Episode 53

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Published on:

19th Oct 2025

The Day I Stopped Dying Quietly

Today’s guest is not here to perform strength. She is here to tell the truth. Molested at 7. Silence, fights, and promiscuity by 13. A teenage pregnancy. Multiple suicide attempts. Law enforcement work that amplified unhealed wounds. An abusive marriage. A fourth attempt that became the turning point. Chanika shows us what it looks like to stop waiting for rescue and choose yourself in real time. We map her healing to the three phases of exiting survival mode: self-awareness, reprogramming, and reinvention.

  • Naming survival mode when it looks “functional”
  • Why secrecy feeds shame and keeps the cycle alive
  • Motherhood as mirror and motivation
  • Owning impact without self-erasure or blame
  • Rewriting the story with daily, unglamorous choices
  • Living with empathy, boundaries, and purpose

🎙️ What We Talk About:

  • Survival mode as masking, smiling, and “figuring it out” while you crumble
  • Early abuse, intimidation to stay quiet, fights, and high school promiscuity
  • Pregnancy in teens, suicidal ideation, and the cost of silence on the body
  • Working in policing with untreated trauma and why it intensified symptoms
  • Abusive marriage, isolation, sanctions to MAWI, and the fourth attempt that became a line in the sand
  • Honest parenting: telling sons the truth, raising twin girls with vigilance and empathy
  • The conversation with her mother that unlocked generational context
  • Forgiveness as self-liberation, not condoning harm
  • The three phases to exit survival mode:
  • Self-awareness: see the pattern, stop gaslighting yourself
  • Reprogramming: challenge the scripts about worth, love, and safety
  • Reinvention: build a life and identity that are not organized around pain

🔑 Key Takeaways:

“My beginning was loud. It didn’t get to be my ending.”
“I forgave myself first. That is how I stopped bleeding on the people I love.”
“Acceptance is not approval. It is the doorway to change.”
“Self-awareness, reprogramming, reinvention. That is how I stopped performing and started living.”


🙌 Why This Episode Matters:

High-achieving women are celebrated for composure while they quietly disintegrate. Chanika’s story gives language to that dissonance and a map out of it. If you have ever worn “strong” as a mask or felt unworthy of gentleness, this conversation will hand you both mirror and machete. You are not broken. You are unfinished.


💬 Connect with Chanika:

  • Made For More: Stories of Purpose — Instagram + Facebook
  • Personal IG: @beautifulbydesign_
  • WhatsApp: +1 441 707 0114

🔗 Resources & Links:


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Show artwork for Survival Mode Disrupted with Leticia R Francis

About the Podcast

Survival Mode Disrupted with Leticia R Francis
Disruptive Unapologetic Conversations about Survival Mode
Survival Mode Disrupted is not just a podcast. It's a rebellion.

A raw, unfiltered space where we finally stop pretending we're fine and start telling the truth—the truth about the trauma we've carried, the identities they had to wear to survive, and the radical decisions we made to break free.

Because here's the deal: survival mode isn’t just a season. It’s a damn identity. One that so many were forced to adopt just to get through life, to stay safe, to stay needed, to stay sane. But eventually, it starts costing you more than it protects. Your peace. Your purpose. Your power.

This podcast is for the disruptors—the people who were told to stay small, stay silent, stay grateful for crumbs… and said “hell no.”

Hosted by Leticia, The Survival Mode Disruptor herself—a trauma recovery mentor, speaker, and woman who has lived through the fires of abuse, betrayal, and breakdown and still chose to rise—this show dives deep into the unapologetic exits from survival mode that no one talks about.

You’ll hear from women (and a few brave men) who walked away from toxic relationships, soul-sucking careers, generational dysfunction, religious trauma, cultural expectations, and the lies they were taught to believe about themselves. Not because it was easy—but because staying would’ve killed something sacred inside of them.

These are the stories of bold pivots, quiet courage, and messy but miraculous rebirths.

Each episode is a conversation—a disruption—meant to wake something up in you. Whether it’s a guest sharing the moment they chose themselves for the first time, or Leticia dropping a truth bomb that makes you question everything you’ve normalized, this podcast is here to shake the foundation of your survival mode identity and replace it with something truer. Something freer.

We’re not here for surface-level self-care tips or fake empowerment slogans.

We’re here to talk about what it really takes to:

Reclaim your voice after being silenced.

Reinvent yourself after being broken down.

Rewrite your story when everyone else wants you to stay the same.

Release the guilt of choosing YOU.

This is for those who are done performing. Done pleasing. Done pretending.

It’s for the ones ready to exit survival mode—not slowly, not quietly, but disruptively and unapologetically.

You won’t leave this podcast the same.
You’ll cry. You’ll rage. You’ll laugh.
You’ll see yourself in every story.
And more importantly, you’ll remember who the hell you are.

Welcome to Survival Mode Disrupted.
It’s not just a podcast.
It’s a movement.
And your exit begins here.

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About your host

Profile picture for Leticia Francis

Leticia Francis

I am not here to inspire you—I am here to activate you.

As a Survivor, Keynote Speaker, and Trauma Recovery Mentor, I know what it’s like to fight battles no one sees. I also know that breaking free is possible. My work is about disrupting survival mode, exposing trauma-driven success cycles, and giving women the blueprint to reclaim their lives.

🔹 200+ podcast features & speaking engagements
🔹 Global Women of Choice Award Winner 2022
🔹 Creator of the Survival Mode Exit Plan
🔹 Host of Survival Mode Disrupted Podcast