We recently connected with Leticia Francis and have shared our conversation below.

Leticia, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I had just finished homeschooling my daughters, clocked out of a job that drained me, and cried in the bathroom between Zoom calls like it was part of my daily schedule. I was exhausted. Numb. But still performing. Still achieving. Still showing up with a smile because that’s what strong women do, right?

But here’s what no one tells you about survival mode, it doesn’t always look chaotic. Sometimes it looks like degrees, promotions, high-functioning routines, and curated Instagram feeds. But underneath all that? You’re drowning in your own damn strength.

The truth hit me like a punch to the gut: I wasn’t living. I was performing my way through pain. And I realized, if I felt this way, how many other high-achieving women were silently suffocating under the weight of their own resilience?

That was the birth of my business.

I didn’t just want to build a brand. I wanted to start a rebellion.

Because here’s what I saw: a world full of coaches, therapists, and “healers” offering surface-level solutions for deep-rooted trauma. A culture obsessed with “bossing up” while ignoring the inner child crying for rest. I wasn’t interested in slapping affirmations on open wounds. I wanted to disrupt the entire conversation around trauma, success, and womanhood.

I created my business and eventually the Survival Mode Exodus framework, to offer what I never had: a brutally honest, soul-shifting space for women to exit survival mode, reclaim their voice, and rewrite their lives. My approach is raw. It’s real. And it works because it doesn’t pretend that healing is pretty. It honors the mess.

I knew this was a worthwhile endeavor because every time I spoke out, shared my story, challenged the toxic “strong Black woman” narrative, or helped a client unravel years of self-abandonment, the response was overwhelming. Women weren’t just listening. They were waking up. Crying. DM’ing me at midnight saying, “You just put words to something I didn’t know I was living through.”

That’s when I knew, I wasn’t just solving a problem. I was naming it.

This business isn’t about me. It’s a movement. And it started the day I finally said: “I’m done surviving. I want to live.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Leticia Francis – The Survival Mode Disruptor.

I’m a trauma recovery mentor, international speaker, market research strategist, and now a published author. But behind all the titles and accolades is a Black woman who clawed her way out of generational pain, domestic abuse, toxic relationships, and high-functioning burnout… and turned her survival into a strategy for others to thrive.

I didn’t stumble into this work. I became this work.

My career started in market research, helping entrepreneurs understand their audience, craft irresistible offers, and make confident business decisions rooted in data, not guesswork. I still do that. But what I realized after working with hundreds of women, many of whom looked like me, was this:

Strategy means nothing if you’re stuck in survival mode.

Women were hiring me for business help, but what they really needed was a way out of the trauma patterns running the show. They were perfectionists, people-pleasers, and hyper-independent overachievers who had learned to equate struggle with worth. They didn’t need another funnel, they needed freedom.

That’s when everything shifted.

Now, I help high-achieving women, especially Black women and trauma survivors, exit survival mode, disrupt the identities that were built to protect them, and create lives rooted in ease, truth, and power. I do this through my signature 6-step framework, The Survival Mode Exodus, which I teach in my book, podcast, coaching sessions, and inside my membership community.

My offerings include:

🖤 1:1 coaching for trauma-informed life and leadership reinvention

🖤 Survival Mode Exodus Membership – a community for women ready to stop performing and start healing

🖤 Workshops + keynotes for organizations on workplace trauma, psychological safety, and identity-based burnout

🖤 Survival Mode Disrupted – my podcast that dives deep into healing stories and the realities of what it takes to stop surviving and start living

🖤 Survival Mode Exit Plan – my book written to help women break survival patterns and reclaim their identity

What sets me apart? I don’t do fluff. I don’t do performative healing. And I damn sure don’t do “just think positive” coaching. I go deep. I challenge. I call things out. And I guide women with truth, grace, and strategy.

I’m most proud of the women who have walked away from relationships they outgrew, redefined motherhood on their terms, left soul-sucking jobs, built healing-centered businesses, and finally gave themselves permission to choose themselves.

I’m here to make one thing clear: survival mode isn’t a phase, it’s an identity. And if you’re living life on autopilot, constantly “pushing through,” and settling for a version of life that drains you…

I will disrupt that comfort zone.
I will challenge your patterns.
And I will walk with you until you remember who the hell you were before the world taught you to shrink.

This isn’t just a business. It’s a movement.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience isn’t a word I throw around lightly. It’s not cute. It’s not always empowering. Sometimes, it’s bloody. Sometimes, it’s surviving things you should’ve never had to endure in the first place.

I was 14 when I entered my first abusive relationship. And I say “entered” like I had a choice but the truth is, I was groomed. Conditioned. Taught from an early age to confuse control with love. What started as emotional manipulation quickly turned into physical violence. But I stayed. Because trauma teaches you that chaos is normal and that silence is survival.

I married him.

And not long after, I found myself being stabbed by the very man who promised to love me.

I remember the moment with chilling clarity. The way time slowed. The way I tried to make myself invisible. The way I bled and still thought somehow it was my fault. That I had provoked it. That if I could just be better, be quieter, be smaller, this wouldn’t have happened.

That moment could’ve ended my life. And in some ways, it did. It ended the version of me who tolerated the pain. Who made excuses for abuse. Who believed she was unworthy of peace.

But that same moment also awakened me.

It was the catalyst for everything that came after. My healing. My rage. My boundaries. My decision to rebuild myself from the inside out. I didn’t just survive that attack, I resurrected from it.

And now?

Now I help other women do the same.

Not all wounds bleed on the outside. So many women are walking around with invisible scars, high-functioning, successful, put-together… but still haunted by the trauma they’ve never named.

My story is a reminder that resilience isn’t about being unbreakable. It’s about refusing to stay broken. It’s about choosing, every damn day, to keep showing up, for yourself. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

That’s the kind of resilience I carry. And that’s the kind I help my clients reclaim.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn the lie that being strong meant being silent.

That lesson was wired into me from the start. I grew up believing that strength was about endurance. That if I didn’t cry, didn’t complain, didn’t break, then I was winning. That keeping the peace, carrying the weight, and swallowing my pain was somehow noble.

But that wasn’t strength. That was suppression.

It showed up in my first abusive relationship as a teenager, when I stayed quiet after the first slap. The second one. The night I was stabbed by the man I married. I told myself, “It’s not that bad.” I wore long sleeves and longer excuses. I didn’t want to be “dramatic.” I didn’t want to be a problem.

Later, it showed up in corporate rooms where I overachieved while being overlooked. In motherhood, where I gave everything to everyone and left myself last. In entrepreneurship, where I burned out chasing validation dressed up as success.

The backstory? I was taught to be a good girl. A strong Black woman. A fixer. A ride-or-die. I was taught that my silence made me safe. But silence didn’t protect me, it buried me.

The truth is, strength isn’t about how much you can carry.

It’s about how brave you are to put it down.

To rest. To say no. To cry in public. To leave the man everyone else thought was perfect. To start over, again and again, even when people don’t understand your why.

That’s what I had to unlearn: that strength isn’t performance. It’s presence. It’s truth. It’s letting yourself be human and still choosing to rise.

And now? That unlearning is the foundation of everything I teach.

Because healing doesn’t come from pretending you’re fine.

It comes from telling the damn truth and building a life that doesn’t require you to suffer to feel worthy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.leticiareneefrancis.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leticiareneefrancis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leticia.r.francis
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leticia-f
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@leticiareneefrancis