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 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 about disbelief, danger, and the cost of bias on Black women’s bodies.
We trace the throughline from the labor ward to the comment section: how joy gets labeled arrogance, how visibility is framed as provocation, and how a simple hello on a dating app can trigger a stranger’s need to diminish. I share my own birth story and the memories that still burn twenty years later, then connect those memories to a nervous system shaped by chronic dismissal. Hypervigilance isn’t drama; it’s adaptation. When medical staff ignore pain or minimize symptoms, the body flips to survival mode, and over time that stress hardens into complex PTSD—one reason Black maternal mortality and Black infant mortality remain disturbingly high in the United States.
We also explore the political stage, where double standards make mistreatment for some a scandal and for others a baseline. Through it all, we honor the resilience of Black women—most educated demographic in America—who keep creating, parenting, leading, and loving in a culture that too often refuses to protect us. This conversation offers language, validation, and practical grounding for anyone who’s felt unseen, along with guidance for raising kids who know their worth and can claim their voice early.
If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show. Tell me: where were you last dismissed, and what would believing you the first time have changed?
Did y'all see a video of the black woman who went into labor? This is just a few weeks ago. This video went viral of her being in the wheelchair and a white nurse asking her, How many live births have you had while she is letting out the most guttural scream of pain? And she says, What's your due date? And she yells in another guttural scream, Today. She is eight minutes from giving birth. That video pained me and so many other people to watch because as a black woman, you know what that feeling feels like. It felt like it encapsulated the feeling of even when we are breaking, we are still not believed. Even when we are breaking, we are still not helped. At some point she says, I feel like the baby is in my ass. Which, if you ever gave birth before, and I have three times, when it feels like it's in your ass, it is. It really is. And it's time to push. What is so sad about that scene is that the nurse looks at her and basically decides that she's worthy of being dismissed. Maybe perhaps that she's exaggerating. I'm not sure. I really wouldn't mind doing an interview with her. She disbelieved her pain. She disrespected her. And on top of all that, as a nurse, she has no bedside manner. And then less than a week later, another video comes out of a couple going in. You see this black woman in a wheelchair, she's breathing heavily. We know later she was 12 minutes from giving birth. She's turned away, and then she has birth in the car on the side of the road 12 minutes later. For those of us here who've had children, we know that it is an incredibly vulnerable feeling to be pregnant just in general. But when you are about to give birth, there really is no other feeling to describe how vulnerable you feel for yourself and your child and knowing either one of you could die at any time. It is a terrible feeling to feel disregarded, disrespected, and undone in that moment. When I gave birth to my first son, I had never had a baby before. I had no idea what contractions felt like. You know, I'd done all the homework, all the research, but you know, you can never prepare yourself. My water broke at home. I hadn't experienced really any contractions yet, just little ones here and there. But I had no idea what the full strength of a full contraction felt like. And in the car on the way there, he was driving and I had a real contraction. Like the ones where you're like, oh, now I know what this is. Like, this is some fuck. It's crazy. The amount of pain. It just took me off guard. And I let out a very loud yelp. And I remember my ex-husband saying to me, You're not gonna be like this the whole time, are you? And I was just like, I will kill you. I remember feeling so frustrated. So frustrated. Again, this is his first baby too. Both of us are our first baby, but still. And then we get to the hospital. This is five minutes later, after that little interaction. We get to the hospital, we're in the parking garage, and I'm like, okay, well, just let me out here. I'll go inside and I'll wait for you while you find a spot. So I open the door, I put one foot out the door, and I'm have a backpack, and I'm getting out of the car. I am hours away from giving birth. And my ex-husband starts to drive. And I was like, bro, what the f are you doing? I have one foot out the door. And he was like, There's a car behind me that really needs to get by. You need to hurry up. And I was like, I will put a knife and a dagger through your heart if you don't calm the f down right now. Now back then I didn't swear. I don't even know what I said, but whatever sentiment I just gave you, that was the sentiment that