Survival Mode
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHANNON NIEMAN
She’s waiting to go on stage, the lights are about to rise, and thousands of women are waiting in the auditorium. In the final moments before she walks out, Shannon Nieman is pro- cessing more than just the microphone in her hand. She has just gotten off the phone with her lawyer. A custody situation is unfolding. Her marriage has been fracturing for years. Grief still comes in waves from her mother’s passing. And this is not a single bad season. It is years of one hit after another. And still, in ninety seconds, she will step into leadership.
That was not a dramatic story crafted for a stage. That was her real life. And it is the emotional ground zero of Survival Mode, Nieman’s forthcoming book built for the woman who cannot pause her life to heal, the woman who is awake at 2 a.m. seeking the answer to the burning question in her soul, “What do I do today?”
Nieman, founder of One Sisterhood, speaker, author, and the lead pastor at Abundant Church based in El Paso, Texas, has become known for a message that is both faith-forward and practical, anchored in spiritual truth and supported by real tools that help women overcome crisis. In an exclusive conversation, she opened up about grief, leadership, single motherhood, the tension between surviving and thriving, and the disciplines that help keep a woman together even when her life feels as though it is collapsing.
“I’ve been doing church my whole life,” Nieman shared. “I was born into that.” Raised by pastors who began their ministry as a home Bible study. For a season, she attempted a different trajectory. Law school felt ambitious and respectable. She took the LSAT, planned for Pepperdine, and began an internship at a major firm. “Six weeks in, I was like, I am going to be the worst lawyer in history. I am not wired for this.” The realization was unmistakable. When she told her parents she would not be attending law school, they simply said they already knew. What appeared to be a career detour was, in truth, a step toward the calling that had always been on her life. Not long after she married, her life suddenly shifted. A scan revealed a mass in her mother’s abdomen. Within days, they were at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago facing what doctors believed was advanced cancer. The morning they prepared to fly out, Nieman took a pregnancy test. It was positive. That same week, as her mother lay in ICU recovering from surgery, Nieman began cramping intensely. A nurse, heaven-sent in that fragile moment, toldher she was miscarrying and helped her receive immediate care. Alone in a hospital bathroom, she prayed through tears, “God, I’m begging you, if I’m actually pregnant, please make this baby stay.” She later shared, “No one knew I was expecting.”
Her daughter, Emery, would be carried through the duration of her mother’s battle. For nine months, Nieman moved between oncology appointments and prenatal checkups, hospital rooms and much prayer. When doctors told her that her mother had only two weeks to live, Nieman made the decision to induce. She wanted to be by her side in hospice. After hours of labor, Emery was ultimately delivered by emergency C-section. Less than twenty four hours after giving birth, her request to be discharged was miraculously granted so she could return home. It was an answered prayer that her mother was able to hold baby Emery in her arms. The next day, on a Sunday morning, she passed away. “I knew the moment my mom went to be with the Lord,” Nieman said. “I was holding her hand. I felt it.” In the next room, her newborn began to cry at that exact same moment. It was in that moment she experienced what she now describes as simultaneous truths: endings and beginnings sharing the same breath, joy and sadness coexisting at the same time.
By Tricia Love Trujillo
