Krista Monson Is Making Sure We Never Forget the Sound of a Voice

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

(small.news) — There is a specific kind of grief that arrives not at the funeral, but years later in the quiet moment when you reach for the sound of someone’s voice and find only silence.

Krista Monson understands this deeply. Her mission: to help people preserve voices and stories so that no one needs to experience that particular loss. This mission built her business and has shaped her career.

Monson is the founder of Sincerely Yours Memoirs, which creates cinematic, deeply personal documentary records of a person’s life, told in their own voice. To understand what led her here, it’s important to consider the remarkable life she left behind.

A Small Fish That Learned to Swim in the Biggest Pond

Monson grew up in the suburbs of western Canada, where she began dancing at four years old and fell equally in love with the French language, its poetry, its color, and its nuance. She excelled at both, eventually completing a degree in French as a Second Language while building a successful career as a choreographer, winning awards across Canada and establishing herself as a serious creative force.

Then she and her husband, a musician, made the kind of decision that makes people think you’ve lost your mind. With a one-year-old son in tow, they sold their house and most of their possessions and moved to Los Angeles. They traded being big fish in a small pond for the uncertainty of starting over in a much larger pond. The gamble paid off in a way neither could have predicted: A chance airport encounter with an old friend led to an introduction at Cirque du Soleil and a drive across the desert in a used car to an interview in Las Vegas.

Within two years, Monson became Artistic Director of Cirque’s iconic show “O” at the Bellagio. Her husband joined a Cirque production as a musician. Over the next decade, she built the company’s first global casting department, wrote and directed original productions, and later took on international creative leadership roles, including at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul and in Berlin, where she made history at a famed theater.

“Don’t ask me what the media always asks me, use your own curiosity.” – Gilles Ste-Croix, co-creator of Cirque du Soleil

When the Curtain Falls on the Life You Built

Monson burned out. Not slowly, not gradually, but with the full weight of decades of creative output arriving all at once. Monson found herself dreading the work she had once loved, and at her lowest point, silently hoping productions would be canceled simply so the pressure would lift. It was, she says, a deeply unfamiliar feeling for someone who had always moved toward challenge rather than away from it.

COVID arrived as Monson was still working a position many considered fortunate. Yet the disconnection from joy was complete. During this period, she curated an international online theatre conference that featured a pivotal conversation with Gilles Ste-Croix, co-creator of Cirque du Soleil. His direction to use her own curiosity set a new tone. Afterward, Monson found herself replaying the recording, not for information, but for something more meaningful.

Watching him, Monson noticed not just what was said, but how it was shared, the pauses, expressions, and the feeling of a life being remembered aloud. She realized she longed to hear the voices of those she had lost in the same way. That clarity became her new direction: “This is what I’m meant to do. I want to help others avoid that same regret.”

Two People, a Conversation, and Nothing to Prove

With no formal training in videography or editing, Monson started with family. She created space, curated questions, and emphasized that this was simply a conversation, not a performance. This deliberate approach set the foundation for her process.

The first memoirs profoundly affected viewers, revealing the irreplaceable value of preserving a loved one’s voice and stories. When a friend requested a memoir for her memory-impaired mother, the family’s emotional response after watching confirmed Monson’s realization: These memoirs are not a simple service but an essential, priceless way to ensure memories are never lost.

Sincerely Yours Memoirs goes beyond documenting facts. By capturing a person’s voice, laughter, gestures, and storytelling style, each memoir preserves what makes their presence unique. The addition of family photos and home videos ensures that these living memoirs deliver lasting value, allowing memories to be relived and voices never to be forgotten.

The Hardest Sell is Convincing People Their Life is Worth it

The biggest challenge Monson faces lies in convincing people that their stories have intrinsic value. Many downplay their lives as ordinary, but Monson emphasizes that every life holds meaning worth preserving. Her process ensures that clients see the value in sharing their experiences, creating memoirs that become cherished family heirlooms.

She has also had to navigate the tension that many values-led small business owners know well: work that feels so profoundly meaningful that placing a monetary value on it feels almost wrong, while simultaneously recognizing that it is, in fact, a business. Learning to hold both truths at once has been part of the journey.

Sincerely Yours Memoirs has since grown, now including memoirs for founders, leaders, and, as Monson calls them, ‘unicorns’: those whose stories and philosophies might otherwise be lost as organizations change. She is also producing a documentary on a renowned Olympic artistic swimming coach, preserving not just achievement, but philosophy.

“When we listen to the stories and history of someone we love, we not only understand more about them, we understand more about ourselves.” – Krista Monson, Founder, Sincerely Yours Memoirs

Not a Story About Loss, a Story About Listening

Monson speaks openly about her purpose: To shift the narrative away from urgency or fear and towards recognizing the unique value in every story. Through these memoirs, she captures the power of listening, highlighting the irreplaceable impact of recording memories that might otherwise be lost.

When people are given space and genuine attention, they often revisit memories and discover forgotten aspects of themselves. For Monson, the greatest value of a living memoir is giving a person space to be truly heard, offering a lasting record and legacy for families to cherish for generations.

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