Ep 53: The Real Problem isn't Being a Pick-Me. It's Self-Abandonment

A single line on a reality show can expose a lifetime of conditioning. After watching Love Island’s most explosive moments, we sit with the gut-punch of hearing someone plead to be chosen and ask the real question behind all the viral “pick me” discourse: what happens when you start choosing another person over yourself?

We talk about why “pick me culture” gets weaponized as a shame label, and how that kind of public dragging can sound like internalized misogyny dressed up as commentary. I’m honest about having empathy for the women getting criticized while still naming what’s unhealthy: ignoring red flags, chasing crumbs, rationalizing disrespect, and confusing loyalty with love. I also share a personal story about staying mentally hooked on someone who never truly chose me, and how that painful lesson helped break a self-abandonment pattern.

Then we zoom out to the deeper roots: the way girls are socialized to orbit men, the added layers of purity culture and religious messaging, and the constant accusation that women are “selfish” when we prioritize ourselves. We also look at how younger generations are gaining language around boundaries, attachment, gaslighting, and emotional labor and why I still have hope that growth is possible, even after a public crash-out.

If this hits close to home, you’re not alone. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or a five-star rating on Spotify so more women can find the conversation.

Transcript

Choosing Others Over Yourself

SPEAKER_00 0:05

What happens when people get into a place where you are somewhere along the way choosing someone else instead of yourself?

Love Island Fallout And Public Dragging

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey y'all, welcome back to the Out Here Trying to Survive podcast. Are y'all watching Love Island season seven or season eight? Whichever season this is, it's crazy. Wow. I just watched the last super explosive episode on what's today, Saturday, Sunday, the 28th. It was yesterday. Yesterday's the 27th episode was fing insane. Let's just put that out there. I've never seen anything like that on Love Island. And I love me a love reality show, but the internet is dragging Melanie and Anaya and defending Melanie and Anaya. And it seems like it feels pretty split down the middle. Now I'll be honest, I don't spend like a ton of time on TikTok keeping up with everything, but I have been hearing a bunch of pick Misha talk around Anaya and Melanie. I think I want to talk a little bit more about how Anaya fits into this whole topic of the pick me thing, about their desperation. But particularly Anaya, it really broke my heart when she was crying and she was like, You didn't pick me. You didn't pick me. Here I picked you. You didn't pick me. You didn't pick me. And this is the session where you can pick me and you can pick me. Yeah, I was like, oh god, like that is going to be chopped up, clipped up, and fed to the TikTok fodder mill. This Poe Child. You know, a lot of people are saying they have no self-respect, talking about Melanie and Anaya. And I'm not gonna go into what where I'm at with it. I will in a second, but I wanted to say something as an empath. So I'm a strong empath. I'm someone who literally leads with empathy, kind of as like a dominant personality trait. Actually, for my job, they just had us take the Gallup strengths finder, and empathy was my second gift. So empathy is a big part of my worldview, just who I am as a person. So if you don't want to hear me being empathetic or you're allergic to empathy, you probably don't like me or my channel. So I do have empathy for both Anaya and Melanie, but I can also hold it in tension with the correction that I have for them and how I've seen this play out in my own life. So just know that I have empathy, but then I also have the nuance of, and y'all can do better. But part of the reason that I have empathy for these girls is because I've been one. Yeah. And I lived in a lot of pick me shit. I did a lot of pick me shit in my life. And that's something that number one, I don't think was a good thing for me to do. Number two was self-abandonment. And number three, caused me a lot of pain. And number four, I'm glad to not be participating in anymore. But at the same time, we can't expect people to be perfect and never go through the things that actually cause them to learn to change the behavior. And these are young women. And if I had been 21 or 22 or 23 or 24, I believe they're all under, let's just say 25. Most of them are under 25, I think, except for Bryce, who's 29. If I had been on a reality TV show when I was that age, there would be no end to the amount of things that would have been said about me. And I try to lead with that and remember like all of these people talking all of this shit about Anaya and Melanie, and and you know, and Casey. I mean, there's a lot of, but I'm just gonna focus on uh Melanie and Anaya in particular. Y'all have to remember you have your own struggles, you're not perfect, you're not all out here in super healthy relationships yourselves or ever been in super healthy relationships, and your shit stinks too. It's just different. But I feel like there's always a little bit of less empathy for women who struggle with pygmyism than other struggles. Maybe it's because the consequences are more drastic. I'm not sure what it is, whatever the case may be. I think people are being a little too hard on them. Now, again, again, I was kind of it I like the whole episode gave me the ick. I was happy to see Trinity and Bryce reunite. But after that, all of the fighting and the way that Trinity was treating TT, the way that all the girls were yelling, hearing Clansy, because I cannot stand that girl, hearing Clansey speak, just in general, but all of that yapping, I'm like, y'all, the whole end of it, it yes, it was entertaining television, but it was ick. It just gave me the ick. And it reminded me, number one, of all of their ages. Cause I had to, like, as a woman in my late 40s, be like, okay, remember, these are to me, as a woman who's literally almost 50, I'm like, Grace, remember, these are children in some way. Like these kids are my son's age. Like, my I have a son who's about to be 21. And I'm like, oh my God, if he were on Love Island, like, oh Lord, I I believe I don't know him. I'm just playing. I don't even think he'd be bad. I think he would be well, actually, let me not talk about my son. I don't need to say that, but he's just he's young, he has a young mindset, and he would not be ready for the psychological damage that show would cause him for real. Me or him. But I had to remember, like, these are younger people. They're they're adults. Yes, I'm not abdicating them of their responsibility, but also I don't think, and I don't think anyone thinks this. This is why we really need to be very careful with our wording about these people. I don't think any of these people are evil. I don't think any of these people are, you know, have narcissistic personality disorder or or psychopaths or sociopaths. I think these are just young people who are immature and making poor choices and crashing

