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

Send us Fan Mail For a long time, I believed healing would begin the day I finally understood why. Why the relationship ended. Why the prayer wasn't answered. Why life unfolded the way it did. That day never came. Instead, God gave me something I didn't know I needed. He transformed my heart, reminded me who I was, and taught me to trust Him even when the answers never arrived. In the fi...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever thought you were healed, only to find yourself asking the same questions all over again? Maybe a conversation caught you off guard. Maybe you heard news you weren't expecting. Maybe a memory resurfaced, and suddenly it felt like you were back where you started. If you've ever wondered whether that means you've failed, this conversation is for you. In P...

Send us Fan Mail What if God was building something while you were still asking why? In Part 8 of the I Never Got My Why series, Tennille shares how healing often happens quietly—and how purpose can begin emerging long before we recognize it. Through Isaiah 43:18-19 and her own story of heartbreak, healing, and unexpected community, she explores what it looks like to move from searching for answer...

Send us Fan Mail Why does rejection hurt so deeply? In Part 7 of the I Never Got My Why series, Tennille shares a powerful realization from her healing journey: she was asking another person questions only God could answer. Through the story of the woman in Mark 5, this episode explores healing after heartbreak, the pain of rejection, and the identity wounds that often leave us wondering if we are...

Send us Fan Mail What if the breakthrough wasn't pretending you're fine? In this episode of The Living Story Podcast , Tennille explores the story of Hannah and the moment she stopped hiding her grief. For women carrying heartbreak, disappointment, unanswered prayers, or seasons that feel impossibly heavy, Hannah offers a different picture of faith than many of us were taught. She didn&a...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when your mind knows the truth, but your heart is still grieving? In this episode of The Living Story Podcast , Tennille shares the lesson she learned in the aftermath of heartbreak: understanding something intellectually is not the same as accepting it emotionally. If you've ever known what God was saying but still felt stuck in sadness, disappointment, or unans...

Send us Fan Mail In Part 4 of the I Never Got My Why series, Tennille explores the true context behind Jeremiah 29:11 and why God's promise of hope and a future was first spoken to people living in exile. What happens when God doesn't change the season? Through the story of Israel in Babylon, this episode explores how to stop putting your life on hold while waiting for the next chapter a...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 3 of I Never Got My Why, Tennille explores the wilderness story of Hagar and the powerful name she gives God in the middle of unanswered questions: El Roi, the God who sees me. This episode is about isolation, edited pain, emotional honesty, and the deep human need to be seen fully in suffering. Inside this episode: Hagar in Genesis 16 El Roi, the God who sees emotional...

Send us Fan Mail Why do some questions stay with us long after the moment that created them? In Episode 2 of I Never Got My Why series, Tennille explores what happens when heartbreak, disappointment, and unanswered prayers stop being something we experience and start becoming the emotional place we live. Through the story of Naomi in Ruth 1, personal reflections, and an honest conversation about t...

Send us Fan Mail Why can’t I move on… even when I know the relationship is over? In this first episode of the I Never Got My Why series, I explore the emotional and spiritual exhaustion of living inside unanswered questions.  If you’ve ever wrestled with heartbreak, grief, disappointment, emotional looping, or wondering why God allowed something painful to happen, this episode is for you. Through...

Send us Fan Mail Before you compare your life to someone else’s, remember this: You joined their story in the middle. In this episode of The Living Story , we’re talking about comparison, social media, waiting seasons, and the quiet belief so many women carry that they are somehow “behind” in life. Maybe you thought you’d be married by now. Maybe you thought you’d have children, clarity, healing,...

Send us Fan Mail Before I met God, I had a whole library of stories I believed about myself. Stories about rejection. Worth. Being overlooked. Being too much and somehow not enough at the same time. Stories about love, purpose, identity, and whether I was chosen at all. In this episode of The Living Story , we’re talking about the quiet lies women carry for years — the ones repeated so often they...

