November 4, 2025 • 37 mins
A headline asked whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing—and it landed because so many women are done letting public romance define their worth. I take you from “boyfriend land” and early mommy blogging to a new center of gravity where sovereignty, safety, and self-respect lead. As a Gen X Black woman who grew up in church culture, married young, and lived the trad-wife script, I’ve seen how the internet once rewarded hard launches and identity-by-relationship. Now, younger women are choosing privacy, soft launches, and lives not anchored to men. That isn’t cynicism; it’s clarity.
We dig into why Gen Z calls relationships a brand risk, the rise of “aura,” and how heterofatalism names the real fatigue of cishet dating. I share why I posted the back of my boyfriend’s head, what protecting our adult kids online looks like, and how choosing to share less can reflect more power. We also talk data: why single women often age happier and wealthier, why men’s outcomes improve with marriage, and how that asymmetry shapes whether marriage, partnership, or a private bond makes sense. The theme running through it all is agency—love as a choice, not a rescue plan.
You’ll hear what a sovereign relationship feels like in practice: two full lives, mutual respect, effort and consistency without codependence. We celebrate friendship, community, and mothering as real sites of intimacy, and we reject manipulative “get-his-money” strategies that mirror the worst of patriarchy. Share your joy loudly or guard it quietly—either way, let the center be you. If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your take: do you hard launch, soft launch, or keep love off the grid?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
So the other day I saw the British Vogue article is
having a boyfriend embarrassing?
And I saw it on my Instagramstory, so I reshared it to my
stories.
And I wrote, Low key, it is alittle embarrassing, but my
boyfriend is the salt of the MFin Earth, and he is one of the
best humans I've ever met, soI'll keep him.
Even before I read that article,I have noticed that a lot more
(00:26):
women on the internet aresharing their boyfriends with
like the back of their head,which is literally exactly what
I did.
Actually, that was my softlaunch post I put on Instagram,
which I'll post here, was just apicture of me holding the back
of his head.
But our first date was like thisepic whole first weekend because
(00:46):
we had been, I call it Mr.
Texas Online because he isreally far away, obviously lives
in Texas.
Our first date was like a wholeweekend he planned for us in
Detroit, which was really,really fun.
So I had been posting all weekon all my Instagram stories like
what we were doing and where wewere going and how much fun it
was.
And I posted him with a pictureon my stories of just his head
with like an emoji.
(01:08):
And one of my guy friends waslike, There is no way I would be
happy with that.
Now, let me say one of my guyfriends who wrote this, he is 30
years old right now, I thinkabout to be 31.
My boyfriend, by the way, is 56.
So there is a big generationaldifference between the guy who
wrote that and my actual man whodid not care at all whether I
(01:29):
put his head as an emoji orwhether I put his real face.
We do have some legitimatereasons why I'm not showing his
face.
It's partly because we are olderpeople with older grown kids,
and we don't really want ourkids all up in our business
because our kids are all onsocial media.
That's part of it.
But anyway, I just thought itwas so funny that one of my
younger guy friends would saythat like I would never let a
(01:50):
woman, I would never take awoman out on a whole day and
then have her post me as anemoji head, which is partly what
I want to talk about in today'sepisode, is having a boyfriend
embarrassing how it's differentfor generations for both men and
women.
It was a very viral article, andit's kind of setting up this
cultural moment.
I appreciated that she calledout.
And I think the reason why itwent viral is because women in
(02:11):
this generation, this youngergeneration, I'm Gen X, I'm 48.
Women in the younger generation,these millennials and like the
Gen Z age that are at the likedating, maybe I kind of want to
get married age.
For them, considering boyfriendsas kind of embarrassing is
honestly kind of a flat comingfrom your elder Gen X woman over
here.
But before we get into all that,let me just introduce myself
quickly.
I'm Grace Sandra, a writer,author, advocate, activist, mom,
(02:33):
etc.
And this is the Out Here Tryingto Survive podcast.
Please consider this a warm hugof solidarity from me to you.
I am rooting for black women.
It's made for black women and itcenters black women.
And if that's you or you want tolearn about that, welcome to
episode 34.
Yeah, so I want to talk aboutthis article.
Let me get my glasses on becauselike I said, I'm Gen X and I'm
going half blind.
Y'all, not me with the Bifalbecause I gotta look up like
(02:55):
this.
So in the article, she says thatif someone so much as says my
boyfriend on social media,they're muted.
I had never heard of that.
Again, I'm Gen X, but I knowthis was written for
millennialslash Gen Z women,probably more Gen Z than
millennial.
And I think that's fucking crazythat that would happen, but I
get it.
Just hear me out.
So I like that she talks aboutthis idea of boyfriend land, and
(03:17):
that is basically a world wherewomen's online identities
centered around the lives oftheir partners, a situation
rarely seen reversed.
And this is about the time wherewomen's identities were defined
by the relationship.
Now, if you're talking aboutwomen's identities being defined
by the relationship, that is me,baby.
I grew up Gen X at a time when,especially particularly for
(03:40):
those of us who grew up in thechurch or in evangelical culture
in general, we were taught thatwe need to get us a man.
As soon as you get a man, you'regonna be happy.
And then what you're gonna dowith that man is you're gonna
marry that man.
And then what you're gonna do isyou're gonna marry that man and
you're gonna live happily everafter.
And of course, you're gonna waituntil you marry him to have sex.
You're not gonna like sex beforethen.
But then once you get married,then you better become a whole
(04:00):
freaking a hoe for that man.
So I was kind of raised in thatgeneration of like, this is the
most celebrated thing you can dois become a wife.
And if you think about it, I wasborn in the 70s, so we're just
literally coming out of thatgeneration.
I mean, I think even after I wasborn, where women were just able
to like literally get their owncredit card and have their own
bank account and be able to buytheir own house and all of these
(04:21):
things that my mom's generationdefinitely didn't have.
I mean, consider that my mom wasborn in 1940.
My mom had me older and I'm 48.
She was born in 1940.
Women were not able to do any ofthat.
So my mom was definitely notteaching me, like, you are fine
on your own.
You can be whatever you wantwithout a man, you can do
whatever you want without a man.
That was not the little speechthat I was getting.
(04:43):
She was always talking aboutwhen you get married, Grace, and
when you get married.
So what did I do as I went andgot married at 22?
Because that is what I wastaught to do as a good Christian
girl.
And I honestly wasn't like thegreatest little Christian girl,
but that is one thing I didright, quote unquote, right.
You get my point.
Like women's identities weredefined by this boyfriend land.
(05:04):
And then when you get socialmedia taking off and people
having, you know, especially thewhole trad wives movement,
people having all of thiscontent about women being
married.
And then from there, one of myfavorite authors of all time,
Anne Lamont, wrote this bookcalled Operating Instructions.
And it was, as people later cameto call it, it was like the
first mommy blog.
(05:25):
And she really just goes intoall of her feelings about being
a mommy and all of this stuff.
Although she was not married,and then she later converted to
Christianity.
But anyway, mommy blogging was athing that started in the early
2000s that I fully partook in assoon as I had my first son in
2005.
So I started writing about myday-to-day life as a mom and
blogging all of these storiesabout my kids.
(05:45):
Thank God a lot of it is goneand not on the internet anymore.
It was really embarrassing.
But mommy blogging was a bigthing, and it was a space for
women to talk about what theirlife was like as traditional
wives.
And I was really heavily in thatspace.
There was this organizationcalled Blog Her, and Blog Her
like really celebrated women'svoices.
This was before TikTok.
This was really honestly just asInstagram was starting to kind
(06:08):
of become a thing.
The big thing back then was likeit went from my space to people
were blogging on Zanga,X-A-N-G-A, y'all remember Zanga?
And then it went from that toWordPress, and everybody had a
well, all the mommies who werewriting or wanting to share
their kind of trad wife liveswere mommy blogging.
And then that gave rise toInstagram and TikTok and all
(06:30):
that came later.
But during the whole mommyblogging phase, it just was
pretty much celebrated amongstwomen of my generation that,
like, that is what you weresupposed to do.
You were supposed to get marriedand you were supposed to have
babies and you were supposed tolive and celebrate in that.
It was, I feel like, seen as anideal that you were supposed to
thrive.
As a woman, you were supposed tothrive, especially in even
evangelical Christian circles.
(06:51):
You were supposed to thrive as awife and mom.
Because I was married from 22 tolike 36, and then I got married
again at 37, from like 37 to 42.
So I was married for like 20years combined.
I have no idea what theexperience was like for a lot of
Christian women who were waitingon that, who are like now my
age, who never got married, orwho got married very late.
(07:13):
But I have seen some of thecommentary about this,
particularly from older women,and apparently it was hell out
here for Gen X women who wereunmarried, particularly in
Christian spaces, to what it isnow, what it is now, what a
difference.
So now we got youngergenerations, particularly Gen Z,
who are seeing launching aboyfriend as cringe, and on top
(07:37):
of all that, as a threat totheir personal brand.
And I am not mad at them, y'all.
I am not mad at them.
They are seeing being single asa flex.
She says here, they want theprize and celebration of
partnership, but understand thenorminess of it.
I don't understand what thatmeans, to be honest with you,
the norminess.
Not my old Gen X ass having tolook up a word and an article
(07:59):
written for Gen Z.
Norminess.
Meaning, Lord, okay, it's awhole thing, y'all.
Norminess is not a standardEnglish word, but it likely
refers to the state or qualityof being a normy, N-O-R-M-I-E, a
slang term for a normal personwho conforms to mainstream
tastes and habits.
