For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

For the Love Podcast
For the Love Podcast
  • 4.6 (6.4K)
  • Relationships
  • Updated Weekly

New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker has arrived in the middle years, and she couldn't be happier about it.Jen has navigated the ins and outs of life, from career to parenting, marriage (and divorce), spiritual evolution, and the joys of being a hardcore Gen Xer.With each weekly episode, Jen serves as our "everywoman" guide to all the seasons, past, present, and future, as she walks excitedly and tenaciously into the second half of life.Some weeks, Jen brings her perspective straight to you, just her and the mic, talking through the things we're all navigating. Other weeks, she pulls up a chair for some of the most interesting and accomplished guests around, plus a few of her favorite friends, bringing insight, expertise, and a whole lot of heart to the most relevant topics of our time.While Jen has plenty of wisdom to share (and some pretty hilarious stories, too), she doesn't claim to know it all. From her honest solo reflections to her compelling conversations with guests, she's here to reassure you that you're not alone in this game of life.It's "For the Love" of all that is good, justified, exasperating, exhilarating, real, fun, and so much more.

  1. 3d ago

    Encore: Barbara Brown Taylor on Being the Saint of Small Things

    Description: Barbara Brown Taylor gave us the question that ends every episode of this show, so it feels right to hand the Sacred Work series over to her. In this encore, the New York Times bestselling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest talks with Jen about the year she spent doing almost nothing impressive: the county fair with a couple of six-year-olds, an old racehorse nobody wanted, blueberry pies for friends going through hard things, and shifts at the public library. She calls herself the saint of small things, and she is honest about how hard that is to say out loud when people want to know what big thing you are working on. They also get into why she is wary of hope that functions as an escape hatch, how she keeps her heart from going wooden in a world of terrible headlines, and why friendship is worth protecting even though nobody rewards you for it. Stay to the end for the benediction Barbara wrote for this community. Thought-provoking Quotes: I’ll be the saint of small things today.Headlines give me omniscience but no omnipotence.I’ve got to attend to the sustainability of a supple heart.I’m real wary of hope unless it functions right here, right now.The years are short but the days are long, and that’s a blessing not a curse.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: A Rhythm of Prayer by Sarah Bessey, which includes Barbara’s contributionThis Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, who has also been a guest on For the LoveWhen God Is Silent by Barbara Brown TaylorLeaving Church by Barbara Brown TaylorLearning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown TaylorAn Altar in the World by Barbara Brown TaylorGuest’s Links: Website - https://barbarabrowntaylor.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authorBarbaraBrownTaylor Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.

    Encore: Barbara Brown Taylor on Being the Saint of Small Things

  2. 5d ago

    Priya Parker on Fighting Well, and Why Conflict Is Not Sin

    Description: Think about the last real fight you had with someone you love, then think about what you did with it. Most of us swallowed it and called it peace. Priya Parker has spent twenty years walking into rooms where groups are coming apart, churches mid-split, companies that lost their founder, families with one topic nobody will name at the table. She is back on the show with a new book, The Art of Fighting, and her argument is that the peace we keep by avoiding conflict costs us the very thing we say we want most. Jen and Priya open with a hot takes round on pineapple pizza and whether a hot dog is a sandwich, which turns out to be one of Priya's actual tools: low stakes arguing is practice for the high stakes kind. From there, what unhealthy peace looks like inside a family, a team, or a church. Priya tells the story of her grandfather's funeral, where the minister's highest praise for a fifty year marriage was that the couple never fought. Jen names the four years she let a business partnership die rather than have one hard conversation. They get into how to diagnose the fight you are actually in, why “we’re not a ___” is the sentence to listen for, and what happened when Priya went looking for the best literature on group conflict and kept landing in the Christian tradition. Conflict is not sin. It is a skill, and every one of us can get better at it. Part of September's Sacred Work series. *** Thought-provoking Quotes: Low stakes arguing helps us approach high stakes arguing. – Priya ParkerWhen the going gets tough, add warmth to heat. – Priya ParkerHuman connection is as threatened by unhealthy peace as it is by unhealthy conflict. – Priya ParkerI learned from an early age that there is loss in avoidance. – Priya ParkerI invite you to think about conflict as a skill. And you can get better at it. – Priya ParkerConflict is not sin. Conflict is actually highly functional. – Priya ParkerFighting is about power. Avoidance is also about power. – Priya ParkerWhose mess do you want to be in? – Priya ParkerResources Mentioned in This Episode: The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict by Priya Parker (Riverhead, out 9/8) - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fighting-Transformative-Power-Conflict/dp/0593420225The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Gathering-How-Meet-Matters/dp/1594634920Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull - https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-Inspiration/dp/0593594649If You Met My Family, You'd Understand: A Family Systems Primer by Jack Shitama - https://www.amazon.com/You-Met-Family-Youd-Understand/dp/1732009368a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferr ...

