Grief can knock the breath out of you. One moment life feels steady — and the next, everything you knew is gone.

In this episode of The Nona Jones Show, I sit down with author and speaker Courtney Pray Duke, who was widowed at 29 and left to raise three young children after the sudden loss of her husband.

This isn’t a conversation about “moving on.”
It’s about what happens when resurrection meets real life — when Jesus shows up in the middle of heartbreak and helps you rise again.

We talk about:
• walking through unbearable grief
• faith when God feels silent
• declarations in the dark
• filtering voices during loss
• and how healing actually happens

Scripture reminds us in Matthew 9:25, “The girl got up.”
Sometimes that’s the miracle, not the absence of pain, but the strength to stand again.

If you’re grieving, exhausted, or wondering if your story is over, this conversation is for you.

Most of us think relationship problems are about communication.

But what if the real issue is what’s happening beneath the surface?

In this episode of The Nona Jones Show, I’m joined by Dr. Gino Collura; behavioral scientist, executive advisor, and neuroanthropology expert, to unpack the hidden language of trauma and why it shows up in how we relate, react, attach, and interpret people.

Trauma doesn’t always show up as a memory.
More often, it shows up as overreaction, withdrawal, control, or shutdown, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

We talk about:

How early experiences shape the “cost of love” we believe in

Why so many high-achievers chase success as a proxy for love

The patterns trauma produces (people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, emotional withdrawal)

Boundaries, self-respect, and why loving people doesn’t mean protecting everyone

Why healing is possible: the brain can rewire and the heart can heal

This conversation is faith-forward, emotionally honest, and deeply practical, especially if you’re a high-capacity woman who leads well outwardly but feels tired, reactive, or stuck internally.

Most of us enter relationships trying to pass; pass as healed, pass as confident, pass as ready. But love was never a test to ace.

This conversation shifts the posture from trying to master love to becoming a student of it. Drawing from Student of Love, we explore how relationships are meant to teach us, through rejection, boundaries, identity, commitment, and even discomfort.

Too often, we chase connection without clarity and search for soulmates without doing the soul work. When we stop trying to control love and instead listen to what it’s teaching us, something changes.

Love doesn’t fail us; we fail to listen.
And when we do, we don’t just experience love, we reflect it.

Laterras R. Whitfield's new book, Student of Love, is available now, wherever books are sold.