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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…
  • FB: Shannon Bell Denniston
  • IG: @risewithshannon 

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.