    Priya Parker on Fighting Well, and Why Conflict Is Not Sin

  3. Sep 4

    Adrienne Brodeur on Family Myths, Wounded People, and Honest Fiction

    Description: Some families run on rules nobody ever wrote down. Here is your role. Here is what we talk about. Here is who gets forgiven and who gets blamed. We accept those terms as children, and then one day we look up and wonder who exactly signed us up for the job. August’s Jen Hatmaker Book Club pick is Little Monsters, and Adrienne Brodeur came with the whole story behind it. She spent thirty years on the other side of the pen, co-founding Zoetrope: All-Story with Francis Ford Coppola, editing at HMH Books, judging the National Book Award, and now running Aspen Words. She published one novel of her own in 2005, then waited fourteen years for the next book, a memoir that broke a silence she had kept since she was fourteen. Adrienne and Jen get into the unspoken rules every family runs on, why estrangement takes love rather than indifference, and what Cain and Abel taught her about the gifts we give our parents. Adrienne explains why fiction can feel more honest than memoir, makes an unpopular case for Ken, and talks about writing mania with compassion rather than spectacle. Plus the stack of books a stepmother handed her that redirected her whole life, the screenplay she is writing, and the book club’s standing offer to cast the movie. *** Thought-provoking Quotes: He’s wounded, and wounded people wound. – Adrienne BrodeurUnderstanding someone isn’t quite the same as absolving them. – Adrienne BrodeurFiction can sometimes feel more honest than memoir. I don’t mean factual honesty. I mean emotionally unguarded. – Adrienne BrodeurWho the hell decided that peacemaker was my job, or golden child, or secret keeper, or difficult one? – Adrienne BrodeurTurns out dead mothers still have an excellent work ethic. – Adrienne BrodeurEveryone wanted a flat version of themselves. – Jen HatmakerWe have family stories that we’re telling too, even believing, that we’re trying to believe. – Jen HatmakerSome of our characters landed on their feet, but they landed on their feet in a different zip code. – Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Little-Monsters/Adrienne-Brodeur/9781982198114Little Monsters book club discussion questions - https://www.readinggroupguides.com/reviews/little-monsters-by-adrienne-brodeur/guideWild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wild-game-adrienne-brodeur/1130010789Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001HN38FIAspen Words at the Aspen Institute - https://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/adrienne-brodeur/Zoetrope: All-Story, co-founded with Francis Ford Coppola Guest’s Links: Adrienne’s Instagram -  https://www.instagram.com/adriennebrodeur/ Adrienne’s Faceboo ...

    Adrienne Brodeur on Family Myths, Wounded People, and Honest Fiction

  4. Sep 2

    Your Life Is the Assignment: Jen Hatmaker Solo Episode

    Description: For twenty years, one question has followed Jen everywhere she goes: what am I supposed to be doing with my life? It comes in the comments, the voicemails, the line after every event. And for a long time, Jen answered it like a career question, as if somewhere out there was a slot with her name on it and her only job was to find it and climb inside. In this solo episode, she puts down the word calling and picks up a different one: assignment. Not the thing waiting for you in the future, but the work already in your hands, in this season, on this street, with these people. Jen untangles work from worth, names the theology a lot of us absorbed that rewarded us for burning out, and shares the questions she uses to tell the difference between an assignment that is actually hers and one that is simply available. She also talks about the assignments that end, and why finishing one well is its own sacred work. Ordinary, faithful, unglamorous work is not the consolation prize for people who never found their capital C calling. It is the actual thing. This episode kicks off September's theme, Sacred Work, here on the show and over in the AWAKE Collective. Thought-provoking Quotes: "I have stopped asking what my calling is altogether. I started asking what my assignment is." - Jen Hatmaker"Sacred work is not a waiting room for a more important life that hasn't started yet." - Jen Hatmaker"The paycheck is not the assignment. The paycheck funds the life where the assignment happens." - Jen Hatmaker"Burnout is not evidence that you are on assignment. More likely it is evidence that you have taken on someone else's assignment." - Jen Hatmaker"A real assignment will cost you something. But an obligation costs you yourself. That's not the same bill." - Jen Hatmaker"Something does not have to be bad for it to be over." - Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: This month's Sacred Work lineup: Priya Parker, Dr. Marisa Franco, Zibby Owens, plus encore conversations with Barbara Brown Taylor and Mary PipherWorth by Dr. Marisa FrancoThe AWAKE Collective monthly reflection guide. September's writing prompt: The work that is mine right now is...Your challenge this week: name one assignment you are actually on, then do the very next small thing it requiresLeave Jen a voicemail: https://jenhatmaker.com/podcastTake the AWAKE Quiz: JenHatmaker.com/quiz Connect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen's Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen's YouTube - a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/u ...