A normy is often seen as someonewith unremarkable interests who
(08:20):
doesn't deviate from popularculture or opinion.
Damn.
It shows a lack ofdistinctiveness.
This term can imply a person hasno unique or counter-cultural
personality traits.
Okay, so what she's saying hereis that some of these women want
the prize and celebration ofpartnership, but they understand
the norminess of it, that theyare boring as hell, apparently.
(08:42):
In other words, in an era ofwidespread heterofatalism, women
don't want to be seen as beingall about their man, but they
also want the clout that comeswith becoming partnered.
Let's define heterofatalism too.
It is the belief thatheterosexual relationships are
doomed to fail due to inherentflaws, frustration with men's
dating behaviors, and apessimistic outlook on finding a
fulfilling partnership.
(09:03):
It stems from a sense ofdisappointment in dating where
efforts to form connections withmen are often met with
unsatisfactory outcomes, leadingto a feeling that all
relationships will end infailure and is particularly
associated with the experiencesof straight women frustrated
with contemporary heterosexualdating dynamics.
Okay, well, in that case, I'vebeen hetero fatal as fuck.
unknown (09:25):
As fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (09:27):
So then she goes on to share more about like how
women online are hiding theirrelationships that people don't
know whether ever with a man ornot with a man.
I feel like I've seen that a lotlately.
Or they'll just do somethingreally subtle, like the little
clink of the glasses, where youcan kind of see the man's hand,
which I have done before severaltimes, but that's only because I
was out here dating and I wasdating like two men, maybe three
men at a time, or or literallyjust dating one man for a month,
(09:50):
then dating a different man thenext month, and just really
trying to get to know men andrealizing when it wasn't a good
fit to move the fuck on.
And I'm not gonna post a pictureof every man I'm dating, but
like doing a little glass clinkdid not seem like that big of a
deal.
But anyway, I just think it'sinteresting because I wasn't
doing it because I thoughthaving a boyfriend was lame
because none of those men weremy boyfriend, those are just men
I allowed to take me out.
(10:11):
I thought this was so funny.
So on the delusional diariespodcast, Hallie and Jazz are
talking about whether having aboyfriend is quote unquote lame
now.
And one of them said, Why doeshaving a boyfriend feel
Republican?
I am dead.
I am dead.
And then somebody said,Boyfriends are out of style,
they won't come back in untilthey start acting right.
(10:33):
In essence, having a boyfriendtypically takes hits on a
woman's aura.
So for all of you other gen Xfolks, aura is this new thing
that before the word was Riz.
My son, who's 16, one of hisfriends told me the other day
that aura was on its way out,too.
But aura is apparently the newRiz.
How person is, and I don't evenfully know how to explain it,
but this is what the young folksare saying, right?
(10:55):
The women nowadays are like, ifyou have aura, like if you find,
if you cue, if you are it girl,if you think you're all that,
and then you get a man like youraura is reduced.
Okay, girlies.
Okay.
I did think this was veryinteresting because this also
fits me.
It says, even partnered womenwill lament about men and
heterosexuality, partly insolidarity with other women, but
(11:16):
also because it is now.
I don't know where the rest ofthat sentence went.
I must have cut it off in myscreenshot.
It says, being partnered doesn'taffirm your womanhood anymore.
It is now no longer consideredan achievement, and if anything,
it's become more of a flex tojust pronounce yourself single.
And as straight women, we'reconfronting something that every
other sexuality has had tocontend with, which is a
(11:37):
politicization of our identity.
I love that she said, however,as traditional roles are
starting to crumble, maybe weare being forced to reevaluate
our blind allegiance toheterosexuality.
And that I think is an amazingthing.
I love that for this generation.
I love that they're starting tosay, I don't have to be with a
man.
I literally don't have to.
I also love that the articlepoints out that there's
obviously no shame in findinglove or falling in love or
(11:59):
celebrating your joy.
As long as we are openlyrethinking heteronormativity,
which is something I am sopassionate about, particularly
as an LGBTQIA plus ally.
And I also love that she talksabout how single women now are
romanticizing their single life.
And if you look on YouTube, ifyou just type in the word
romanticizing, I mean, I think Ieven have a podcast title with
romanticizing in the podcasttitle.
(12:21):
I love that women are talkingabout their soft girl era.
You know, I have a whole systemthat I built, which by the way
is available on my stand store.
It's called the soft girlsurvival system to figure out
how to literally, literallysurvive all the things that
we're going through withoutfeeling like you need to depend
on a man.
It's really not about the manaspect, but more about like how
do you find what you need withinyourself?
How do you become the soft girlthat you need to be?
(12:43):
And not for the purpose offinding a man, but so that you
can be the best version of you.
And I love that she says this isa nail in the coffin of a
centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefited
men to begin with.
YouTube video on this, and Iwill link it in the comments,
about an article that came out afew years ago that got big, like
way bigger than this one.
(13:04):
It went viral, viral, viral.
Talked about this idea thatbasically heteronormativity and
getting married is notbenefiting women overall.
It talked about the idea of howthe most dangerous man in a
woman's life is usuallytypically her boyfriend, fiance,
or husband.
Shortly after that, it's herfather or brother.
The article talked about howmultiple, multiple studies have
(13:26):
shown that when a woman getsolder as she's aging, that she
is so much more likely to behappy and content if she's not
married.
She's wealthier, she has betterrelationships with her kids, she
has more hobbies, she's readingmore, she has more animals,
animals that she loves, hencethe cat lady thing, that women
really are starting to comealive as they get older and
(13:47):
realize they do not need a manbecause now we can have our own
bank accounts and we can haveour own homes and we can have
our own careers, and we're oldernow.
Our kids are off and we canstill pursue meaningful
connections with them andrestore those connections
without someone coming in andsabotaging them.
And the article goes in greatdepth about how men do not have
the same outcomes.
If a man is single as he getsolder, he is fatter in an
(14:11):
unhealthy way, he is not makingas much money, he's not as
fulfilled, he's usually verylonely, he's not doing social
things, he's typically notpursuing his kids, he's not
going to the doctors like heshould be, he's not doing his
checkups, so he's dying younger.
And sometimes, if they're lonelyenough, they will unalive
themselves and they don't haveas many friends and they're not
pursuing therapy, so they'reunaliving themselves at a much
(14:33):
greater rate than women.
And a lot of times people attestthat to something being wrong
with women, or somehow women aresomehow making these men unalive
themselves.
It's no, it's because women aregoing to therapy and they're
dealing with their stuff andthey're co-communing.
We're communing with ourgirlfriends and we're creating
community and we're making surethat we're repairing and
restoring the relationship withour children or just having good
(14:53):
relationships with our childrenin general.
And men are unaliving themselvesbecause they're not doing those
critical things that women do aswe age.
And so, men, if they are single,as they get older, they are
unhappier.
And if they get married, all ofthose outcomes get better.
And so, what that means is thatstudies have now proven what
women have been like literallygrowing towards for these last
(15:14):
20 or 30 years of things havebeen evolving and the cultural
conversation is shifting sodramatically, is women are
realizing, like, oh yeah, thesestudies are true.
We are just happier withouty'all.
We are literally just happywithout y'all.
And so many of y'all are soviolent in so many ways that
it's literally not benefiting usto be with you.
And so these younger generationsare like, not only that, but
it's embarrassing.
Y'all are embarrassing, fullyembarrassing.
(15:36):
And I have been on theseinternet streets a low-key Miss
Andrus, which I believe is justa response to misogyny.
Because we still don't have thepower.
We still making less than y'all,and we still getting unalive by
y'all and beaten by y'all andtreated abhorribly by y'all in
so many different ways.
So I'm not feeling too bad aboutmy little low-key Miss Andry.
But I'm a feminist and awomanist, and I have been out
here wanting liberation theologyfor all my sisters.
(15:59):
For real.
That's why my entire platformcenters black womanhood.
Why I'm really committed toadvocating for black women in
every way possible till the dayI'm not here no more.
Even then, my spirit will liveon.
But here's where it getspersonal, reflective, and
nuanced.
Because behold and low, lo andbehold, like Jesse Wu says, I
watched so much Jesse Wu.
I talk like her now.
Behold and low, lo and behold,I'm in a relationship.
(16:19):
Like I said when we first gottogether, I soft launched with a
picture with the back of hishead.
I was not in any wayembarrassed.
Like I said, that was kind ofmore logistical because of our
situation with our children.
We are both older.
Like I said, I'm 48 and he's 56.
So we're not dabbling in allthese kind of weird relationship
dynamics anymore.
We've both been married before.
(16:40):
We're more mature.
We're just trying to figure outwhat is the best way to have a
relationship right now at thiscurrent trajectory and how to
share or not share that online.
And trust me, we are both reallyexcited to share each other when
the time is right.
At the same time, y'all, I'm oldas dirt, and I think I've earned
the right.
Not that I need to earn it, butI've definitely earned the right
(17:01):
to love quietly and not have toput my relationship all out
there.
Because I definitely have in thepast.
And also for me, sharing lessright now, I'm older and more
mature, so I'm not centeringthis man in my life the way I
have previously.
So, in some ways, me sharingless is a reflection of what I
want for the younger girlies andwhat the younger girlies are
already getting a hold of.
(17:22):
It's like these men shouldn't becentered in our lives anyway.
They should not be the center,and our whole life revolves
around them.
Now it is something different ifthere's a young couple or a
married couple or even an oldercouple who like they want to
make content together, they wantto partner together, that's
fine.
You know, or they're makingfamily content or mom content,
trad wife content, that'stotally fine.
