For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Description:Barbara Kingsolver got the offer on her first novel the same day her first daughter was born. She came home from the hospital to a blinking answering machine, and the book came out the week that same baby learned to walk. Almost forty years later, she has a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Foundation’s medal for a lifetime of work, and a recovery house for women in Lee County, Virginia, built with her Demon Copperhead royalties. She has been one of my literary heroes and true life mentors for decades, and I still cannot believe I got to talk with her.We talk about what publishing looked like in 1988 versus now, why a slow-building career was a gift to a young mom, and the stubborn hand condition we both live with that ended her public book signings. She walks us through October on her farm in southern Appalachia, where the tomatoes are canned, the peppers are roasted, and she is the one who gets the call when a lamb gets stuck. And she makes the case that rural people are close to half of this country but almost none of what we see on screen, which is why she writes books that work as mirrors for her neighbors and windows for everybody else.Then we get into Partita, her new novel. Livia was a piano prodigy from east Tennessee who became a small-town piano teacher instead. In her fifties, the first love who derailed her calls and asks to see her, and she has seven days to decide. Barbara built the whole book like a Bach partita, with movements named for old dances and a listening list in the front. She tells us how a small-town girl fell for classical music on her living room floor, why nobody in America wants to talk about class, why revision is where art lives, and about the practice room scene her pianist friend had been waiting her whole life to read.Thought-provoking Quotes:I became a novelist and a mom the same day. (Barbara Kingsolver)I need my hands to write books. If you let me keep them, I will write you more books. (Barbara Kingsolver)Rural people are close to half of the population of this country, but we are just about zero percent of what you see on television, in the movies, or in the news. (Barbara Kingsolver)I want to write these books that are both mirrors for the people who need to see themselves and windows for the people who don’t know. (Barbara Kingsolver)When you’re in the flow state making something beautiful, that is love too. It’s another kind of love. (Barbara Kingsolver)I love revision. I feel like revision is where art really lives. (Barbara Kingsolver)When I’ve finished a book to my absolute satisfaction and send it out into the world, the work of it is only half done. (Barbara Kingsolver)When I closed Demon Copperhead, I remember thinking, I have just read a masterpiece. (Jen Hatmaker)Some people ask me, how can you be optimistic in these times? And I say, look who I’m dealing with. (Barbara Kingsolver)Resources Mentioned in This Episode:Partita by Barbara Kingsolver - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063577541: Barbara asks you to buy it from your local independent bookstore. The listening list is in the front of the book.Labor: One Woman’s Work by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari - https://bookshop.org/book/9781668015407Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Pennington Gap, Virginia, founded with Demon Copperhead royaltiesBarbara’s earlier books we talk about: Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Veg ...

People tell me I’m brave all the time. About the divorce, about the book, about rebuilding my life while everybody watched. And every single time, I feel a low-grade panic, because I know what it actually looked like from the inside: sitting in my parked car for 45 minutes because I could not make myself walk in, typing one sentence and deleting it 15 times, sobbing in the parking lot outside my brand new financial planner’s office. I was not brave. I was scared, and I moved forward anyway.We’re kicking off our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared, and today it’s just me and you. I’m handing you a much smaller word than “ready.” Ready is a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision, and you can make it on a Tuesday while you unload the dishwasher. We’ll sort fear into two piles: the warning you should heed and the fee you simply have to pay. And I’m going deeper on two stories: the months I waited too long to face what was happening in my marriage, and the years I coddled my fear before publicly changing my theology on LGBTQ inclusion in 2016. That was the best fee I ever paid.Coming up this month: Barbara Kingsolver, Kim and Penn Holderness, and Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. You’re not going to feel ready. But you can get willing, and willing is available to you in the next ten minutes.Thought-provoking Quotes:In my life, ready never came. Not one time in my entire life did readiness already exist before the hard thing.Ready is something like a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision. Willing is a choice.Fear is not measuring whether or not you should. It is measuring whether or not this thing matters.There is fear that is a warning that should be heeded. And then there is fear that is just a fee. It’s just a cost that you’re going to have to pay.The first one has a real object, but the second one has an audience.The fear was a fee. It was not a warning. And I did have to pay it. It’s the best fee I ever paid.I may not be ready, but I am willing.You’ve done harder things than this. And you did those things scared too.Resources Mentioned in This Episode:Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565Join the AWAKE Collective on Letters from the Middle - https://jenhatmaker.substack.comOctober AWAKE Collective Reflection Guide, with this month’s writing prompt: “The Thing I Would Do If I Were Not Scared”Leave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell me the change you’re scared of, or the one you already did scared.Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http ...