  5. Aug 28

    Jodi Picoult on Banned Books, Buried Truths, and the Story Behind Hollow Bones

    Description: Jodi Picoult is back, and she brought her thirtieth novel with her. If you have been in a book club at any point in the last thirty years, you know the name. Forty million copies in print. Thirty four languages. And, as of this year, the fourth most banned author in America, which Jen considers a five star review. Jodi and Jen get into all of it: what thirty years of publishing actually teaches you (start with the underwear), why she refuses to coast when she could easily phone it in, what she believes AI will never do to a reader, and the career she never asked for as an advocate against book banning. Then they turn to Hollow Bones, out September 15, a novel that began with an anonymous postcard and a letter from a jail cell and carried Jodi deep into postpartum psychosis, the dismissal of women by medicine, and the long shadow of 9/11. She also brings back a character you have wondered about since My Sister's Keeper. One heads up before you press play: this conversation includes discussion of postpartum psychosis, suicide, the death of a child, and school shootings. Please take good care of yourself. Support resources are linked below. Thought-provoking Quotes: If I'm not challenged by a book, why should you be?AI will never be human. Novels work because an author is reaching deep into the heart and soul of a reader and finding a chord to pluck that resonates. AI can imitate that. It can never really do it.It's fine for a parent to decide what his or her child should be reading. I advocate that. It is not fine for that parent to decide what everyone else's child should be reading.When we remove books from schools, we are not protecting children. We are taking away resources that help them deal with an increasingly complex world. And that is the opposite of protecting kids.Women are failed at every turn of their lives by the medical industry.The more you lie, the easier it gets to lie. And we are living in a time right now when lies are being peddled as truths.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine, September 15)Pre-order signed copies plus an exclusive overlay from Still North BooksPre-order from Barnes & Noble for the sweepstakes and a letterNineteen Minutes, My Sister's Keeper, and Mad Honey (with Jennifer Finney Boylan) by Jodi PicoultThe Book Thief by Markus Zusak, adapted for the stage by Jodi PicoultPostSecretPEN America on book bansPostpartum Support InternationalNational Maternal Mental Health Hotline: call or text 1-833-TLC-MAMA988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988Guest's Links: Website - https://jodipicoult.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/jodipicoult TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@jodipicoult Facebook - a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://facebook.c ...

    Jodi Picoult on Banned Books, Buried Truths, and the Story Behind Hollow Bones

  6. Aug 26

    Your House Is Talking to You with Myquillyn Smith

    There is a specific kind of overwhelm that hits when you walk into your own living room and everything in it seems to be asking you for something. Finish this puzzle. Put me away. Read the rest of me. Myquillyn Smith, better known as The Nester, says your house is talking to you. It is not shaming you. It is telling you the truth about your stuff. Myquillyn is back in the guest chair, this time on her own, and her new book House Hushing is out now. She walks us through backwards decluttering (pull the loose stuff out of one room, stash it somewhere else, live with that room for 48 hours, and let it prove its case), the threshold where a room tips from fine to too much, and why so many of us cross it earlier than our mothers did. We also get into the confession she hears most from women about their homes, the difference between a room that is quiet and a room that has no soul, how pattern and contrast work like volume dials you can turn up or down, and why she owns seasonally instead of just owning less. Plus a dead butterfly hot glued into a frame, and the ten minute fix for anyone whose house is currently yelling at them. We are in our Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud series, and there is plenty most of us never say out loud about our own homes. This one gives you permission and a plan. Thought-provoking Quotes: Whenever you feel friction happening in your home, that is your house actually talking to you. And it is not shaming you. (Myquillyn)Less stuff leads to peace, that is what the minimalists say. But I would say intentionality leads to peace. (Myquillyn)More begets more. But the opposite is also true, which is so hopeful for us. Less leads to less. (Myquillyn)Of all the places in the world, wouldn’t it be nice if we created a home that quietly welcomed us? (Myquillyn)It is not a mystery, that feeling you get of just a little bit of overwhelm and a lack of joy. (Jen)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: House Hushing by Myquillyn Smith (Baker Books), at https://thenester.comSimplicity Me Course https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/products/simplicity-for-the-rest-of-usGuest’s Links: Website - https://thenester.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/thenester Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s YouTube - https://www. ...

