Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 1: and speaker.
Speaker 2: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician,
Speaker 2: writer and course creator. We are two working parents who
Speaker 2: love our careers and our families.
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 1: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
Speaker 1: from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 3: Term career goals.
Speaker 1: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 3: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 1: This episode is airing in late September of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: We're excited to welcome Jen Hatmaker back to the show.
Speaker 1: Jen is the author of a brand new memoir called
Speaker 1: a Wake, which is about the end of her twenty
Speaker 1: six year marriage and the aftermath of that. So Jen
Speaker 1: was actually on the show back in April of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: which I distinctly remember because it was one of those
Speaker 1: pandemic like early pandemic interviews when I was doing it,
Speaker 1: because if it aired in April, we were probably recording
Speaker 1: in either early April or March or so everyone was
Speaker 1: still sort of figuring out what on earth was going on.
Speaker 3: And I remember talking to her then, but.
Speaker 1: I was pondering, like, do you have memories of April
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Sarah, how was like that you were still
Speaker 1: holding on too from.
Speaker 3: That part of your life.
Speaker 4: They weren't positive.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, like I had a two and a
Speaker 2: half year old, I had a kindergartener who was like
Speaker 2: in virtual school, and it was like the failest failed
Speaker 2: that ever failed, Like it just.
Speaker 3: Did not work.
Speaker 2: And then the only kid that was sort of learning
Speaker 2: anything was maybe Namel in virtual second grade. But it
Speaker 2: was still like highly depressing, and I had to work,
Speaker 2: like so I would be on call in person. But
Speaker 2: then otherwise I think we were entirely tallehealth, thinking it
Speaker 2: was going to be like just a few weeks. So
Speaker 2: I sitting upstairs like trying to see patients from my
Speaker 2: office and I hate it. I still hate telehealth, like
Speaker 2: I just really, I mean, for a quick follow up,
Speaker 2: it's great, but for like a new patient evaluation or
Speaker 2: talking about something serious, it's not ideal.
Speaker 3: And then the kids were like loud and it was
Speaker 3: not a fun time.
Speaker 2: Plus Josh and I were like no, everyone was very
Speaker 2: scared of the virus at that point, and Josh and
Speaker 2: I were kind of like, well, we're getting it because
Speaker 2: we're going to work and we have to and like
Speaker 2: they're not even like enough mass to go around, and
Speaker 2: who was wild.
Speaker 3: At times, and I don't really remember it fondly.
Speaker 2: My only happy memory from that period was going on
Speaker 2: walks where Genevieve would like hug trees. So I think
Speaker 2: that's what my I've golden whitewashed it to distilled it to.
Speaker 1: That, but she was tree hugging, literal tree hugging. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean there wasn't much else to do. I guess
Speaker 1: that was the little adventure for the day, to go
Speaker 1: out and hug totally. Yeah, I was thinking about that too.
Speaker 1: I mean, Henry was an infant during that time and
Speaker 1: he basically wouldn't sleep except on somebody, so either me
Speaker 1: or Michael or one of our babysitters would have to
Speaker 1: like hold him and trot him around. And then he
Speaker 1: at some point decided to stop taking a bottle at all,
Speaker 1: because why would he.
Speaker 3: I was there, I was clearly there.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going anywhere, so it's a little hard to
Speaker 1: convince him that there was another option. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: just like everyone wearing masks during sort of crucial times
Speaker 1: in other children's social emotional development that you can't read
Speaker 1: social cues that take a long time to sort.
Speaker 3: Of deal with the fallout of all that. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh, I still think that's why Genevieve's in speech today
Speaker 2: yasing those key years with her teacher. I mean, we
Speaker 2: had to do it at the time, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: actually can't read blog posts from that time. Like I
Speaker 2: if I accidentally like linked to one, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I closed it.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, it's just it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well Jen was at the time when we talked,
Speaker 1: she didn't actually have a whole lot of idea what
Speaker 1: was about to happen. But as people who read her
Speaker 1: memoir will find out, in July of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: middle of the night, two thirty am, she wakes up
Speaker 1: to hear her husband of twenty six years dictating a
Speaker 1: text to his girlfriend. If you could imagine, She mentions
Speaker 1: in the book that it was weird that during the
Speaker 1: pandemic he was lots of other places which nobody was
Speaker 1: going anywhere during the pandemic, but suddenly he found places
Speaker 1: to be a sort of pondering that it would have
Speaker 1: been very challenging to pull off that during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Going where are you going? Where are you going? Doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense?
