Out Here Tryna Survive
This podcast is a trauma-informed, hope-oriented, safe space. It is a warm hug of solidarity for Black women 35+. It is a celebration of our resilience thus far & our determination to not only survive but THRIVE.
Join me, Grace Sandra, a Mama, author, advocate/activist, storyteller, for some good ole self-love shenanigans.
We are braver than we believe✨
Out Here Tryna Survive
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 two Black teenagers in 2018 Los Angeles through their experiences of first love. But what struck me most powerfully were the parents - particularly Justin's mother with her protective (sometimes "overbearing") love and his father with his perfect balance of firmness and unconditional acceptance. "You will never lose my love," he tells his son in one pivotal moment, and those words illuminated something I've been missing my entire life.
As someone raised by a white mother with paranoid schizophrenia and an absent Black father who later abused me, watching these functional, loving Black families on screen created an ache of recognition. I found myself wondering what it would have been like to grow up with that protection, that stability, that unconditional love. Not just theoretically, but specifically - what would my life trajectory have looked like with parents who could create safe spaces for me instead of spaces I needed to escape?
This isn't about claiming victimhood or staying stuck in grief. It's about acknowledging our specific wounds so we can heal them. For Black women especially, we're so often expected to be endlessly resilient without acknowledging our pain. But naming our losses matters. And healing happens when we learn to reparent ourselves - offering our inner children the protection, validation, and love they didn't receive.
What helps me most is building community with other Black women, pursuing therapy when needed, and focusing on relationships built on mutual respect rather than just chemistry. I'm learning to create the environment I longed for rather than looking for it elsewhere.
What small act of kindness or protection can you offer your inner child today? Remember - we can become the parents we wished we had, not just for our children, but for ourselves. Share your thoughts in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Have y'all ever seen a TV show and it just like cuts to the heart? It just cuts to everything. You're feeling. Your heart is just exploding. You're feeling so seen and so sad and so grateful at the same time. That's what I want to talk about in today's episode.
Speaker 1:Welcome to All you Tryna Survive. All you Tryna Survive. No, I can't say. My friend came up with that little tune. We were going to record like an official intro with that like sounding like that, and we never did and it's just still in my head, so prepare to hear it more often.
Speaker 1:Anyway, y'all, my name is Grace Sandra. I'm an activist, author, mom, podcaster, youtuber, tiktoker and mental health advocate. And this is All your Turn to Survive. Thank you for being here. This podcast is a hope-oriented storytelling space. A warm hug of solidarity from me to you and a celebration of our resilience thus far and our determination to not only survive but thrive. Welcome to episode 27.
Speaker 1:So today I want to talk about the new show on Netflix called Forever. I just thought it was so sweet and I thought that there were some great lessons to pull out of it, especially for Black women, and I want to talk about it. But first a quick commercial break. This episode is brought to you by Grace Actually. Memoirs of Love, faith Loss and Black Womanhood. And yes, that's me. This is my book. I'm Grace Sander, the author. You can get this available on Amazon on digital copy or for your Kindle, which you can read on your phone or iPad, or you can get a hard copy just like this. If you like the kind of stories I tell, then you'll love this book. This was a collection of blog posts and reflections I wrote over in five to eight year time of life where I was reflecting a lot on love, faith loss and black womanhood. Pick it up. So today I want to talk about Forever, this new show on Netflix. This will be spoiler free so you don't have to worry If you haven't seen it. I will not give away any of the major plot points or anything like that.
Speaker 1:So, if you don't know, forever is an adaptation of a Judy Blume book that was written in 1975. And she wanted to write honestly because I guess her daughter at the time wanted to know about things like sex and all the kind of things in 1975. I imagine people weren't talking about openly and especially if it wasn't like some big trauma situation. So she wanted to write a book that was kind of stood out for its time and they adapted it. I never read the book, I never heard of the book, so I don't know anything about what the book looked like in 1975, written by a white woman, and what it was adapted to played by an all black cast in 2025. How many years later? Is that 45 years? I should know, because I was born in 76. Okay, sorry, almost 50 years later. That's insane.
Speaker 1:But Forever on Netflix is set in 2018, right at the height of BLM and Trayvon Martin getting unalived and, from what I have read and other articles online, a love letter to LA. So I'm from Detroit. I've only ever been to LA a few times, so I don't really know about that aspect, but I can tell you that the way they did the soundtrack, it was very reminiscent of the soundtrack of Insecure. You know how the soundtrack on Insecure was just like it fit the time, it fit the characters, it fit the people, just everything fit. That's how Forever is with this soundtrack, like it's just banging. But also the actors in it were just so perfectly cast just so perfectly cast like you cannot tell me.