    Your House Is Talking to You with Myquillyn Smith

  7. Aug 19

    Listener Voicemail Day: Five Women Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud

    Description: There is no guest on the mic today. There is you. It is Listener Voicemail Day, one of Jen's favorite episodes to make, and it lands in the middle of our permission series, right after Jen asked you to find your one true sentence and say it out loud. You did. This episode is what came back. It comes in two halves. First, the women who called about Jen's mom, Jana King, who, as Jen puts it, a genre. Have something you need to say out loud? Head to JenHatmaker.com/Podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button, and tell us the quiet thing you finally said, or the one you are still working up to. We are listening. Thought-provoking Quotes: "It is real work as moms to not take our own burdens and gently pick them up off of our own shoulders and place them on the shoulders of our kids." - Jen Hatmaker"Hearing your mom describe a different way of loving and existing was incredibly freeing for me." - Stacy, listener voicemail"It's just a new terror every day." - Sena, listener voicemail"I betrayed myself to keep everyone comfortable." - Gina, from her poem "Backfire""The truth is, I'm sad because I've given up on myself." - Courtney, listener voicemail"You do not have to have the answer, or even the path, in order to say the true sentence." - Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again (Jen and her mom, Jana King) - [EPISODE LINK]Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud, Jen's solo episode and the one true sentence assignment - [EPISODE LINK]https://jenhatmaker.com/podcastLetters from the Middle, Jen's Substack, where the honesty conversation runs all month - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/The AWAKE Collective, Jen's subscriber community on Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/p/the-awake-collectiveTell us your story. Leave a voicemail at https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button. Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook/ ...

  8. Aug 14

    Encore: The Conversation You Have Been Avoiding for Years: Dr. Rick Hanson

    Some of us will sit in years of low grade misery rather than have one uncomfortable conversation. Jen will be first to raise her hand. She has put off a confrontation so long that the frustration outlasted the thing she was frustrated about. Saying the quiet thing out loud is not only about the truths we tell ourselves. Sometimes it is the sentence we owe another person, the one we have been rehearsing in the shower for eight months and still have not said. Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author of Making Great Relationships. He reframes the whole problem in a way that took the air out of Jen’s dread: confrontation is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is a skill, which means it can be learned and practiced. In this episode, Jen and Rick explore: Why relationships are built out of small back and forth interactionsThe difference between what comes at you and what you send back, and where your real power livesRick’s five part checklist for wise speech, plus the optional sixthWhat to do when a conversation goes sideways, and how to know your own linesThe permission to resize a relationship instead of ending itIf you have been carrying something for months waiting for the right moment, consider this a nudge and a toolkit. Thought-provoking Quotes: “Relationships are made from interactions. The gradual weight of interactions, for better or worse, over time shapes the relationship.” (Dr. Rick Hanson)“What comes over the net is out of our control in the moment. But what we do at that point, how we respond, what we choose, that is under our control.” (Dr. Rick Hanson)“Most arguments are about the past. They will never see it your way. The best you can get them to do is agree to something different from now on.” (Dr. Rick Hanson)“I never get free until I identify whatever I was responsible for, which sometimes is zero.” (Dr. Rick Hanson)“I will walk around with a conflict in my brain and heart and bury it until it comes out sideways. Because it does. It will find a way out.” (Jen Hatmaker)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Making Great Relationships by Dr. Rick HansonMother Nurture by Dr. Rick HansonNonviolent Communication by Marshall B. RosenbergBeing Well Podcast with Dr. Rick Hanson and Forrest HansonGlobal Compassion Coalition - https://globalcompassioncoalition.org/Greater Good Science Center - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/Guest’s Links: Website - https://rickhanson.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rickhansonphd Podcast - https://rickhanson.com/being-well-podcast/ Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitte ...

    Encore: The Conversation You Have Been Avoiding for Years: Dr. Rick Hanson
See All (623)

Shows with Subscription Benefits

FOR THE LOVE PREMIUM

Listen to episodes ad-free & before anyone else

7 days free, then $2.99/month

View Subscription FAQs

Hosts & Guests

4.6
out of 5
6,377 Ratings

About

New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker has arrived in the middle years, and she couldn't be happier about it.Jen has navigated the ins and outs of life, from career to parenting, marriage (and divorce), spiritual evolution, and the joys of being a hardcore Gen Xer.With each weekly episode, Jen serves as our "everywoman" guide to all the seasons, past, present, and future, as she walks excitedly and tenaciously into the second half of life.Some weeks, Jen brings her perspective straight to you, just her and the mic, talking through the things we're all navigating. Other weeks, she pulls up a chair for some of the most interesting and accomplished guests around, plus a few of her favorite friends, bringing insight, expertise, and a whole lot of heart to the most relevant topics of our time.While Jen has plenty of wisdom to share (and some pretty hilarious stories, too), she doesn't claim to know it all. From her honest solo reflections to her compelling conversations with guests, she's here to reassure you that you're not alone in this game of life.It's "For the Love" of all that is good, justified, exasperating, exhilarating, real, fun, and so much more.

Information

More From For the Love Podcast

You Might Also Like