Send us Fan Mail You read the books. You went to therapy. You journaled, processed, grew, and did everything the personal development world told you to do.  And something is still missing. Not because the work was wrong. Because there is a question underneath all of it that none of it could answer.  Am I actually known by something larger than all of this?  This episode is for the woman who has tr...

Send us Fan Mail There is a Japanese art form called kintsugi. When pottery breaks, the artist repairs it with gold. The cracks do not get hidden. They become the most luminous part of the whole piece.  What if God works the same way in your story? What if the chapters you have been trying to get past are actually the chapters He has been filling with something that makes them the most beautiful p...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty years. Thousands of girls. And one thing that has never changed: the moment a girl decides she doesn't matter is the moment the world loses something it cannot afford to lose.  This episode is for every woman who remembers being that girl. And for every parent, mentor, or educator who has one in front of them right now.  Tennille Martinez opens up about what she has wa...

Send us Fan Mail I deleted messages on WhatsApp. More than once. And every time I did, I restarted the clock on my own healing without realizing it.  If you have ever reached back for something God already moved, if you have ever stood in a room with tears running down your face while worship music played and wondered why it was not getting easier, this episode is for you.  This is what real heali...

Send us Fan Mail I was angry at God for years. And the honest truth is that most of my anger was built on a version of Him I had never actually taken the time to know. I had heard about Him. I had sat in rooms where people talked about Him. I had consumed the content, the books, the sermons. But I had never done the work of sitting with His word myself, letting the Holy Spirit correct me, letting...

Send us Fan Mail I was sitting on the couch with my mom, three episodes deep into The Testaments on Hulu, when something came out of me before I knew I was going to say it. That is not the God I know. And I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. In this episode, I am getting into all of it. Margaret Atwood and why her storytelling stopped me cold in The Handmaid's Tale and pulled...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever been in a hard week and needed to know things were going to be okay? This Holy Week, I found myself in a hospital waiting room. I had been avoiding going to the doctor for weeks because I was too busy, too scared of what sitting still might force me to face.  Everything was going to be okay. Even if it was not, everything was going to be okay. But the peace came befo...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt like healing was for everyone else but somehow not quite available to you?  Like you were doing everything right and still felt like you were behind where you were supposed to be?  This Selah episode is for the woman who is raw and hurting, the woman in the long, quiet middle, and the woman who is almost through, but not yet whole.  Not a lecture. Not a formula....

Send us Fan Mail I was gone for six almost seven months. And if you have ever stepped away from something you loved because life asked too much of you all at once, this episode is for you.  A new subject I had never taught before.  A hunger for the Word I could not explain or ignore.  And healing that does not arrive on a schedule.  What I discovered is that the seasons that go quiet are not alway...

Send us Fan Mail I was baptized at sunrise on the beach with my church community.  One week later, the relationship ended.  Same week. Same breath.  If you have ever had a chapter that cost you more than you thought you had to give and still cannot quite explain what God was doing inside it, this is that episode.  This is my full testimony.  From the accident that took my voice to the fifty books...

Send us Fan Mail Do you struggle with the fear of sharing your story —afraid of being judged, misunderstood, or rejected? In this episode of The Living Story , we explore why so many women hesitate to tell their stories and how God can transform fear into freedom. Through the lens of Elizabeth Acevedo’s novel The Poet X , the biblical journeys of Jeremiah, Moses, and Esther, and my own personal re...

Send us Fan Mail Perfectionism promises peace but leaves us exhausted.  In this episode of The Living Story, I share the quiet ways perfectionism shows up in our lives at work, in relationships, and in our faith, and how to finally let it go. Through the sharp precision of Lessons in Chemistry’s Elizabeth Zott, the striving of Martha in Luke 10, the résumé of Paul, and the failure of Peter, we dis...

Send us Fan Mail Do you keep replaying the same painful inner narrative? The one that whispers, “You’re not enough,” “You’ll never be loved,” or “This is just how it is”? In this powerful episode of The Living Story , we explore how to stop rehearsing lies and start rewriting the truth with God. Featuring reflections on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the heartbreaking story of Tamar...