About She Rises: Faith, Freedom and Order for Christian Women
The podcast for Christian women who are tired of survival mode and hungry for something deeper than cultural narratives. Rooted in Scripture and a biblical worldview, She Rises helps you renew the mind, resist pressure-driven living, and build peaceful, Christ-centred rhythms for real life. This is grounded, truth-forward encouragement for women navigating life with faith, clarity, and hope.
Hosted by Johanne Hewlett, author and founder of She Rises.
FREE devotional: johewlettauthor.com/free-devotional
Ministry: johewlettauthor.com/ministry/she-rises
https://ko-fi.com/johannehewlett
#82 When You Look Fine on the Outside but Know Something Isn’t Right Inside
For years, much of my life looked perfectly ordinary from the outside.
I was married, raising children, managing a home, going to church and getting on with what needed doing.
Inside, things felt very different.
My body ached. My mind was foggy. Ordinary jobs became overwhelming. I sometimes cried while folding laundry or pushing the hoover around the lounge, yet because I was still functioning I kept telling myself I simply needed to cope better.
Different diagnoses and treatments helped different parts of the picture, but I still had the sense that nobody — including me — quite understood the whole story.
Then one day, sitting at my kitchen table with a friend, she asked:
“Did anything happen to you as a little girl?”
I said no.
And I genuinely meant it.
In this deeply personal episode of She Rises, I share what it was like to look capable while quietly unravelling underneath, why I minimised the past for so long, and how that ordinary conversation over a cup of tea became one of the turning points in my healing.
We explore:
• Why a life can look stable while something inside feels deeply wrong
• The hidden cost of continuing to function
• Crying through ordinary household tasks because everything had become too much
• Why different diagnoses could explain symptoms without fully explaining me
• The comfort and limitations of having a label
• How ordinary family noise could begin feeling overwhelming
• The difference between healthy guilt and believing you are fundamentally bad
• The kitchen-table conversation that changed the direction of my story
• Why I honestly believed nothing traumatic had happened to me
• The danger of dismissing pain because someone else has suffered more
• Why vulnerability and therapy frightened me
• The shift from self-blame towards grief
• Why therapy initially made things feel more unsettled rather than less
• What it was like sitting in church unable to sing
• Why needing professional help was not evidence that my faith had failed
• The difference between functioning and flourishing
• A gentle check-in for the woman whose outside and inside tell very different stories
Memoir:
Everything But the Past: A Family, a Secret and the Courage to Break the Pattern is available on Amazon or through my website johewlettauthor.com
Scripture:
Psalm 34:18, Matthew 11:28–30, Psalm 139:23–24
With love,
Jo
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7 Oct 2026
#81 The Ways We Learn to Survive — and Why They Can Be So Hard to Let Go Of
Last week, I introduced you to more of the girl I was.
This week, we're looking underneath her story.
What did her mind and body learn to do with the things she couldn't understand?
For me, survival appeared in ways I didn't recognise for decades: compulsive nail biting, rituals, shutting down into overwhelming sleep, anger, self-blame, seeking care indirectly, being indispensable and constantly trying to fix myself.
I simply thought these things proved something was wrong with me.
Therapy eventually helped me ask a different question:
What were these behaviours trying to do for me?
In this deeply personal episode, we explore:
• Why survival strategies develop in the first place
• The childhood compulsions and rituals I couldn't explain
• Biting my nails until they bled and wrapping my fingers in sellotape
• Why simply stopping a behaviour may not address what sits beneath it
• The strange way the emergency can end while the survival strategy stays
• My years of overwhelming sleepiness and what therapy later suggested about shutdown
• How receiving care through illness became emotionally complicated
• Why being useful and indispensable can become tied to worth
• How the “good girl” can grow into the adult people-pleaser
• Control and the attempt to create safety
• Why ordinary family life sometimes triggered disproportionate anger in me
• The difference between understanding behaviour and excusing harm
• Why shame didn't change me
• Responsibility without self-hatred
• How survival patterns can become part of our identity
• Why boundaries, rest, vulnerability and asking for help can initially feel unsafe
• The difference between what needs repentance and what needs compassion
• How independence and invisibility can both become forms of armour
• Four questions to help you gently explore one pattern in your own life
Memoir:
Everything But the Past: A Family, a Secret and the Courage to Break the Pattern is available through my website www.johewlettauthor.com
Scripture:
Psalm 34:18, Romans 12:2, Isaiah 43:18–19, John 8:36
With love,
Jo
x
30 Sept 2026
#80 The Girl Before the Woman: How Our Past Shapes More Than We Realise
For years, I looked at the woman I'd become and asked what was wrong with me.
I rarely asked about the girl who came before her.
The child who learned to be good and stay out of trouble. Who experienced abuse she couldn't understand. Who learned to keep things quiet. Who was bullied at twelve and began measuring her body, clothes, voice and laugh against other girls. Who later believed changing her appearance might finally make her feel enough.
These experiences looked like separate chapters for decades.
Eventually, I began seeing the threads between them.
In this deeply personal episode of She Rises, I'm sharing parts of my story from Everything But the Past — not because I expect another woman's childhood to look like mine, but because she may recognise some of the conclusions I carried into adulthood.
We talk about:
• How a childhood can contain both genuine love and painful experiences
• Becoming the “good girl”
• Childhood sexual abuse and the shame a child can wrongly carry
• How silence and self-editing became familiar
• The story of a lost tube of Lypsyl and why the size of my panic matters to me now
• Being bullied at twelve and learning to make myself smaller
• Measuring my voice, clothes, body and laugh against other girls
• Why running became a place where my body finally felt right
• Having breast implants at eighteen and believing fixing my body might fix me
• The humiliating restaurant encounter with my former school bullies
• How usefulness and being needed became tied to value
• Growing into an adult while part of me still felt thirteen
• Why criticism became evidence that something was fundamentally wrong with me
• Therapy, responsibility and learning to see my younger self differently
• Childhood beliefs another woman may recognise even when her story is completely different
• Why understanding the past doesn't require blaming it
• How faith helped me separate what shaped me from who I actually am
Memoir:
Everything But the Past: A Family, a Secret and the Courage to Break the Pattern is available through my website www.johewlettauthor.com
Scripture:
Psalm 139:13–16, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:18–19
With love,
Jo
x
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