Speaker 1: But one thing I appreciated her memoir is it's not
Speaker 1: just like my ex is a terrible person. I think
Speaker 1: she delves deep into various problems that she refused to
Speaker 1: see before then, and so I appreciate when things are
Speaker 1: not entirely black and white, even in situations where it might.
Speaker 3: Appear that they are.
Speaker 1: So. In this interview, we discuss a week and Jim's
Speaker 1: career evolution from sort of the Christian mommy blogger's sphere
Speaker 1: to what she's doing now.
Speaker 3: So we're excited to have her back.
Speaker 1: So Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Jen Hatmaker
Speaker 1: back to the show, first time since twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: So, Jen, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having
Speaker 4: me again again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, why don't.
Speaker 1: You tell our listeners really quickly for those who weren't
Speaker 1: listening in twenty twenty, a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4: Well, let's see, what's the snapshot of my life. I
Speaker 4: live in Austin, Texas. I've been here for a long time.
Speaker 4: I've got five kids. They're all like young adultish, we're
Speaker 4: nineteen to twenty seven, and I've been a single parent
Speaker 4: now for five years. So that was not anything I
Speaker 4: ever expected. But that's where I'm at now. That's a
Speaker 4: change since the last time we spoke. And I'm a writer.
Speaker 4: I've written a lot of books. The first hout whole
Speaker 4: half of them were absolutely terrible, and I tell people
Speaker 4: all the time, I'm like, if you read one of
Speaker 4: my first five books, I will never speak to you
Speaker 4: again ever. And so, and I have a podcast it's
Speaker 4: called for the Love and I love it. And I
Speaker 4: just have a great life on my best friend I
Speaker 4: live on the same street and one over for my
Speaker 4: best friends in the world. My whole family lives here,
Speaker 4: and also my parents and all my siblings and my
Speaker 4: adult kids minus my marine. So I'm just in a
Speaker 4: really happy moment in my life for sure.
Speaker 3: Which is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Which is an interesting to be talking about this memoir,
Speaker 1: of course, when you're in this wonderful place, because the
Speaker 1: memoir Awake is about the end and aftermath of your
Speaker 1: twenty six year marriage. I mean, did you ever imagine,
Speaker 1: like in the mess and Moxie era that this would
Speaker 1: be a book that would be on the shelf next
Speaker 1: to all those.
Speaker 4: I mean, not in the outer most reaches of my imagination,
Speaker 4: like it would have been the opposite. I would have
Speaker 4: had a fairly like violet reason response to the suggestion
Speaker 4: that I might one day write a divorce memoir. I mean,
Speaker 4: come on, we were married for twenty six years, and
Speaker 4: we were we had done like a whole we'd done
Speaker 4: the thing, we'd done the like Christian do the right
Speaker 4: template thing. We got married really young in Baptist Bible College,
Speaker 4: and I was a nineteen year old bride, if you
Speaker 4: can even imagine something so absurd and insane, and married
Speaker 4: for twenty six years. He was a pastor, and we
Speaker 4: started a church here. And so no, no, under no
Speaker 4: circumstances did I ever foresee or even moderately suspect that
Speaker 4: this was going to be my story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is I mean, life comes out all of
Speaker 1: us hard, right, I mean, this is just the truth
Speaker 1: life happens. But one thing I really appreciated about this
Speaker 1: memoir is it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Just like this guy is terrible.
Speaker 1: It would be very tempting to write a memoir you
Speaker 1: have a public platform and be like, my ex is
Speaker 1: a horrible person. But you talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: challenges of the fact that you did get married so young.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what happens with that? I mean, what are
Speaker 3: the issues inherent?
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys were together for twenty six years,
Speaker 1: but when you get together at age nineteen, I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the challenges that come with that?
Speaker 4: Oh? My god, I have a nineteen year old right
Speaker 4: this second. My youngest kid is nineteen. If she came
Speaker 4: home today and said she was engaged, I would run
Speaker 4: her over with my car. She is a baby. She
Speaker 4: doesn't know anything about anything, and neither did I, but
Speaker 4: I thought I did not. Only is there just the
Speaker 4: obvious immaturity and undeveloped nature of being an actual teenager.
