On Unfolding

Ryan and Jennie Denney

On Unfolding: Learning to Live the Questions is a podcast about what it means to grow as a person in a complicated world. Ryan and Jennie Denney bring together their experiences as therapists, partners, parents, former evangelicals, and lifelong question-askers for conversations about identity, relationships, faith and deconstruction, mental health, parenting, culture, books, and the stories that shape our lives. At the heart of the show are the questions that continue to orient us: Who am I becoming? What kind of person do I want to be? What am I responsible for? What has shaped me? How do we create the relationships and communities we want to inhabit? Through personal stories, ideas from therapy and the humanities, and the kinds of conversations that rarely arrive at tidy conclusions, On Unfolding explores how we might live with greater curiosity, responsibility, connection, and openness to change.

Episodes

  1. Oct 4

    The Cost of Change

    On a FaceTime call with Ryan's parents, Ryan mentioned a USC game. His dad said, "Oh, I didn't know you were a fan." Ryan has been a USC fan since he was eight. It was a throwaway line, and his dad didn't mean anything by it. But Ryan felt his smile dim, and he noticed it as it was happening. That small sting is where this conversation begins. Change always costs something, and a lot of what it costs is relational. Over the past several years, both of us have moved a long way from the faith we were raised in. For Ryan, it was a shift from searching for the one true story to asking how to live well when no one really knows. For Jennie, it came through years of being told no, wait, or move over, until she finally said, "I can't do church anymore." She was in her last semester of seminary, writing a capstone paper arguing that community was the missing element in spiritual formation, while we were walking away from ours. We didn't only leave a church. We moved into a different world from many of the people we love. Distance like that is rarely announced. It shows up in a forgotten detail, or in a question like "Who's the common denominator?" Not changing would have cost us something too. We would have kept our heads down, ignored the pain, and kept living within limits on who we were allowed to become. And change has opened things up. Jennie describes it as walking out of a slot canyon onto open plains. We see people and their stories differently now, with curiosity instead of an agenda. What we're still learning is how to stay close to people who are still where we used to be. We don't think the two worlds can be fully bridged. What we can do is notice when something hurts, ask why, and keep showing up as the people we want to be. Maybe that's what grief asks of us: not to forget what we've lost, but to make room for it in the life we're living now. Moments 0:00 — A dimmed smile on a FaceTime call3:48 — "I don't think anyone knows, so now what?"9:53 — Writing about community while walking away from ours18:18 — The difference between a pastor and a prophet21:33 — "What should I do?" and what no one can promise us28:33 — Out of the slot canyon, onto the open plains31:18 — Staying close to people still inside the system35:50 — Grief as integration, not forgetting Questions to Sit With What has a change in your life cost you, and what did it make possible?What would it have cost you not to change?Where do you feel distance from someone you love, and what might that distance be asking of you?How has someone else's change landed on you? Mentioned in This Episode ToddA mentor who once told Ryan there's a big difference between a pastor and a prophet. Pink Floyd, "Is There Anybody Out There?"Stuck in our heads by the end. Keep Reading Why are Questions so Threatening? — Episode 2, which this conversation keeps circling back to.Lose the Script — Jennie on her dissertation defense, the UNFOLD Model, and the ordination question.Whatever Purity Meant

  2. Sep 13

    Why are Questions so Threatening?

    Why are questions so threatening? In this episode, Jennie and Ryan talk about the very different lessons we learned about questions growing up. Jennie learned early that questioning could mean challenging authority, and that doing so might come with a cost. Ryan grew up almost on the opposite side of that, encouraged to question things and slow to realize that other people might experience my questions as threatening. From there, we get into what questions can actually do. They make us look more closely at the stories, beliefs, relationships, and systems we inherited. And once we begin to really look, change becomes possible. That can be freeing, but it can also be deeply destabilizing. We talk about Jennie’s experience growing up in conservative evangelicalism, Ryan's history of questioning authority, the ways those patterns have shown up in our marriage, and why lasting change seems to require more than simply deciding to think or behave differently. Eventually we find ourselves asking what makes it possible to question and change without immediately becoming defensive or retreating into certainty. We come back to trust, curiosity, relationship, and the willingness to believe that another person might have something to teach us. Maybe part of learning to live the questions is becoming open to being changed by our encounters with other human beings. On Unfolding: Learning to Live the Questions is a conversation about faith, family, therapy, culture, and the stories that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Learn more at https://theunfold.ing

  3. Aug 31

    Learning to Live the Questions

    In the first episode of On Unfolding: Learning to Live the Questions, Ryan and Jennie talk about what happens when certainty stops working and we begin learning to trust ourselves, question the stories we inherited, and take responsibility for the people we are becoming. The conversation moves through evangelical Christianity and faith deconstruction, attachment, Internal Family Systems, parenting, mental health, identity, and the ways our relationships shape how we understand ourselves. Along the way, we return to a few questions that have become important to us: What kind of person do I want to be? Who am I becoming? What am I responsible for? Who are the safe people in my life? What stories have shaped the way I understand myself? How do we create space for the people we love to grow and change? We also talk about childhood experiences that shaped our relationships with certainty, Jennie’s experience of interpreting panic attacks through the language of spiritual warfare, Ryan’s memories of stealing Micro Machines as a seven-year-old and the way his father later helped him see that story differently, and a conversation with our daughter about the difference between the loud stories we tell about someone and the quieter stories that can get lost. Near the end, we talk about one of the ideas at the heart of this project: creating a safe place for others to find their own lonely way in the world. Life can be lonely, even inside good relationships. Sometimes what another person needs is not an answer or a solution. Sometimes it is simply someone willing to sit beside them and say, “I’m here.” In this episode • Learning to “live the questions” and Rainer Maria Rilke• Growing up with religious certainty• Faith deconstruction and learning to trust yourself• Attachment, safety, and relationships• Internal Family Systems and adaptive behavior• Shame and the stories we tell about ourselves• Spiritual warfare, panic attacks, and competing ways of making meaning• Parenting adult children and listening without becoming defensive• The stories parents tell about their children• Loneliness, connection, and why we are making this podcast Mentioned Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young PoetThomas MertonInternal Family Systems (IFS)Attachment theory Read the show notes and full transcript at theunfold.ing.

    Learning to Live the Questions

  4. Jul 12

    Trailer

    On Unfolding

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    3 Episodes

Trailer

About

On Unfolding: Learning to Live the Questions is a podcast about what it means to grow as a person in a complicated world. Ryan and Jennie Denney bring together their experiences as therapists, partners, parents, former evangelicals, and lifelong question-askers for conversations about identity, relationships, faith and deconstruction, mental health, parenting, culture, books, and the stories that shape our lives. At the heart of the show are the questions that continue to orient us: Who am I becoming? What kind of person do I want to be? What am I responsible for? What has shaped me? How do we create the relationships and communities we want to inhabit? Through personal stories, ideas from therapy and the humanities, and the kinds of conversations that rarely arrive at tidy conclusions, On Unfolding explores how we might live with greater curiosity, responsibility, connection, and openness to change.

Information

  • Creator
    Ryan and Jennie Denney
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Denney Family Therapy
  • Show Website
    On Unfolding