Speaker 1:I want to know if those two ever dated, hooked up anything I want to know. But they were ever dated, hooked up, anything I want to know. But they were so perfect together. Y'all, like you, can't tell me they weren't really in love. You cannot tell me it was just really really well done and you get a good. I think it was like 35 minute, eight 35 minute episodes. It was like dang. Thank you Netflix for being generous, maybe because I watch probably too many reality shows and I get used to these little short snippet shows that don't really go deep. But they went deep. I just felt so many things while I was watching.
Speaker 1:It related, with so many areas of it, back to my own high school years and when I was in high school. So I was born in 76. So when I was in high school we didn't have cell phones and couldn't block each other. There was no way to block anyone. I don't even think, because we had landlines and I don't even think you could block another person's landline. That just wasn't a thing, okay.
Speaker 1:But I do remember when I was like in 11th or 12th grade, people were starting to have pagers. I do remember that. That created a certain dynamic in dating Because, like you know, you could page someone a message so that when you put in the certain numbers, if you turn it upside down, it would read something. We had all sorts of things that you could figure out what it meant if you turn the pager upside down. I do remember one time my boyfriend, when I was in like 11th or 12th grade, we were in a big fight and he was able to write out on my pager come get me, I'm at the corner of Seven Mile and Telegraph, I'm not even kidding and I didn't respond. Well, actually, you can't respond. You couldn't respond to a page. Y'all these were different times. These were different times, like I know I'm talking about prehistoric stuff. I took too long and then I remember him texting me ho, like 45 minutes later, and then I actually did go pick him up and then got into a huge fight. So I probably should have just left him there. But y'all, it was just a different time, but still it's interesting because technology changes, but still the same kind of angst and all of that came through.
Speaker 1:But this is what set out to me. I know forever has, from what I've seen, just different reviews and different people writing about it. It's created, you know, a little, a little bit of a ripple impact, because it's just so beautifully done what I love. Another thing I'll tell you what I love before I tell you what hit me is that there's, you know, the two. It centers on these two black families Keisha Clark's her and her mother and her father, who loves her but is distant, and then Justin and his black family, obviously, and from different one is, I guess, lower class. Keisha's family is lower class and Justin's family is upper middle class. But the entire thing does not center on the fact that they're black, it's just. It's just a story where they happen to be black and I think that's a dynamic that people are liking a lot more, watching a lot more, because the thing is is like, for me, as a black woman, I don't always want to see trauma every time. I want to see our story centered. I know a lot of people feel like that. You just want to see a story and that's what Forever is. So if you love a good black drama, go watch it. But this was the part that really hit me.
Speaker 1:When it starts, justin's mom is very worried. She's worried about her son. She's worried about him being a black man in America. She's worried about the police, him being out, where is he at? When is he coming home? He's also neurodivergent and so they kind of start the show trying to paint her a little bit as like overbearing. And there's times throughout the show where he, where he's saying like my mom's doing the most, my mom is on one, my mom is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know it's just kind of like they're giving you that feel that he thinks she's doing too much. And then his dad, in contrast, is you can tell he's concerned and he's, you know, obviously wants the safety of his son. But he's also really trying to respect the manhood of Justin and Justin coming into his own and Justin taking chances and like living a little, justin having new experiences, but being careful, making sure that you know when Justin is ready to have sex, that he has a condom, even self going so far as making sure that he knows how to put the condom on, not just in the light, but like literally with the lights off. I thought that part was hilarious making sure that he's there for the girl that he's, that he's falling in love with, and making sure that he knows who he is.
Speaker 1:And what got me about the show was right away when it first started. I was just thinking about my experience as a black woman but being raised by a white mom, and it's not something I think about a whole lot. It's interesting because I was just having a conversation with a guy friend about this, probably two or three weeks ago, and he was asking me questions about what it meant for me, as a biracial person who has a black father and a white mother, to identify as a black woman exclusively. Now, this guy who I was talking to, he has a daughter who is similar. She has a black father and then her mom is like white and Latina, I think white and Puerto Rican and so but he was saying that his daughter identifies as both Puerto Rican and as black and as white, and almost he was kind of almost like trying to pressure me to see it the way his daughter does. And I'm like, first of all, your daughter's 18 years old, like she's still learning who she is in the world Okay, like, please, bro.