Speaker 4: I got married halfway through my sophomore year of college.
Speaker 4: So we were just simply half baked. Like, put two
Speaker 4: people together in that age range and expect them to
Speaker 4: understand conflict resolution, to understand attachment styles, to know how
Speaker 4: to manage their money like just a banana system. And
Speaker 4: then there was kind of the bigger story around, which
Speaker 4: was one of sort of religious dogma, and so there
Speaker 4: was a real high premium placed on like sexual purity
Speaker 4: in our subculture, and so the only credible way through
Speaker 4: that conundrum was to get married, because that's the only
Speaker 4: place sex belonged back then, as we were told, was
Speaker 4: inside marriage. But everything after that was just absolutely like
Speaker 4: shame based and like fear based. And I know exactly
Speaker 4: how that worked. And so that was a driver into
Speaker 4: like a covenant that we were simply unprepared to make.
Speaker 4: Even if you can even just think of, like who
Speaker 4: you might have chosen as a life partner when you
Speaker 4: were eighteen years old, can you even think of that,
Speaker 4: like you would just grow up and choose differently when
Speaker 4: you were a full blown adult. And so I have
Speaker 4: a lot of compassion actually for both of us, not
Speaker 4: just me. I have compassion for him too. It's taken
Speaker 4: me a long time to get there. And that is
Speaker 4: not an excuse. I'm not saying, oh, well, now I
Speaker 4: feel great about all his choices. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 4: But we were both handed a story at a really
Speaker 4: young age, and we played those roles to the best
Speaker 4: of our ability. Yeah, and I'm sorry for what that
Speaker 4: subculture actually stole from both of us.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, We're going to take a quick ad break and
Speaker 1: then I'll be back with more from Jen Hatmaker. So
Speaker 1: I'm talking now with Jen Hatmaker here on Best of
Speaker 1: Both Worlds. And when we talked in twenty twenty and April,
Speaker 1: it was the middle of the pandemic, and all the
Speaker 1: events that started this book happen shortly after that in
Speaker 1: the summer I believe of twenty twenty. But I follow
Speaker 1: you online and one of the things that's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me with people who are very online, who have a
Speaker 1: public presence, public following, and things life happens, things go bad,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how you are going to address
Speaker 1: that that you're used to sharing so much about life,
Speaker 1: I mean, like stories of your kid peeing in target
Speaker 1: or something like that, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that's on your brain is something that
Speaker 1: is so hard to write about. So maybe you could
Speaker 1: talk us through how that went, like how you were
Speaker 1: figuring out what to share, like as your life and
Speaker 1: your family is in crisis, and how you thought that
Speaker 1: would go, and then how it did wind up going.
Speaker 4: That's so fuzzy, like that whole season is just bogged
Speaker 4: down in this fog of grief in my memory because
Speaker 4: First of all, the end of my marriage was a
Speaker 4: shock and a trauma. It wasn't like we had been
Speaker 4: having conversations like privately and we had finally just emerged
Speaker 4: with this decision we had made. It wasn't like that.
Speaker 4: It was like the type of ending where you go
Speaker 4: to bed with one kind of life and you wake
Speaker 4: up the next day with a completely different life. That
Speaker 4: was how it was. And so the level of shock
Speaker 4: and betrayal and grief and suffering that we were experiencing
Speaker 4: in the family was just unprecedented for us. And then
Speaker 4: on top of that, I had to figure out how
Speaker 4: to manage a pretty public facing career, one for which
Speaker 4: at least a part of what I have talked about
Speaker 4: for fifteen or twenty years in front of people, among
Speaker 4: other things, is marriage and family. So I mean this
Speaker 4: is it felt not like just such a catastrophic personal loss,
Speaker 4: but also like a loss of I wondered if it
Speaker 4: would be a loss of credibility, whatever sort of confidence
Speaker 4: I had ever inspired in my community. I had no idea,
Speaker 4: to be honest, but at the beginning it was all
Speaker 4: just so very traumatic. I just went silent. I just
Speaker 4: didn't do anything. I just went a wall. I don't
Speaker 4: have the capacity to just pretend. I just don't have it.
Speaker 4: Like I did not have the ability to come online
Speaker 4: and just say something about something over here while my
Speaker 4: life was in tatters. I don't That's not my way.