I think that maybe my firstmarriage when I first started
(17:43):
mommy blogging and sharing somuch about my marriage, and I
was sharing the good parts andthe bad parts because I wanted
to be vulnerable.
Like, this is not perfect.
And I've been taught thatgetting married was so much like
the answer to all my problems,and my first marriage was so
imperfect and so unhealthy.
Our conflict was so unhealthy.
There was things about me thatwas so unhealthy.
(18:04):
There was stuff about him thatwas so unhealthy, y'all.
Like it was just unhealthy asfuck.
And I just look back at that andI was sharing so much of our
marriage, good and bad.
That's one thing I can say.
I was sharing good and bad.
I've always done pretty wellonline and sharing the good and
the bad.
People get real happy stuff fromme, and you're gonna get the
ugly stuff too.
I've never really just beenlike, look at my big, beautiful,
(18:25):
happy life.
And I've never been like, lookat this misery I'm in only.
Because I definitely have hadtimes where I've been like, I'm
in misery, y'all.
I'm in fucking misery.
Someone save me from my misery.
But I do wonder if my firstmarriage, how much I shared
online, was maybe performativebecause I thought this is who I
have to be.
I have to be a wife, I have tobe a mom.
(18:47):
I have to be a traditional wifein some way.
Like there was a whole timewhere I never showed cleavage
online, which some of y'allmight not believe because my
titties be all on these internetstreets everywhere now.
I used to not think that waswhat I should do as a
traditional wife.
I didn't even get my nosepierced for a long time because
I was so heavily involved inevangelical Christian culture
and I wanted it, but I was solike brainwashed to believe that
(19:09):
as a traditional Christian wife,I shouldn't ever show like a
little tip of my cleavage, norhave my nose pierced.
I mean, it was crazy, y'all.
And no, we were not Mormon.
We were evangelical Christiangoing to like Baptist churches
and then like anon-denominational vineyard y
kind of church.
We went to one of those.
So for where I'm at now, mesharing more privately or
sharing less of our relationshipis more about power.
(19:30):
It's not about shame or beingembarrassed by having a
boyfriend.
It's more about like, wow, I'mreally firmly standing in my
power now.
I know that this relationshipdoesn't define me.
If you heard my previousepisode, I talked a lot about
how I got to a place where Ifully was fine if I never had a
man for the rest of my wholegoddamn life.
I finally got to the point whereI'm like, I don't need this or
want this at all.
(19:51):
Right before I met him.
And I finally got to a placewhere I was like, yeah, if I
ever get with anyone, like thisrelationship is going to be so
fucking special.
It's going to be so special tome in so many ways.
That's what it is.
So when I don't share now, it'snot from shame.
It's more from, yeah, I just amreally aware that this is not my
(20:13):
savior.
It's not something that I haveto have in any way.
It's just something that I wantto have.
I like having him around.
I don't need him to be around.
You know what I'm saying?
And also, I think as a Gen Xwoman who's been divorced twice,
me and him both have beendivorced and have kids, things
just feel, I think, a little bitmore sacred.
Now, if any younger ladies, Iknow my podcast audience is
(20:33):
typically 35 women and up, buteven for those of you who are 35
and never been married before, Ido want to say as an older lady
out here in these dating streetsthat you do go to a point where
it feels like you know more ofwho you are, and it really is a
better place to love from.
And cishat men, y'all, theydon't tend to change, they don't
tend to change.
Like I said, they're not doingtheir work.
(20:55):
So who they are when they areolder is who they are.
Like I said, my man is 56.
Who he is is who he is.
So when I chose him, I waschoosing him.
I'm not, there is no potentialwhen you're dating at this age.
You're not dating for potential.
These men are who they are.
He is who he motherfucking is.
So when I chose him, I'm like,okay, are you fully content with
(21:16):
who he is right now today?
If he never changes anotherthing, are you content with this
man?
And vice versa.
You know, just a little note tomy younger women friends who are
dating.
When you're a little bit older,things are a little bit more
clearly.
I actually think this is a greattime to start a new
relationship, is when you'remuch, much, much older.
(21:38):
I think it's a great time tomove forward in a way that's a
little bit more serious, butmaybe not even marriage.
That's not for everyone.
And as someone who's alreadytried marriage twice, oh it's
challenging to thinking aboutdoing something like that again.
It really is.
I will say that I'm someonewho's always, in the past couple
years, said, I'll never getmarried again.
(22:00):
I only ever want to have like along-term partnership.
Maybe just like a guy I'mhanging out with every five or
seven years or so.
I don't know.
I didn't really have a plan likethat, but I really wanted to
have like a companion.
Like I mentioned in my lastepisode, I wanted to have
ongoing sex.
I wanted to have a companion.
I wanted to have like a guy inmy life who I felt like was
(22:20):
really special, who found mespecial, and just kind of relax
into that.
Probably again, because of mygeneration and being Gen X and
then being married for 20 yearsof my adult life, I kind of
thought like that was moreideal.
And when I finally woke up andrealized, like, that is not an
ideal girl.
Like, what are you talkingabout?
Now I'm with someone who doesactually want to get married
again.
(22:41):
I have told him before, like,wow, this is not something I
ever thought about.
But again, we're pretty new, soit's pretty new for that kind of
conversation.
But it is interesting becauseour relationship does kind of
prove the statistics that mentypically do want to get married
again, and men typically do getmarried again immediately,
almost immediately afterdivorce, typically don't wait
long to get married again.
(23:01):
Whereas women nowadays are like,yeah, this is just not really a
thing that I feel like I need todo in any way.
Don't really need to legallymake this happen, don't really
need to put our financestogether, don't really need to
change up our life insurancepolicies and all these things
that are honestly reallycomplicated, including changing
my name again.
You know, after doing that shittwice, it's frustrating.
(23:23):
So, what do y'all think?
Do you think that women shouldbe shamed for hard launching
their boyfriends, losingfollowers, being muted on social
media?
I actually personally thinkthat's crazy.
I don't think that any womanshould be shamed like that.
I think what I want to do as anolder woman is I want to help
younger women realize everythingy'all are thinking about how
potentially dangerous it is toassociate yourself with a cishat
(23:46):
man.
Everything that y'all arefearing, all of the exhaustion
that you feel from dating, whichalmost every single woman I
know, including myself, has beenjust exhausted on dating in
general because the dating poolis so poisoned with larva and
maggots, liars and abusers andcheaters, emotionally violent
men.
(24:06):
I get the fatigue like fully.
The one thing that I like aboutthe fatigue that young women are
experiencing like the fullramifications of the patriarchy
and the full ramifications of alot of men who have embraced
misogyny.
What I like about that is thatthey're saying, yeah, this
heteronormativity shit, likethis is bullshit.
The idea that I should getmarried to be happy, like it's
(24:28):
bullshit.
I love that they're gettingthere.
I love that they're saying thesethings.
I love that there's even some ofthis, like maybe cultural
regression, because honestly,like sometimes shit has to hit
rock bottom for everybody towake up and be like, let's do
things differently.
And this hetero fatalism, likethe idea that men ultimately
will disappoint you, and theidea that like public enthusiasm
for a relationship just ingeneral, that that feels like
(24:51):
naive or cringy.
I think that's part of thegrowing pains.
Both can exist.
This is where nuance comes in.
Both can exist because I I feltall of that.
I felt hetero fatal as fuck,like I said.
But then I also got to a pointwhere I'm like, I'm not going to
close the door on something thatcould still be beautiful for me
personally, but I realize I justdon't need it anymore.
(25:12):
But I also, you know, I hadenough years of dating where I
was just like, this shit is thisis unbearable.
I can't keep living like this.
And as a matter of fact, Iwasn't dating.
I decided not to date.
Like I said in my last episode,listen to it if you haven't yet,
that I decided not to dateanymore at all.
I did not meet my man right nowon a dating app or trying to
look for him or anything likethat.
He kept seeing my stuff come upon his Facebook.
(25:33):
He said that my stories keptpopping up, and then he reached
out to me.
I told him right away, I'm notinterested.
Sorry.
And then he like reached outagain the next week, and I was
like, Yeah, you know, you doseem nice, but no.
And then he like reached outagain the next week.
I mean, the whole process of himreaching out to me before I
finally agreed to even a phonecall.
Actually, I didn't agree to aphone call.
I finally sent him a voice clip.
(25:53):
It was like three weeks, but hereached out to me, I don't know
how many times, but like quite afew times.
And he wasn't being rude oroverly aggressive.
I wasn't ever offended becausehe was being so polite and
respectful in his discourse.
But I was just like, yeah, it'snot happening, bro.
This is literally not happening.
And I think what he got that hestill appreciates about me is he
(26:13):
knew that my life was notanchored in men and would never
be anchored in him.
That I have a big, full lifefull of my children, my
girlfriends, my career, myaspirations, my desire to even
grow this podcast.
Like he knows I have otherthings in life that anchor me
and that my life is centeredaround, and that he was never
going to be directly in thecenter of it.
You know, and as a side note, Ithink men appreciate that as
(26:34):
much as women appreciate that.
I love that he got a lot of shitgoing on in his life.
He has so many things going onin his life that I'm intrigued
by, that I'm interested in, thatI respect, that I appreciate,
that I'm in awe of.
Just all the things that he doesand all the things he thinks
about and all the things that heis and all of what he's done in
his life, I'm like, that'sfucking cool, bro.
Like, that's really fuckingcool.
I love all this stuff about you.
(26:54):
And I love that his life is alsonot centered around me.
As soon as people startcentering their whole lives
around each other, like then itjust turns into a big
codependent ball, which is neverhealthy anyway.
