Out Here Tryna Survive
Out Here Tryna Survive is a trauma-informed, reflective podcast centering the emotional lives, resilience, and humanity of Black women — especially those of us navigating midlife, healing, motherhood, and healing after survival.
Hosted by Grace Sandra — Mama, storyteller, advocate, and lifelong student of survival — this podcast explores what it feels like to live in a world that constantly demands our strength while offering little protection.
Through personal storytelling, cultural reflection, and nervous-system-aware conversations, each episode holds space for truth, grief, joy, rage, softness, and repair.
This is not a place for perfection or performance. It’s a place for us as Black women to exhale, feel seen, and remember ourselves.
We are braver than we believe ✨
Episodes
41 episodes
Ep 41: Nikki Minaj & Why Trading Your Soul For Power Never Buys Peace
The day already felt heavy—parenting logistics, frayed edges, and no Sunday reset—so we start where real life starts: tired and still showing up. From there, we move into the sharp stuff making so many of us ache right now: Don Lemon’s arrest f...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 41
•
22:53
Ep 40: When AmeriKKKa has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, go NO CONTACT
Your eyes told the truth, and then the headlines told you they didn’t. That whiplash has a name—DARVO—and once you see how deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender operate, it becomes impossible to unsee the pattern in both intimate relati...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 40
•
25:12
Ep 39: When The State Spins A Story: Renee Good, Media Power, And Black Women’s Clarity
The camera rolls, a woman dies, and then the story tries to kill her again. We talk about Renee Good’s killing and the speed with which power moves to rename a victim a threat, turning language into a shield for violence. As Black women, we kno...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 39
•
18:32
Ep 38: Rethinking Monogamy, Accountability, And Agency In Modern Relationships
Headlines love a simple story, but real relationships rarely fit clean plots. When Christy filed for divorce and Desmond responded publicly, the internet crowned a villain overnight. We slow down the scroll and ask harder questions: why does a ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 38
•
41:46
Ep 37: Unlearning Purity Culture And Choosing Guilt-Free Pleasure! Please Use Your Cl1t0ris.
Your sexuality is not a community project—and it never needed a committee’s approval. We’re pulling back the curtain on how purity culture, patriarchy, and respectability politics train women, especially Black Gen X women, to carry shame like a...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 37
•
41:49
Ep 36: Quiet Wins That Made 2025. Let's Reflect!
Let’s tell the truth about a “good, not greatest” year and why it still mattered. We walk through six lessons that rewired how we think about success, love, and healing: movement as medicine for the nervous system, the power of changing your sc...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 36
•
34:41
Ep 35: Bias, Birth & the Burden of Being Believed
A woman is eight minutes from delivery, screaming through a wheelchair ride, and a nurse is still asking about “live births.” That moment—followed by another mother turned away to give birth on the roadside—sparked a raw, necessary conversation...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 35
•
21:53
Ep 34: Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing OR Just Bad for your Aura?!
A headline asked whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing—and it landed because so many women are done letting public romance define their worth. I take you from “boyfriend land” and early mommy blogging to a new center of gravity where sover...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 34
•
37:15
Ep 33: Losing SNAP but not Losing My Mind
The headline said SNAP might pause, and my stomach dropped. Not because of theory, but because of dinner. What follows is a raw, grounded look at who gets hit first when social safety nets fray—women-led households, elders, disabled neighbors, ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 33
•
40:10
Ep 32: How Choosing Myself Attracted my Dream Partner
The moment I stopped needing a relationship, everything changed. After years of pushing through “little t” traumas in the dating pool and holding out hope that the right man would make it all click, a brutal Valentine’s reveal forced a reset. I...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 32
•
38:23
Ep 31: Motherhood is Sacred in the Performance of Whiteness
A high school football game ended with an injury—and a prayer. What came next exposed something bigger than sports: the way covert racism hides behind “safety,” outrage, and the performance of white motherhood. When my short clip of my son pray...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 31
•
35:43
Ep 30: Y'all not Finna Convince me to Mourn the Fashy; Charlie Kirk
The feed won’t stop. One more video of a life ending, one more thread turning human pain into content—and our nervous systems keep paying the price. I’m talking frankly about what it’s like to be inundated by violent imagery, how selective empa...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 30
•
33:05
Ep 29: The Soft Revolution: Finding Peace When You're Sick and Tired
// The Soft Girl Survival System - https://stan.store/GraceSandra/p/the-soft-girl-survival-system //💌SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER! 💌https:/...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 29
•
28:43
Ep 28: An Unexpected Alliance: From Dating The Same Man To Girlfrans?!