Speaker 1:But also like biracial folks are allowed to see things differently and have wildly different experiences, and I was like I think one of the differences that that I have noticed about myself and other biracial people is that I had access to a lot of racist negativity coming from white people from a very, very early age and so for me I kind of saw them for what they were, at least the ones who are racist, very, very early on, whereas I've met a lot of other biracial people. They had really loving, healthy relationships with a bunch of white people, most of them, especially their family, their whole life, and so it's kind of easier for them to identify that way. But for me I was always just kind of like when I was like five or six years old, like drawing my line in the sand, like I don't want to be white or have anything to do with y'all, because all of y'all are so mean to me and so horrible and say such terrible things about black people, and it just was easy for me as a biracial kid to be like, yeah, I'm not gonna identify with that. And it just started very young and so I've never really identified as a biracial person, not really. A little bit in high school I kind of had a phase and then, like a little bit in college, I had a phase, but then I was like, yeah, I don't identify as a white person, I'm not living as a white person. I'm not being mistaken as a white person I'm not getting the perks of a white person. I definitely get privilege like light skinned, light skinned privilege as a black woman. I definitely get like light skin, long hair, pretty girl privilege as a black woman, but I'm not out here in these streets living like a white woman. Okay, so I'm on a little bit of a tangent, but my whole point is is that I was raised by a white woman and I was raised in a household with racist overtly not covert, not hidden, not silent overtly racist white people, and all of my mom's side of her family were like that.
Speaker 1:And then I was being sent to white schools that were racist as well and I was attending a church that was also racist. So when I look at stories like this and I see someone who was raised so Justin was raised, you know, with healthy black family and he was sent to PWIs private white institutions and he expresses the frustration of being at PWIs, how interesting is that black family going to PWIs versus what I had of not having been raised by my black family or even see my black family at all, because my dad I saw him like sparingly up my first 10 years and then he went to prison and then I didn't have any connection with him or his family. So for me it was just the idea of like wow, I wonder what it would be like to have a black mom. That was my first thought. Like, what an interesting idea. Is just something I've never experienced as a biracial woman who identifies as black. To think, wow, I wonder what that would be like. And I found myself feeling somewhat jealous of Justin's situation, because she was overbearing, because she was known, as you know, being on one like doing too much. And it was like it was easier for me to see, obviously, as a 48 year old woman who has a kid the same age as Justin. Literally my son just finished up his freshman year of college and Justin was, you know, a senior going into his freshman year of college, and so, as a mom, it was easy for me to see, like what she's doing is right, what she's doing is good, like, yeah, she's a little bit, a little bit overbearing, yeah, she's a little bit overprotective, but he needs that and I needed that and I definitely didn't have that. And just for those of you who don't know me, my backstories.
Speaker 1:My mom was a paranoid schizophrenic. She's gone now, but when I was in high school, my mom was really getting worse and worse and worse, and when I was in college she had a complete fucking mental break. Okay, so all of those years when I was coming into my own like for between 14 and 19 and 20, my mom was really, really losing, and I was the only one living with her at the time, and so she was not protective because she was trying to survive herself. She was not present, she was not available. My mom was kind and she loved me, but there was definitely some neglect, you know, just from her having a mental illness. Not because I'm trying to judge her, I promise you I'm not judging my mama. I loved my mom. I think she did the best she can as someone with a very severe mental illness.
Speaker 1:Like paranoid schizophrenia is not a little Thing, it's a big, big problem, and she was causing a lot of problems for herself and for all her children, not just me and so when I was in high school, I was just out here doing whatever the hell I wanted to do because my mom was mentally ill. You know, I was out all night. I was making horrible choices. I was around so many people that could have hurt me. I definitely could have been killed in so many different situations like I. Just it's just God's grace that I survived that time because I had her car that I was stealing sometimes, and then she got me my own car like a brand new car, and then I was, you know, had even more freedom to get into more problems. And it's not like I had this great home training where it was like, you know, I had all of this. You know, sometimes like you raise people who raise a kid responsibly, then by the time they're 14, they're like they know what to do, they know how to take care of themselves, they know how to handle themselves. I didn't. I was out here acting a whole fool, okay. So when I look at what Justin's mom was doing, I felt that pain of sadness like, wow, I wish I had had that. I wonder where I would be if I had had a mom who was caring for me like that. So I'm just curious if anybody else kind of got that and saw that as you watched it.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing was Justin's dad. Oh man, justin's dad is the dad we all want. He is the cool dad that we all want. First of all, he's super cute. I mean that doesn't matter, but I guess it mattered for his wife. But he was super cute, he was loving, kind, firm when he needed to be, and he was successful, you know, has provided a really nice life for them, like the house the house was gorgeous, like this gorgeous, beautiful, well decorated house. And then they spend their summers in Martha's Vineyard on the black side. They spend their summers in Martha's Vineyard on the black side Like okay, thank you, sir, for providing for your family like this. But the kind of things that he said to Justin.