I gave him. Like, bro, but you see how I remember that? That son, my first son, he's just turned 20. It's been 20 years, and I still remember how bad he pissed me off with just those two little things, just because of how vulnerable I felt. But also, it's not wise to drive to push forward and drive when you you got one foot out the door. I mean, what if my foot had got dragged under and I have failed and I mean, he y'all, I'm mad just talking about it. Mad just talking about it. So within the last week, both of these stories went viral. Not because they're surprising. They're not a surprise to any of us, but because they're familiar and because they're filmed. Because we know that this kind of thing happens all the time, but occasionally things get filmed. The question about why are we still not believed when we go into medical facilities comes up. Why are we treated like inconveniences still comes up? It reminded me of a time, I think it was like three or four years ago, I was dating a guy who was a vet and he had to go to the hospital for something. I was like, let me just take a shower and put in my makeup and do my hair and stuff. And he was like, What are you talking about? I just need to go. Like he had a I think he had a really bad migraine. And I was like, Well, I can't go to the hospital as a black woman looking poor because we're not gonna get treated. And he was like, What are you talking about? This is a black man, by the way. I was just like, No, I'm let me put myself together. Like, I'm not gonna go to the hospital in like sweatpants and sweatshirt looking poor because I know how they treat black women. And it's sad that I think that way, but I know that it's true. Black women still have the highest mortality rate of any other developed nation, even those with fewer resources. If you're a black woman in America, there is a chance that you will die in childbirth that is a higher chance than any other developed nation, even poorer countries. That's fed up. You are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth here in 2025 in the richest country on earth. We are still not making out alive, and our babies too. The infant mortality rate for black babies is disproportionately high. And this is not about biology, y'all. This is neglect. It's just pure, utter medical neglect. It's about bias, like everything else in this country. It's about this lethal assumption that we are exaggerating, that we are too emotional, too dramatic, too much, too little, that we are fine, that we are not in danger even when we are quite literally bleeding out. And that pattern is showing up everywhere. And I want to give some other examples today and talk about some things that have happened to me recently as well. Today I want to talk about this and our nervous system. But before I do that, let me introduce myself. My name is Grace Sandra. I'm a writer, activist, advocate, mom, and podcaster here on how you're trying to survive. Welcome to episode 35. I want to talk a minute about what it means to live in a body that is constantly ignored, not believed, manipulated, and second-guessed. And I want to talk about what that does to the nervous system because we all know how important it is for our nervous system to be aligned, to be calm, to be at peace, to be at rest. For most black women, not all of us, but for most of us, we are living in a constant state of hypervigilance, living in hypervigilance. That's not your personality. You were not born with hypervigilance. This happened as a result of conditioning of years and years of being in an invisible or too visible body. It's how we've learned to survive. We get called dramatic. Hyper awareness is not dramatic. It is our history of having to be hyper-aware. The same way women have to be hyper-aware of men and what men are around us at all times, even in our home, in our family. Black women have had to be hyper-aware of both men and white people at all times, even at home, even within our family for hundreds of years. The type of tension that it builds up in us, in our chest, in our shoulders, in our jaw, that's not just stress. It is the residual effect of being unprotected for most of your life. That's why I truly believe, I know not everyone agrees with me, that most black Americans have complex PTSD, which is when you've experienced many traumas over the course of many, many years as opposed to one big trauma. Black women's ancestors weren't believed, our grandmother wasn't believed, our mothers weren't believed, and now we are not being believed. And as a result of that, our bodies have learned a very, very sad lesson. The lesson is if I don't advocate for myself like my life depends on it, I will not be safe. And my life might actually depend on it. I might not be here no more. Every time a nurse dismisses a black woman like that, it's not just disrespect. It is a biological threat. And not just to that black woman, but also to the next generation too, who's being born under these circumstances. That baby should not have been born on the side of a goddamn road when she was in the hospital, contracting, damn near ready