Speaker 4: So I just said nothing, and of course that did
Speaker 4: not go unnoticed. A big portion of my career is
Speaker 4: locate online, and that's where we gather, and that's where
Speaker 4: I write, and that's where whatever, and so I eventually
Speaker 4: just had to put a placeholder out there and just
Speaker 4: say we're in it, like we're in it, just I
Speaker 4: don't know what to say about it, but just we're
Speaker 4: in it. Like if you can spare a kind thought
Speaker 4: toward our family, send it. And that just sort of
Speaker 4: held the tide at bay for a while until a journalist,
Speaker 4: I say journalists loosely, but like a person who runs
Speaker 4: a website dedicated to kind of like Christian Gotchas if
Speaker 4: you will, found our online filing and we had tried
Speaker 4: to keep that as private as we could with initials,
Speaker 4: and it didn't matter. She found it and wrote a
Speaker 4: whole thing exposing our divorce. So we hadn't even told
Speaker 4: all of our family yet, and it was pretty devastating,
Speaker 4: So just kind of on the spot. It was trending,
Speaker 4: and it was interesting because her particular site was sort
Speaker 4: of a lightning rod for like Christian fundamentalists, if you will,
Speaker 4: like the gatekeepers, the type who are looking like preparing
Speaker 4: to catch anybody in any trap. And so the response
Speaker 4: was overwhelmingly to blame me for it? What did she do?
Speaker 4: We knew this was going to happen, We knew this
Speaker 4: was her problem, she says, what she deserves. My husband,
Speaker 4: by the way, omitted from the reckoning, ironically, when all
Speaker 4: of it was his doing. And so that was a
Speaker 4: really chaotic season. But I will say, as I landed,
Speaker 4: sorry for such a long answer, what happened in my
Speaker 4: actual community, the one that I have built, the one
Speaker 4: that I as in under my wings online was so beautiful.
Speaker 4: The response was so stunning. I mean, I cannot think
Speaker 4: in fifteen years of leadership anything that has galvanized my
Speaker 4: community more in terms of love, hair, support, encouragement, women
Speaker 4: in my community coming out and going I've been right
Speaker 4: where you're at. I'm ten miles further down the road
Speaker 4: than you are. Keep going, this is what to expect,
Speaker 4: this is what to do. It was like so helpful.
Speaker 4: My community held up a bunch of lanterns for me
Speaker 4: and said, keep walking this way. We promise you're going
Speaker 4: to get here. We all got here, you're going to
Speaker 4: do the same. It was. It turned out to be
Speaker 4: the most beautiful soft landing I could have ever hoped for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is wonderful. I mean when you get that
Speaker 3: sort of support.
Speaker 1: And from people in your actual life, like not just
Speaker 1: online life too, And that was what I found interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I don't know you personally know your
Speaker 1: friends and all that, but one of the things I've
Speaker 1: found with friends who have gotten divorced is very challenging.
Speaker 3: It's like, who gets custody of the friends?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, right?
Speaker 1: If you had a couple of friends and like you're
Speaker 1: a couple, like, well, am I going to go hang
Speaker 1: out with Doan and Robert? Now, just as me to
Speaker 1: feels weird, how did you navigate that? Because it sounded
Speaker 1: like you you managed to keep a lot of them.
Speaker 4: I did my own personal friends, the ones that I
Speaker 4: live with and live by and live for, the ones
Speaker 4: in my life and my family, and honestly, Awake is
Speaker 4: essentially a love letter to them, as you saw they
Speaker 4: loved me back to life. I I'll never get over
Speaker 4: it as long as I live. But to your point,
Speaker 4: I mean, we've been married for almost three decades. We
Speaker 4: had a group like divorce breaks a million hearts. It
Speaker 4: is not just the spouse that loses, it's the kids.
Speaker 4: My parents lost a son in law, my siblings lost
Speaker 4: their brother in law. I lost my in laws. And
Speaker 4: then we have this friend group of which we had
Speaker 4: been in a tight pack for so long, and what
Speaker 4: is that going to look like? And there's no one
Speaker 4: way through this. In my particular story, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of my friends loyal to me, in which if
Speaker 4: they felt like they had to choose, and I'm not
Speaker 4: sure they would say it in those stark terms, but
Speaker 4: just based on the nature of the ending, Yeah, it
Speaker 4: was dark and it was bleak, and I was left
Speaker 4: here with the kids and with the remains of a life,
Speaker 4: and it made a bit of a before and then
Speaker 4: after in our friendship group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh there, you're really funny about it. I appreciate
Speaker 1: that the memoir that you want them with a gathering
Speaker 1: of like three couple friends and you you had to
Speaker 1: bring two side dishes because you don't get out of
Speaker 1: bringing two just because it's nobody sorry for me?
Speaker 4: Like there, sorry, are you going to work? Like that sucks?
Speaker 3: But you're gonna bring you two dishes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, Like I geet excited, getting excited?
Speaker 1: All right, got it? Got it? So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about me Camp because I absolutely love this idea
Speaker 1: of me camp. I mean, particularly for someone who was
Speaker 1: married young. So you've been sharing space with your husband
Speaker 1: and sharing decisions with your husband for since you're nineteen
Speaker 1: years old. And then you've got five kids who are
Speaker 1: if there anything like my five kids, they are always around.
Speaker 3: Somebody is always around it.
Speaker 1: There's not a moment where there isn't somebody there in
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 3: So how did me camp come to be? And how
Speaker 3: has this tradition evolved?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do want your listeners to know this is
Speaker 4: not just a sad book about divorce. It's got a
Speaker 4: lot more in there than just that divorce is not
Speaker 4: that interesting. It's wider than that. It's also about grief
Speaker 4: and recovery and ultimately flourishing, which is a great story
Speaker 4: to be able to tell. And part of that tipping point,
Speaker 4: part of that turning point was what I ended up
Speaker 4: calling me camp. It was sort of an accidental I
Speaker 4: stumbled into it accidentally. At first. It had been almost
Speaker 4: a year since I'd lost my marriage and I had
Speaker 4: a kid who had deeply suffered, and I was like,
Speaker 4: I got to get this kid out of this environment.
Speaker 4: We need something wholesome, we need something pure, no screens.
Speaker 4: We got to get off TikTok. We got to get
Speaker 4: out of this house. So I signed her up for
Speaker 4: a month of summer camp in Maine. This is a
Speaker 4: state I've never been in in my life. But because
Speaker 4: she was still pretty fragile, and so was I. Both
Speaker 4: of us had fallen down to the bottom of the
Speaker 4: ocean physically mentally, we were both pretty fragile, and so
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, in a blaze of hubris, that
Speaker 4: I just made up on the spot because I just
Speaker 4: signed her up maybe with three weeks to go, I said, honey,
Speaker 4: what if while you are at camp, I'll go to
Speaker 4: Maine two and I'll just be there so that if
Speaker 4: you need me at any moment, I'll be less than
Speaker 4: two hours away. I can literally get in a car.
Speaker 4: And I don't even know what I was saying. I've
Speaker 4: never even been to me like I don't even know
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about, but I just felt like I
Speaker 4: needed to provide this emotional safety that underne her. So
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, I was like, well, what
Speaker 4: the hell am I going to do? What am I
Speaker 4: going to do for? Well?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 4: I've never even been to a movie by myself, And
Speaker 4: so fast forward and I rented a house in bar Harbor,
Speaker 4: Main right on the coast.
Speaker 3: Beautiful place, beautiful, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: And thus began the most wonderful, healing, restorative months of
Speaker 4: my entire life, solo travel for a month in a
Speaker 4: beautiful place. My daughter was fine, she never even needed me,
Speaker 4: never called, didn't And I was like, look at this
Speaker 4: moment of independence of joy. I'm a solo traveler. I
Speaker 4: love it. I'm not self conscious. I am absolutely like
Speaker 4: invigorated and so on the spot. I didn't mean to
Speaker 4: I wasn't looking to brand it. I was just I
Speaker 4: didn't even know what I was doing. But I was like, God,
Speaker 4: my daughter's at camp right now, this is my I'm
Speaker 4: at camp. I'm like, this is my me camp. And
Speaker 4: it genuinely was a turning point in my recovery, and
Speaker 4: I have since repeated it five times that.
Speaker 3: Where did you go this summer?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Where's this summer? And went to a tiny town
Speaker 4: on the Oregon coast called Yahats Yahats, Oregon. It is
Speaker 4: my fifth meet camp in a row where I mostly
Speaker 4: travel solo for the month of July and it has been,
Speaker 4: honestly one of the best things has ever happened to me,
Speaker 4: and so I love it. Never going to end it.