Speaker 1:There's one particularly poignant scene when Justin is going to take his new car out and he grills him about what to do if he gets stopped by the police and Justin goes through the list of what he's supposed to do and then his dad is just like you know, take her here, have this time, respond immediately when we text you and then be back by, I think, midnight. So it was boundaries and it was firmness, it was clear direction and he still lets him go and he knows what to do in case he's in trouble. There's so many other scenes throughout where Justin's dad is so loving, but you also know, like, don't fuck with him. There's this other scene where he, justin, is telling them something hard and then he says something like I hope that I'm not a disappointment to you or lose your love. I forgot how he worded it and his dad just said immediately you will never lose my love. Y'all. I'm not crying right now, but it definitely got me teary eyed.
Speaker 1:That's the black dad we all wish we had. That's the black dad that we all wish we had, someone who can give us kindness and softness, someone who will always be a safe place for Justin to land, like if they were real. We know that. Someone who cares enough about not just his son but his son's girlfriend to be like hey, let me teach you how to be a good man to your girlfriend. There was just so many things about him that it was just like. You know, I'm single, right? So if that man existed in the world, hey, hi, I'm Grace, call me okay, because seriously, oh seriously. I think I just wanted to take this opportunity to both normalize and validate for us as black women, like just how both healing it can be to see this played out on a, on a television screen, but also like how it makes us feel some kind of way because we recognize we didn't have that and I forgot to mention. But also they're a family unit, like they were literally married and happy and the way the show showed them they're in love, they like being together. They showed them they like still having sex, they're still. They still out here getting it in. They still out here having fun parties and smoking weed with their, their friends, their own age, you know, and they're still a joined family unit.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes the sadness of that never really goes away. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, y'all, but like as someone from a broken family, I mean my parents were never married. Actually my dad was married to someone else when he found out that he got my mom pregnant and then he tried to marry her too. Like they literally went down to the courthouse and this motherfucker tried to actually marry my mom while he was legally married to someone else. Like what the fuck bro? What the actual fuck.
Speaker 1:But you know, I got to give it to my mom because she broke up with him and he was never able to get her back. And I know this because one time I found an entire drawer. I mean a drawer that my mom kept of all his like love letters and cards and flowers that she had dried out and it was like it was a stack, like pretty sizable y'all. So for those for my audible, only listening people, it was, like you know, two trapper keepers full of letters on letters. And don't forget that was 1976. Ok, so there was no, there was no pages, no phones, no internet, no email, no, nothing.
Speaker 1:The nigga was just writing letters trying to get my mom back and I read some of them and he was apologizing to him how he's gonna get his divorce and blah, blah, blah, and just so you know, I don't think that he ever got that divorce. I think he might have died married to her. I should check, I should fact check, because I really don't know, but I'm pretty sure he never actually left that woman. I was just trying to say I just got to give my mom props for being like nah, nigga, you was, you was married, I'll do this myself, I'll raise this baby myself anyway, and then he ended up abusing me and going to prison for it. She was right to try to get away from him, but anyway, my whole point is, I think a lot of us really carry that internal burden of just wanting a safe place to land and for me, that's something that I have always had this like particular sadness about, about the kind of home I was raised in and what I did and didn't have as I've moved through this journey and tried to heal, is just this sadness of like well, I never have really had a safe place to land with either parent Because, like I said, my mom, my dad, abused me.
Speaker 1:He went to prison. My mom was gone by the time I was 11, I probably the roles switched 11 or 12, where I started parenting her. And so when I see stuff like this, it just hits it. Just it hits at a hard core for a little vulnerable place in me. I've come a long way. I think 10, 15 years ago I probably would have been sobbing my eyes out seeing some of those scenes. I think this time it was more of like a balm, like, oh, I know that this exists even more nowadays. I know that there's many more healthy, loving Black families, which I just love. So, yeah, it created a bomb and not created a wound, but I definitely felt the wound. Just curious, did y'all feel like this. When you watched it, please let me know in the comments. I also think there's the financial aspect too.
