Loading summary
Transcript90 lines
- [00:00]
Jen Hatmaker
It's morning in New York. Hey, everybody, I'm Andy Patinkin. And I'm Kathryn Grody. And we have a new podcast. It's called Don't Listen to Us.
- [00:14]
Elise Lunan
Many of you have asked for our advice. Tell me, what is wrong with you people.
- [00:19]
Jen Hatmaker
Don't listen to us. Our take it or leave it advice show is out every Wednesday, premiering October 15th.
- [00:26]
Elise Lunan
A Lemonada Media original.
- [00:32]
Jen Hatmaker
Lemonada.
- [00:36]
Elise Lunan
Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. Today I'm talking to the hilarious Jen Hat Maker, who has a new memoir out that I'm obsessed with. Hi, it's Elise Loonan, host of Pulling the Thread. On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we're here. My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow. Here is today's guest, Jen Hatmaker, in typical Jen Hatmaker fashion, talking about how she was about to be canceled.
- [01:29]
Jen Hatmaker
I was at that crossroads where I was either going to be able to hang on to my career as I knew it or my integrity, but not both. And so I couldn't go another day. I just could not go another day. Out of alignment. Internally, I couldn't. So I picked my integrity and then just decided, let's just see what's left when all this settles. And if there's anything to rebuild, I will. And if not, I'm good at other things. I always wanted to be a librarian. I really did. That was my second plan. I'll pick something else.
- [02:07]
Elise Lunan
Oh, Jen Hatmaker makes me laugh so much and she is so wise. Jen has written many books, including several New York Times bestsellers. She's the host of the podcast for the Love. And her new memoir, Awake is out this week. And man, it is so good. It is about a moment in Jen's life when everything seemingly dissolves, including her marriage of 26 years and her relationship to the church. But really, it's about the much deeper awakening that Jen enters from there as she starts to truly rely on herself. Jen and I talk about all of this today. I think so much of what she shares will really resonate. Her approach to being human is one of my favorites. Here's Jen. Well, I have been looking forward to this since I got the bootlegged pre galley copy with a pasted on cover because I have been every time I go and see my brother in New York and I wander through the avid reader press offices like a Vagabond. They refer to me as their west coast press officer. I just love avid reader press and I go to their editorial meetings sometimes, Jen, and just I larp. I'm a larper. I'm a book editor. Larper. And yeah, and so when I heard that Lauren won the auction for your book, I have been just gently harassing, you know, when can I read it? When can I read it? Do you want me to read a draft? Do you like this?
- [03:46]
Jen Hatmaker
You need another set of eyes on the manuscript. I'm just here, I've got some time.
- [03:51]
Elise Lunan
Yeah. So I was rewarded with a very early copy and it did not disappoint. I love. I love awake. Jen, it is as I've texted you, you have pulled something off that I think is incredibly difficult to do, which is a testament to your pain and betrayal that does not betray yourself and simultaneously is quite loving and kind to everyone involved as we know. That's very hard to do.
- [04:24]
Jen Hatmaker
Yeah, yeah. I was so anxious about that. So anxious about that. And so when I'd finished it, I handed it out to a handful of really close friends who know me well, know Brandon, you know, who I don't ever name in the book, but that was my ex husband and my kids, our family. And I'm like, I'm not asking you to read this and tell me what you think about the stories or about the systems that I am discussing. I'm like, I want one response. Do you think this is generous enough? Do you think I have been fair? Do you think I have overexposed my family? Do you think I have taken a hatchet to my ex husband? That's the only response I want. And so I put it through several gauntlets to make sure that I hadn't just done a hit piece. I just wasn't interested in that. And that's still my kid's dad, you know, we just, we got a lot of life to live as a weird family configured however we are now. And so anyway, thank you for saying that that means so it's literally the only thing that means anything to me. I was not unfair. And this is not like a tell all.
