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
51 episodes
Ep 51: Banish The Fantasy Of Male Protection
Subscribe to my Substack: https://substack.com/@outheretrynasurviveGet the Out Here Tryna Survive Journal: https://stan.store/GraceSandraBusiness Inquiries: OutHereTrynaSurvive@gmail.comA man knows where you live, and sudde...
Ep 50: My 50 Best Lessons On Sex, Healing & Survival in my 50th Year!
Fifty lessons. Three themes. Zero sugarcoating. I’m celebrating a huge personal milestone with a rapid-fire list of what I’ve learned about sex, healing, and survival while rebuilding my life and learning to trust my body again.We start...
Ep 49 Stop Calling Teen Girls (& Brandy) Fast. On Wanya Morris' Grooming.
A grown ssa man can say something vile about Brandy on camera, and somehow the loudest anger still lands on the her. That’s the real story I can’t stop thinking about and it’s why I’m speaking on the resurfaced comments about Wanyye Morr...
Ep 48: Five Survival Mode Lies And The Journaling Practice That Breaks Them
Survival mode is sneaky because it can feel like “I’m just handling life” right up until you pause and realize you’ve been white knuckling everything for years. I’m Grace Sandra, and I’m talking about the way trauma, chronic stress, and a cruel...
Ep 47: Pretty Privilege Can Get You Chosen But Rarely Loved
A man tells me, “You’re not like those other Black girls,” and suddenly the real conversation isn’t about compliments at all. It’s about misogyny, colorism, and the quiet ways “pretty privilege” can become a trap that asks us to shrink other wo...
Ep 46: I Feel For the Epi Survivors. On Anxiety And The Survivor's Need For Accountability
The hardest part of watching the Epstein files dominate the headlines is not the shock. It is the familiar, stomach-dropping feeling of seeing alleged abusers stay protected while victims get ignored. If you are a sexual abuse survivor, that pu...
Ep 45: Is it Time For Black Women to Leave the Church? On Deconstruction.
What if survival means walking away from what was supposed to save you? Grace opens up about growing up in church, stepping into ministry, and the slow burn of shame that came with purity culture, constant confession, and the pressure to be “ho...
Ep 44: How My Sexual Freedom & a GoFundMe TRIGGERED a Hater
A stranger’s 5 a.m. DM tried to make me small—attacking my sexuality, my finances, and my motherhood in one breath. What they didn’t expect was how quickly I would choose boundaries, body wisdom, and community over shame. This conversation star...
Ep 43: Women Standards Hit Different in this Political Climate
The anger you’re feeling isn’t random—it’s a signal. We open up about what happens when survival mode collides with a culture that shrugs at harm, from the Epstein files to everyday silence, and why so many women are rethinking romance, risk, a...
Ep 42: I Quit My Job over Verbal Abuse | A Narc Boss | Panic Attacks & CHOOSING MY DAMB SELF!
The mic is on, the map is clearer, and the mission just got sharper. We’re opening Season Two with Survival Diaries—a deliberate turn toward stories that center how Black women survive, heal, and reimagine life in a world that keeps testing our...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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, ...
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...
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...
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...
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:/...
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...
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...