Speaker 1:Honestly, this is more of a discussion of just kind of normalizing the unspoken, like loneliness and sadness that can come from realizing what you didn't have. I want to make it okay to talk about it because so many people are just like you're claiming victimhood. People get really upset if you stop to say what you're actually sad about sometimes. But I actually think it's okay to identify it. There's no way that I would encourage anyone like oh yeah, completely, stay in a victim mindset, stay a victim, stay, you know, dwelling on things that didn't go right. But I am definitely one of those people who will say you should definitely take a minute to figure out what you're sad about, get it out and practice radical acceptance and move forward.
Speaker 1:But I think sometimes we're very quick to not even let ourselves figure out what we're sad about, and with specificity. I definitely think for me, the biggest way that I've healed, and for those of y'all who are on this healing journey, is I have learned how to figure out what I'm sad about with specificity. Because the reason why so many people turn to, you know, drinking, numbing themselves out with weed or whatever. And again, no judgment. I'm never going to judge anyone on how they choose to cope and medicate to get through this life, because Lord Jesus. But I'm just saying I think part of the reason that we try to numb and I know this from my own life is because sometimes we don't even know what we're numbing. It's like how can you get to the bottom of what you're sad about if you haven't actually taken the time or figured out in any way whether that's through therapy or even allowing yourself those uncomfortable feelings to know what the hell you got to heal from? So you're just like, I'm sad, I feel depressed, I'm going to numb.
Speaker 1:I just want to have space to say it's really okay to like, look at shows like this and identify hmm, there's a lot of historical oppression and economic disparities and structural racism that has impacted deeply Black families. I mean, that's base level knowledge, right, base level knowledge. But it's okay to say like and, as a result, you know our parenting situation was messed up. Or, for example, you know all of the our black men that were murdered 125 years ago and lynched and stolen from us and then lost to the industrial prison system for the last what? 50, 60 years at disproportional rates. It's just.
Speaker 1:I think it's okay to say we looking at these black families in forever and just like, yeah, wow, a lot of us didn't have that and there's some sadness that we feel about that and this is an ache. This is an ache, and it feels like something that can't be fixed and that's really fucked up and sad. So, yeah, I just want to legitimize the loss. If you feel it, I feel it too sad. So, yeah, I just want to legitimize the loss If you feel it. I feel it too. If you feel that sadness of like oh, I didn't have whatever it is, like you know, parents who could afford anything for me. I didn't have parents that were together, or I didn't have a mom that was overbearing at all, like in my situation, or whatever it might be. It's not about being ungrateful for what you do have, it's just recognizing and acknowledging. Damn, not having family really fucking hurts. It really, really, really hurts.
Speaker 1:And as much healing and work as I've done in the past, I don't know that that's something that I'm ever going to fully get through. And I'm twice divorced. I really thought at some point, like whoever I marry will become my new family. Both my marriages didn't work out and the last one crashed and burned. It was literally terrible. That man traumatized the hell out of me and I really thought, obviously before I married him, that he was going to be my new family. And so when you're in the position like I am and I don't know if a lot of you are where you're divorced and you just don't have family or connected family at all, it can really feel so major, like almost unbearable, and I don't feel like that right now. I feel like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm going to get through it, I'll be fine. You know, I create family with my friendships and my community and things like that.
Speaker 1:But when I see stuff like this, it just takes the knife and just stabs it, stabs it in Grief, definitely recycles at different life stages. I think it looked like one thing when I was getting married and my dad wasn't there. He was out of prison but there was no way that I was going to invite him To my wedding. He wasn't sorry. Even when he got out he wasn't sorry. He didn't act like he was sorry, he was mean about it.
Speaker 1:It was terrible and there was some grief there. You know, there was grief after I had my second child and realized my dad is never going to meet my kids. I think by that point he was already gone. Oh, actually, no, that's not true. It was my first child. My dad was gone. He was dead before my first child was born and I remember thinking, oh, he's never going to meet them, they're never going to know their only black grandfather, their only black grandfather, and that's both a good thing and a bad thing. You know, there's some career milestones, there's just things that I feel sadness about, that I don't have any family, particularly my black family, to celebrate with me or to mourn with me. More with those who mourn that kind of thing, there are certain aspects that still kind of linger. Has that ever happened to you?