- [05:43]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, well, and snaps to you for even getting yourself to that place, having, you know, being a writer. And I haven't experienced that level of betrayal in my life even remotely. And yet there is still. You have your pen, which is quite mighty. And I have experienced, I'm sure everyone listening has experienced, even if they're not a writer, this drive, instinct, desire to not only be Understood. But to make sure that your side of this story is known and that this person gets what's coming to them. It is so strong. And I have walked so many friends down this street, not always to any good conclusion. You know, where I'm like, I know this is the center of your life, and yet what do you get if you win here?
- [06:37]
Jen Hatmaker
That's a good question.
- [06:38]
Elise Lunan
How do you feel in five years when you pick up this artifact of your life? Is it going to bring you peace and closure? And yet there's also. There's a line. Right. Because you also don't want to betray yourself and say, oh, I'm going to prioritize Brandon over my own experience.
- [06:55]
Jen Hatmaker
That's exactly right. It was a tricky needle to thread. And I left out the worst of his sins. They are not in there. Yeah. And so even now, I still feel. Did I overcorrect? Because he still has a power over me that I hate to admit. I hate it. And still, that's why we have therapists. But I don't think so. I don't think including the details, the salacious, horrible details serves the story. It's already enough. It's already enough that he walked away from his family and his marriage after 26 years. That the story is bad enough and I didn't have to make it worse with the rest of it. And really not even for him. You know, my kids are all in their 20s, and so, anyway, I felt like I found the right balance. I said, enough. You know, I've never said in public that Brandon's had an affair. Not one time. So this is something of a departure from what I have said thus far. So I feel like I said enough. Anyway, blah. Thank you. I really appreciate your feedback. And I also share your obsession with avid reader. It's the best publisher I've ever worked with.
- [08:10]
Elise Lunan
I know.
- [08:11]
Jen Hatmaker
I love them. I'm having the best publishing experience I've ever had, and that's saying a lot. I've written a lot of books, and I have been a star in some of those spaces, those imprints. And this team is so, so gifted. I'm obsessed good with that.
- [08:32]
Elise Lunan
I have a vested interest. And this is your first book. Not with a Christian press, right?
- [08:37]
Jen Hatmaker
That's right.
- [08:38]
Elise Lunan
With a secular press.
- [08:41]
Jen Hatmaker
10 out of 10 stars.
- [08:42]
Elise Lunan
10 out of 10.
- [08:43]
Jen Hatmaker
Yeah.
- [08:44]
Elise Lunan
Yeah. So you came into my awareness like you did for so many people on the eve of your whole world exploding. I think you were on the edge of my conscious awareness, but I never really paid much attention to sort of this world of evangelical Christian writers who. You were one of the. You were like the lead cheerleader, right? You were the captain.
- [09:11]
Jen Hatmaker
I was the captain. So funny. I can't wait to use that somewhere else and.
- [09:19]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, and then when your world was exploding, it definitely crossed my transom on Instagram and I started reading your posts and I of course fell in love with you because you made me laugh from the get go. And you're so gifted at those small human truths. And yet I also am like, why are we so attracted to drama and despair? Isn't it wild? Isn't it suck that these things need to happen for us to cross a chasm of audience?
- [09:56]
Jen Hatmaker
I don't know, you know, I, who is all that interested or fascinated with or can relate to the head cheerleader, you know? Yeah, that's not that interesting of a story. And it's too shiny and it is too much of a caricature and I don't know, I think you're being hard on yourself and whoever else is drawn to drama. I don't know that we're drawn to drama because we're voyeuristic or we take delight in the pain of others. For me, when I am drawn to a painful story, it is because people's, their wounds somehow signal safety to me that that is a place that is way less interested in optics or a story they're telling the world. You know, that is very marketable. That to me feels like something lower to the ground where we all actually live. And so I think that's it. I think that we're drawn to the humanity of it, not necessarily the drama of it. At least that's what I hope on my better days.
