The Living Story: Healing from Heartbreak, Finding Purpose, and Learning to Live Again
You have done the work. Read the books. Sat in the therapy chair. Said the prayers or maybe stopped saying them altogether. And something still is not landing. You are not broken. You are not behind. You are in the middle of a chapter that is longer and harder than anyone told you it would be. You feel stuck between who you were and who you are still becoming. And you are looking for someone who has been exactly where you are. Welcome to The Living Story. Hosted by Tennille Martinez, a teacher, storyteller, and woman of faith, this is a podcast for women in their 30s and 40s navigating healing, identity, heartbreak, and the long journey of finding themselves again after loss, divorce, depression, and the kind of pain that changes everything. Each episode weaves together personal testimony, scripture, and honest spiritual conversation for women who are done performing and ready to go deeper. Whether you are healing after divorce, recovering from heartbreak, rebuilding your sense of worth and purpose after loss, walking through depression and faith at the same time, or simply trying to find yourself again after a season that left you unrecognizable, there is a chapter here for you. This is not a podcast for women who have it together. This is a podcast for women who are still in the middle of it and need to know the middle is survivable. Faith will meet you here exactly where you are. Even if you are not sure you believe anymore. Even if you are angry. Even if the last thing you expected was for God to show up in a chapter that looked like this. If you have been searching for a podcast about healing, starting over, self-worth, identity, purpose, and becoming the woman you were created to be, you just found it. The chapters you least understand are often the ones that change everything. You don't just read stories. You are one.
Episodes
How do you trust God when you cannot see how your story will end?
In this episode of The Living Story, Tennille shares encouragement for Christian women facing heartbreak, unanswered prayers, grief, uncertainty, and unexpected endings. A quiet moment in her church helped her realize that a painful chapter had ended, but God had continued writing.
Through the biblical stories of Naomi in the Book of Ruth and Joseph in ...
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 final part of the I Never Got My Why series, we're loo...
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 Part 9 of the I Never Got My Why series, we're talking ab...
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 answers to discovering what God may ha...
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 enough, lovable, or worthy of being c...
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't show up strong.
She didn't show up with the r...
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 unanswered questions, you're not alone.
Heal...
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 and how to build, grow, and flourish in a place y...
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 isolation
- the edited version of pain
- w...
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 the gap between knowing truth and trust...
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 honest storytel...
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, p...
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 stop feeling like stories a...
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 tried everything available...
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 part of what He is building? ...
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 watched happen to girls in classroo...
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 healing actually looked like for ...
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 the full story of who He is get past ...
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 me straight into The Testaments.
I wat...
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 before the results. And that is what t...
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