Speaker 1:It's interesting too, because I think that watching this episode brought up a little bit of my inner child wounds, and I recently talked about inner child healing in one of my episodes like three ago I think and then I talked about it early on when I first started this podcast because, as someone who has a high trauma background, inner child healing work has been really significant for me. When I watch shows like this and I can feel that pain of sadness, like almost like knocking at my door, I can tell that little inner Gracie is just like oh yeah, I wanted that validation that he got that Justin got from his dad. You know, I wanted that protection that Justin got from his mom. The you know, the little little inner Gracie is kind of like oh, look at that unconditional love, like damn, that would have been really nice. And man, the unlimited resources would have been really really nice.
Speaker 1:Now I'm only talking about Justin, keisha Clark also, who was the other character. She also had a very loving mother and she was struggling and I don't want to downplay in any way the impact that she had on her daughter because she was also a very loving, protective, doting mother who was working two jobs to try to afford a private school for Keisha, and she was an amazing mother too. So I don't want to kind of downplay that. I think I'm just focusing on the feelings that I felt specifically I got from the situation with Justin's parents In order to really heal from this stuff.
Speaker 1:I do understand that we have to try to understand what our parents went through. We have to understand our parents journey and find empathy for them, because they were humans just doing the best they could. And you know, honestly, as a mom, and I just think about when my kids are older I really hope they're like damn, my mom was out here fighting for her life. She was trying as hard as she possibly could to provide the best life for us. But and I know that my kids are not enduring the same level of trauma and traumatic experiences that I was not in any way, and I thank God for that literally almost every day, because that is one of my primary things that I've wanted to do as a mom is to break generational curses and stop all of this cycles of abuse as best I can, as best I possibly can, as someone who is notably still struggling with all of the trauma that I went through in my childhood, even with years of therapy, willingness to heal, a desire to do better, trying my hardest, everything. I mean I just have really been out here and the fact that I'm still struggling sometimes with some of this stuff is like son of a bitch. Struggling sometimes with some of this stuff is like son of a bitch. What in the world? So when I look at my kids, I'm just grateful that I know they're not experiencing the same trauma All of us do have to understand.
Speaker 1:You know, our parents were also navigating unhealed trauma and at least if we can understand their context it can dampen some of the pain that we might feel. Now I'm not saying that we're just supposed to say, well, they did the best they could, your parents did the best they could, so get over it. Your parents did the best they could versus whatever they did was still harmful, is a very delicate balance and I think it requires a lot of nuance and I think if we can learn to juggle that a little bit, it can really help us heal and come to terms. So that's what I've had to do with with both my parents, with my mom, who it took me a lot of years to forgive Her at all and really understand like this was a mental illness, but I was angry. You know.
Speaker 1:What you hear now is I love my mom, I'm grateful for her, but when she was alive I was just really angry and sad and mad and and for a lot of years I hated her, didn't want to be around her at all. There was a good number of years that I just this is going to sound so bad, but it's really true. So I'm just going to be honest with y'all. But I just couldn't wait until she died because the pain was so acute in her going on living for so long while just kind of the backstories that we thought she was going to die for a while because she just kept having random things that the doctor was like, oh yeah, it's not long, and it just ended up being like six or seven more years and that whole time. It's really hard to explain because I haven't processed this fully, but I just was still so angry and hurt and sad and trying really hard to get over and get through it.
Speaker 1:But with her being alive and still doing shitty shit as someone who is a paranoid schizophrenic, and then she developed dementia. So you know, people with mental illnesses like that especially get older. They're really mean. It can be really very, very painful. If you've never, if you've never had that happen with an elderly person that you love please don't judge me or anyone else it's extremely painful to watch people you love turn into literal demons, because I think those kind of mental illnesses are in some way demonic. But I really hard for me to get to where I am now, where I'm like I understand how much her mental illness was impacting her her whole life and how much that impacted the kind of parent that she was for me. And now I can be like I really love her, even really miss her, sometimes, just a little bit, just a little bit.
Speaker 1:But, man, my relationship with my mom is hella complicated, but with my dad I still don't really understand why he did what he did to me sexually. But I can only assume that that's what he went through when he was a kid. I can only assume that that's all he knew. It's hard for me to reconcile like and just be like. Yeah, he did the best he could like. That's your best, bro, that was your best. But at the same time I acknowledge the shit was harmful. It really fucked up my life. It fucked up my sexuality in some ways. It fucked up my relationship to men in a lot of ways For all of these years and I'm still working through it, still working through it at my big age of 48, but whatever the case may be, I have Released them because I do understand that when you hold unforgiveness and bitterness it's literally like the popular quote that you've heard it's like drinking rat poison and hoping that the other person gets poisoned.