- [11:25]
Elise Lunan
God, Jen, One of the. I highlighted paragraphs from. I don't remember which essay or which part of the book this is, but where you write the Whole Truth is a real mind fuck for most of us because it doesn't have any hidden corners. And I personally love hidden corners. They are perfect places to tuck hard things away from scrutiny, away from requiring any attention at all. Hidden corners offered me a mechanism to lie to my own self because I didn't want the whole truth. I didn't want it. I wanted what I wanted what I'd hoped, what I'd crafted. I wanted the story of our marriage, not our actual marriage. And I think what you just said is so true. Right? Because when we see someone who has bottomed out or the betrayal, and I use that word not just for actual betrayals, but when life betrays you, right? When someone dies or you lose something you shouldn't have lost, it feels like you lose your trust. Right. But when I think that's it. When you see someone who is experiencing their worst, it is. There is safety. Because you're like, I see the bottom right. The hidden corners are exposed. The dark closet doors are open. Yeah, I think that's it.
- [12:47]
Jen Hatmaker
And we've lived long enough to know that the hidden corners exist, man. So the shinier a story looks, the more I'm like, come on, dude. You know, we're all walking around on the same globe, and life is hard and painful and even really great or healthy relationships wobble and we fuck up. And I think I'm just. The longer I go here at the midpoint of life, I'm very optimistic about my lifespan. I really am. Just. I crave human stories that absolutely include some of the highlights. We get those, too. You know, it's not just a dungeon around here. We get those, too. But, boy, I crave. I crave the truth tellers who are like, also, marriage is real hard and all the things. And those are hard to find because, you know, this world is so weird. Social media has made our collective consciousness so bizarre. It's rewritten in all the rules and all the scripts. And so sometimes that, you know, honesty is super punished. And so it's a deterrent. You know, it's a deterrent knowing I can say this thing, but I'm gonna have to deal with this level of backlash. That isn't normal. It's not normal. That's not how millennia of humans have lived on this earth with this many people looking in at our lives. But I get the impulse to say, I'm going to tuck this back into a corner.
- [14:35]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, well, you've lived this too, right? I didn't realize that you had been large scale. Was it even a canceling? I mean, it came from sort of the right, Right. Was it a can? I don't remember exactly how you just. Yeah, a canceling.
- [14:48]
Jen Hatmaker
Massive canceling. We didn't have that word back then in the zeitgeist. But, yeah, that was in 2016. A real great year for America. Everything was going great that year. It was sort of the twin tributaries of the election that year in which. And that was still when I was pretty deeply embedded in evangelical subculture. But I could not stay silent about candidate Trump. I just couldn't. I couldn't believe anybody else could. You know, I was stunned that we felt so differently about this person in this community where we supposedly share these Values of whatever they all are. I'm like, wait, this can't. Yeah, like Jesus, for example. And so I'm like, what? I feel like I was taking crazy pills the whole year. Like, what? No, we surely are in alignment here, right? This guy's a maniac. This is the opposite of our deal. So I was really surprised to find myself at such odds. I know. I'm so. I'm so precious. People who live in the real world are like, jen, why were you surprised? I'm like, I know. I hate this about me. And then not even two weeks before the election was when I said in an interview to Jonathan Merritt over at rns, you know, that I was. I had changed my mind, if you will, on the theology around the LGBTQIA community and that I was, you know, fully affirming and completely honoring their dignity and inclusion at all levels of society and church and personhood. And that did not go well. That was it. That was the cancellation. That was overnight cancellation, so.
- [16:33]
Elise Lunan
And your books were pulled.