So I love that all these youngwomen are like, we are never
going to be a codependent ballwith y'all.
We are going to have our ownfull lives.
We're gonna have our cats andour books and our friends and
our yoga and our trips, our solotrips to Japan and our girls'
trips to Miami, etc.
(27:15):
What I love about this articleagain is that it hopefully
releases the shame.
What I want young women to knowis that the fairy tales and the
sitcoms, growing pains, and allthese things that I was raised
with, that all of that are nottrue in the way it was presented
to us.
But that real, actual, true loveis possible and it doesn't have
to be through a man.
(27:36):
I experienced, and I've saidthis so many times, and I want
to keep harping on it.
I have really beautiful girlfriendship.
I have three right now that arereally strong and really
beautiful in my inner circle,and we are all in love with each
other.
We're all heterosexual women.
Actually, no, that's not true.
One of them is homosexual, butshe got her own little
girlfriend.
Like, we're we are not in lovewith each other in a romantic
(27:57):
way, but we love each other asgirlfriends.
My girlfriends are such animportant part of my love life.
You know what I mean?
As a straight person, like theyare such an important part of
how I receive intimacy in thisworld and how I give intimacy in
this world.
And it is fully possible to findjoy and fulfillment in that.
For me, I'm also a woman withthree children, and I also love
(28:17):
my relationships with mychildren, and I will do anything
for them until the day I die,will pursue these children, will
always pursue them, will alwayslove them.
I always want them to be in mylife.
They will always be a big partof how I love and receive and
give community and receivecommunity.
As a Gen Xer, I have come tounderstand marriage is not a
part of my survival plan, nordoes it have to be.
(28:40):
And y'all, we don't have to belike this fucking idiot, Shira
Seven.
Like, I remember for a while shewas really popular because she
was talking about how, okay,well, if you're gonna have a man
in your life, then use him formoney.
Y'all, don't be that girl.
Do not be that girl.
And she got droves and droves ofwomen on her platform, mostly
Gen Z millennial women, becausethese women are like, well, fuck
(29:03):
it.
Like, if we're gonna have men inour lives, like we might as well
use them for money.
The reason why I always hatedwhat she was doing is because it
was just a woman basicallyteaching other women to do evil
shit.
Now, I talked about Miss Andry.
It is one thing to be in arelationship with someone that
is reciprocal and ask for moneyfor help or or whatever, or just
you know, ask your boyfriend,like, what's crazy is I ain't
(29:24):
never asked this man for nomoney.
He'd just be sending it to me.
Like, hey, here, go have fun.
I took my kids to have abirthday party.
He sent me money.
When me and my girl went toComic-Con over in the Detroit
area, he sent me money.
He was like, Hey, this is soy'all can have a little fun.
He just sends me money.
I don't ever have to ask.
But I ain't shaming women thatdo ask, but that's my point.
When you're asking for money ina relationship and it's
(29:45):
reciprocal and it's not for thepurpose of using someone, but
what Shira Seven was teachingwomen like, okay, well, we hate
men anyway, so if we're gonnahave them in our lives, let's
just use them for money, andreally teaching women to be
really, really manipulative,dishonest, Really horrible
people.
And I had a friend, she's not myfriend no more.
And this is a big reason whybecause she was a big Shira
(30:06):
Seven fan and she was doing allof these things just to use men.
I think she still is, I don'tknow.
But I was just like, this isreally disgusting behavior.
And I do understand because hergen she was younger than me.
I think she is a wholegeneration different than me.
I think she's like 36 or 37 now.
I'm not sure.
So she's probably a millennial.
Basically is right in line witheverything this article said.
(30:26):
And for her, it's like, why thehell not?
And for me, it was like, becauseyou're being a horrible person.
Don't be a dishonest, horribleperson.
We don't need to do that, y'all.
We don't need to do that.
I personally, as a woman, as ahuman, am never going to just
try to be a horrible, dishonest,mean, unkind person for shits
(30:46):
and giggles.
And I'm never going to teach mychildren to be mean, horrible,
dishonest, unkind people forshits and giggles.
And so the whole Shira Sevenmovement, I'm like, you took
something that is really ahealthy thing, teaching women
that they don't need a man tosurvive and they can be truly
independent and truly happy andpeaceful person.
You took that such a beautifulthing and then added on this
(31:07):
whole element, but like also bea bitch in a bad way.
Because you can be a bitch, youcan be a bad bitch in a good
way.
Or you can put all of thatdissonance, resistance into
something that really matters,like fighting for social justice
or or or or feeding hungry kidsor something that's worth a
damn, but using men for money?
How unoriginal.
(31:28):
And also, you really want to beas evil as men who just use
women for sex and then dump themon the side of the road
literally and figuratively.
Ew.
Oh, I'm so disgusted.
Y'all, if you know me and youknow my platform, I don't really
like hating on women for almostanything, but this.
Please don't be a dumbass, basicass, original ass bitch and just
(31:50):
use men for money.
Like, please.
There's so many more ways we canget money nowadays.
Besides becoming evil.
That's not an option.
That should not be an option.
The new flex isn't being singleor partnered per se, it's being
sovereign.
There is no need to broadcastyour relationship to validate
your life.
But if you want to share yourrelationship, if it makes you
(32:12):
happy, do that.
Please don't reject love just toprove your independence.
If love finds you, embrace it,baby girl, embrace it.
Nowadays, after all these years,women are finally allowed to
love on their own terms.
We are allowed to love quietly,privately, or even loudly, with
maybe some chagrin, but on ourown terms.
(32:34):
So, no, my conclusion is havinga boyfriend is not embarrassing,
fully.
Maybe somewhat, a little bit,depending on who the audience
is.
But as a grown-ass woman, Idon't give a fuck.
But maybe for the first time,beautifully, it's just not a
headline anymore.
I hope that most of my listenerswill be like, oh, Grace has a
boyfriend.
I hope he's good to her.
I hope he loves her.
Good for her.
But not like, oh my God, Gracefinally has a good boyfriend.
(32:57):
She finally got a man who lovesher.
Oh my god, her whole life mustbe amazing.
Which is where we were 20 yearsago.
And I thank God we are not thereanymore.
So did y'all read the article?
I'm wondering what you guysthought of the article.
Do you have a boyfriend?
Do you find it embarrassing?
And also, if you answer that,what generation are you in?
I'd like to know.
At the end of the day, y'all, Ireally do believe in manifesting
(33:18):
our future and our destiny andwhat we want.
And what I have been telling theuniverse and God that I want is
a peace-filled life with peoplearound me who are safe, who love
me well, who I love, who Ienjoy, who really enjoy me and
love me for who I am.
And that could be girlfriends,that could be my children, that
could be other friends andcolleagues I meet along the way.
(33:39):
It could be a man, it could be aman we're just friends, it could
be a man who I'm just sexualwith, and that's it.
It can be a man I'm romanticallywith, and we both friends, and
we sexual and we romantic andall of those things.
Like I've just been very open toexperiencing a peace-filled
life.
A peace-filled motherfuckinglife.
That's the kind of life I'vebeen trying to manifest.
(34:00):
And so the fact that this entirecalendar year, this entire
calendar year, I have beentrying to manifest the shit out
of everything.
I've been scripting, I've beenmeditating, I've been trying to
manifest a whole lot of shit.
And I haven't this calendar yearspecifically wrote in like I'm
trying to manifest a big,beautiful relationship because I
did that last year.
(34:20):
And as I said in my lastepisode, that really fell flat
on my face because I ended upkind of low-key falling in love
with a man who actually had agirlfriend the whole time and
was just hiding it from me.
And I ended up feeling reallyembarrassed and ashamed.
And I just felt like I'm donewith that being this big ass
goal in my life.
So when I think about you, Iwant you to really think about
what do you really want when itcomes to a boyfriend?
(34:41):
If you want one, do not beashamed of it.
If you don't, and you're like,yeah, I just really don't think
I want that.
I really don't think I do wantto be married, then y'all, then
don't be ashamed of that.
Then really try to manifest andput out in the world what you
really actually want.
What do you think will bring youthe most peace?
If you're a younger woman andyou're like, I still do want to
have kids, like despite the 4Bmovement and despite what women
(35:03):
are saying, like divorce yourex, not your ex, divorce your
husband, break up with yourboyfriend, etc.
I think there really has to be aplace of sovereignty, like I
said earlier, where we are fullyliving into what we want,
despite what the culture has.
But I am thankful that theculture has got us to a place
where we are questioning whathas been true before.
And I'm thankful that women ofmy generation are waking the
(35:25):
fuck up.
So yeah, I love my boyfriend.
He's really sweet.
Having had someone go out oftheir way the way that he has
tangibly, physically,emotionally, spiritually,
sexually, in every way to showme how much I mean to him.
If effort and consistency are areflection of how much someone
loves you and how much they careabout you, this man is winning
(35:47):
and winning and winning andwinning and winning in all of
those areas.
I feel so loved and so takencare of.
Just a sense of I have a reallygood person in my life, and
that's not something I havethought for many, many, many,
many, many years.
Many years.
(36:09):
So anyway.
And on that note of hopefulnessand non-embarrassment nor shame
about my new relationship, letme also say my content is never
gonna change.
I'm not gonna be a relationshipexpert.
I'm never gonna be on trying toteach women how to get a
boyfriend, how to get a man, howto keep a man, how to get
married.
I'm never gonna do that kind ofshit, y'all.
I'm still gonna always berooting for black women,
advocating for black women, andout here trying to do the most
(36:31):
to make sure that the mostvulnerable, marginalized
populations are able to surviveand thrive post-trauma and love
ourselves because we deserve it.