Speaker 4: As long as I can tear it up, I'm going
Speaker 4: to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
Speaker 1: and I'll be back with more from Jen Hatmaker. Well,
Speaker 1: I am back talking with Jen Hatmaker about her new
Speaker 1: memoir a week now. I have to ask, because you
Speaker 1: are in a new relationship. You've posted that on social media,
Speaker 1: you and your boyfriend or partner or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call him, But how is he with the idea
Speaker 1: of you taking months to go off and.
Speaker 3: Do a camp.
Speaker 4: Oh, he loves it. He loves it for me, and
Speaker 4: since he hit the scene, he comes and visits me
Speaker 4: for a few days at every meet camp for sure,
Speaker 4: So he's thrilled about it. He gets like a he
Speaker 4: gets a full mini vacation out of my personal meat
Speaker 4: camp as well. But no, he cherishes my independence almost
Speaker 4: as much as I do. And so we're old. I'm
Speaker 4: fifty one, he's forty nine. We're not grabby and needy
Speaker 4: and co dependent in a lot of the ways that
Speaker 4: we were when we were young adults, in a lot
Speaker 4: of the ways that I was when I built a marriage.
Speaker 4: We've already done the part where you build a life.
Speaker 4: That's in our rearview mirror right now. We just get
Speaker 4: to live one and it is such a delight, and
Speaker 4: it is such a joy. I don't need him to
Speaker 4: make my life right, and he doesn't need me to
Speaker 4: make his life right. So each of us is just
Speaker 4: free to be a good partner without kind of crushing
Speaker 4: the autonomy of the other one. We don't live in
Speaker 4: the same set. We're long distance. I live in Texas,
Speaker 4: he lives in Tennessee. But it has been a very
Speaker 4: surprising joy. I did not go looking for him. The
Speaker 4: universe dropped him in my lap, like the old fashioned
Speaker 4: way where you meet somebody out in the wild. Because
Speaker 4: if you remember, in a wake, I do tell the
Speaker 4: story of my twelve hours on a dating app, and
Speaker 4: it was dark.
Speaker 3: It was not the place to be.
Speaker 4: It's not for me. I just I went twelve hours
Speaker 4: in delete the app never again. I'm sorry. I'd rather
Speaker 4: just be single the rest of my life. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I felt really lucky that he's in my life, but
Speaker 4: he did not fix me. I found him when my
Speaker 4: heart had already healed, and I got to be a
Speaker 4: different version of myself in this relationship.
Speaker 3: Which is wonderful.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, the title of the memoir is Awake, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's about this idea of we can sort
Speaker 1: of sleep walk through a lot of life.
Speaker 3: Especially when we make decisions young.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you have advice for someone like, how
Speaker 1: does one wake up in life without necessarily going through
Speaker 1: an obvious trauma like this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't actually believe that we have to experience
Speaker 4: trauma to be shaken out of a slumper. That's how
Speaker 4: it ends up working for a lot of us, because
Speaker 4: there's a lot of factors that will rock us to
Speaker 4: sleep in our own life. And it is definitely the
Speaker 4: path of least resistance, but it is possible to choose it.
Speaker 4: It is possible to choose going through your life in
Speaker 4: a posture of being wide awake to your own story.
Speaker 4: And for me, I can only do this in hindsight,
Speaker 4: but there is a real moment that I think each
Speaker 4: of us have to say what is actually true about
Speaker 4: our lives, our marriage, our habits, our relationships, our addictions,
Speaker 4: our dreams. We can choose to be honest about those
Speaker 4: or not. But what happens is, I think for a
Speaker 4: lot of people, and this is how it was in
Speaker 4: my life. And I mentioned this in the book that
Speaker 4: I wanted the story of my marriage, not my actual marriage,
Speaker 4: and I was very committed to it. I was committed
Speaker 4: to the outcome I wanted. We weren't experiencing that, and
Speaker 4: I didn't know how we were going to get there.
Speaker 4: But I was so committed to what I wanted out
Speaker 4: of that that I refused to actually face what was
Speaker 4: what is true here, what is actually happening right now?
Speaker 4: And so I am hopeful for so many people who
Speaker 4: will choose instead the courage to say kind of face
Speaker 4: what actually is, what's actually true, even if it's hard, embarrassing, humiliating, inconvenient,
Speaker 4: disrupt dive, because most things are, even then I am
Speaker 4: going to face them head on. I'm going to say,
Speaker 4: this is what's true, this is what is not what
Speaker 4: I wish it was. And then I'm going to reorient
Speaker 4: my life around that truth. I wonder sometimes what would
Speaker 4: have happened if I could have done that, if I
Speaker 4: would have had the courage to do that, what would
Speaker 4: it have looked like? I'll never know, because I lived
Speaker 4: too long in the story, and somebody made the choice
Speaker 4: for me, and so then I had to. Then I
Speaker 4: was forced to reorient my life or on what was true.
Speaker 4: And I will tell you that here, five years later,
Speaker 4: almost exactly, my true life is so much more full
Speaker 4: than the one that I had before. And you could
Speaker 4: not have told me that five years ago when everything
Speaker 4: was shredded. But it is actually more abundant and expansive
Speaker 4: and just plain happier to live a true story than
Speaker 4: to force a fake one into existence. And so I
Speaker 4: hope people will dig deep and go I'm not going
Speaker 4: to let somebody else choose this for me. I'm going
Speaker 4: to go ahead and face what's actually true about my
Speaker 4: own life and then adjust my life so that that
Speaker 4: truth is the one I'm living.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely well, and one thing that is true right now.
Speaker 1: To end on a sort of later note, you are
Speaker 1: driving what is it a nineteen seventy six stick shift Bronco.
Speaker 4: I mentioned that story that I'd never bought my own car.
Speaker 4: I mean I had in so many ways, my adulthood
Speaker 4: was stunted, and that's somebody's fault, that's mine. I phoned
Speaker 4: a bunch of stuff in because I had a partner
Speaker 4: from such a young age that I didn't have to
Speaker 4: learn some adult skills. Buying a car was one of them.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, the first car I ever bought, all
Speaker 4: by myself after my divorce was a nineteen seventy five Bronco.
Speaker 4: What I wanted.
Speaker 3: But did you know how to drive? Stick shift?
Speaker 4: And I did? You did?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 4: I did. I was a child of the eighties. We
Speaker 4: all had are okay? All right?
Speaker 1: Well I had one horrible experience with it and that
Speaker 1: was the end of it for me.
Speaker 4: You're an automatic girl for life.
Speaker 1: I mean I had at a girl for life. But
Speaker 1: uh oh, well, I guess that is so Dan. We
Speaker 1: always end with the love of the week, which I
Speaker 1: guess could be your Bronco if you want it could
Speaker 1: be something else.
Speaker 4: I will say.
Speaker 3: I'm actually this is just whatever is cool for you.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 1: I'm recording this from a random coworking space in Nowheresville.
Speaker 1: New Jersey that I rented because my beach house has
Speaker 1: really terrible Wi Fi. And I kind of like it,
Speaker 1: like there's a nice little plant on the desk, Like
Speaker 1: there's no clutter, like it's my office, except there's no
Speaker 1: clutter like ten years of home office clutter that I've
Speaker 1: built up. So big fan, big fan, how about you.
Speaker 4: One thing that I'm loving right now are my indoor plants.
Speaker 4: I decided last year to become a plant person on
Speaker 4: the spot. And I'm a person who's never ever kept
Speaker 4: plants alive ever. So I called my daughter, my twenty
Speaker 4: five year old, who is a plant savant, and I said,
Speaker 4: I would like you to help me be a plant
Speaker 4: person for my birthday. So she came over and we
Speaker 4: potted a bunch of plants. Now, some of them are
Speaker 4: it's definitely rip, like they didn't all make it. But
Speaker 4: my plants give me so much joy and I pay
Speaker 4: so much attention to them, and I'm constantly like tweaking
Speaker 4: and pruning and watering and snipping, and every time I
Speaker 4: look at them, they made me so happy. So my
Speaker 4: indoor plants is the end thing.
Speaker 1: Kept them alive, kept them alive, all right? Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Where can people find you?
Speaker 4: Well, as you might imagine, there's not that many gin
Speaker 4: hat Makers, So if you put in gin hat Maker,
Speaker 4: you will find me. Jinhatmaker dot Com is my website.
Speaker 4: That is the location of everything that I do over there,
Speaker 4: and then I'm Gina hat Maker on all the socials
Speaker 4: and my podcast is called for the Love with gin Hatmaker.
Speaker 3: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, that was fascinating. I cannot wait to
Speaker 2: check out that book. Okay, So our question comes from
Speaker 2: a listener. They have an older kid and they want
Speaker 2: to know is there a system for who has the
Speaker 2: car once you have eighteen driver?
Speaker 3: How did you figure that out? Any mistakes to avoid? Perhaps?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is tough and in our case, so we
Speaker 1: were trying to get by with Jasper and me sharing
Speaker 1: a car, and the general idea was that he was
Speaker 1: driving to school. So then that kind of left me
Speaker 1: without a car during the day. And I don't always
Speaker 1: go many places during the day, but it was still
Speaker 1: a little weird to not have the ability to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: And I could on Wednesdays and Fridays. The van was
Speaker 1: available for part of the day, but normally the van
Speaker 1: is what our nanny would use to drive around the
Speaker 1: little kids, and so that was still had Henry at
Speaker 1: various points during this So I wasn't going to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys have to sit at home because I have
Speaker 1: to take the car somewhere. Which way I have to
Speaker 1: arrange it. Long story short, we wound up getting another vehicle,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that's going to work for everyone.
Speaker 1: I understand there are real reasons people either can't or
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, but I'm also of the
Speaker 1: opinion that sometimes reducing mental load is worth putting some
Speaker 1: money into, and you might be able to get a
Speaker 1: kid a I mean, a safe car, but it definitely
Speaker 1: does not need to be flashy or expensive or.
Speaker 3: Anything like well or new. Yeah, probably shouldn't be new.
Speaker 1: I would put that out there because the odds of
Speaker 1: them dinging it are probably pretty high, and if that's
Speaker 1: going to upset you with a new car, perhaps you
Speaker 1: don't wish to do that.
Speaker 3: What we actually wound up doing is that I got
Speaker 3: my car back because I like my car. It's old,
Speaker 3: but I like it.
Speaker 1: Jasper got Michael's old car which is a twenty eighteen car,
Speaker 1: and then Michael got a new car, which he was
Speaker 1: happy with because he wanted a new car. So everyone
Speaker 1: was pleased with how the trade worked out. But I
Speaker 1: would say, don't entirely rule that out. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't want to or think maybe we
Speaker 1: won't work. But you could also, especially if you're going
Speaker 1: to have a lot of teenagers, you might decide that
Speaker 1: you're going to need a teen car that gets passed
Speaker 1: from kid to kid as people graduate.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, if your plan is to get that
Speaker 2: kitt car eventually and it would make your life easier
Speaker 2: to get it for them while they're still in your house,
Speaker 2: logic would have it that it might just make sense
Speaker 2: to bite the bullet. And you're right, it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be getting that kit of car. Could be getting
Speaker 2: yourself a car so that they can have your nice, safe,
Speaker 2: seven or eight year old car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean this could be something that you
Speaker 1: don't want to like, I mean, if you're worried about
Speaker 1: like spoiling a kid or something, and me, you could
Speaker 1: definitely have them contribute to it, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: this could be something that like, Okay, we are going
Speaker 1: to get the car, and then you are going to
Speaker 1: be responsible for X of the cost, or we expect
Speaker 1: you to con tribute x from savings from a summer
Speaker 1: job toward this.
Speaker 3: As part of it.
Speaker 1: But especially if your kid has a lot of places
Speaker 1: to go, like not having to drive them, there.
Speaker 3: Is a huge benefit, I know, like not.
Speaker 1: Having to drive fifteen minutes to voice lessons and then
Speaker 1: hang out there for an hour and drive fifteen minutes back.
Speaker 1: It was just like, Yeah, it's an hour and a
Speaker 1: half out of my life that I.
Speaker 3: Don't have to deal with because he could drive himself.
Speaker 3: That's where I don't know. I'm I know.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the answer that people wanted. You know, we
Speaker 1: have an elaborate system where you put in your bid
Speaker 1: for having the car for the day or whatever.
Speaker 2: So maybe they're looking for permission to go ahead looking
Speaker 2: for for it. So you just gave it.
Speaker 4: We gave it.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, Well this has been best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: I was interviewing Jen Hatmaker about her new memoir Awake.
Speaker 1: We will be back next week with more on making
Speaker 1: work and life fit together.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
Speaker 2: shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram,
Speaker 2: and you.
Speaker 1: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
Speaker 1: has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
Speaker 1: us next time for more on making work and life
Speaker 1: work together