- [16:35]
Jen Hatmaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put out a print. Not just pulled and everything. It just evaporated, went up in smoke overnight. And so, yeah, that was a time where I went, okay. And I knew that was gonna happen, by the way. That wasn't a surprise. I planned for that as much as a person can plan for that level of fury. But, you know, after that, I was at that crossroads where I was either gonna be able to hang on to my career as I knew it, or my integrity, but not both. And so I couldn't go another day. I just could not go another day. Out of alignment, internally, I couldn't. So I picked my integrity and then just decided, let's just see what's left when all this settles. And if there's anything to rebuild, I will. And if not, I'm good at other things. I always wanted to be a librarian. I really did. That was my second plan. I'll pick something else.
- [17:35]
Elise Lunan
And so. And then tell me, so then it all explodes or implodes. Your books are taken out of print. When did you fully leave the church that you grew up in? Was that around that same time?
- [17:54]
Jen Hatmaker
Well, that was a bit more of a slow slide at the time. You know, I was married at the time, and my husband and I had started a church in Austin, and so we were at the helm of a little baby, like, social justice church in Austin. So I had already had quite a departure from the church that raised me, which for me was. I grew up Southern Baptist, and that had started earlier for me, a decade earlier, at least just this migration over to a different zip code of faith that I found a lot of life in for that season of my life and joy and purpose and meaning. And so I wasn't still personally rooted in that environment. I was kind of over here in side church in which we also walked our little flock through the process of being an affirming church that, you know, we wrote that into our values and into our creeds and. And so that was actually a really soft spiritual landing for quite a few years.
- [19:11]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, it's beautiful.
- [19:17]
Better Help Ad Voice
This is an ad From Better Help. October 10th is World Mental Health Day. And this year we're saying, thank you, therapists. Behind every breakthrough, supportive moment and small win is a therapist who showed up and made a difference. BetterHelp therapists have supported over 5 million people globally on their mental health journeys through creating safe spaces to open up, asking thoughtful questions, and being there for those little moments that can result in real change. With more than 12 years experience and the world's largest online network of qualified therapists, BetterHelp makes it easy to match with the right therapist online, the one who can make a real difference. See for yourself. Visit betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.
- [20:00]
Steve Burns
Hey, it's me, Steve Burns. And I'm so glad you're here because you and I go way back, right?
- [20:06]
Jen Hatmaker
Yeah.
- [20:06]
Steve Burns
And look at us now, like, we're all grown up. We've got this new podcast where we talk about all this grown up stuff and there's special guests like Jamie Lee Curtis and Bill Nye, but for the most part, it's about you. I mean, it's always been about you. From Lemonada Media Alive with Steve Burns is coming September 17th. Wherever you get your podcasts or you can watch every episode on YouTube.
- [20:33]
Elise Lunan
At the end, you write, I currently find myself unable to attend church and unable to reject it. And I worry about this unresolved leadership. And then I remember, dear reader, that I am not your leader. I am your sister. And this is not a handbook. You are a grownup and make your own choices. And I love that. And I love just being with you on the page as you're wrestling with all of this, because so much of your whole story is about how you assumed this patriarchal structure. Because I think you write about how much you love rules and discipline and.
- [21:11]
Jen Hatmaker
Order and structure, and I'm so good at rules. Reassuring.
- [21:16]
Elise Lunan
Yeah. And then you on every level recognized, oh, outsourcing this to patriarch, whether it's my husband or the church is not working And I think we're all feeling that, right? What does leadership look like and what does. Because we also need community, we need churches. I feel like the lack of community in our culture now, which used to be held mostly by religious structures, is kind of killing us, right?
- [21:47]
Jen Hatmaker
Oh God. I have this conversation with my 25 year old daughter all the time because it's a conundrum, you know, in so many ways. And I talk about this in awake, but when I just began facing down the religious, I don't want to abuse this word, but just the religious trauma that I walked around with all the time, simply from my childhood and the church that I invested in my 20s and 30s and always on staff. So we saw behind the curtain, which I do not recommend. And I really started examining those structures and the way that those systems are patriarchal in nature and gender limitations. Homophobia, obviously baked into the sauce a really clever container to preserve a degree of white supremacy. It's clever, but they'd manage it. And I realized, God, these institutions.