I do have a book called GraceActually Memoirs of Love, Faith,
Loss, and Black Womanhood.
And if you like reading and youlike personal stories and
memoirs, this is a book that youwill love.
It's very highly reviewed.
Everyone who's ever read it hastold me they loved it.
I think you'll like it too.
(36:52):
It's available on Amazon, bothhardcopy and Kindle.
Thank you so much if you made itthis far.
I appreciate you being here withme.
I know that you could beanywhere on these internet
streets.
So the fact that you're herewith me and all the way to the
end says something important.
So thank you so much for beinghere.
And hopefully, I will see you onthe next episode.
Bye.
So the other day I saw the British Vogue article is
having a boyfriend embarrassing?
And I saw it on my Instagramstory, so I reshared it to my
stories.
And I wrote, Low key, it is alittle embarrassing, but my
boyfriend is the salt of the MFin Earth, and he is one of the
best humans I've ever met, soI'll keep him.
Even before I read that article,I have noticed that a lot more
(00:26):
women on the internet aresharing their boyfriends with
like the back of their head,which is literally exactly what
I did.
Actually, that was my softlaunch post I put on Instagram,
which I'll post here, was just apicture of me holding the back
of his head.
But our first date was like thisepic whole first weekend because
(00:46):
we had been, I call it Mr.
Texas Online because he isreally far away, obviously lives
in Texas.
Our first date was like a wholeweekend he planned for us in
Detroit, which was really,really fun.
So I had been posting all weekon all my Instagram stories like
what we were doing and where wewere going and how much fun it
was.
And I posted him with a pictureon my stories of just his head
with like an emoji.
(01:08):
And one of my guy friends waslike, There is no way I would be
happy with that.
Now, let me say one of my guyfriends who wrote this, he is 30
years old right now, I thinkabout to be 31.
My boyfriend, by the way, is 56.
So there is a big generationaldifference between the guy who
wrote that and my actual man whodid not care at all whether I
(01:29):
put his head as an emoji orwhether I put his real face.
We do have some legitimatereasons why I'm not showing his
face.
It's partly because we are olderpeople with older grown kids,
and we don't really want ourkids all up in our business
because our kids are all onsocial media.
That's part of it.
But anyway, I just thought itwas so funny that one of my
younger guy friends would saythat like I would never let a
(01:50):
woman, I would never take awoman out on a whole day and
then have her post me as anemoji head, which is partly what
I want to talk about in today'sepisode, is having a boyfriend
embarrassing how it's differentfor generations for both men and
women.
It was a very viral article, andit's kind of setting up this
cultural moment.
I appreciated that she calledout.
And I think the reason why itwent viral is because women in
(02:11):
this generation, this youngergeneration, I'm Gen X, I'm 48.
Women in the younger generation,these millennials and like the
Gen Z age that are at the likedating, maybe I kind of want to
get married age.
For them, considering boyfriendsas kind of embarrassing is
honestly kind of a flat comingfrom your elder Gen X woman over
here.
But before we get into all that,let me just introduce myself
quickly.
I'm Grace Sandra, a writer,author, advocate, activist, mom,
(02:33):
etc.
And this is the Out Here Tryingto Survive podcast.
Please consider this a warm hugof solidarity from me to you.
I am rooting for black women.
It's made for black women and itcenters black women.
And if that's you or you want tolearn about that, welcome to
episode 34.
Yeah, so I want to talk aboutthis article.
Let me get my glasses on becauselike I said, I'm Gen X and I'm
going half blind.
Y'all, not me with the Bifalbecause I gotta look up like
(02:55):
this.
So in the article, she says thatif someone so much as says my
boyfriend on social media,they're muted.
I had never heard of that.
Again, I'm Gen X, but I knowthis was written for
millennialslash Gen Z women,probably more Gen Z than
millennial.
And I think that's fucking crazythat that would happen, but I
get it.
Just hear me out.
So I like that she talks aboutthis idea of boyfriend land, and
(03:17):
that is basically a world wherewomen's online identities
centered around the lives oftheir partners, a situation
rarely seen reversed.
And this is about the time wherewomen's identities were defined
by the relationship.
Now, if you're talking aboutwomen's identities being defined
by the relationship, that is me,baby.
I grew up Gen X at a time when,especially particularly for
(03:40):
those of us who grew up in thechurch or in evangelical culture
in general, we were taught thatwe need to get us a man.
As soon as you get a man, you'regonna be happy.
And then what you're gonna dowith that man is you're gonna
marry that man.
And then what you're gonna do isyou're gonna marry that man and
you're gonna live happily everafter.
And of course, you're gonna waituntil you marry him to have sex.
You're not gonna like sex beforethen.
But then once you get married,then you better become a whole
(04:00):
freaking a hoe for that man.
So I was kind of raised in thatgeneration of like, this is the
most celebrated thing you can dois become a wife.
And if you think about it, I wasborn in the 70s, so we're just
literally coming out of thatgeneration.
I mean, I think even after I wasborn, where women were just able
to like literally get their owncredit card and have their own
bank account and be able to buytheir own house and all of these
(04:21):
things that my mom's generationdefinitely didn't have.
I mean, consider that my mom wasborn in 1940.
My mom had me older and I'm 48.
She was born in 1940.
Women were not able to do any ofthat.
So my mom was definitely notteaching me, like, you are fine
on your own.
You can be whatever you wantwithout a man, you can do
whatever you want without a man.
That was not the little speechthat I was getting.
(04:43):
She was always talking aboutwhen you get married, Grace, and
when you get married.
So what did I do as I went andgot married at 22?
Because that is what I wastaught to do as a good Christian
girl.
And I honestly wasn't like thegreatest little Christian girl,
but that is one thing I didright, quote unquote, right.
You get my point.
Like women's identities weredefined by this boyfriend land.
(05:04):
And then when you get socialmedia taking off and people
having, you know, especially thewhole trad wives movement,
people having all of thiscontent about women being
married.
And then from there, one of myfavorite authors of all time,
Anne Lamont, wrote this bookcalled Operating Instructions.
And it was, as people later cameto call it, it was like the
first mommy blog.
(05:25):
And she really just goes intoall of her feelings about being
a mommy and all of this stuff.
Although she was not married,and then she later converted to
Christianity.
But anyway, mommy blogging was athing that started in the early
2000s that I fully partook in assoon as I had my first son in
2005.
So I started writing about myday-to-day life as a mom and
blogging all of these storiesabout my kids.
(05:45):
Thank God a lot of it is goneand not on the internet anymore.
It was really embarrassing.
But mommy blogging was a bigthing, and it was a space for
women to talk about what theirlife was like as traditional
wives.
And I was really heavily in thatspace.
There was this organizationcalled Blog Her, and Blog Her
like really celebrated women'svoices.
This was before TikTok.
This was really honestly just asInstagram was starting to kind
(06:08):
of become a thing.
The big thing back then was likeit went from my space to people
were blogging on Zanga,X-A-N-G-A, y'all remember Zanga?
And then it went from that toWordPress, and everybody had a
well, all the mommies who werewriting or wanting to share
their kind of trad wife liveswere mommy blogging.
And then that gave rise toInstagram and TikTok and all
(06:30):
that came later.
But during the whole mommyblogging phase, it just was
pretty much celebrated amongstwomen of my generation that,
like, that is what you weresupposed to do.
You were supposed to get marriedand you were supposed to have
babies and you were supposed tolive and celebrate in that.
It was, I feel like, seen as anideal that you were supposed to
thrive.
As a woman, you were supposed tothrive, especially in even
evangelical Christian circles.
(06:51):
You were supposed to thrive as awife and mom.
Because I was married from 22 tolike 36, and then I got married
again at 37, from like 37 to 42.
So I was married for like 20years combined.
I have no idea what theexperience was like for a lot of
Christian women who were waitingon that, who are like now my
age, who never got married, orwho got married very late.
(07:13):
But I have seen some of thecommentary about this,
particularly from older women,and apparently it was hell out
here for Gen X women who wereunmarried, particularly in
Christian spaces, to what it isnow, what it is now, what a
difference.
So now we got youngergenerations, particularly Gen Z,
who are seeing launching aboyfriend as cringe, and on top
(07:37):
of all that, as a threat totheir personal brand.
And I am not mad at them, y'all.
I am not mad at them.
They are seeing being single asa flex.
She says here, they want theprize and celebration of
partnership, but understand thenorminess of it.
I don't understand what thatmeans, to be honest with you,
the norminess.
Not my old Gen X ass having tolook up a word and an article
(07:59):
written for Gen Z.
Norminess.
Meaning, Lord, okay, it's awhole thing, y'all.
Norminess is not a standardEnglish word, but it likely
refers to the state or qualityof being a normy, N-O-R-M-I-E, a
slang term for a normal personwho conforms to mainstream
tastes and habits.
A normy is often seen as someonewith unremarkable interests who
(08:20):
doesn't deviate from popularculture or opinion.
Damn.
It shows a lack ofdistinctiveness.
This term can imply a person hasno unique or counter-cultural
personality traits.
Okay, so what she's saying hereis that some of these women want
the prize and celebration ofpartnership, but they understand
the norminess of it, that theyare boring as hell, apparently.
(08:42):
In other words, in an era ofwidespread heterofatalism, women
don't want to be seen as beingall about their man, but they
also want the clout that comeswith becoming partnered.
Let's define heterofatalism too.
It is the belief thatheterosexual relationships are
doomed to fail due to inherentflaws, frustration with men's
dating behaviors, and apessimistic outlook on finding a
fulfilling partnership.