Speaker 1:It's just literally poisoning you. And there's lots of scientific studies nowadays that holding bitterness lots of scientific studies nowadays, nowadays, that you know, holding bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, all of that is low vibration energy in your body and low vibration energy causes sickness. It literally causes illness. This is not rocket science, is an established science now. So don't hold bitterness and unforgiveness and anger in your heart. Even for the people who traumatized you, release them because you're not hurting them by holding in your heart. Even for the people who traumatized you, release them because you're not hurting them by holding in your heart. You calling them a son of a bitch in your journal every day for 10 years is not hurting them.
Speaker 1:So, like I said in my other episode about inner child healing, the best thing that we can do is learn to reparent ourselves. And I was reminded that when I watched Forever. Like the best thing that I can do honestly to heal a part of me and heal that little inner Gracie that was like really looking at them and like longing for those kind of parents is to reparent myself with all of that, all of that protection, all of that setting boundaries and the nurturing and the foresight, and also another thing that I can do completely practically is provide that for my own kids as best as I can, which I'm already trying to do, but I'm imperfect. It is the power of the conscious choice, and that is what I wanted to bring to you today. From watching forever, is we now have a conscious choice to say, oh, I love seeing all of that. How can I be that for me? How can I be that for other people? How can I be that for my little niece or little nephew or little cousin who doesn't have, you know, parents who are at all protective or protecting them out here in this cold world? And this is just a friendly reminder y'all that we have to build our own communities. Not all family is blood. We all know that. Yes, blood is thicker than water, but sometimes you ain't got no blood. I mean, in my situation, I don't have anybody in my family who is blood related that I'm remotely close to at all. Everybody who in my family that I'm blood related to, I'm kind of like loosely connected acquaintances at that at best.
Speaker 1:I think it's really, really important for us to invest in our friendships with other black women. I cannot emphasize that enough. I really try to work hard. To be sure I'm hanging around with pursuing loving, caring for, spending on just involving myself fully with other black women in the black community because it's just so important I think for us as black women to have that and to figure it out. And it won't always work. I feel like in these last three years I've lost. In these last three years I've lost actually three or four years I've lost three black women in my life who I was close to. I've never really had that happen like that, where, yeah, I'm just, I use. Most of my friendships are long, like once I gain a friend I keep that friend for life. But in these three situations it just didn't work out and so one of them I talked about in a different episode which I'll post here. But two of the other ones is a long story y'all. But I still have other black women in my life who I pursue and love and try to prioritize in terms of friendships over men and over everybody else I mean obviously not over my kids.
Speaker 1:But y'all just make sure you're in community where you feel seen and loved and felt and celebrated. Just make sure that that's a priority for you. Make sure that when you're pursuing connections with romantic interests. For those of you who aren't, who aren't hetero, it doesn't matter who you're pursuing connections with, like if it's not built on love and mutual respect, you know, mutual consistency and mutual reciprocation, like it's probably not going to be what you need, regardless of chemistry, regardless of feelings, regardless of great sex, regardless of anything. And that's one thing I have really really learned like there can be a lot of good things going on, that the sex can be bomb, you can have amazing chemistry, you can have a lot of stuff going on, but if there is not a mutual foundational respect of I care for you and respect you as a friend and I'm giving you reciprocal respect and connection, it's not good for me. It's just not good enough. It's literally just not good enough. So just keep that in mind, y'all Keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Black women are so resilient, we are so empathetic, we have so much self-awareness, we have a very deep capacity for love and we are out here breaking generational curses, and that's a beautiful thing. So, as you forge your own path, just be cognizant that you are creating the environment that you longed for. You know and I have to keep that in mind, like every time I de-center men in my life and re-center myself, make myself my own priority and re-center all of my women, friendships, my children, even my dreams and my passions, or my hobbies, like even this podcast. That is a way that I am creating that kind of environment that I saw in forever, that I loved, one that is protective and beautiful and really was both Keisha's home and Justin's home a safe place for them, even though you know their parents weren't perfect and there were challenges, but it was a safe place for them. That's what I want for myself and for my kids.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, this episode or not this episode, the whole series just gave me so much to think about. What does reparenting ourselves look like for you? You know, that's that's one thing that it made me think about. And how can I be the kind of parents that I saw in the show that I really want to be for my kids? That was just a big thing for me. It's like I want to think more intentionally as my kids get older. I have a 19 and a half year old, a 14 and a half year old and a almost nine year old in just a few weeks here, and so I still have quite a bit of time to help them and mold them and prepare them for this world. Not so much my oldest, but you know.