to give birth. When any random doctor gaslights your pain, it reopens every wound your nervous system has ever had. When a provider ignores your symptoms, your body enters an instant survival mode. Because somewhere deep down, there's a voice that black women know. And that voice says, if I don't see myself scream for myself, fight and claw for myself, literally no one else will. That is what generational trauma looks like physiologically. That is why we age faster, y'all. That's why we die sooner. This is why childbirth, something that should be so sacred and beautiful and life-giving, has become a battlefield for so many black American women, and that's completely fed up. So the other day I put up a YouTube short about how I was graduating from my master's degree, which I am graduating on December 15th, so very shortly soon. And I put up some graduation photos that my son took from me. He did such a great job. And y'all, why did this white man come on the post and he said that make you look stupid? Not even that makes you look stupid, that make you look stupid. Just out of curiosity, I asked him why. And he went on this whole thing about how, as a white man, if he were to wear a stole that says straight white pride, that he'd be seen as racist and how nobody cares that I'm black and how it ain't the 1950s no more. And it was just a whole lot of ridiculousness. But it just made me think about how often when black women achieve something, how you can be celebrating, you can be living in your own excellence just for a few minutes, right? I'm just celebrating this. I get this small window of time to celebrate that I got my master's degree through a really hard time of life, y'all. Okay, I've been in peramenopause, I've been struggling in a lot of different ways. As a single divorced mom without any family, my both my parents are dead with three children facing very serious mental health crises in these last four or five or six years. I mean, very serious. Okay, very serious. Like almost lost my life, honestly, almost unalived myself in March of 2023. Have been wrestling through poverty and through all of that, still managed to somehow get a damn master's degree. So let me have my little five minutes to celebrate myself. And this random white man felt the need to humble me in the comments. And then I posted a TikTok about it, sharing his comments, which I then posted to YouTube, and I got a lot of different comments from people. But one thing that was a threat of what everyone said and what I believe too is that my joy is perceived as arrogance. And he actually said that. He actually literally said, It makes it seem like you think you're better than everyone else. By the way, the stole said black girl magic. That's all it said. And to him, my pride was perceived as a threat. My visibility was seen as a provocation, which is insane if you think about it. Honestly, this is the same kind of entitlement that have white women thinking or that nurse thinking, oh, she's fine. Oh, I'm sure she's just exaggerating. Why is she too much? And we see this over and over again. I had a friend recently on Facebook. She posted a screenshot of her on Facebook dating. So on Facebook dating, men can respond to your picture without matching with you. On the picture, this guy wrote like little heart eyes, like three heart eyes. And then she wrote back to him and said, Hey sir, how are you doing? Or something like that. And then the next paragraph was an insane, diabolical paragraph about how she thinks she's better than everyone else. She is doing too much, carrying too much weight. I mean, it was insane. She didn't match with him, she didn't flirt with him. All she said was hello. And he literally just matched with her to attack her about a bunch of random stuff, including her weight. You know, you want to say, like, damn, I can't believe that, but really, I can believe it because we've all seen it. And then also, I'm not on dating apps anymore, but when I was on dating apps, like, damn, I do remember how often men just go insane. Men will literally start aggressive conflict with you with no provocation whatsoever. So for some reason he attacked her, specifically about her weight, but other things too. For some reason, he felt the need to establish dominance. And I really think it just all ties together. It's the same impulse that makes these medical practitioners treat black women as if we're unruly. It really doesn't matter what we're doing. We could be wearing a black girl magic stole, we could be eight minutes away from having a baby, we could just be on a dating app saying thank you to a guy leaving heart eyes on our picture. And we're gonna be treated like we are somehow dramatic or wrong. Because believing us or just letting us have our celebration or our happiness or our baby or whatever in peace would be respecting us. And for some people, that's just too much. Another example is a guy who's a friend of mine on Facebook, and this is really sad because we have been actual friends. But I saw him say that he's been matching with women just to tell them they're cap. They're cap, this, they