(09:03):
It stems from a sense ofdisappointment in dating where
efforts to form connections withmen are often met with
unsatisfactory outcomes, leadingto a feeling that all
relationships will end infailure and is particularly
associated with the experiencesof straight women frustrated
with contemporary heterosexualdating dynamics.
Okay, well, in that case, I'vebeen hetero fatal as fuck.
unknown (09:25):
As fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (09:27):
So then she goes on to share more about like how
women online are hiding theirrelationships that people don't
know whether ever with a man ornot with a man.
I feel like I've seen that a lotlately.
Or they'll just do somethingreally subtle, like the little
clink of the glasses, where youcan kind of see the man's hand,
which I have done before severaltimes, but that's only because I
was out here dating and I wasdating like two men, maybe three
men at a time, or or literallyjust dating one man for a month,
(09:50):
then dating a different man thenext month, and just really
trying to get to know men andrealizing when it wasn't a good
fit to move the fuck on.
And I'm not gonna post a pictureof every man I'm dating, but
like doing a little glass clinkdid not seem like that big of a
deal.
But anyway, I just think it'sinteresting because I wasn't
doing it because I thoughthaving a boyfriend was lame
because none of those men weremy boyfriend, those are just men
I allowed to take me out.
(10:11):
I thought this was so funny.
So on the delusional diariespodcast, Hallie and Jazz are
talking about whether having aboyfriend is quote unquote lame
now.
And one of them said, Why doeshaving a boyfriend feel
Republican?
I am dead.
I am dead.
And then somebody said,Boyfriends are out of style,
they won't come back in untilthey start acting right.
(10:33):
In essence, having a boyfriendtypically takes hits on a
woman's aura.
So for all of you other gen Xfolks, aura is this new thing
that before the word was Riz.
My son, who's 16, one of hisfriends told me the other day
that aura was on its way out,too.
But aura is apparently the newRiz.
How person is, and I don't evenfully know how to explain it,
but this is what the young folksare saying, right?
(10:55):
The women nowadays are like, ifyou have aura, like if you find,
if you cue, if you are it girl,if you think you're all that,
and then you get a man like youraura is reduced.
Okay, girlies.
Okay.
I did think this was veryinteresting because this also
fits me.
It says, even partnered womenwill lament about men and
heterosexuality, partly insolidarity with other women, but
(11:16):
also because it is now.
I don't know where the rest ofthat sentence went.
I must have cut it off in myscreenshot.
It says, being partnered doesn'taffirm your womanhood anymore.
It is now no longer consideredan achievement, and if anything,
it's become more of a flex tojust pronounce yourself single.
And as straight women, we'reconfronting something that every
other sexuality has had tocontend with, which is a
(11:37):
politicization of our identity.
I love that she said, however,as traditional roles are
starting to crumble, maybe weare being forced to reevaluate
our blind allegiance toheterosexuality.
And that I think is an amazingthing.
I love that for this generation.
I love that they're starting tosay, I don't have to be with a
man.
I literally don't have to.
I also love that the articlepoints out that there's
obviously no shame in findinglove or falling in love or
(11:59):
celebrating your joy.
As long as we are openlyrethinking heteronormativity,
which is something I am sopassionate about, particularly
as an LGBTQIA plus ally.
And I also love that she talksabout how single women now are
romanticizing their single life.
And if you look on YouTube, ifyou just type in the word
romanticizing, I mean, I think Ieven have a podcast title with
romanticizing in the podcasttitle.
(12:21):
I love that women are talkingabout their soft girl era.
You know, I have a whole systemthat I built, which by the way
is available on my stand store.
It's called the soft girlsurvival system to figure out
how to literally, literallysurvive all the things that
we're going through withoutfeeling like you need to depend
on a man.
It's really not about the manaspect, but more about like how
do you find what you need withinyourself?
How do you become the soft girlthat you need to be?
(12:43):
And not for the purpose offinding a man, but so that you
can be the best version of you.
And I love that she says this isa nail in the coffin of a
centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefited
men to begin with.
YouTube video on this, and Iwill link it in the comments,
about an article that came out afew years ago that got big, like
way bigger than this one.
(13:04):
It went viral, viral, viral.
Talked about this idea thatbasically heteronormativity and
getting married is notbenefiting women overall.
It talked about the idea of howthe most dangerous man in a
woman's life is usuallytypically her boyfriend, fiance,
or husband.
Shortly after that, it's herfather or brother.
The article talked about howmultiple, multiple studies have
(13:26):
shown that when a woman getsolder as she's aging, that she
is so much more likely to behappy and content if she's not
married.
She's wealthier, she has betterrelationships with her kids, she
has more hobbies, she's readingmore, she has more animals,
animals that she loves, hencethe cat lady thing, that women
really are starting to comealive as they get older and
(13:47):
realize they do not need a manbecause now we can have our own
bank accounts and we can haveour own homes and we can have
our own careers, and we're oldernow.
Our kids are off and we canstill pursue meaningful
connections with them andrestore those connections
without someone coming in andsabotaging them.
And the article goes in greatdepth about how men do not have
the same outcomes.
If a man is single as he getsolder, he is fatter in an
(14:11):
unhealthy way, he is not makingas much money, he's not as
fulfilled, he's usually verylonely, he's not doing social
things, he's typically notpursuing his kids, he's not
going to the doctors like heshould be, he's not doing his
checkups, so he's dying younger.
And sometimes, if they're lonelyenough, they will unalive
themselves and they don't haveas many friends and they're not
pursuing therapy, so they'reunaliving themselves at a much
(14:33):
greater rate than women.
And a lot of times people attestthat to something being wrong
with women, or somehow women aresomehow making these men unalive
themselves.
It's no, it's because women aregoing to therapy and they're
dealing with their stuff andthey're co-communing.
We're communing with ourgirlfriends and we're creating
community and we're making surethat we're repairing and
restoring the relationship withour children or just having good
(14:53):
relationships with our childrenin general.
And men are unaliving themselvesbecause they're not doing those
critical things that women do aswe age.
And so, men, if they are single,as they get older, they are
unhappier.
And if they get married, all ofthose outcomes get better.
And so, what that means is thatstudies have now proven what
women have been like literallygrowing towards for these last
(15:14):
20 or 30 years of things havebeen evolving and the cultural
conversation is shifting sodramatically, is women are
realizing, like, oh yeah, thesestudies are true.
We are just happier withouty'all.
We are literally just happywithout y'all.
And so many of y'all are soviolent in so many ways that
it's literally not benefiting usto be with you.
And so these younger generationsare like, not only that, but
it's embarrassing.
Y'all are embarrassing, fullyembarrassing.
(15:36):
And I have been on theseinternet streets a low-key Miss
Andrus, which I believe is justa response to misogyny.
Because we still don't have thepower.
We still making less than y'all,and we still getting unalive by
y'all and beaten by y'all andtreated abhorribly by y'all in
so many different ways.
So I'm not feeling too bad aboutmy little low-key Miss Andry.
But I'm a feminist and awomanist, and I have been out
here wanting liberation theologyfor all my sisters.
(15:59):
For real.
That's why my entire platformcenters black womanhood.
Why I'm really committed toadvocating for black women in
every way possible till the dayI'm not here no more.
Even then, my spirit will liveon.
But here's where it getspersonal, reflective, and
nuanced.
Because behold and low, lo andbehold, like Jesse Wu says, I
watched so much Jesse Wu.
I talk like her now.
Behold and low, lo and behold,I'm in a relationship.
(16:19):
Like I said when we first gottogether, I soft launched with a
picture with the back of hishead.
I was not in any wayembarrassed.
Like I said, that was kind ofmore logistical because of our
situation with our children.
We are both older.
Like I said, I'm 48 and he's 56.
So we're not dabbling in allthese kind of weird relationship
dynamics anymore.
We've both been married before.
(16:40):
We're more mature.
We're just trying to figure outwhat is the best way to have a
relationship right now at thiscurrent trajectory and how to
share or not share that online.
And trust me, we are both reallyexcited to share each other when
the time is right.
At the same time, y'all, I'm oldas dirt, and I think I've earned
the right.
Not that I need to earn it, butI've definitely earned the right
(17:01):
to love quietly and not have toput my relationship all out
there.
Because I definitely have in thepast.
And also for me, sharing lessright now, I'm older and more
mature, so I'm not centeringthis man in my life the way I
have previously.
So, in some ways, me sharingless is a reflection of what I
want for the younger girlies andwhat the younger girlies are
already getting a hold of.
(17:22):
It's like these men shouldn't becentered in our lives anyway.
They should not be the center,and our whole life revolves
around them.
Now it is something different ifthere's a young couple or a
married couple or even an oldercouple who like they want to
make content together, they wantto partner together, that's
fine.
You know, or they're makingfamily content or mom content,
trad wife content, that'stotally fine.
I think that maybe my firstmarriage when I first started
(17:43):
mommy blogging and sharing somuch about my marriage, and I
was sharing the good parts andthe bad parts because I wanted
to be vulnerable.
Like, this is not perfect.
And I've been taught thatgetting married was so much like
the answer to all my problems,and my first marriage was so
imperfect and so unhealthy.
Our conflict was so unhealthy.
There was things about me thatwas so unhealthy.
(18:04):
There was stuff about him thatwas so unhealthy, y'all.
Like it was just unhealthy asfuck.
And I just look back at that andI was sharing so much of our
marriage, good and bad.
That's one thing I can say.
I was sharing good and bad.
I've always done pretty wellonline and sharing the good and
the bad.