Speaker 1:Here's a journal question for you. What small act of kindness can you offer your inner child today? What small act of protection can you offer your inner child today? What's one thing that you can do to show her that you love her and you care for her? And you know y'all? If all else fails, go to therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, girl, I just actually started therapy again. I started back for the first time in. I think it's been two years since I've been in therapy. I actually had to stop because I was three years ago I left a full time job so I lost my insurance and then for a little while I was paying on a sliding scale because I had Medicaid and then he stopped accepting that Medicaid and so it just felt like we, if I look we were kind of at a natural stopping place anyway, because he had seen me through leaving an abusive marriage, domestic violence, he had done EMDR with me, he had really saved my life in big, big ways. But it felt like we were kind of coming to the end of our therapeutic relationship anyway, just as my Medicaid was ending with that particular company and I couldn't afford to keep seeing him without any sort of insurance. So I was like you know, I'm doing pretty good, I'm feeling pretty good, so I stopped and you know I've had some crazy, crazy times with mental health in the last couple years, so I don't know if it was a good thing, but I just never picked it back up, in part because of ADHD Not even kidding like being unable to organize. My life has been a struggle.
Speaker 1:But earlier this year I went through some things. I had a dating relationship and where it was just so painful I just felt so humiliated by this man and so surprised and I had so much cognitive dissonance about how he ended it. It was sad, really, really sad. And then, like a few months later, I dated someone for just a week and that week ended up being really hard on me and I actually did an episode about that which I will post right here if you want to. I did a whole episode about what happened in that week and why it led me to get real specific about my healing. And I really think that week caused me so much pain because I had never really healed from what happened in February, in the end of that dating situation. That just really took me out.
Speaker 1:So I decided I have to go back to therapy. I just have to, I just have to, I just have to. I was like I really need to figure out once and for all what these issues are that's keeping me. You know, you know they say you won't change till it hurts enough. Baby, baby. It hurt enough that what happened with those two hurt enough. And it wasn't even like terrible choices, it was just me dating. It wasn't like and if you knew it, you know and my friends knew who these men were that it wasn't even like terrible choices, it was just me dating. It wasn't like and if you knew, you know, and my friends knew who these men were that it wasn't like oh my God, why would you choose such horrible, terrible men? It wasn't like that. These were the men that everybody was like yeah, these are good guys, these are, these are the good ones, these are the ones you, these are the kind of guys you shouldn't be dating.
Speaker 1:And still, for me to be so hurt and so devastated, I was like I gotta get therapy stats. So I looked for a new therapist and I literally just started and we are going to kind of delve into my past a little bit more. And I told him like I think I'm finally ready to really maybe fully fully look into my father wounds of abandonment, because I don't think I had ever, I don't know. I've definitely done healing stuff around my dad but the abandonment wounding is coming up a lot lately, a lot. So I told him I was like let's, let's deal with abandonment wounding, let's face this. Yeah, we're actually going to be reading through this book by Gabriel Mate, the Myth of Normal. I'll link it below if you're curious. But he was like that book is life changing. I love Gabriel Mate, I talk about him. I feel like I bring up Gabriel Mate in every episode. So I have watched a lot of podcasts where he's talked about it, but I've never actually read the book. So I'm going to actually get the book and read it.
Speaker 1:I just bring that up to say like you don't have to navigate big feelings alone. Therapy has been so good for me and I actually have really good friendships. I have good girlfriends who two of my good girlfriends are licensed clinical psychotherapists and therapy still been really good for me to have a place. So just don't be isolated. Let me just read to you an affirmation, and if you would just close your eyes, if you're not driving, take a deep breath and listen to this affirmation Remember you are deserving of deep, unconditional love, even if it didn't come from where you expected. You have the power to cultivate it within yourself and attract it into your life. You are a source of love and you can love yourself fully and unconditionally.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Please take care of yourself, please nurture that beautiful soul of yours and don't forget to follow me on all the socials. I'm on TikTok at out here trying to survive. Youtube out here trying to survive. My sub stack is out here thriving and even though I am struggling to get that started, follow along, because I'm going to. I swear to goodness, I'm going to. And if you would please like this episode, give me a like please. If you enjoy it, go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, as I'm just really just. This is really just getting started in terms of podcast, even though this is episode 27. Apparently, you know you need up to 100 episodes before you really doing a damn thing. So please review me on Apple podcast. That would help me so much. Y'all could be anywhere, but you're here and I'm so grateful for that. So thank you so much for listening and I will see y'all in the next episode. Bye.