Description:Julianna Glasse was a Christian pop singer playing megachurches and arenas, married to a Major League Baseball player, and in January 2017 she sang at Donald Trump's National Prayer Breakfast weekend after voting the way her husband voted. Two years later she walked away from her faith, her marriage, and nearly everything she had built. Jen and Julianna trace the unraveling: the question she asked while holding her newborn daughter, the friend who handed her Plato's allegory of the cave, the "Christian drinkers" who changed clothes in the car after her concerts, and the day her then husband threw her books on the floor and said the sentence that became her title. They talk about love versus fear as a compass, why storytelling reaches people that shouting never will, and what Julianna would say to evangelical women quietly questioning how they vote. Now an Oxford alum, Julianna leads the This Is What Happens When Women Read foundation, which partners with Oxford's Saïd Business School to fund MBAs for women leaving high-control religions and cultures and has reached more than four million people in nearly 67 countries. Her memoir, This Is What Happens When Women Read, releases October 13.Thought-provoking Quotes:“You cannot know that which you do not know, but once you do know, it becomes your responsibility.” – Julianna Glasse“Does it feel like love or does it feel like fear?” – Julianna Glasse“This is actually what happens when women read. We notice the systems of oppression that we are in.” – Julianna Glasse“Bare your teeth at the institution, at the dogma, at the policy. Do not bare your teeth to the human.” – Julianna Glasse“It's just the teeniest taste of hope and freedom, and that is the most powerful taste you will ever have.” – Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode:This Is What Happens When Women Read by Julianna Glasse (pre-order)Oxford Saïd Business SchoolMaria Popova, The MarginalianPlato's Allegory of the Cave (The Republic)Rebecca GoldsteinWalt Whitman and Ralph Waldo EmersonThe Measure of a Woman by Gene A. GetzGuest’s Links:Website - https://www.juliannaglasse.com/Foundation - https://www.thisiswhathappenswhenwomenread.org/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/juliannaglasse/Foundation Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tiwhwwr/Foundation Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/This-Is-What-Happens-When-Women-Read/61566356275917/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliannaglasse/Connect with Jen!

Description:Calling all book lovers, calling all readers, calling everyone who has faced down a reinvention in the middle of life. Zibby Owens is one of the book world’s most tireless and warm-hearted connectors: a podcaster who has interviewed more than 2,000 authors, a publisher, a bookstore owner, a self-described accidental activist, and now an author herself. Ten years ago she was a perfectionistic stay-at-home mom of four on the Upper East Side, up at 4:55 a.m. to sign up for parent teacher conferences, with color-coded calendars and no time to read. Then she got divorced, fell in love with her tennis pro, recorded a podcast into her phone from her bed on a whim, and rebuilt the whole thing: new career, new marriage, new name, new voice.Her memoir in essays, Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot, is out now. In this Sacred Work conversation, Jen and Zibby get into what losing the plot actually feels like from the inside, the tiny unglamorous steps that add up to an entirely different life, why she sunsets things that are still making money, and how books became the connection vehicle for a whole community of women. Also: shy kids who grew up into very public careers, and the permission slip Zibby would hand her 39-year-old self.Thought-provoking Quotes:"There is a way. You are not stuck. Your life is not over. You can take these small steps to remember who you are. And it is not selfish. It is imperative." - Zibby Owens"When you cannot remember the last time you belly laughed, that could be a red flag to pay attention to." - Jen Hatmaker"Save nothing for the swim home." - Jen Hatmaker, quoting her agent Margaret"Talking about books is really talking about life." - Zibby Owens"It’s not just, well, I guess this is it because it has to be. This is it because it can be, and it should be." - Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode:Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot by Zibby Owens (Zibby Publishing)On Being Jewish Now, edited by Zibby Owens"A Mother’s Right to Sanity," Zibby’s essay that went viral overnightThe Between Chapters essay platform on Substack, where readers write about their own chaptersAuthors in the mix: Dani Shapiro, Anna Quindlen, and Sarah Mlynowski, who told Zibby to start a podcastChildhood favorites: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, and Little House on the PrairieGuest’s Links:Website - https://zibbymedia.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zibbyowens/Substack - https://www.zibbyowens.com/Podcast - Totally Booked with Zibby https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-booked-with-zibby/id1366633318Connect with Jen!<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="ht ...

