In this episode, Monique sits with Dr. Annu Goel, whose life and medical career have been shaped by a deep commitment to service and community. Alongside her husband, Dr. Goel began practicing medicine in underserved communities at a Navajo reservation and in several countries abroad. The returned to the US to start a family, but returned to international practice after their first child was born. Together they worked on the reservation and in Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Vietnam, building meaningful community with the people they served.

Just as her husband accepted what seemed like the perfect role with the CDC while they were still living overseas, they learned he had a brain tumor. After his passing, Dr. Goel continues to practice pediatric medicine and raise her children, grounded in gratitude for the communities she serves and the shared humanity that sustains her. This episode reflects on grief, calling, and the strength found in community when life unfolds differently than planned.

Before history made room for applause, a fifteen year old girl made room for courage.

In this solo episode, host Monique James tells the story of Claudette Colvin, a teenager whose refusal to stand on a Montgomery bus helped change the law of the land, even as her name nearly disappeared from the record. This is a story about unseen bravery, the cost of doing the right thing too early, and the quiet power of staying seated when the world expects you to move.

In this episode, we sit down with Victoria Wynder to share a powerful story of faith, waiting, and perseverance. From a lifelong desire to become a mother to years of infertility, endometriosis, and PCOS, Victoria reflects on the emotional weight of unanswered prayers and prolonged uncertainty.

As she leaned on faith, community, and self-care, Victoria prepared to consider fertility treatments — only to receive an unexpected miracle. With honesty and vulnerability, she shares her fears, her hope, and the trust required to keep believing in the in between. This episode is a reminder that even long seasons of waiting can still lead to promise.

In this episode of the Unbreakable Her Podcast, I sit down with my mother, Leslie Sterling, to explore the heart of her life’s work. With more than three decades in the health and human services field, she has devoted herself to caring for people in moments of need, vulnerability, and transition.

What makes her story especially powerful is not just what she’s done, but where it comes from. She did not experience consistent love during the first five years of her life, yet somehow grew into a woman who leads with deep compassion, patience, and care for others.

This conversation centers on how love can be formed without a blueprint, how service can become a calling, and how giving to others can be both a gift and a healing. This episode is a reflection on resilience, empathy, and the strength of a woman who chooses to love anyway.

This episode is a love letter. I’m sharing the stories of how I met my three closest friends—Quitaya (Tay), Chavella (Vel), and Alicia (Swiss)—and how each of them became strength for me during the hardest season of my life: the loss of my grandmother.

There are no guests today, just me reflecting on friendship, and the gift these women are to me. The episode isn’t about telling their detailed stories, but about honoring who they are and celebrating how they always show up for me.

This is about borrowed strength, shared silence, and the women who held space for me when I didn’t have the strength to hold myself.

This episode is a love letter. I’m sharing the stories of how I met my three closest friends—Quitaya (Tay), Chavella (Vel), and Alicia (Swiss)—and how each of them became strength for me during the hardest season of my life: the loss of my grandmother.

There are no guests today, just me reflecting on friendship, and the gift these women are to me. The episode isn’t about telling their detailed stories, but about honoring who they are and celebrating how they always show up for me.

This is about borrowed strength, shared silence, and the women who held space for me when I didn’t have the strength to hold myself.

In this episode, we sit down with Kenderlyn Turner as she shares the journey that shifted everything. For nearly a year, she lived with migraines, memory lapses, and overwhelming exhaustion — symptoms she chalked up to motherhood and the nonstop pace of raising three small children. Like so many women, she kept pushing through what she assumed was normal.

But her body was telling a different story. And when her symptoms intensified, her husband pushed for deeper answers, urging neurologists to look beyond the surface. What they uncovered — fluid accumulating in her brain — brought both relief and fear. Relief in finally having an explanation, and fear in knowing surgery was the only way forward.

Kenderlyn opens up about the emotional toll, the moments she felt unseen, and the courage it took to face a diagnosis that demanded immediate action. Now on the other side of surgery, she is learning new rhythms, honoring her limits, and choosing gratitude for the gift of being here with her family.

Here to share her story, her strength, her triumph, we welcome this week’s guest, Kenderlyn Turner.

In this episode, Monique opens up about the quiet and complicated place where gratitude meets grief.

She never imagined she’d become a mother, but life had other plans. After a beautiful first pregnancy came an unexpected loss — not of a child, but of choice. The ability to try again was taken from her, leaving a space she didn’t know she’d one day ache to fill.

Through honesty and reflection, Monique shares what it feels like to live between what is and what might have been — how she’s learned to honor the twinge that still shows up, to find peace in the present, and to give thanks even when her heart still remembers what was lost.

This is her story of gratitude and grief, loss and love, and the quiet triumph of choosing joy anyway.

Her story. Her strength. Her triumph.

In this episode, we sit down with Joniqua Combs, a woman whose journey through infertility and child loss redefined her understanding of faith, hope, and perseverance. After four miscarriages and the heartbreaking loss of a baby shortly after birth, she found the courage to keep believing that motherhood was still possible.

In this episode, we sit down with Kelly — a survivor whose story is one of endurance and strength. After years of emotional abuse and one violent turning point, she chose herself. She opens up about the moments that tested her spirit, the silence that kept her bound, and the courage it took to finally break free. Her journey is a reminder that it’s possible to rebuild and rise — still unbroken.