Empathy Without Excusing Bad Choices

SPEAKER_00 5:36

out and it's all televised. I mean, this is what they agreed to. They also agreed to a game. At the end of the day, this is a television show with a prize. They're all playing a game. And I know that's gotta be super confusing because it has to deal with your heart and matters of the heart, which is why I could never do it. But what I think this is showing, and what I want to talk about today, is what happens when people get into a place where you are somewhere along the way choosing someone else instead of yourself. And there are people who are playing this game correctly on Love Island by choosing themselves and not choosing other people and not choosing other people's hearts, and then there are people who are choosing with their heart foolishly and not choosing themselves, and I think that that is almost the bigger danger. Pygmyism is about self-abandonment, but there's lots of ways that people self-abandon themselves. Pick me is one of them, so we're gonna get into that a little bit. So, y'all, it's been six weeks. Last time I filmed was May 13th. Today is June 28th. I took a little needed and necessary break. Number one, I started working full-time, which was a big transition. Number two, I started taking a class again. So I kind of have a little bit of a training development class I'm in, which is taking some time. I also joined a mastermind group, which is beautiful and I love doing it. My kids also transitioned into being home from summer break. And you know what? I was just like, girl, you are not superwoman, you don't have to be superwoman. Take a break, it'll be fine. So, in addition to all that, I've been trying to get outside and walk more, take my health seriously, spend time with my kids. It's been a good six weeks, but I'm ready to be back. So let's chat. If you're new here, my name is Grace Sandra. I'm a writer, author, advocate, storyteller, mom, podcaster, and a YouTuber. And the Out Here Trying to Survive is a hope-oriented storytelling space for black and brown women of color to talk about all the things that we are trying to survive through, particularly in this midlife moment: paramenopause, divorce, raising kids of multiple ages, sometimes caring for our parents, and everything else that goes along with it. And we're trying to heal together in community, survive, and ultimately thrive. Welcome to episode 53. Okay, so let's talk about the pick me culture a little bit. I have always hated the pick me culture. Here's why I've hated it because when people talk about women who are pickmes or pickmicias, it's almost always in a way that they sound like internalized misogynists. It just sounds like internal misogyny to me. That's how my ears hear it. I'm not going to sit up and argue with somebody about that. That's just how I hear it. It's like literally, if someone sees a woman walking by and they're like, ugh, look at her ass. Her ass is clearly a BBL. And then they just go on and on and on about women with BBL. Well, I do think that's internalized misogyny. I literally think you're doing the work of the patriarchy. Like if you're actively hating on women, whether it's for how they operate or how they look or whatever it is, I do think that you're just operating by a misogynist playbook. That's just me. I think there's other ways to discuss women in ways that do not cut them down. And as someone who has struggled with being a pick me having lack of boundaries, I completely fully understand why I got there, what led to that. And then, you know, as someone who's on the other side of it, thank God, what I needed to do to heal. There was one girl in my life who she never spoke to me kindly about my issues. I can tell you it never led to any healing. Her calling me a pick me or in even insinuating it, her being really harsh and really judgmental about the things I was struggling with with men that she wasn't, it never led to healing at all. Actually, it led to the opposite, only ever led to shame. And I'll harp on this till the day I die. You cannot heal from shame. That is the one thing that American society continues to purport and put out there and like let's shame them, let's shame them into different behavior. You cannot shame people into different behavior. It doesn't work. We all have Brene Brown books now. We all know the research has been done. We all know that you cannot heal from shame. And I think that just labeling women a pick me or a pickmesha is just a shame-based comment at this moment in the cultural zeitgeist to just tear a woman down. So I just, I'm not gonna do that, even though I do think that when we discussed Love Island, my mouth was aghast. The fact that Melanie and Anaya still chose Sincere and Casey, my mouth was open. Like I was just like, Y'all, what the fuck? What?