People get real happy stuff fromme, and you're gonna get the
ugly stuff too.
I've never really just beenlike, look at my big, beautiful,
(18:25):
happy life.
And I've never been like, lookat this misery I'm in only.
Because I definitely have hadtimes where I've been like, I'm
in misery, y'all.
I'm in fucking misery.
Someone save me from my misery.
But I do wonder if my firstmarriage, how much I shared
online, was maybe performativebecause I thought this is who I
have to be.
I have to be a wife, I have tobe a mom.
(18:47):
I have to be a traditional wifein some way.
Like there was a whole timewhere I never showed cleavage
online, which some of y'allmight not believe because my
titties be all on these internetstreets everywhere now.
I used to not think that waswhat I should do as a
traditional wife.
I didn't even get my nosepierced for a long time because
I was so heavily involved inevangelical Christian culture
and I wanted it, but I was solike brainwashed to believe that
(19:09):
as a traditional Christian wife,I shouldn't ever show like a
little tip of my cleavage, norhave my nose pierced.
I mean, it was crazy, y'all.
And no, we were not Mormon.
We were evangelical Christiangoing to like Baptist churches
and then like anon-denominational vineyard y
kind of church.
We went to one of those.
So for where I'm at now, mesharing more privately or
sharing less of our relationshipis more about power.
(19:30):
It's not about shame or beingembarrassed by having a
boyfriend.
It's more about like, wow, I'mreally firmly standing in my
power now.
I know that this relationshipdoesn't define me.
If you heard my previousepisode, I talked a lot about
how I got to a place where Ifully was fine if I never had a
man for the rest of my wholegoddamn life.
I finally got to the point whereI'm like, I don't need this or
want this at all.
(19:51):
Right before I met him.
And I finally got to a placewhere I was like, yeah, if I
ever get with anyone, like thisrelationship is going to be so
fucking special.
It's going to be so special tome in so many ways.
That's what it is.
So when I don't share now, it'snot from shame.
It's more from, yeah, I just amreally aware that this is not my
(20:13):
savior.
It's not something that I haveto have in any way.
It's just something that I wantto have.
I like having him around.
I don't need him to be around.
You know what I'm saying?
And also, I think as a Gen Xwoman who's been divorced twice,
me and him both have beendivorced and have kids, things
just feel, I think, a little bitmore sacred.
Now, if any younger ladies, Iknow my podcast audience is
(20:33):
typically 35 women and up, buteven for those of you who are 35
and never been married before, Ido want to say as an older lady
out here in these dating streetsthat you do go to a point where
it feels like you know more ofwho you are, and it really is a
better place to love from.
And cishat men, y'all, theydon't tend to change, they don't
tend to change.
Like I said, they're not doingtheir work.
(20:55):
So who they are when they areolder is who they are.
Like I said, my man is 56.
Who he is is who he is.
So when I chose him, I waschoosing him.
I'm not, there is no potentialwhen you're dating at this age.
You're not dating for potential.
These men are who they are.
He is who he motherfucking is.
So when I chose him, I'm like,okay, are you fully content with
(21:16):
who he is right now today?
If he never changes anotherthing, are you content with this
man?
And vice versa.
You know, just a little note tomy younger women friends who are
dating.
When you're a little bit older,things are a little bit more
clearly.
I actually think this is a greattime to start a new
relationship, is when you'remuch, much, much older.
(21:38):
I think it's a great time tomove forward in a way that's a
little bit more serious, butmaybe not even marriage.
That's not for everyone.
And as someone who's alreadytried marriage twice, oh it's
challenging to thinking aboutdoing something like that again.
It really is.
I will say that I'm someonewho's always, in the past couple
years, said, I'll never getmarried again.
(22:00):
I only ever want to have like along-term partnership.
Maybe just like a guy I'mhanging out with every five or
seven years or so.
I don't know.
I didn't really have a plan likethat, but I really wanted to
have like a companion.
Like I mentioned in my lastepisode, I wanted to have
ongoing sex.
I wanted to have a companion.
I wanted to have like a guy inmy life who I felt like was
(22:20):
really special, who found mespecial, and just kind of relax
into that.
Probably again, because of mygeneration and being Gen X and
then being married for 20 yearsof my adult life, I kind of
thought like that was moreideal.
And when I finally woke up andrealized, like, that is not an
ideal girl.
Like, what are you talkingabout?
Now I'm with someone who doesactually want to get married
again.
(22:41):
I have told him before, like,wow, this is not something I
ever thought about.
But again, we're pretty new, soit's pretty new for that kind of
conversation.
But it is interesting becauseour relationship does kind of
prove the statistics that mentypically do want to get married
again, and men typically do getmarried again immediately,
almost immediately afterdivorce, typically don't wait
long to get married again.
(23:01):
Whereas women nowadays are like,yeah, this is just not really a
thing that I feel like I need todo in any way.
Don't really need to legallymake this happen, don't really
need to put our financestogether, don't really need to
change up our life insurancepolicies and all these things
that are honestly reallycomplicated, including changing
my name again.
You know, after doing that shittwice, it's frustrating.
(23:23):
So, what do y'all think?
Do you think that women shouldbe shamed for hard launching
their boyfriends, losingfollowers, being muted on social
media?
I actually personally thinkthat's crazy.
I don't think that any womanshould be shamed like that.
I think what I want to do as anolder woman is I want to help
younger women realize everythingy'all are thinking about how
potentially dangerous it is toassociate yourself with a cishat
(23:46):
man.
Everything that y'all arefearing, all of the exhaustion
that you feel from dating, whichalmost every single woman I
know, including myself, has beenjust exhausted on dating in
general because the dating poolis so poisoned with larva and
maggots, liars and abusers andcheaters, emotionally violent
men.
(24:06):
I get the fatigue like fully.
The one thing that I like aboutthe fatigue that young women are
experiencing like the fullramifications of the patriarchy
and the full ramifications of alot of men who have embraced
misogyny.
What I like about that is thatthey're saying, yeah, this
heteronormativity shit, likethis is bullshit.
The idea that I should getmarried to be happy, like it's
(24:28):
bullshit.
I love that they're gettingthere.
I love that they're saying thesethings.
I love that there's even some ofthis, like maybe cultural
regression, because honestly,like sometimes shit has to hit
rock bottom for everybody towake up and be like, let's do
things differently.
And this hetero fatalism, likethe idea that men ultimately
will disappoint you, and theidea that like public enthusiasm
for a relationship just ingeneral, that that feels like
(24:51):
naive or cringy.
I think that's part of thegrowing pains.
Both can exist.
This is where nuance comes in.
Both can exist because I I feltall of that.
I felt hetero fatal as fuck,like I said.
But then I also got to a pointwhere I'm like, I'm not going to
close the door on something thatcould still be beautiful for me
personally, but I realize I justdon't need it anymore.
(25:12):
But I also, you know, I hadenough years of dating where I
was just like, this shit is thisis unbearable.
I can't keep living like this.
And as a matter of fact, Iwasn't dating.
I decided not to date.
Like I said in my last episode,listen to it if you haven't yet,
that I decided not to dateanymore at all.
I did not meet my man right nowon a dating app or trying to
look for him or anything likethat.
He kept seeing my stuff come upon his Facebook.
(25:33):
He said that my stories keptpopping up, and then he reached
out to me.
I told him right away, I'm notinterested.
Sorry.
And then he like reached outagain the next week, and I was
like, Yeah, you know, you doseem nice, but no.
And then he like reached outagain the next week.
I mean, the whole process of himreaching out to me before I
finally agreed to even a phonecall.
Actually, I didn't agree to aphone call.
I finally sent him a voice clip.
(25:53):
It was like three weeks, but hereached out to me, I don't know
how many times, but like quite afew times.
And he wasn't being rude oroverly aggressive.
I wasn't ever offended becausehe was being so polite and
respectful in his discourse.
But I was just like, yeah, it'snot happening, bro.
This is literally not happening.
And I think what he got that hestill appreciates about me is he
(26:13):
knew that my life was notanchored in men and would never
be anchored in him.
That I have a big, full lifefull of my children, my
girlfriends, my career, myaspirations, my desire to even
grow this podcast.
Like he knows I have otherthings in life that anchor me
and that my life is centeredaround, and that he was never
going to be directly in thecenter of it.
You know, and as a side note, Ithink men appreciate that as
(26:34):
much as women appreciate that.
I love that he got a lot of shitgoing on in his life.
He has so many things going onin his life that I'm intrigued
by, that I'm interested in, thatI respect, that I appreciate,
that I'm in awe of.
Just all the things that he doesand all the things he thinks
about and all the things that heis and all of what he's done in
his life, I'm like, that'sfucking cool, bro.
Like, that's really fuckingcool.
I love all this stuff about you.
(26:54):
And I love that his life is alsonot centered around me.
As soon as people startcentering their whole lives
around each other, like then itjust turns into a big
codependent ball, which is neverhealthy anyway.
So I love that all these youngwomen are like, we are never
going to be a codependent ballwith y'all.
We are going to have our ownfull lives.
We're gonna have our cats andour books and our friends and
our yoga and our trips, our solotrips to Japan and our girls'
trips to Miami, etc.
(27:15):
What I love about this articleagain is that it hopefully
releases the shame.
What I want young women to knowis that the fairy tales and the
sitcoms, growing pains, and allthese things that I was raised
with, that all of that are nottrue in the way it was presented
to us.
But that real, actual, true loveis possible and it doesn't have
to be through a man.
(27:36):
I experienced, and I've saidthis so many times, and I want
to keep harping on it.
I have really beautiful girlfriendship.
