The Living Story: Healing from Heartbreak, Finding Purpose, and Learning to Live Again

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Why can’t I move on… even when I know the relationship is over?

In this first episode of the I Never Got My Why series, I explore the emotional and spiritual exhaustion of living inside unanswered questions. 

If you’ve ever wrestled with heartbreak, grief, disappointment, emotional looping, or wondering why God allowed something painful to happen, this episode is for you.

Through honest storytelling, biblical reflection, and emotional truth-telling, we talk about:

• functioning publicly while grieving privately
• why heartbreak can become part of your identity
• the gap between what the mind knows and what the heart can hold
• Moses at the burning bush
• El Roi, the God who sees
• why asking “why” is not weak faith

This episode is not about quick answers.

It’s about learning how to stay honest with God in the middle of pain.

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If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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Before you compare your life to someone else’s, remember this:

You joined their story in the middle.

In this episode of The Living Story, we’re talking about comparison, social media, waiting seasons, and the quiet belief so many women carry that they are somehow “behind” in life.

Maybe you thought you’d be married by now.
Maybe you thought you’d have children, clarity, healing, purpose, or peace by now.
Maybe you scroll through someone else’s life and wonder why their story seems to be moving while yours feels stuck.

But what if you’re not behind at all?

What if you’ve simply been comparing your page one to someone else’s page three hundred?

In this episode, Tennille Martinez explores:

•  why comparison is emotionally destructive 
•  how social media distorts our timelines 
•  the hidden middle chapters people never show 
•  what the stories of Joseph and Hannah reveal about waiting 
•  why God’s timing is not punishment 
•  and how your “middle chapter” may actually be the place where transformation is happening most deeply 

This episode is for the woman who feels overlooked, delayed, discouraged, or exhausted from measuring her life against everyone else’s.

You are not behind.
You are being formed.

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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Before I met God, I had a whole library of stories I believed about myself.

Stories about rejection. Worth. Being overlooked. Being too much and somehow not enough at the same time. Stories about love, purpose, identity, and whether I was chosen at all.

In this episode of The Living Story, we’re talking about the quiet lies women carry for years — the ones repeated so often they stop feeling like stories and start feeling like truth.

If you’ve ever struggled with:

•  low self-worth 
•  overthinking relationships 
•  feeling unseen 
•  people pleasing 
•  fear of rejection 
•  comparison 
•  identity confusion 
•  heartbreak 
•  or believing you missed your purpose… 

this conversation is for you.

We explore:

•  how false narratives are formed 
•  why emotional wounds become internal beliefs 
•  the stories women silently rehearse 
•  what happens when God interrupts those narratives 
•  and how healing begins through truth, surrender, and renewal of the mind

Free Resource:
Download “The Story She Keeps Telling Herself,”  a truth-and-lie reflection guide designed to help you identify the narratives shaping your life. My gift to you!

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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You read the books. You went to therapy. You journaled, processed, grew, and did everything the personal development world told you to do. 

And something is still missing. Not because the work was wrong. Because there is a question underneath all of it that none of it could answer. 

Am I actually known by something larger than all of this? 

This episode is for the woman who has tried everything available and still feels like one piece is not quite in place. 

What changed when the Bible stopped being something she circled from a distance and became something she actually opened. 

And what it says about who she is that nothing else could tell her.

Here is the free guide mentioned on today's episode: The Story She Keeps Telling Herself. It is a truth-and-lie finder for the woman who is ready to stop believing everything the middle has told her about who she is and who she will become. My gift to you!

Support the show

Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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There is a Japanese art form called kintsugi. When pottery breaks, the artist repairs it with gold. The cracks do not get hidden. They become the most luminous part of the whole piece. 

What if God works the same way in your story? What if the chapters you have been trying to get past are actually the chapters He has been filling with something that makes them the most beautiful part of what He is building? 

This episode is a slow and honest look at the gold thread running through your life. Even the chapters that felt like detours. Even the ones you would rewrite if you could. Nothing was wasted. And the story He is telling through your life is more beautiful than you can see from where you are standing right now.