Description:Dr. Marisa G. Franco is back — and this time, she's turning the lens inward. Marisa is the New York Times bestselling author of Platonic and a psychologist at the University of Maryland, and her brand new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, might just be the most important thing she's ever written. It is tender, personal, and research-backed in equal measure — and friend, it will find you.In this conversation, Marisa and Jen dig into the central argument of the book: that trying to become a "secure" person — calm, confident, regulated, healed — is one of the most efficient ways to stay stuck. The goal, Marisa says, is not security. It's being secure-ish. That means making room for the anxious parts and the avoidant parts, the shame and the neediness and the grief, and offering those parts the care they never got instead of running from them one more time.In this discussion, you’ll also hear:Why the goal was never to be fully "secure" — and what it means to be secure-ish insteadWhy your insecurities are messengers, not enemies — and how to stop whack-a-moleing them into silenceThe memories that are keeping you stuck — and the science that proves you can actually change how they live in youThe messages installed in us by the wider world — faith, bodies, marriage, worth — and what it looks like to do this work when those messages came from somewhere we once considered holyAnd Marisa shares her own story, the one that cracked her open: a hike, a relationship unraveling, and the moment she finally stopped performing calm long enough to say the true thing out loud.This is a conversation for anyone who has been trying to be better than they are instead of being who they are. Which is to say — it's for all of us.Thought-provoking Quotes:“The struggle of not feeling worthy is that you're stuck in the same sense of reality. You're trapped and you don't know how to get out. People are loving you but you don't feel loved. The beauties of life slide off of you. I just want people to get free of that.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco“We have to start with allowing what is, with the truth. So many of us don’t think we can because we have to be something different than we are. But being where you are, that's where the healing happens.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco“I'm still learning for my first reaction to no longer be, what am I allowed to feel according to other people? What am I allowed to look like according to other people? And for my first question to be what expresses who I am and how I actually feel, even if that violates all of the rules as to how I should feel or how I should present myself? That's where I need to begin, in the truth.” - Dr. Marisa G. FrancoResources Mentioned in This Episode:Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/42N2MyEPlatonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/4dph3rmFriendship MeCourse - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/products/friendship-for-the-rest-of-us<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/the-great-friendship-res ...

Description:Some yeses cost us something. Some of them save us.Jen sits down with her partner, actor, author, and speaker Tyler Merritt, hours after his chemotherapy infusion. Tyler is midway through treatment for colorectal cancer, his second diagnosis in six years, and the two get honest about making thoughtful decisions when your body is calling every shot.They talk about the yes Tyler gave in the middle of radiation: booking a brand-new theater tour that opens seventeen days after his last chemo, a yes he says he "arguably shouldn't have" given, made so he'd have something beautiful to walk toward. Jen turns the lens on her own year and the yes she almost took back: getting on the plane to Me Camp after a hysterectomy, a brutal spring, and a boyfriend in chemo two thousand miles away.Tyler also flips the mic and asks Jen whether she regrets writing AWAKE. Her answer is about closure, discretion, and the two longest weeks of her life waiting to hear what her daughter thought of the book.Plus: how to tell your intuition from everybody else's fear, Jen's top three Me Camp TV experiences, one Enneagram argument, and the one yes Tyler is still too scared to say out loud.Thought-provoking Quotes:"There is something absolutely sacred in choosing your body in a time period where it may not be convenient." — Tyler"Rest is the thing that I choose. Rest is my sacred yes." — Tyler"It's not a yes that feels obligated. It's not coerced. It isn't even careless. It's thoughtful. It is baked in with wisdom." — Jen"In the midst of the fire, I made the decision to do something that would be difficult if I was just healthy." — Tyler"When someone else puts their caution on your yes, that can be a real governor on forward progress." — Jen"The sacred yes I'm afraid to say out loud is that I'm going to be okay." — TylerResources Mentioned in This Episode:AWAKE by Jen HatmakerI Take My Coffee Black by Tyler MerrittTyler's new theater tour, opening August 28Me Camp, the Enneagram, and Jeremy PopeJohn Candy: I Like Me, Widows Bay, The Bear, The Five-Star WeekendGuest's Links:Website - thetylermerrittproject.comInstagram - @thetylermerrittprojectTwitter - @TTMProjectFacebook - The Tyler Merritt ProjectYoutube - The Tyler Merritt ProjectConnect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ...