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

    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/ ...

  2. 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

  3. Aug 12

    Amena Brown on Getting All the Way Free

    Description: Nine years is a long time between visits. When Amena Brown was last on the show in 2017, she was a spoken word poet booked solid inside white evangelicalism, doing one poem at a time between worship songs and quietly wondering how much longer she could keep walking back in. She came back to tell Jen what happened next. This conversation traces the whole arc: the green rooms where she was told her grief was divisive, the healing circle where a Black woman looked her dead in the face and said you have to get out, the three months of panic attacks that followed, and the call from Tracee Ellis Ross that showed her a bigger world was possible. It is a story about leaving before you have a new boat built. Then there is the book. Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl started as a poetry collection and became something wilder, funnier, and more free. Amena talks about Black Girl as a verb, the essay she cried writing, her list of qualifying reasons for a Black Woman Day Off, and why the audiobook has a live Black girl audience hollering back. Bring your cheekbones. They are going to be sore. Thought-provoking Quotes: You can't keep re-entering that space. Every time you re-enter, it re-traumatizes you. (Amena Brown, quoting the leader of a Black women's healing circle)Whatever a Black girl does is Black girling. If I'm a Black girl who likes to fry chicken, then that's Black girling. If I'm a Black girl who likes to play the cello, that is Black girling. (Amena Brown)Save nothing for the swim home. (Jen Hatmaker, quoting literary agent Margaret Riley King)I love about Cardi B that she gives me permission to be mad as hell. (Amena Brown)Joy is a part of how we survive, it's a part of how we resist. (Amena Brown)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl by Amena Brown (Tiny Reparations Books)How to Fix a Broken Record by Amena BrownAwake by Jen HatmakerBookshop.org, plus your local indie and Black-owned bookstores and your libraryThe Together Live tour with Glennon Doyle and Abby WambachPATTERN Beauty and Tracee Ellis RossLemonade by BeyonceNew Blue Sun by Andre 3000Austin Channing Brown, Jeff Chu, and Sarah BesseyGuest's Links: Website - https://www.amenabrown.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amenabee/ Podcast - https://www.amenabrown.com/her-with-amena-brown 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.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.

    Amena Brown on Getting All the Way Free

  4. Aug 7

    Bonus Book Club edition. Guest: Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts.

    Description: In this Book Club edition of For the Love, Jen sits down with novelist Annie Hartnett to talk about The Road to Tender Hearts — a book Jen calls heart-wrenching, heartwarming, weird, hilarious, and deeply satisfying all at once. They open with a very funny catch-up from Me Camp, the solo month Jen takes every July. This year she’s in a tiny lake town in Canada, cooking, meeting neighbors, reading on the deck at sunset — and buying blueberries for scones instead of checking her calendar. From there, Annie traces her path from high-school art major to novelist, and the two teachers whose offhand comments redirected both of their lives. She unpacks the real backstory behind the novel: a Providence rental house that delivered basement floods, gas leaks, black mold, vicious rats, a falling tree, and a neighborhood tragedy — all in 2020 — and the anxiety that followed her to a new town anyway. Her answer was to write down every bad thing she feared could happen to her family, then make it as funny as she possibly could. Jen and Annie also get into: PJ Halliday, built from Annie’s dad and grandfather — lottery dreams, storytelling, lollipop trees and allPancakes the death-predicting cat, inspired by Oscar, a real Rhode Island nursing-home catWhy Ivy and Fred keep loving PJ, and what that tells us about himHow a talking cat in chapter one bought Annie the freedom to go very darkWriting grief, addiction, and fear without losing the comedyThe “year of floundering” that starts every new bookWhy readers mourn whichever character they want, no matter what the author intendedJen closes by asking what Annie’s reading, and Annie makes a hard case for Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Thought-provoking Quotes: “Life is suffering and joy.” — Pancakes, The Road to Tender Hearts“I realized in that class that I could be exactly who I am. I could be weird and I could be really accepted.” — Annie“Your words are not wasted. The stuff that you say into our little ears when we are formative and searching can absolutely set me on a path.” — Jen“She took my face in her hands and said, Jennifer, you have a gift for words and you should use it.” — Jen“I will put every bad thing that I think could happen to my family in a book, but I will make it as funny as possible.” — Annie“That’s how I feel like that’s the only way you get through bad things — to talk about them. But also to make them funny.” — Annie“I love people despite their flaws, sometimes because of their flaws.” — Annie“He has to be loved before he can really… he wants to be in the family.” — Annie, on PJ“The year of floundering, when you spend a year just flopping around like a fish out of water.” — AnnieResources Mentioned in This Episode: The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie HartnettUnlikely Animals and Rabbit Cake by Annie HartnettLost Lambs by Madeline CashGuest’s Links: Website - https://www.anniehartnett.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/annie_hartnett Newsletter - https://www.anniehartnett.com/newletter Connect with Jen! ...

    Bonus Book Club edition. Guest: Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts.

  5. Aug 5

    Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud: Jen Hatmaker solo episode

    Description: Jen is coming to you from the last two days of Me Camp in Canada, eyeballs on the lake, four weeks into having the volume turned down on every channel. And when the static quiets, the truer things rise up. In this me-to-you episode, Jen kicks off August's theme of honesty with the idea at the spine of the whole month: there is the thing we say, and then there is a truer sentence sitting an inch underneath it. And usually one inch under that. Jen shares what her own silence cost in the last years of her marriage, names the difference between truth-telling and truth-throwing, and offers the gentlest possible place to begin: one true sentence, one page, just between you and you. Thought-provoking Quotes: “Staying quiet only masquerades as keeping the peace. We are genuinely just deferring the bill.”“It doesn't disappear just because we're not willing to look it in the eye. It just goes underground, but it charges interest.”“So here I am thinking I'm protecting this marriage, protecting the kids — and I was actually helping to sink the ship.”“My body was absolutely telling the truth. Maybe my mouth wasn't, but my body was.”“There is a difference between truth telling and truth throwing.”“Honest is not the same thing as "unfiltered." Honest and kind are not opposites.”“You are not too much, and your real self is not an inconvenience.”Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The AWAKE Collective, the monthly live gathering where this conversation started, included with a paid subscription to Jen’s Substack: jenhatmaker.substack.comLetters from the Middle, Jen’s Substack, where the honesty conversation continues all month: jenhatmaker.substack.comTell us your story — head to jenhatmaker.com/podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button, and tell Jen the quiet thing you finally said out loud (or the one you’re working up to).Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.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.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.

  6. Jul 29

    The Sacred Yes: Jen Hatmaker & Tyler Merritt on Choosing Your Body

    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.com Instagram - @thetylermerrittproject Twitter - @TTMProject Facebook - The Tyler Merritt Project Youtube - The Tyler Merritt Project Connect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ...

    The Sacred Yes: Jen Hatmaker & Tyler Merritt on Choosing Your Body

  7. Jul 22

    The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again

    In our Sacred Yes series, we've explored what it means to choose courage, curiosity, and joy in the second half of life. Who better to join than the woman who quietly taught Jen those lessons from the beginning? In this deeply personal episode, Jen calls home from MeCamp to check in with her mom, Jana. Jana was originally supposed to be lakeside in Ontario with Jen this week—until Jen's dad, Larry, discovered that Jana's passport had expired back in April. Instead of catching up by the water, mother and daughter connected remotely. Thankfully, they hit record so we could all benefit from Jana's wisdom. This warm, funny, generation-spanning conversation explores the stories, fears, and freedoms we inherit. Jana reflects on growing up in the '50s and '60s, the cultural scripts that told young women they couldn't quite "make it" on their own, and how her own mother—who died when Jana was just 33—refused to let her carry fear. Jen and Jana trace how that fearlessness rolled down through the family, for better and occasionally for worse. Jana shares insights from 55 years of marriage and raising four resilient children in a home where faith was central and failure was never a dealbreaker. She also discusses her decades as an educator and the joy of discovering new passions after retirement—including the "yeses" she's given herself lately, from traveling with her best friend to opening her own bank account (so she never has to explain a $78 lunch again!). Whether you're navigating an empty nest, caring for aging parents, rebuilding after loss, or wondering what this next chapter holds, this conversation offers the gentle mentoring so many of us wish we could still receive from our own mothers. Because the greatest gift a parent can give isn't certainty—it's the confidence to believe that no matter what happens, you can always get back up and begin again. Thought-Provoking Quotes: "Everybody's been on the ground. Everybody screws up… But while you live with the consequences, you can still just get back up. That doesn't need to define you." — Jana King"We built a solid foundation on faith, but mostly we built it on just loving our kids and giving them a safe harbor." — Jana King"Even if you weren't given that privilege of unconditional love, that doesn't need to define you. You can still step out and be brave." — Jana KingResources Mentioned: Moonshine Grill (Austin, TX) & Kinfolk Cocktail LoungeCommunity First! Village (Jana's post-retirement library project)Good Hang with Amy Poehler PodcastAwake Season QuizConnect with Jen!Website - Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - YouTube The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.

    The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again

  8. Jul 20 ·  Bonus

    Introducing: Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger

    There’s a lot of dopey financial advice out there. Jill Schlesinger is here to call it out, answer your questions, break down the financial news that actually matters, and help you manage your money without losing your mind. No jargon. No judgment. Just clear, actionable financial guidance about saving, investing, buying a home, managing your career, and deciding how to spend your hard-earned dollars. When it’s time to panic, Jill will tell you. When everyone else is panicking and you shouldn’t be, Jill will tell you that too. Your money. Your move. Let’s go.

    Introducing: Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger
See All (617)

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
6,375 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