Here is the free guide mentioned on today's episode: The Story She Keeps Telling Herself.   A truth and Lie Finder for the woman who is ready to stop believing everything the middle has told her about who she is. My gift to you.

Support the show

Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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Twenty years. Thousands of girls. And one thing that has never changed: the moment a girl decides she doesn't matter is the moment the world loses something it cannot afford to lose. 

This episode is for every woman who remembers being that girl. And for every parent, mentor, or educator who has one in front of them right now. 

Tennille Martinez opens up about what she has watched happen to girls in classrooms during her career, what she wished someone had said to her at twelve, and why she built Her Story Begins — a literary and identity experience that gives girls what the curriculum never could. 

If you have a daughter, a niece, a student, or a girl in your community who is disappearing quietly into someone else's idea of who she should be, this episode is for you both.

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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I deleted messages on WhatsApp. More than once. And every time I did, I restarted the clock on my own healing without realizing it. 

If you have ever reached back for something God already moved, if you have ever stood in a room with tears running down your face while worship music played and wondered why it was not getting easier, this episode is for you. 

This is what real healing actually looked like for me. Messy and circular and full of grace I did not earn. And what I found in Isaiah 30 on the night I finally stopped running from the truth.

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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I was angry at God for years. And the honest truth is that most of my anger was built on a version of Him I had never actually taken the time to know.

I had heard about Him. I had sat in rooms where people talked about Him. I had consumed the content, the books, the sermons. But I had never done the work of sitting with His word myself, letting the Holy Spirit correct me, letting the full story of who He is get past my arms-crossed, already-decided heart.

This episode is for the woman who is tired, skeptical, or quietly furious and does not fully understand why. We are talking about secondhand faith, why it always produces doubt, what the enemy does with our unanswered questions, and what transformation actually looked like when I finally stopped managing my pain and handed it over.

You don't have the full story yet. Neither did I. But it changed everything when I finally started reading it.

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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I was sitting on the couch with my mom, three episodes deep into The Testaments on Hulu, when something came out of me before I knew I was going to say it.

That is not the God I know.

And I have not been able to stop thinking about it since.

In this episode, I am getting into all of it. Margaret Atwood and why her storytelling stopped me cold in The Handmaid's Tale and pulled me straight into The Testaments. 

I watched The Handmaid's Tale the first time as a woman who knew of God. I am watching The Testaments as a woman who has actually met Him. 

And the difference between those two watches is the difference between recognizing a counterfeit and not knowing what was missing.

If you believe in God but are still figuring out what He is actually like, this one is for you. If you have watched The Testaments and felt something you could not name, this one is for you. 

If you have ever been in a room where someone used the Bible to keep a woman in her place, and something in you said that is not right, this one is especially for you.

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Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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Have you ever been in a hard week and needed to know things were going to be okay?

This Holy Week, I found myself in a hospital waiting room. I had been avoiding going to the doctor for weeks because I was too busy, too scared of what sitting still might force me to face. 

Everything was going to be okay. Even if it was not, everything was going to be okay.

But the peace came before the results. And that is what this episode is about.

This Holy Week Selah is for the woman who is in a hard week right now. 

• Who is waiting for results she cannot control. 
• Who is being asked to trust God in a season that does not look the way she hoped.
•  Who needs to know that the One who rode into Jerusalem knowing what was coming is riding into her week with her, too.

In this episode, we talk about:

•  What Holy Week really means for the woman in the middle of a hard chapter

•  Why trusting God does not mean pretending the hard thing is not hard

•  What Holy Saturday is and why most of us are living in it right now

•  The peace that comes before the results

•  Why Sunday is coming even when Friday feels permanent

Support the show

Enjoyed this episode? There's more waiting for you on Substack. Longer thoughts, quieter moments, and a community of women who get it. Come find us.

If this episode stirred something in you, grab the free guide: I Thought I Would Be Further By Now: 5 Signs You Are Trying to Finish a Story God Is Still Writing. It is a gentle mirror for the woman who is still in the middle. My gift to you!

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