- [22:57]
Elise Lunan
Are.
- [22:58]
Jen Hatmaker
Working precisely as defined. I didn't hear it wrong, I didn't misinterpret the data. I didn't get it wrong from the pews. They're working like they're intended to. And so this has just proven to this very second. I wish I felt more resolved about this. I lost my marriage July of 2020. So we were right on the front edge of the pandemic and everything was just shredded. And. And so our church, like all churches, went online only, you know, went streaming. And because we had this little weird woke church, we streamed way longer than everybody else, forever. We were on just the Internet. And it was during that year, when I was away from the church but grieving, processing and sorting out the own destruction of my own marriage, that my relationship to organized religion started shifting. And I just couldn't. My brain would break when I think about going back in and sitting in those seats. And at that point we were no longer obviously the lead pastors. We had kind of passed the baton, but still a founder, still preached several times a year, still a leader in the church. And when I thought about it, I just. My brain just fried a circuit and it did not feel like what I would have expected church to feel in my soul, which would have been comforting, safe, important, necessary. And the few times that I went back, it was like death by a thousand cuts.
- [24:42]
Elise Lunan
And.
- [24:45]
Jen Hatmaker
So I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. Right now, right now I'm still not in church in a Traditional sense of it. Which is not to say that I've walked away from faith. I just don't know what my place inside an institution is anymore. It is so fragile and prone to human corruption and error, even in the best of times, with the best of intentions. So that's a long answer to say what I could have just said to your question was. Yeah, I still don't know.
- [25:22]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, no, sorry. But I think it's such a deep wound for so many. I mean, I know it's a deep wound for so many people. I know there's holy hurt. There's also. I think this book is fantastic. Connie Zweig, who wrote Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, which is about essentially what happens in these communities, both Western patriarchal and Eastern. And when leaders aren't doing their own shadow work and are suppressing and repressing what happens in these communities and how devastating it is for the people who are subscribed to these people and venerate them and how those, what invariably, you know, look at the Catholic Church or Bikram or. I mean, there are millions of examples of these abusive leaders who aren't doing their own human work. Right.
- [26:17]
Jen Hatmaker
That's it. I mean, if you want to lay the ax at the root of the tree, that is the first link in that really faulty chain.
- [26:28]
Elise Lunan
Yeah.
- [26:29]
Jen Hatmaker
Is when the leadership continues purposefully to lead an unexamined life.
- [26:35]
Elise Lunan
Yeah.
- [26:35]
Jen Hatmaker
And then, you know, it's not a mystery, it's not confusing to know that in any context you put enough power, authority and money into any given system and it has a really negative trickle up effect. It just does. We don't mean for that to happen. But I'm not picking on the church. Even that can happen really anywhere where all of a sudden you have a person who is held in such high regard and then holds this sense of spiritual or emotional or intellectual superiority and authority over a group of people. But that is a recipe for disaster.
- [27:25]
Elise Lunan
Yeah.
- [27:25]
Jen Hatmaker
And then you add money and forget about it.
- [27:28]
Elise Lunan
Yeah. So no, these are all incredibly corrupting, highly charged energy sources. And I think it takes great skill and care to take care of them and take care of yourself. And you know, I know we both love Father Richard Rohr, but as he says, he prays for his daily humiliation. You know, if you are not keeping yourself tethered to the ground, you're in trouble, you're in danger. And then you are, I think, a danger to other people. And it's also, you know, Carl Jung has this quote which I'll butcher, but essentially it's like more light, more night. The greater the light, the more sort of energy you're pulling in, the greater the shadow. And that your responsibility only increases. It's not ever something that you transcend, you know, but if anything, the work is more intense and harder. But as you're really good at therapy, as I learned in this book, you made me laugh. What did you say? Something about. She was like, what are you afraid of? And essentially you were like, I would need to spend $250 million at $125 an hour to tell you.
