The RISE Experience
It’s not always about becoming someone different.
Sometimes it’s about realizing you’ve been disconnected from yourself for longer than you thought.
The RISE Experience is a podcast for the woman who can handle everything — except herself. The one who shows up, gets things done, keeps things together… but quietly feels like something isn’t landing the way it should.
Shannon Denniston is a behavior change coach and the founder of RISE. What she talks about here isn’t behavior on the surface. It’s what sits underneath it — patterns, beliefs, and identity-level disconnects that make consistency feel harder than it should.
A lot of what gets called “starting over” isn’t starting over at all. It’s noticing what’s been running in the background for a long time, and learning how to move differently from there.
Not forced. Not rushed. No reinvention, no reset, just more aware, more honest with where things actually are, and returning to yourself in a way that holds.
The RISE Experience
Why Your Heart Still Hurts After the Right Decision.
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You can be walking with God into something better and still feel like your heart is breaking over what you left. That tension does not mean you got it wrong. It means it mattered.
Welcome to The RISE Experience — a podcast for women who are finding their way back to themselves. This is a space to slow down when everything feels loud, to live from steadiness instead of urgency, and to finally hear yourself think again. Here we talk about identity, faith, and the quiet inner wisdom that gets buried under all the doing. A place to pause, reflect, and rise from clarity instead of pressure.
Episode Highlights
In today’s episode I talk about how hard it is to leave a job, a community, or a relationship you’ve outgrown, and why it can still hurt even when you know you did the right thing. We talk about the difference between missing the thing itself and missing what it gave you, like belonging, purpose, or feeling chosen, and why you keep reaching back for what feels familiar. I also share how letting go of control is not the same as losing control, what it looks like to trust God in the in between, and how naming what you are really grieving can help you look for that same feeling in a place that actually fits who you are now.
Episode Outline
- Leaving Behind the Familiar
- Understanding the Grief of Change
- Letting Go of Control
- Moving Forward with Grief
- Embracing the New and the Old
Episode Chapters
00:00 Welcome and why leaving still hurts
01:02 Missing what you left, not wanting to go back
03:40 Grieving the feelings, not the job or relationship
05:05 Comfort of the familiar and why we stay stuck
07:10 Nervous system, fear of the unknown, complacency
09:00 Letting go of control vs losing control
10:05 Isaiah 43 and noticing the new thing God is doing
11:40 Naming what you are actually grieving
13:25 Finding those same feelings in a new container
15:10 Prayer for the in between and final encouragement
Conclusion
You are allowed to grieve what you left and still trust that you were right to leave. The container can be over and the feelings it gave you can still matter. Those needs for belonging, identity, and purpose are not gone. They are being met in new ways that fit who you are becoming. Honor the version of you that stayed as long as she did, let yourself feel the grief without letting it keep you stuck, and stay open to the new thing God is already growing right in front of you.
Action Taken
- Name what you are actually grieving, not just the job, relationship, or community you left.
- Identify the feeling you miss: belonging, being chosen, purpose, clarity, identity, or comfort.
- Put it in front of you in a way that works for you: write it down, text it to yourself, or sit with it quietly.
- Ask, “How do I find this feeling again in a place that fits who I am now, not who I was?”
- Notice where God may already be doing a new thing, even while you are still in the middle of letting go.
CTA
Share this with one woman who is in the middle of leaving something behind and needs to hear that hard does not mean wrong.
Visit the links provided to stay connected.
- Your next step… https://msha.ke/risewithshannon
- Read the blog… https://www.risewithshannon.blog/
- Come hang out…
Thank you for listening and for being honest about the in between you are standing in. You are not weak for grieving what you left. You are brave for moving toward what God has next. Keep rising.