capping about this, they capping about that. And so I had to go on this woman's page and tell her she's cap, she's cap. She's the cap of Capperton. Basically, he was doing what this other woman said that a guy did to her. He was just matching with women to tell them that they're lying. I was going to say something back to him, but I just decided to leave it alone. It made me respect him so much less because he's a man on Facebook I've been friends with and I previously respected. The pathology of entitlement towards black women just mind in a black business, and the men that seek us out just to put us in our place. I'm tired. And what place is that exactly? The place where we're small, the place where we're quiet, the place where we have no accomplishments, the place where we're not sexual, the place where we're not educated, the place where we quietly give birth without bothering you or your schedule, the place where we're just grateful, the place where we are always non-confrontational, the place where we are easily dismissed. Again, same story, different arena, different hunger games. And in the political arena, we have Marjorie Taylor Green and the fact that she is resigning from Congress, I guess, on January 5th. Marjorie Taylor Green, let's just call her Marge. So I've gotta say her whole ass long name. She has created so much drama over I don't even know how many years. Now she has been against the president for one month. Just one month. And she compared herself to an abusive wife. When she said that she was resigning, she said, I no longer want to be an abusive wife to the president's antics and that she feels afraid for her life. And so she resigns. Now look, y'all, I know that the orange demon is evil AF. I wouldn't put it past him if he faked the whole ear shooting thing and let the guy behind him die just so he could win the election. I wouldn't put it past him if he organized and arranged for the unaliving of Mr. Kirk. Okay, I would not be surprised at any number of evil things knowing this man has graped several young girls. I wouldn't be surprised at any point if he really did put a hit out on merge. Okay, I wouldn't at all. But all I'm saying is, oh, to be a white woman and only have to experience one month of really feeling truly scared for your life because of the situations you've gotten yourself in. Because I'm just like, girl, you could never, you could never be black. Like never. Never. So anyway, Jasmine Crockett, I saw a little clip of her on a news doing an interview, and she just said, like, wow, like I have been receiving death threats and experiencing everything you've been experiencing for years. And the fact that you cannot even take it for one month is crazy. The difference is for someone like Marge and white women in general, mistreatment is outrageous. Just grab your pearls. Outrageous. Outrageous. Whereas for black women, it's kind of expected. And then we're just really like, damn, I got treated really well. Like, wow, I'm surprised at good treatment. It's sad. Our disrespect has become so normalized and predicted. It's really, really, really a terrible place to be in. And then somehow we are still always expected to respond with grace and dignity. It's the same story over and over and over across every institution, politically, medically, parasocially, spiritually, sexually. I mean honestly, all the ways. These stories really do create an emotional composite of what it looks like to be a black woman in America. We are unprotected when we are vulnerable. We are disbelieved when we are in danger. We are punished when we are confident. We are targeted when we are visible. We are harassed when we are joyful. We are humiliated when we set boundaries, and we are blamed when we survive. Yet it's okay for the world to critique our attitude, our tone, our strength, our independence, and never really check in on the type of psychological toil that that creates for us. But look, here's the thing. I love us so much. I think we are such a beautiful group of humans. That's why I talk about us all the time. Because we still show up, we still push through, we still giving birth to beautiful black people. We still creating culture, raising family, leading movements, surviving systems, softening when we can, and still getting advanced degrees. Because let me remind y'all, the black American woman is the most educated demographic in all of America. We have the most advanced degrees than any other demographic. And we fight when we must. And that's why I was not exaggerating when I put it on, when I shared what Jasmine said on my story. I literally said she could never survive being black. I wasn't being dramatic. I'm just being accurate. I wasn't being a jerk. It's just true. The type of resilience that black women have to have to survive what's constantly coming at us when the world is unbelievably inhospitable. It really is a beautiful thing. And unless you're a black woman, you just don't get it. Sorry. So if you're a black woman listening to this right now, your survival is not a personality trait, an accident, or a default setting. Our survival and our resilience is a skill and a legacy and a nervous system that has been calibrated through centuries of harm, hope, loss, brilliance, pressure, and love. And we honestly deserve more than just survival. We deserve safety and softness. We deserve to be believed the first time we speak. We deserve to be held, supported, and protected in every room that we enter, including the damn delivery room. And one day, I pray the country will catch up to this, although I doubt they will. Because the truth is we don't survive because we're strong. We survive because there is no other choice. We have never been given another choice. Literally. And no matter what, we keep bringing life into this world. Spiritually, culturally, politically, creatively. I mean, America is riding our coattails of creativity all the way to the bank. Everything black women do is repackaged and monetized. All of the way that we talk, our cultural mannerisms, hell, even having fuller lips has somehow become monetizable and the world continues to take life from us. So if you're a black woman, I just want to say you're not imagining the weight, you're not too sensitive, you are not overreacting, your body is just telling you the truth about what the world is denying. That's called being gaslit. And here in this community, you will always be believed the first time. I know a fair amount of black women who were raised by black mothers who really taught them how to move into the world and really own who they are and protect themselves. But I know many, many more who are raised like me without a mother who poured into them in that way. I was also raised by a white woman and definitely she did not give me any sort of identity as a black woman, even though I always presented as a little black girl. There was never any confusion about what I was, except from white people who knew I was mixed with something. But I was never taught to be proud of my blackness or who I was or how I'd be perceived in the world. Certainly not my culture. And as a result, I moved through the world really skittish. It's taken me the last, I would say, probably 10 or 15 years to really decide how am I going to approach this? How am I going to approach life as a black woman in a way that really honors who I am, where I'm from, where I've been, and honestly just sticks up for myself. And as your elder auntie, I just have to say that has been a journey. That wasn't an overnight thing for me. So if you're listening to this and you're a lot younger than me and you're not there or you weren't raised in that way, let me try to pour into you for a minute, sis. You can get there and you can advocate for yourself in a very powerful way. And you should. And now as a black mother to my black daughter, I'm trying so hard to let her know that she is strong, that she's beautiful, that she's smart, that she's wise, that she can take up space. As a matter of fact, just the other day, someone told her that she was too young to understand politics and that she shouldn't have a voice at all because she doesn't even understand. And I looked her in her eyeballs and I was like, listen, you are incredibly smart. You know what's right from wrong. You know that it is evil that there are children and people, innocent children and people being rounded up violently and sent off to detention camps where they're sleeping on the floor within small tiny cages, like Reverie. Her name is Revy. You are old enough to know that is evil. And that is what I'm teaching you. You have to claim that you are smart enough and you have a voice. It doesn't matter how young you are, don't let nobody ever tell you that again. And I feel like she got it. But it took me till I was like in my late 20s to really feel that way. And I pray that my daughter feels that way so much sooner because she's nine. And I have let her know she has complete control over her body, over her mind, and don't let nobody try to control her in any way. I am trying my damnedest to give her the education that I did not get at all when I was growing up, and that I have fought so hard for now. So please, please, please fight for yourself and fight for others. Would you do me a favor? Would you check to see that you're subscribed? If you're not, please subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube and please give this video a like. If you're on Apple, go to Apple and follow this podcast. If you're on Spotify, go to Spotify. If you're on iHeart, this podcast is all over. Wherever you listen to podcasts, whatever you're listening on, please go ahead and subscribe. If you're on YouTube, please leave me a comment. Let me know what really set out to you. And by the way, for my book lovers, I do have a book called Grace Actually Memoirs of Love, Faith, Lost, and Black Womanhood. This is available on Amazon. You can get it in Kindle or Hard Copy. It's pretty good if I do say so myself. If I don't see y'all for Thanksgiving, but don't get this edited before Thanksgiving or after, I hope you have or had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And I'll see y'all on the next episode. Bye.