- [28:42]
Jen Hatmaker
You know, which enneagram3. And so it felt really important to me to be good at therapy. I really wanted to impress my therapist, you know, and win it. I wanted to win it. So she let me know real early on, that's not how this works.
- [28:59]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, but let's talk about this. You write about how you guess you should have been afraid all along. And then I think what she talks about with you in terms of your fears is so profound that it's not the fear that's the problem. It's the resistance to fear. Can you talk about that? Because I've been thinking about this obsessively in the last two weeks, and particularly with everything happening in the world, all our deepest fears, being touched.
- [29:24]
Jen Hatmaker
God, totally right. That is so universal. And I think maybe my Rocky skidding around the corner into this conversation came because I am not naturally an afraid person. That is not my homeostasis.
- [29:45]
Elise Lunan
I'm an enneagram type 6. So I can really tell you all about fear, in case you were wondering.
- [29:49]
Jen Hatmaker
Yes, you can. Two of my absolute best friends out of the three are sixes. So I deeply understand the psyche.
- [29:57]
Elise Lunan
Anxiety is my baseline, babe.
- [29:58]
Jen Hatmaker
That's right. That's right. And I'm a big, shiny three. So I am like, look at the world of possibility. You know, I just see a hero in everyone. I am absolutely glass half full. That's my personality. And also, I was raised by a dad like that. And so I. Looping back around. God, I can make anything so verbose and long. When I lost my marriage, I realized, oh, my God, I'm terrified of everything. I cannot. I was in a poisonous loop of fear in my brain. The what ifs I would take to the ends of the earth and then start back over again. Oh, my God, there was. It was literally endless. And so, you know, I took that into therapy and just went, I need you to teach me how to live like a scared person. I don't have any training here. I Have no precedents. Can you give me some tools to just how to be scared all the time? She was like, that's one option. You know, we can deal with it. And I'm like, well. And so that's when she told me that my fear wasn't the problem and that, in fact, some of my fears, at least 30% of them, were valid and made sense. And even if they didn't, the other 70%, it's okay that I was feeling that way because this was fucked up. So it's okay that you're in a bit of a fear spiral right now. But she said, it's not the fear. It's your resistance to it. And it took me quite a while to figure that out. What do you mean? I felt like that was the right thing to do when the fear came up, to talk myself out of it or to be like, what's real? Is this even likely? You've got this. You know, I just was gonna positive strong arm myself right up to the surface of the water again. And so I did resist it. Every time it spiked, which was constant. So she was the one who said, stop resisting. What if you just went ahead and let it flow through, come and go? And so, I mean to tell you, I needed instruction to figure out what that meant. So she's the one who gave me my brain was. I get trapped up here in my head. This is where I live the moment. I have struggled to access my body as a source of wisdom or processing or any of it. So she had to teach me how to drop down into my body to let the fear come through. And she's like, just get calm. Get to a literal place that helps you feel calm. If you want to go sit in the grass, if you want to sit on the porch, whatever, get yourself calm. And she taught me the breathing exercises. I know it seems so dumb breathing, but super helpful. So I would do these breathing exercises, and then I just would not resist the thought I was having. I just let my brain think it. Well, I'm just gonna think this thought. I'm gonna think this terrifying thought. I'm gonna breathe. I'm gonna relax. She was like, first of all, check your forehead, your shoulders, and your hands. And sure enough, every time I'm like this so tight, I'm like up in the rafters. So I'd have to actively get my forehead to relax and let my should. So even relaxing my body physically and then doing that breathing, and then I would just let the thought be. Whatever it was, I wasn't going to give it a lot of attention or energy or gas or breaks. I was just going to let it. It's just the craziest thing. It just kind of rolls on through. It rolls on through and you don't die.
- [33:37]
Elise Lunan
You don't die.
