Nine Lives, One Mission

Leticia Francis Author

From homeless to healing: Vitelle’s raw story of leaving survival mode—through self-awareness, reprogramming, and reinvention.

Vitelle learned to swim with a toddler on her hip and a dream in her teeth.

Actress. Author. Founder of US Three Productions. Mama. Auntie. Healer through the arts. Also: survivor of childhood abuse, domestic abuse, homelessness with kids in the backseat, and the silent wars high-achieving women fight when no one’s watching.

If you’ve ever juggled bills, babies, and big vision while your chest felt like a clenched fist—this one’s for you.

Survival mode can save your life. But if you live there too long, it starts eating it.

This episode isn’t a pity party; it’s a blueprint. Because yes, chaos trained you, but peace is supposed to keep you. And getting from one to the other happens in three phases: Self-Awareness. Reprogramming. Reinvention. Let’s walk.

Phase 1 — Self-Awareness: Name the Storm You’re Standing In

“Survival mode is a mindset—and I kept slipping back into it anytime life got loud.” — Vitelle

Self-awareness is the moment you stop pretending the house isn’t on fire while you smile for the HOA. It’s radical honesty about where you actually are:

• Reality check: “I’m functional, but I’m not okay.”

• Body check: “My shoulders are in my ears; my breath is shallow; my brain is sprinting.”

• Pattern check: “When I’m scared, I overwork, overgive, and isolate. That’s not discipline. That’s survival.”

For years, survival mode kept Vitelle alive: food, water, shelter, safety—period. That clarity matters. Survival mode is wisdom under threat. But when the threat passes and your habits don’t? That’s when wisdom calcifies into a prison.

Self-awareness moves to steal today:

• Say it plain: “I’m in survival. I’m not broken; I’m activated.”

• Spot your tell: Overfunctioning? People-pleasing? Doom scrolling? Pick your poison and call it out.

• Dignify your data: You don’t fix what you refuse to feel. Feelings are intel. Listen.

Phase 2 — Reprogramming: Retire the Strong Girl Costume

“Coping kept me afloat. Healing taught me how to walk out.” — Vitelle

Coping is a life raft. Reprogramming builds a bridge.

Therapy can help you unpack what happened. Coaching helps you move toward what you want. Faith fuels both. Community makes it sustainable. And none of those require performance—just participation.

Swap the scripts:

• Old: “If I just hustle harder, this ache will quiet down.”
  New: “My nervous system needs safety, not a spreadsheet.”

• Old: “I’m fine. I got it.”
  New: “I’m resourced when I’m supported. Help is holy.”

• Old: “Busy equals worthy.”
  New: “Breathing equals worthy. Rest equals worthy. I exist, therefore worthy.”

Reprogramming moves to practice:

• Daily check-ins: What am I feeling? Where is it in my body? What would help by 10%?

• Tiny rituals > huge resolutions: Color for ten minutes. Walk around the block. Pray. Journal one page. Text one friend instead of disappearing.

• Tech as tool, not trap: Use YouTube sermons, meditations, or motivational talks to lift you into community, not deeper into isolation.

• Boundaries that bite: Overgiving is a trauma response, not a personality trait. Re-draw the circle. Let fewer people closer.

Mic-drop truth:
Coping is “I’m learning to breathe again.”
Reprogramming is “I breathe first, then I build.”

Phase 3 — Reinvention: Make a Life that Fits the Woman You Became

“Nine characters. One stage. My story in all her faces—so other people could finally see theirs.” — Vitelle

Reinvention is not pretending the past didn’t happen. It’s using it on purpose.

Vitelle didn’t bounce back; she built forward—birthing Nine Lives, a one-woman show that alchemizes trauma into testimony. She took it on a nine-city faith walk with no safety net and watched miracle after miracle show up on cue. That’s what happens when you stop auditioning for a life you’ve outgrown.

Reinvention moves to embody:

• Choose your medium of meaning. Maybe it’s art. Maybe it’s advocacy. Maybe it’s the business you’ve been too scared to launch. Your pain can power your platform—without being your prison.

• Set standards that protect peace. You can be called and rested. Purpose without pacing is just another burnout cycle dressed cute.

• Anchor in gratitude for the grit. You don’t have to like it to learn from it. When you can say, “Nothing happens to me—it happens for me,” you’ve crossed into authorship.

Five Hard Truths the Strong Girl Needs to Hear

1. Your competence is not consent to carry everything. Put the cape down before it chokes you.

2. Isolation lies. It says you’re safer alone; it just makes you easier to drown.

3. Faith is not passive. It’s a verb. Ask. Move. Receive. Repeat.

4. Performance isn’t intimacy. Being needed isn’t the same as being known.

5. You’re allowed to be brand new. Not “back to who I was”—forward to who I’m becoming.

If You’re Stuck in the Spin…

Start small. Start now. Start messy.

• Join Disrupting Survival Mode—our free Facebook community where healing is loud, unfiltered, and real.

• Grab Survival Mode Exit Plan—the raw, step-by-step guide that helps you move from autopilot to authorship.

• When you’re ready to do this work with a co-pilot, my 1:1 coaching holds you through Self-Awareness → Reprogramming → Reinvention until peace becomes your new baseline.

You weren’t built to break.
But you damn sure weren’t built to just survive.

Choose ease. Choose power. Choose you.

Categories: : Podcast