unknown 10:06

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Like, I was not happy about it. Like a lot of people, I just was like, y'all are so dumb. But at the same time, I'm not gonna be like, yell or pick me, yell or pick me's. Like, that's just dumb. It's not helpful, it's just shaming behavior. And I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm a girls' girl. I wouldn't want to protect women. I don't mind critiquing us. I don't mind calling us to accountability. I don't mind people critiquing me. I don't mind people calling me towards accountability. But what I don't like is when we're saying something to people for shits and giggles because we're kind of jumping on the bandwagon. And on top of all of that, we have to ask the question who taught us that we are women who need to be picked? Where did that come from? Men, we all know that. All of the lies that have been carried down generation over generation, century after century, have been who created them? Men. So just keep that in mind. When I see women acting in like pick me ways, even when I look it back at my own life and I see how I got to where I got, it was the systems that led to some of those things, not the individuals per se. And it's not always that, but I think in a large way, we do have to pull it out from this like individual kind of mindset to look at the wider mindset. How do we even get here? How did we even get here? Why are we calling women pick me's who have self-abandonment issues? Like that should be met with mercy and grace. Like, hey, let's look into that. Like, why do you have self-abandonment issues that you're willing to self-abandon for a man? Like, what has you being male-centered? What got you to a male-centered place? That is the conversation that I needed and really ended up having in some ways with myself, with my own seeking out how to be a better woman and a better person and a better mother and a better friend. But it's an interesting question, and it's one that a lot of some social commentarians have talked about. So I'm not gonna go too in depth with that part, but just to say, can we please stop all the hating on Anaya and Melanie and Titi and Trinity and all these women, all these beautiful black women, as if they're bad people and not just kind of dumb