- [33:43]
James Corden
Hello, I'm James Corden, and on my new show, this Life of Mine, I sit down each week with some fascinating people on planet Earth. From Dr. Dre to Julianne Moore to David Beckham to Cynthia Erivo to Martin Scorsese to Jeremy Renner to Denzel Washington to Kim Kardashian. We talk about the people, places, possessions, music and memories that made them who they are. These are intimate conversations full of stories that you've never heard before. This Life of Mine premieres October 21st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:21]
Elise Lunan
The way that I learned the Enneagram from my friend Courtney Smith, too, is that essentially that fear is the baseline reality for all of us. And Sixes, because that's our vice, we are hyper in touch with it and we use our own hyper vigilance and context building and map creating to manage our anxiety. But for the rest of the Enneagram types, the core strategy of an Enneagram 3 in that achievement, status, external approval, seeking perfection. All the three is the leader and the CEO. And I mean, you know, you exemplify it, the strategy of an 8 who is looking for conflict and to protect and to sort of engage and come alive. And it's all those all can be boiled down to core strategies for avoiding fear.
- [35:18]
Jen Hatmaker
Totally.
- [35:18]
Elise Lunan
And but I think that like what we are left with as a culture is an inability or an unwillingness to contend with fear and just recognize this is totally this is baseline, this is the most animated, this is what actually keeps me alive. This is what ensures I eat and I protect my family and I protect myself. And yet at the same time, it is so deeply uncomfortable. It's supposed to be uncomfortable because it's supposed to move us, right?
- [35:50]
Jen Hatmaker
That's right. There's an old ancient reason for fear that is protective and it's a motivator. It needs us to respond in some way. But you know, in the absence of, for most of us, of any real danger, I mean, these days we're not actually in danger in the way that our ancestors would have been, in which fear was the way to stay alive. We've just now applied it to everything, just everything in the whole world makes us scared now.
- [36:24]
Elise Lunan
Well, it's concept creep, this idea that in the absence of a massive owl coming down and picking up your kid, there's still the presence of threat. And you're gonna extend, expand your aperture to take in whatever may be a threat. It's an actual psychological concept. And I would say that saying, you know, there's nothing to fear is a very cognitive gen thing where your body is having a different experience. Right? And so. And that's the instinct to be like, I'm gonna manage this, babe, you're good. Forget your feelings.
- [36:57]
Jen Hatmaker
Which is the opposite extreme of a terrible response and also not true. We may not be in threat of the owl, but there are things to fear that are. It's a fair thing to be afraid of. And it doesn't indicate fragility or weakness to feel that way. And so that's what I have to work my way through. This is an okay feeling that you're having. You can have it. You were allowed to be afraid of this for today. So.
- [37:28]
Elise Lunan
Yeah, well. And it just gives so much color to your dark night of the soul too. When all of the structures that you relied on to organize your world and help you continue to manage and be a three crumbled. Right. It just all fell apart. All of your strategies just pulled away from you. Security blanket gone.
- [37:53]
Jen Hatmaker
It was such. It's weird to think of even now, like when I go back in my brain to 2020 and even 2021, I'm just stunned by it all. That just kind of all at once marriage, which I had really banked on, and church, communal health and all the community structures, all of those were gone. We were in our homes like hostages with our children. And honestly, even school, the institution of school, we lost that too. And so I was having to figure out how to fill that in. And I didn't have. My ex husband was completely out of the picture. So we weren't doing this together. I had two kids in high school still, and it was just me. And yeah, what a. What a time to lose your marriage. And I wasn't the only one. That happened a lot, you know, now we can see the women who tell.
- [38:55]
Elise Lunan
Me, and nobody wants to be told that their life is a cliche. Right? And so many of us have the same story. It's a playbook, right? There are so many women who are going to read your book and say, oh my God, I had the exact same experience, which I think is actually so beautiful. I think that there's a lot of reassurance in our collective stories.
