Episode 52

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Published on:

19th Oct 2025

The Fight From Grooming To Grace PART 2

This powerful conclusion tracks Mickey’s path through Drug Treatment Court, relapse, jail sanctions, a high-risk pregnancy, and the moment surrender became a choice. She names the difference between treating symptoms and healing trauma. She walks us into a courtroom that tried to rip her apart and a justice system that finally listened. We talk recovery structure, community, grief, and the audacity to “make a way” when the world will not.

  • Accountability without shame and why relapse is data
  • How a sponsor, routine, and daily calls created safety
  • Grief, mobility loss, surgery, and healing in a traumatized body
  • Trial, conviction, and the limits of Bermuda’s sex offender list
  • Founding Empower Me Bermuda to end silence through community
  • Choosing self-respect, work with purpose, and a future on her terms


🎙️ What We Talk About:

  • Drug Treatment Court, phases, sanctions, and why trauma needs addressing not just abstinence
  • The physiology of craving and what surrender looked like day to day
  • Building a recovery rhythm: 7 a.m. calls, Just For Today readings, action lists
  • Loving someone in recovery and parenting with transparency
  • Grief as a milestone in sobriety and keeping promises to the dying
  • Trial realities in Bermuda, mistrial, retrial, and an 18-year sentence
  • Advocacy: pushing for offender visibility, policy change, and survivor-centered support
  • Creating Empower Me Bermuda and choosing meaningful work in treatment services

🔑 Key Takeaways:

“Relapse didn’t erase my progress. It revealed what still needed love.”
“Surrender was not defeat. It was structure, phone calls, and one honest day at a time.”
“Silence kept me sick. Truth got me free and it protects the next girl.”
“If the door will not open, make a way for yourself.”


🙌 Why This Episode Matters:

Recovery is not linear. Courts are not healing. Bodies keep score. Mickey’s story shows how structure, community, and fierce self-respect can carry you through the middle that most people never talk about. If you have ever felt punished for surviving or unseen by systems that should protect you, this conversation offers language, strategy, and fire.

💬 Connect with Mickey:

Mickey Parfitt Smith — Survivor, advocate, founder of Empower Me Bermuda.

Website: empowermebda.com

🔗 Resources & Links:

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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