I have three right now that arereally strong and really
beautiful in my inner circle,and we are all in love with each
other.
We're all heterosexual women.
Actually, no, that's not true.
One of them is homosexual, butshe got her own little
girlfriend.
Like, we're we are not in lovewith each other in a romantic
(27:57):
way, but we love each other asgirlfriends.
My girlfriends are such animportant part of my love life.
You know what I mean?
As a straight person, like theyare such an important part of
how I receive intimacy in thisworld and how I give intimacy in
this world.
And it is fully possible to findjoy and fulfillment in that.
For me, I'm also a woman withthree children, and I also love
(28:17):
my relationships with mychildren, and I will do anything
for them until the day I die,will pursue these children, will
always pursue them, will alwayslove them.
I always want them to be in mylife.
They will always be a big partof how I love and receive and
give community and receivecommunity.
As a Gen Xer, I have come tounderstand marriage is not a
part of my survival plan, nordoes it have to be.
(28:40):
And y'all, we don't have to belike this fucking idiot, Shira
Seven.
Like, I remember for a while shewas really popular because she
was talking about how, okay,well, if you're gonna have a man
in your life, then use him formoney.
Y'all, don't be that girl.
Do not be that girl.
And she got droves and droves ofwomen on her platform, mostly
Gen Z millennial women, becausethese women are like, well, fuck
(29:03):
it.
Like, if we're gonna have men inour lives, like we might as well
use them for money.
The reason why I always hatedwhat she was doing is because it
was just a woman basicallyteaching other women to do evil
shit.
Now, I talked about Miss Andry.
It is one thing to be in arelationship with someone that
is reciprocal and ask for moneyfor help or or whatever, or just
you know, ask your boyfriend,like, what's crazy is I ain't
(29:24):
never asked this man for nomoney.
He'd just be sending it to me.
Like, hey, here, go have fun.
I took my kids to have abirthday party.
He sent me money.
When me and my girl went toComic-Con over in the Detroit
area, he sent me money.
He was like, Hey, this is soy'all can have a little fun.
He just sends me money.
I don't ever have to ask.
But I ain't shaming women thatdo ask, but that's my point.
When you're asking for money ina relationship and it's
(29:45):
reciprocal and it's not for thepurpose of using someone, but
what Shira Seven was teachingwomen like, okay, well, we hate
men anyway, so if we're gonnahave them in our lives, let's
just use them for money, andreally teaching women to be
really, really manipulative,dishonest, Really horrible
people.
And I had a friend, she's not myfriend no more.
And this is a big reason whybecause she was a big Shira
(30:06):
Seven fan and she was doing allof these things just to use men.
I think she still is, I don'tknow.
But I was just like, this isreally disgusting behavior.
And I do understand because hergen she was younger than me.
I think she is a wholegeneration different than me.
I think she's like 36 or 37 now.
I'm not sure.
So she's probably a millennial.
Basically is right in line witheverything this article said.
(30:26):
And for her, it's like, why thehell not?
And for me, it was like, becauseyou're being a horrible person.
Don't be a dishonest, horribleperson.
We don't need to do that, y'all.
We don't need to do that.
I personally, as a woman, as ahuman, am never going to just
try to be a horrible, dishonest,mean, unkind person for shits
(30:46):
and giggles.
And I'm never going to teach mychildren to be mean, horrible,
dishonest, unkind people forshits and giggles.
And so the whole Shira Sevenmovement, I'm like, you took
something that is really ahealthy thing, teaching women
that they don't need a man tosurvive and they can be truly
independent and truly happy andpeaceful person.
You took that such a beautifulthing and then added on this
(31:07):
whole element, but like also bea bitch in a bad way.
Because you can be a bitch, youcan be a bad bitch in a good
way.
Or you can put all of thatdissonance, resistance into
something that really matters,like fighting for social justice
or or or or feeding hungry kidsor something that's worth a
damn, but using men for money?
How unoriginal.
(31:28):
And also, you really want to beas evil as men who just use
women for sex and then dump themon the side of the road
literally and figuratively.
Ew.
Oh, I'm so disgusted.
Y'all, if you know me and youknow my platform, I don't really
like hating on women for almostanything, but this.
Please don't be a dumbass, basicass, original ass bitch and just
(31:50):
use men for money.
Like, please.
There's so many more ways we canget money nowadays.
Besides becoming evil.
That's not an option.
That should not be an option.
The new flex isn't being singleor partnered per se, it's being
sovereign.
There is no need to broadcastyour relationship to validate
your life.
But if you want to share yourrelationship, if it makes you
(32:12):
happy, do that.
Please don't reject love just toprove your independence.
If love finds you, embrace it,baby girl, embrace it.
Nowadays, after all these years,women are finally allowed to
love on their own terms.
We are allowed to love quietly,privately, or even loudly, with
maybe some chagrin, but on ourown terms.
(32:34):
So, no, my conclusion is havinga boyfriend is not embarrassing,
fully.
Maybe somewhat, a little bit,depending on who the audience
is.
But as a grown-ass woman, Idon't give a fuck.
But maybe for the first time,beautifully, it's just not a
headline anymore.
I hope that most of my listenerswill be like, oh, Grace has a
boyfriend.
I hope he's good to her.
I hope he loves her.
Good for her.
But not like, oh my God, Gracefinally has a good boyfriend.
(32:57):
She finally got a man who lovesher.
Oh my god, her whole life mustbe amazing.
Which is where we were 20 yearsago.
And I thank God we are not thereanymore.
So did y'all read the article?
I'm wondering what you guysthought of the article.
Do you have a boyfriend?
Do you find it embarrassing?
And also, if you answer that,what generation are you in?
I'd like to know.
At the end of the day, y'all, Ireally do believe in manifesting
(33:18):
our future and our destiny andwhat we want.
And what I have been telling theuniverse and God that I want is
a peace-filled life with peoplearound me who are safe, who love
me well, who I love, who Ienjoy, who really enjoy me and
love me for who I am.
And that could be girlfriends,that could be my children, that
could be other friends andcolleagues I meet along the way.
(33:39):
It could be a man, it could be aman we're just friends, it could
be a man who I'm just sexualwith, and that's it.
It can be a man I'm romanticallywith, and we both friends, and
we sexual and we romantic andall of those things.
Like I've just been very open toexperiencing a peace-filled
life.
A peace-filled motherfuckinglife.
That's the kind of life I'vebeen trying to manifest.
(34:00):
And so the fact that this entirecalendar year, this entire
calendar year, I have beentrying to manifest the shit out
of everything.
I've been scripting, I've beenmeditating, I've been trying to
manifest a whole lot of shit.
And I haven't this calendar yearspecifically wrote in like I'm
trying to manifest a big,beautiful relationship because I
did that last year.
(34:20):
And as I said in my lastepisode, that really fell flat
on my face because I ended upkind of low-key falling in love
with a man who actually had agirlfriend the whole time and
was just hiding it from me.
And I ended up feeling reallyembarrassed and ashamed.
And I just felt like I'm donewith that being this big ass
goal in my life.
So when I think about you, Iwant you to really think about
what do you really want when itcomes to a boyfriend?
(34:41):
If you want one, do not beashamed of it.
If you don't, and you're like,yeah, I just really don't think
I want that.
I really don't think I do wantto be married, then y'all, then
don't be ashamed of that.
Then really try to manifest andput out in the world what you
really actually want.
What do you think will bring youthe most peace?
If you're a younger woman andyou're like, I still do want to
have kids, like despite the 4Bmovement and despite what women
(35:03):
are saying, like divorce yourex, not your ex, divorce your
husband, break up with yourboyfriend, etc.
I think there really has to be aplace of sovereignty, like I
said earlier, where we are fullyliving into what we want,
despite what the culture has.
But I am thankful that theculture has got us to a place
where we are questioning whathas been true before.
And I'm thankful that women ofmy generation are waking the
(35:25):
fuck up.
So yeah, I love my boyfriend.
He's really sweet.
Having had someone go out oftheir way the way that he has
tangibly, physically,emotionally, spiritually,
sexually, in every way to showme how much I mean to him.
If effort and consistency are areflection of how much someone
loves you and how much they careabout you, this man is winning
(35:47):
and winning and winning andwinning and winning in all of
those areas.
I feel so loved and so takencare of.
Just a sense of I have a reallygood person in my life, and
that's not something I havethought for many, many, many,
many, many years.
Many years.
(36:09):
So anyway.
And on that note of hopefulnessand non-embarrassment nor shame
about my new relationship, letme also say my content is never
gonna change.
I'm not gonna be a relationshipexpert.
I'm never gonna be on trying toteach women how to get a
boyfriend, how to get a man, howto keep a man, how to get
married.
I'm never gonna do that kind ofshit, y'all.
I'm still gonna always berooting for black women,
advocating for black women, andout here trying to do the most
(36:31):
to make sure that the mostvulnerable, marginalized
populations are able to surviveand thrive post-trauma and love
ourselves because we deserve it.
I do have a book called GraceActually Memoirs of Love, Faith,
Loss, and Black Womanhood.
And if you like reading and youlike personal stories and
memoirs, this is a book that youwill love.
It's very highly reviewed.
Everyone who's ever read it hastold me they loved it.
I think you'll like it too.
(36:52):
It's available on Amazon, bothhardcopy and Kindle.
Thank you so much if you made itthis far.
I appreciate you being here withme.
I know that you could beanywhere on these internet
streets.
So the fact that you're herewith me and all the way to the
end says something important.
So thank you so much for beinghere.
And hopefully, I will see you onthe next episode.
Bye.
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