Why “Pick Me” Talk Feeds Shame

SPEAKER_00 12:10

young adults. You know? But first, let me tell y'all a story. So I got my phone out because in episode 32, I told the story once already. I don't want to tell too much again. But I'm gonna just play this little clip for you, okay? Let's play it. He don't want to. And there have been a couple of people in my life who were saying that, you know, in hindsight, I just didn't get it. I I wish I could tell y'all I did, but that's where I'm at. I'm not gonna lie to y'all. I was just like, no, no, no, it's gonna be fine. But anyway, it didn't end up being fine. And then I found out in the most gruesome way possible, in the most gruesome way possible that he had had a girlfriend on and off basically the whole time. The whole time. The whole time, the whole time. Yeah, that's really all the details you need is that a man led me on for a year and a half and the entire time he had a girlfriend on and off. And I was being such a pick me about it. Looking back, I'm like, I probably literally had my that thought, like eventually he will pick me. Eventually he will choose me. I I can't remember that I had that specific thought, but what else could have been going through my head the way that he was able to keep me on a hook that I stayed willingly stayed on without a gun to my head? Child. And as you hear in that clip, there's something that I said, like there were a few people in my life who were trying to gently let me know, like, this man is not choosing you. You need to move on. And the thing is, y'all, is I was dating other people. I was moving on in the way that I wasn't just sitting at home twiddling my thumbs, waiting for him, but mentally, mentally, mentally, I was waiting to be chosen. And that situation kind of like woke me up, like, oh my god, I will never do that again. I will never date another man ever again who is giving me such nonchalant vibes, such nonchalant energy, such I don't care if I lose you energy. Well, yeah, because he had someone else that he was actively hiding me from. I I I tell y'all all the time, I don't come out here ever pretending to be perfect or ever pretending not to make mistakes. And sometimes I share these embarrassing ass stories so that I can let y'all know y'all can learn from me. Y'all can learn from my mistakes. I'm learning from my mistakes. And if I get on here and tell y'all I did that same shit again, then yeah, that would be really problematic. But I think that situation, the embarrassment, the shame, the pain, the frustration, I think it might have cured me of my pygmyism. And I wish it didn't have to get to that, but I'm gonna just keep it real. What I want to empathize with Anaya, I guess Melanie to some extent, but not the same. The part that I want to empathize, and this is about you too, even if you're not struggling with pick me shit, but you struggle with self-abandonment shit, there is things that cross over, right? So when you are doing pick me shit or when you're self-abandoning, there's things that are happening. You're ignoring red flags about whatever the situation is, you're chasing crumbs, you're having a level of delusional hope that does not match the situation, you're rationalizing about the person or the situation, you're embarrassing yourself, and you're abandoning yourself ultimately. And that is what we can see. I'll just focus on Anaya. In this situation, there are so many red flags that Anaya was ignoring about Casey and about how he was moving with her, even down to watching the videos when they got to Casa Moore. And Trinity said it a couple times in the dressing room. Remember when Trinity was like, Casey had his fingers practically in her ass crack, girl? Like, did you see how excited he was? Did you see how happy he was to be touching on these other girls? She was constantly chasing crumbs. She was hoping, she was rationalizing. What hurt me the most to see Anaya say, where I felt so sad for her. Like, it was one of those moments, like, if I were there or I was like the on-site therapist, which by the way, I'm not a therapist, to be clear. I'm not a doctorial student, like lying ass Dr. Bryant. But anyway, if I were there, I would have wanted to sit her down and be like, baby girl, let me hold your hands when I tell you this. It's so sad to hear you say. She literally said out her mouth, I stand behind him and I choose to stand behind him, and I will always stand behind him. Now, that's a wonderful thing to say about someone you're married to. That's a wonderful thing to say about someone who you have pledged a lifelong commitment to. Maybe even someone who you are engaged to, who has put a ring on your finger and said, Hey, let's make a commitment that we are one day going to enter into a marriage contract. But for Anaya to say that about a man she met three weeks earlier while participating on a game show, it's fucking crazy. I mean, we we all just gotta acknowledge that, right? Now I get it. I have empathy for her, and at the same time, like, girl, there is no greater self-abandonment than being a woman who declares yourself a ride or die to a cishet gendered man in 2026. That shit is embarrassing. These men will embarrass you, they will hurt you, they will harm you, they will stab you in your back 82.9 different ways in 2026, and you talking about you a ride or die. Like I could see as a wife, because I've been a wife and kind of had that mentality at some point, which is why I will never be a wife again. Willingly, I choose to never be a wife again, intentionally choose to never be a wife again after being a wife twice, and realizing I am not going to be a ride or die for any cishet gendered man. But really, my own two boys, my own two cishet gendered boys that I birthed, but even then, there's limits to that if they cause tremendous harm or murder someone or rape someone, like there's limits. Like, I'm not even a ride or die, like no matter what you do for all of your life. Like, if you rape someone or murder someone or do some other sort of heinous behavior, like, yeah, that's going to challenge my ride or dying for you. What we need to do as women is not self-abandon no matter what. There is not any good reason outside of her youth and immaturity that Anaya should have said that on national TV. Like, that was fucking crazy. And then to watch him come in with TT, it was like, girl, you did this to yourself. And I understand it though, because I've been there, so I have empathy for you. But also, you did this to yourself. I feel like I have a very balanced perspective. Like, I could hug her, I could have been there and hugged her and been like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I have I have compassion for you, I have empathy for you, I have sympathy for you. And also, girl, we gotta learn from this and do better. I know you're 22 or 23 or less than 25 or whatever the hell you are, but we gotta get better as time goes on. We have to. These producers gave y'all, was it 12? 12 men to choose from to help you to choose better. They gave you 12 men, and you still still chose the man who chose to put his fingers damn near in a booty hole on a televised live stream, on a televised TV show. But why? Why? What's why is the question not just for Naya, not just for Melanie, but also for me, also for other women who struggle with pick-me behavior, also for all of us who have self-abandoned at some point in time. And if you're sitting here as a woman being like, oh my god, I can't believe Grace has done pick me shit, or I can't believe other women are do this, I can't believe that. This isn't my issue. Girl, you've self-abandoned at some point in your life. Shut at some point in your life, so please shut the fuck up if you're being judgmental. Like that's ridiculous. We've all self-abandoned at some point in our life. This is not something you come out of the coach being perfect at. We all have. We have all at some point entertained a relationship or a boyfriend or whatever or a partner in any situation where we have self-abandoned. This is not for me. I'm never, you're never ever gonna hear me saying, let's come down on a particular type of woman. And I I hate, I literally hate when women get on a high horse about pick me. I would never, okay, I know you wouldn't, but you would do some other silly shit that

My Own Pick Me Wake-Up Call

SPEAKER_00 20:30

I wouldn't do. You don't hear me harping all on you. So let's go into a little bit of a deeper situation. How are Anayas born? How are women like me born where we end up in situations like this, or where, you know, for me, I'm in a much better place, but I still have to internally check myself quite often. I still have to check in with my girlfriends, I still have to do the mental work, it still doesn't come to me naturally. I know there's other women who it does come forward naturally. How do we get here and how do we get out of it? Because this isn't just like about dating. Again, pygmyism is a symptom of a bigger problem of self-abandonment. And what is it that gets us there? I do think the big thing, and I've talked about this tons before, is that women are socialized towards men. We are literally socialized to orient our lives around them. And just think about all the questions we ask little, even little girls like, oh, do you like any boys? Do you have a boyfriend? Who's taking you to prom? You know, so do you want to get married when you get older? Oh, how many kids do you want? You know, like those are the kind of questions that definitely little girls of my generation got asked. I think and hope they're probably being asked less. I haven't heard anyone ask that to my daughter. I have a nine year old daughter, so maybe things are changing. I haven't heard anyone harp on with her, like, oh, do you have a little boyfriend? And stuff like that, which is just nowadays, if you think about it, is so weird. But as a little girl, who else got asked that? Leave leave it in the comments. Did you get asked that a lot? Because I remember getting asked that a lot. When was I getting married and how many babies was I having? But you know, if you think. About it, the questions that boys get asked is you know, who are you trying to be? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to build? What do you want to become? They're not asking, How many kids do you want? People are not asking little boys, do you want to get married when you get older? What age do you want to be married by? And how many kids do you want? And then it gets even more complicated when you add in for me, being raised, born and raised in purity culture, or being born and raised in like a very highly religious culture, you know, Black Baptist Church, the Black Pentecostals, there's a lot of layers of this about centering men, particularly being sure that our body is a reflection of the centering of men. And that's a whole almost whole other podcast episode, but I do think that that's an important thing to consider is religious upbringing and the mindfuck that that does on your brain in terms of how it leads you to center men. And then the whole thing about we are taught often, and it feels like it deserves to be said again, that we are selfish if we're not centering the men in people around us. We are taught this as women, black and brown women are taught this all the time. When it comes to pygmyism, again, the symptom is there, but there's other things that are happening too. There's other symptoms that are showing side by side. It's when we're not leaving a relationship when we really should. But we're taught like that's selfish because what about the kids or whatever? When we're not saying no to people to plan the baby shower or whatever, or to watch our younger siblings. We're taught that we're being selfish. If we're not de-prioritizing ourselves actively, we're taught that if we take ourselves on a date, or even like let a girl get on threads and say she's a bad mamma jamma, and everyone is actively trying to tear her down because she's not de-prioritizing herself. She's saying, No, I look good, bitch, and everybody's tearing her down. You know, if we decide to go back to school, then all of a sudden we're selfish if we're not pouring all of our money back into our children or our husbands or whatever. Like, there's just so many little things along the way that women do to say, like, hey, I'd like to prioritize myself, I'd like to choose myself, and then we get almost shit on for making those decisions to the point that a lot of people are like, move in quiet, move, don't do anything out loud because you're gonna get all that negative energy. In some ways, I agree, but like, why do we have to get all this negative energy? Why can't it be okay for a woman just to literally center herself and prioritize herself, especially if she's not hurting anyone? It's different if it's if it's actual narcissistic, selfish, hurtful behavior towards other people. But like a woman saying she looks good on a threads post or taking herself out to dinner or going back to school or whatever it is, spending money on herself before she spends money on her children. There is such a constant chatter about women choosing ourselves that it makes sense that part of the system that has been set up is that women choose men and kind of fall in line. And that's still there. I think it's still there. And unfortunately for me, and I'm gonna talk about this in a minute, but as an excenial slash gen Xer, basically someone I was born between 1976 and 1983 or 85 or something is considered exennials. Like we're not exactly Gen X, but we're not exactly millennials. I feel it. I feel it. Any other Xennials? Let me know if you're an Xennial. Tell me leave it in the comments. But I had to realize, like after decades, literal decades of conditioning, that I wasn't going to heal because I found a good man. I think for a long time I thought, oh, I haven't healed fully, or I'm not like fully myself because I haven't found a good man that I'm compatible with and I'm not in a healthy relationship, until I realized, oh, healing just comes through me. It actually just, it's my job. Just all by myself. It's just my job. Healing isn't coming through a man. Like I can offer myself to a man, it healed me. And I can offer myself to a relationship, it healed healthy grace. But it doesn't come through that. And that's what I was socialized for many, many decades to believe, particularly someone who was not just raised in religious context, but actually worked in it too. I used to be a minister for a lot of years and work in Christian ministry, and that was the whole thing. And almost like if you leave your husband, if you get divorced, you're removed

