she genuinely loved, born out of her own healing journey. But she was running on empty.
“I could feel God shifting my focus towards something lighter and more life-giving,” she reflects. “I was emotionally exhausted from all the stories, all the pain, all the brokenness.” She had taken a long break from the trauma work, but she didn’t yet have a clear picture of where she was headed next.
What The Course gave her, she says, was space. Rather than being pushed to implement right away, she was encouraged to absorb, reflect, and assess all the possible pathways — no pressure, no commitment required.
“I could just sit there and really think the thoughts and feel the feelings,” Karla recalls. That meant noticing what stirred dread and what stirred peace. It meant leaning into the cohort — listening to how other women were wrestling with similar questions and having lightbulb moments she hadn’t expected.
We remember the conversation well. Karla had so much already built — frameworks, materials, a body of work — and her instinct was to hold onto all of it and make it fit. But the more she shared in the group, the clearer it became: she didn’t have to carry the heaviness of trauma work to still draw on everything God had grown in her through it. She could serve a different woman without erasing the path that shaped her.
That woman, she decided, was a Christian mom discerning a transition toward a slower, more intentional life at home.
The 90-Day Plan That Changed Everything
Once Karla landed on her message — helping overwhelmed moms slow down, come home, and realign their lives with what matters most — she moved fast. That’s just who she is. “I’m kind of all in or just not,” she laughs. “I don’t even share my ideas unless I’m really committed to them.”
She walked away from The Course with a concrete plan: a full website overhaul, a quiz to draw in her ideal reader, a lead magnet, and a podcast — the Discovering Home podcast. All of it has since come to life.
The tech was intimidating, she’ll be the first to admit. She hired help for that part. But once she got into it, she found it wasn’t as hard as she’d made it out to be.
The first sign it was working wasn’t a download spike or a glowing metric. It was something quieter — an internal peace. “Emotionally, I felt energized, excited, inspired every day to do the work in front of me,” she says. “It’s just a testament to the knowing that when your work aligns with how God made you, it doesn’t feel like a drag.”
What Happens When You Stop Chasing the Algorithm
One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when Karla described what happened to her podcast downloads during her breaks.
She records seasonally — intentional rest built into the rhythm — and the first time she went on a break, she braced herself for the silence. Instead, her downloads doubled.
“People are still finding my content,” she says, the wonder still audible in her voice. “My show is getting heard around the world — women in places I may never go, are being blessed by this message.”
That’s the difference between social media content and something evergreen. Reels and stories disappear in 24 hours. A podcast episode lives on and keeps finding the right people, long after you’ve moved on to the next thing.
Stepping away from social media also changed how Karla shows up in her actual life. Without the mental overhead of content creation — the constant reaching for the phone, the wondering whether something is post-worthy — she has more to give to the women she serves, and more to give to her family.
“When you stop optimizing your life for content,” she observes, “you start living it more fully.”
What She’d Tell You If You’re Considering the Leap
Karla offered practical encouragement for anyone standing where she once stood — exhausted by social media, curious about another way, but not quite ready to jump.
“Start with prayer,” she says. “That’s always first. Then have honest conversations with the people around you — the ones who can pour into you and help you discern. And if stepping away completely feels like too much right now, that’s okay too. It’s never too late to start something new or revisit a creative dream.”
She points back to her own life as evidence. In fourth grade, she wrote a telenovela script with her cousin on the steps of their apartment building. In fifth grade, she delivered the graduation speech at her elementary school. At 15, she gave her first sermon at church. A college professor once told her she’d go to grad school and become a writer — and even then, something in her knew he was right, even if she couldn’t see the path yet.
None of it was wasted. The breadcrumbs were always there.
“Look back over your life and notice the moments where you felt genuinely excited, energized, and alive,” she urges. “Those aren’t random things — they are clues to how God made you, and to how he may be calling you to serve today.”
She closes with a quote she loves from podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey, and adds her own flourish to it: just take the next step in faith, with excellence, for the glory of God — and trust him with the outcome.
This post was reformatted from our original transcript by Claude and edited for accuracy by Mary K.
