EXCLUSIVE I went from living the Hollywood dream to no sex in New Jersey... the things I miss now I'm a nun

Daily Mail​

04-05-2025

After dabbling in comedy, performing alongside Jennifer Coolidge, and a fast-paced career in advertising, Claudette Monica Powell, 59, decided to leave it all behind for a life of celibacy as a nun in a New Jersey convent.
Sister Monica Clare's life was anything but ordinary, growing up in rural Georgia, trying her hand in theater as a student at New York University, grinding in the high-stress advertising world, and finally recognizing her true calling - to become a nun.
'I really thought, when I left Hollywood and came to New Jersey, that I would live this very quiet, obscure life, and just sort of disappear,' Sister Monica Clare told DailyMail.com.
Instead the opposite happened and she has gone far from disappearing, instead gaining notoriety online.
She has generated a massive following on TikTok, with over 200,000 followers and almost 3 million likes.
She frequently posts videos about life in the community of St. John Baptist, an Episcopal convent in Mendham, New Jersey, which is about 45 minutes outside of Newark.
Her videos aim to dispel misconceptions about religion and have gained the attention of thousands online, including Penguin Random House - a big five publishing company - that offered her a book deal.
This week she released her highly anticipated memoir 'A Change of Habit'.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com she told how she was approached to write the book.
'I said, 'I don't think anybody's going to want to read this because I'm actually very boring, and people tell me I'm boring,' and I'm in my fifties, so I don't even know if I'm old enough to write a memoir,' she joked.
In her memoir she opens up about growing up in an abusive home, battling poverty, her time in Hollywood, life in the convent, and what she misses about her old life.
While many may imagine that she misses sex, she says being celibate is natural for most people who join religious communities.
'The thing that makes me the angriest is when I see movies about nuns and monks running around having affairs,' she said.
'It only happens in the movies. The people who are in religious communities are generally people who didn't have a lot of that in their secular life, anyway. So when they come in, it's just a natural state. Celibacy is more natural for us.'
The main thing she misses is her friends. 'It was very, very painful to separate from my friends in Los Angeles because I had finally gotten this group of friends. We're very tight and really loved and supported each other,' she said.
Sister Monica Clare also confessed that she missed living alone, and it was an adjustment to live with a group of women.
'Women can sometimes be very bossy with each other, so we boss each other around,' she joked.
'It was hard for me to learn to be humble and to accept that other people have different ways of doing things.'
Sister Monica Clare joked that, 'Every sister has a different idea of how to load a dishwasher correctly.'
Dabbling in comedy
Her life in the convent is a far cry from her days in the entertainment world. In her younger years, Sister Monica Clare earned a scholarship to NYU's Tisch School of Arts and started participating in stand-up comedy.
After she graduated in 1989, she moved to Los Angeles and continued her career in entertainment, auditioning for the iconic improv group The Groundlings, where comedy legends like Will Ferrell, Pee-wee Herman and Kathy Griffin got their starts.
Sister Monica Clare performed alongside Jennifer Coolidge and befriended Saturday Night Live alum Cheri Oteri.
She says Oteri even tried to get her a spot on the writing team at SNL and took her to Jimmy Fallon's birthday party at the Château Marmont.
'I saw that while their life was very fulfilling creatively, it was also so stressful and heartbreaking,' Sister Monica Clare recalled.
'I don't think I could have handled it. I think I would have crumbled and just walked away anyway, because the stress is so tremendous in those kinds of jobs.'
Even though her comedy career didn't pan out, it would still be years before she joined the convent.
Career in advertising
She took up a high-powered advertising job and found herself in a marriage she didn't want to be in.
'I had thought that if I got married that it would cure this desire to be a nun,' she said.
'I don't think my ex-husband was ever called to be married, too. He's called to other things, but not to marriage,' Sister Monica Clare added.
After her divorce in 1999, she continued to try for romance and even tried dating websites, but nothing materialized.
'And that's when I went to my therapist. And I said, 'Do you think that guys have this sense that I'm not called to a relationship, that I'm called to be a nun.' And she was like, 'No, men can't pick up on energy, and vibes like that - they're not that complicated,'' she joked.
As she was grinding in her advertising career, Sister Monica Clare began to realize that her values didn't align with the industry's.
'The environment was so volatile and stressful because everything was behind schedule,' she recalled.
'We had clients like Harvey Weinstein, that if we heard it on the loudspeakers, 'Harvey Weinstein on line one,' everybody would just freeze in terror.'
Sister Monica Clare added that as a feminist, she couldn't rationalize the way she believes that advertising often degraded women.
Childhood calling
During her childhood she didn't grow up with parents who strongly advocated for religion, but she began to feel drawn to it when she was around seven years old and saw the 1959 film, The Nun's Story, starring Audrey Hepburn.
Sister Monica Clare says she leaned on her faith and optimism when her abusive father, Clyde, became violent in their home.
She recalled the traumatic experiences as a child and admitted that she didn't think people would want to read about them.
'Regular people didn't want to hear those stories, they were too disturbing,' Sister Monica Clare told DailyMail.com.
'In the process of writing the book, I was surprised at how emotional I got typing it out, and reading it out loud,' she revealed.
Sister Monica Clare said that she noticed her editor was crying during one of their meetings because of how intense her childhood was.
In her memoir, she describes a traumatic night at the hands of her abusive father, and recalled that she leaned on her sisters to get through it.
'From a young age I understood the power of life with sisters - the advantage of facing uncertainty and terror as a team,' she wrote.
Life in the convent
She finally gave in to her calling and joined the convent in 2012 after she worked off almost $100,000 in debt.
'I was thinking, 'I should have done this when I was 18.' I didn't have any debt,' she said.
'But then, after I joined the community, I realized that all the administrative and marketing experience I had - it's something that the Episcopal Church really needed.
'I thought - God put me into that industry for 20 years to teach me how to market something that really matters.'
Now Sister Monica Clare is the sister superior at her convent.
She practices a progressive approach to religion as the nuns are encouraged to take parts of their old life into the religious community with them.
Sister Monica Clare also believes in LGBTQ+ rights and marched in the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd's death.
'I was so happy to find the Episcopal Church because I myself didn't know that there were progressive denominations in the world.'
'I just thought they were going to tell me that my gay friends were going to hell, and I don't believe that,' she said.
Sister Monica Clare continues to dispel misconceptions and offer an inside look into life in the convent on her social media accounts.
All the proceeds from her new memoir will go toward the ministries of the community of St. John Baptist and is on sale now.