How Women Get Trained To Self-Abandon

SPEAKER_00 26:10

from the covering of God and you cannot be healed. When in fact, I've experienced the most healing since being single. And let me just talk about this age thing real quick. I want to go back to this because younger generations, I think the kids are in a better place. For example, my daughter who is nine, I have told her several times, you don't have to get married, you don't have to have kids. And she's just like, Yeah, I know. And I'm like, Okay, I just want to be sure that you knew that because that's not what I was taught growing up. Like, I want you to do what makes you happy. You can be with a man or you cannot, you can be with a woman or you can be with a a a non-gender asexual person, intersex, you can be with whoever you want to be with romantically. And she's like, Yeah, I get it. Like, bro, this is not rocket science. I'm like, okay, I just want to be sure you knew that because, like, that's not what I was taught. And so there's just like a lot of shame around this. And she's only nine, so I'm not bringing up the sexual piece, but like when she's older, I want her to know, like, hey, by the way, it's okay if you're a sexual being, it's okay if you enjoy sex, you don't have to wait till you're married to have sex. Like, you can do what you want, just make sure it's consensual, make sure you're protected. I'm gonna have all of that conversation with her, but she's only nine, so not yet. But the kids are in a different place, and those are conversations I've had with my sons, by the way, who are 16, almost 17, and 20, almost 21. So they know where I stand on all of that. But I do think the younger generations have a little bit more, especially the girls have a greater sense that they don't have to get married and and have babies. And I actually just saw something yesterday on the news that said this is the first time in I don't even know how many years that like all of the 30-year-old women, it's the most childless generation of 30-year-old women. I'm like, yes, because they know we have this whole big life we can have outside of just like settling down and popping out babies. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that. I mean, that's what I did. I wish I had waited a while longer, but we're not gonna go there. But I do think that Gen Z and whatever one is after that, I think my daughter is Gen Alpha. Is it starting over from Z to A? I don't know. Whatever generation my daughter is, who's nine? So Gen Z and the one after that, I think that they are in the best place to understand that they're don't have to center men. But if you look at my generation, Generation X, and the one before me, which is the boomers and generation X, we were primarily taught go find a man, choose a man, go to college to get a man, keep that man, that will make you happy, have those babies, that will make you happy, and stay married. You know, the boomers were just the ones staying married. Now the Gen X is like me, we're just like, Yep, bro, like we don't have to. We literally don't have to stay attached to a lying, cheating, abusive, whatever, manipulative, or just we're just unhappy. We don't have to stay in this. We just don't. Y'all are not adding enough value for us to want to stay here. So I love that for this generation. And then the millennials are in between, I feel like still kind of figuring this shit out. But these kids on Love Island right now, what are they? Are they Gen Z? I think they're Gen Z. Like, I wish that we were seeing something a little different from them as Gen Zers, but at least there is a sense of some level of boundaries. Like when I was hearing Trinity talk about, like, girl, if you want to be a dummy, go ahead and be a dummy. I'm like, thank you, Trinity. Thank you for saying it. But still, Gen Z does have the vocabulary that like my generation didn't have for sure. When I was in my 20s, my generation did not have. We were not talking about boundaries, attachment, who's anxiously attached and who's not, whether or not a man is gaslighting us or not, how we are doing so much emotional labor for men who are giving us nothing in return, being loved by my men, only for them to get coochie cat and then dip out on us, red flags, like there's just so much for cap vocabulary that millennials and Gen Z have in dating that like us old ass Exennials and Gen X and boomers didn't have. We were not privy to the kind of language and understanding of these relationship dynamics that the younger generations have, and that does give me some hope. And hearing Trinity and Clansey, because I don't I don't like I don't like Clanzy, but uh the one thing she does do is she's playing the game very well and she does stick up for herself, sometimes to an obnoxious level, which has some racial undertones too, which I'm not gonna get into. It's nuanced. My whole point is I do have some hope for this younger generation, and I really wish that Anaya was embodying some of that more, but again, she's young and her prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, so let's have some grace. I do hope moving forward that Anaya and Melanie, honestly, a lot of the cast, I really hope a lot of the cast does not read the comments and take in a lot of the hateful rhetoric about themselves. I hope they just learn their lesson. I pray that this isn't the end of their story, but the beginning of them understanding on a large scale, on a large stage, how important it is to choose yourself. I had to learn, and that is what they're now doing. They're learning, hopefully, moving forward and leaving this villa to choose themselves. And I hope when it comes to us and our situations and all the ways we might self-abandon, that we learn to finally choose ourselves. If you made it this far, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you. I know you could be anywhere out here on these internet streets, so I thank you for spending some time with me. If you're on YouTube, would you please subscribe to the channel, give me a like, and then go to the comments, leave me a comment, tell me how you've self-abandoned, and then hype me up. If you swipe over from the comments, there's the hype points, and the hype points really help the video and the channel get seen. And if you're on Apple, please go ahead and leave me a review on Apple. If you're on Spotify, it only takes a second to leave me a five-star review. I appreciate any of all of you being willing to engage in this conversation with me. I feel like my views are they're not controversial, but I do feel like they're a little bit different than some of what I hear going on. I also follow a lot, follow and listen to a lot of black women. And if I could recommend anyone who is doing the work to talk about Love Island in a really beautiful, emotionally intelligent way, it's Blue Talusma. She is an emotional intelligence coach, and she goes through episode by episode and talks through how to examine what the participants are going through through

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the lens of emotional intelligence. It's really fascinating, and I learned so much from her. And I watched her episode this morning while I was actually putting on makeup and stuff, and I just found myself really resonating with so much of what she was saying about this episode. But honestly, I agree with almost everything she says. So I think like her and I've thought like her for a long time, and she has the words to be able to say, Yeah, y'all, it doesn't matter whether or not people like these opinions, like facts are facts. It doesn't change what's actually happened. So yeah, go follow Blue Talusma if you want social commentary on Love Island that is really, really fair, honest assessment, and she's not afraid to go against kind of like the cultural milieu, like what people are saying. She's not afraid to go against it, but also provide proof and do her research and backup. So yeah, I cannot suggest Blue any more than I already do. I think she's amazing, and I love her channel and I love her. And one day, like it's my dream to be on her show. I want to be on it, I want to talk about something. I don't know what, but I want to talk about something. I just love her. I have a journal called The Out Here Trying to Survive. It's my signature Out Here Trying to Survive journal, and it's for women who are going through stuff. I mean, I could say it in a lot of different ways, but if you are going through stuff and you need a space to ref a space to reflect, it is what I do when I am going through shit. I mean, I have I've always been a journalist since I was like 11 or 12 years old. It's a deeply important part of my healing journey is getting my thoughts, thoughts out on paper, and then also having really good reflection questions and really good reflection mixed in. So this is not a hard copy, it's a digital journal, but you can answer the questions on your iPad or you can pull it up on your phone in the Files app and just kind of go through and read it and reflect every day, maybe write the answers in your journal. I think it will really benefit you if you are someone who's saying, Yeah, I just need more space to think about things more deeply going on into my life so I can get to the next step. This is for you. The link is in my stand store. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see y'all in the next episode. Bye.