A Family Secret. A Chronic Illness. One Unbelievable Transformation | EP 77 with Kimberly Warner
🎙 The Rise Podcast with Sara Connell – Episode 77 Featuring: Kimberly Warner In this powerful episode of The Rise, Sara Connell sits down with creator and thought leader Kimberly Warner for a heart-opening conversation on what it really looks like to rise in the midst of uncertainty, change, and big dreams. Together, Sara and Kimberly explore how to stay devoted to your vision when life doesn't go as planned, how to alchemize challenge into purpose, and how to trust your voice as a leader, artist, and human being. Whether you're writing a book, building a movement, growing a business, or simply navigating your next chapter, this episode will meet you right where you are and invite you to take your next brave step. What You'll Learn in This Episode How to honor your story (even the messy parts) and turn it into fuel for your mission. Simple mindset shifts to help you move from self-doubt into aligned, courageous action. Practices for staying grounded and resourced while you're visible, vulnerable, and leading. How to reframe "setbacks" as sacred redirections on the path to your purpose. Why your lived experience is not a liability but your greatest thought leadership asset. This is a beautiful listen if you've ever wondered, "Is it really possible for me?" and you're ready for a resounding, soul-level yes. Writing the Unfixed Life Every life holds stories that refuse tidy arcs or endings—illness, loss, identity shifts, and everyday uncertainties that shape us. Writing the Unfixed Life is for writers sitting (or wrestling!) with those stories. Over four weeks, we'll build the emotional and creative scaffolding needed to shape your memoir. We'll move beyond the mind's grip and allow prose to rise from within, the kind of truth the body carries long before the brain finds words for it. I'll be your companion on this journey, drawing on years of interviewing and filming people living with chronic illness, my own path living unfixed, and the work of guiding others like Dylan Shanahan, whose memoir Liberation of Being came into the world even as ALS took his ability to speak or type. Between Dylan's story, my award-winning films, and my own best-selling memoir Unfixed, I've learned that the stories we resist the hardest are often the very ones most capable of shining light, for ourselves and for others. REGISTRATION ENDS DECEMBER 31st, 2025 Session Curriculum When: 4 Mondays in February 2026 from 9:00am - 10:30am PT Week 1: The Call to Story — Finding Your Entry Point Identify the central pulse of your memoir: the story only you can tell. Explore the "unfixed" nature of memory and how to embrace uncertainty as part of truth. Exercises: guided free-writes + letter-writing across time (to or from your past or future self or other key characters). Week 2: Sensory and Synesthetic Play — Writing What Can't Be Said Use sensory details, metaphor, and synesthesia to access emotion beyond fact. Learn to transform abstract feelings into vivid images and scenes. Exercises: sensory mapping + writing through an object or image. Week 3: Voices Within — Dialogue With the Unheard Listen for the inner voices (your child-self, your body, the silenced characters of your past). Practice writing conversations across memory and imagination. Exercises: voice-pairing dialogue + "chair across the room" exercise. Week 4: Shaping the Memoir — Building Your Emotional Blueprint Learn how to structure memoirs around emotional arcs, not just chronology. Create your personal story map: themes, turning points, and threads of resilience. Exercises: draft your memoir's scaffolding + closing ritual for courage to keep writing. Participant Takeaways By the end of the seminar, writers will: Have 4+ new chapters, scenes, or fragments rooted in emotional truth. Create a memoir story map that clarifies themes, arcs, and structure. Gain embodied, emotional building blocks needed to finish their memoirs with confidence. Carry tools for writing and living with uncertainty, grief, and the unknown. Enrollment Details Ordinarily, a course like this would cost $495. You can join at no cost when you purchase 10 copies of Unfixed (about $250 total) from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Think of it as giving the books away—to a reader's club, as gifts, or to friends who might need this story—while receiving the workshop as a gift in return. Simply DM or email your receipt, and we'll reserve your spot. Every time I've walked beside someone through this kind of sharing, I've seen how the unspeakable softens once it finds its voice in the body. What once felt unshapable begins to glimmer with coherence, even a kind of magic—as if you survived it so that one day it could be told, so your pain might become someone else's map. Writing the Unfixed Life is my invitation to sit with you in that tender, luminous space. Your story matters, in all its jagged, uncertain, unfixedness, and I would be honored to help you bring it into being. Register here: https://open.substack.com/pub/unfixed/p/writing-the-unfixed-life?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #therisepodcast #saraconnell #kimberlywarner #thoughtleadership #womenstartingmovements #writersofinstagram #creativelife #purposeled #healingjourney #personalgrowth #spiritualgrowth #leadershipdevelopment #womeninbusiness #changemakers #mindsetshift #podcastclip #reelsvideo