Connect with Lily!Website - https://www.bodyintelligenceacademy.comIG: https://www.instagram.com/bodyintelligence_academyHer Medium article- https://medium.com/@lily_56950/love-bombs-and-red-flags-a-story-about-self-trust-7...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 28
•
1:04:44
Ep 27: Netflix's FOREVER -The parents we wished we had are the adults we can become.
Have you ever watched a show that unexpectedly cracked your heart open? That's what happened when I watched Netflix's "Forever" - and I'm still processing all the feelings it brought up.This adaptation of Judy Blume's 1975 novel follows...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 27
•
42:12
Ep 26: Stop Victim Blaming Cassie
"Why didn't she just leave?" It's a question that reveals how profoundly we misunderstand the dynamics of abuse. Drawing from personal experience as both a childhood sexual abuse survivor and domestic violence survivor, I'm pulling back the cur...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 26
•
36:55
Ep 25: From Falling Asleep to Finding Myself: A Black Woman's Meditation Journey
The journey to inner peace often begins in unexpected ways. For me, it started with a desperate search for financial independence while trapped in an abusive marriage. In 2018, I turned to meditation not for spiritual enlightenment but because ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 25
•
34:02
Ep 24: I agree with Tracee Ellis Ross & Shannon Sharpe is WHY!
When Tracy Ellis Ross mentioned dating younger men, she faced an immediate wave of criticism and bizarre comparisons to Shannon Sharp – a man facing multiple sexual assault allegations. This glaring double standard perfectly illustrates the mis...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 24
•
50:31
Ep 23: Healing Your Inner Child: My recent (cougaring) Dating Lesson!
That voice inside your head telling you something feels off? It might be your inner child trying to protect you from making painful mistakes. In this deeply personal episode, I share how a seemingly perfect romantic connection triggered a surpr...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 23
•
47:49
Ep 22: Divesting from Evangelicalism to Law of Attraction 'Ish? Reversing the Influencer to Evangelical Pipeline
What happens when you walk the opposite path of the "influencer to evangelical pipeline"? As someone who spent 16 years as a minister with a nearly-completed Master's of Divinity, my journey away from evangelicalism toward a more liberated spir...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 22
•
45:07
Ep 21: Thinking about Quiet Quitting America?
Black women across America are drawing boundaries and prioritizing self-care as they "quiet quit" a country that has historically demanded their emotional labor while offering little in return. This revolutionary act of self-preservation repres...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 21
•
37:51
Ep 20: Is Meghan Markle Really a Narcissist?
The accusations of narcissism against Meghan Markle have reached a fever pitch, but do any of them hold water? As someone who survived severe narcissistic abuse and later coached other survivors, I bring a uniquely qualified perspective to this...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 20
•
54:56
Ep 19: What we can learn from The Duchess of Sussex
When you strip away the noise surrounding Meghan Markle's Netflix show "With Love Megan," what emerges is a powerful narrative about a woman reclaiming her identity after trauma. Before becoming a royal, Meghan had a lifestyle blog and philanth...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 19
•
41:48
Ep 18: You're Not a Loser, You're a Survivor
Have you ever felt like life knocked you flat, leaving you to start over when everyone else seems firmly established? You're not alone in that journey of rebuilding.At 48, I found myself making just $10,000 a year after once having a st...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 18
•
38:31
Ep 17: Stop being mean to yourself. How Self-Compassion saved my life.
What if you could transform your harsh inner critic into a voice of warmth and understanding? Join me, Grace Sandra, on a heartfelt exploration of self-compassion, where I reveal the deeply personal journey that shifted my perspective from self...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 17
•
48:43