- [39:20]
Jen Hatmaker
I agree. When I first met the crew at Avid Reader that my publisher, I told them straight up My story is not special. And I think that's what makes it important. This is not unusual. It's not an outlier there. It's not. You know, sometimes memoirs include such a fantastical story. It's almost like reading fiction, you know, and you just go, well, that was fascinating to read. Can't relate, but wow, wow for her, you know, or whatever. And this is the opposite of that. It feels frankly so ubiquitous in so many ways. And I think that's it's comforting for me because, you know, this is quite a bit of my life to put out on Front street. And knowing kind of deep in my bones, not special, not an outlier, not a kind of a rogue shoot of the normal story is comforting. Just knowing there's a lot of women who are going to come to this from a variety of points and go, oh yeah, maybe not this, but this for sure, you know, same here. Not quite so same here, but same here.
- [40:33]
Elise Lunan
Have you ever encountered when Richard Rohr writes and talks about the cosmic egg and how the me story is nestled in the we story and then there's the story and we've lost. You love it. I'm going to send it to you. But to your point, I think a lot of memoirs get very in the me realm and sometimes they're just so singular, as you said, like educated, right? Or these incredible memoirs where you're like.
- [41:00]
Jen Hatmaker
Holy bananas, great example.
- [41:02]
Elise Lunan
And then there's the ones that I think are also incredibly powerful are those that speak for a whole bunch of people and then are connected to this larger pattern of humanity. So I think you have a cosmic egg. And I write about this all the time just because I think people are always looking for the me. It's like, no, no, no. Find how it connects to the we. That's the power. That's the drive shaft, I think for most stories. And to get to that point, as I was reading this book, one of my closest friends was having almost an identical experience. I think I emailed you about this. You know, I'm an over functioner, so I'm like, practically, what's going to happen? Have you talked to your accountant? What's going to happen? And how can we create some safety and understand the situation here? And she was like, I don't even have my accountant's number. And this is another similar to you, brilliant, you know, well educated woman who's like, I cannot. I am so ashamed of how disconnected I have allowed myself to become God from these things that keep me alive. Can you talk a little bit about that part of your book.
- [42:15]
Jen Hatmaker
Bless her. I just want to wrap her in a blanket and pull her onto my lap and pet her hair and give her time. T, I understand so much, you know, that so many of us hooked right into the husband is the leader story. For whatever reason. We don't all come at that from the same angle, but, man, I phoned that part of my life. Absolutely. And to be fair, in any good marriage, there is a division of labor. That's okay. Every single thing is not always. 50, 50. I'm not suggesting that it doesn't make sense that sometimes one person has the lead foot in the realm of finances or whatever, but, I mean, I didn't know how much money I made in a year. I couldn't have even gotten close to it. I didn't have any sense of our tax history. I had no idea what our bank account passwords were. I'd never even looked at it, so. And in my case, that turned out to be catastrophic. That set us up in my marriage for a very unaccountable disaster. And it didn't take me too long of sorting that out to go, holy shit, had I just taken my little eyes and it was in plain sight, right? So I like your friend. I had to learn this from negative 10 degrees. I wasn't even at ground zero. I'm like, how many bank accounts do we have? What are our credit cards? What's my salary? So humiliating. It was so humiliating. But for anybody who's listening, going, even if you're happily married and you're thinking, I don't have the first clue about our money. Not involved. I don't touch that. I have outsourced that to the spouse. That is a really unhealthy way to live. So everyone needs to know this, and you can. It's possible. I went through a financial boot camp, essentially between my cpa, who I figured out, my bookkeeper, and my financial planner and my banker. I was in financial homeschool, and they taught me everything. And you can learn it. We can learn anything. And it's so funny, because now, five years down the road, God, I am so good with money. I am so responsible. I am so careful. I am thoughtful. And I've just been telling myself a story that a lot of that was beyond me. Oh, you know, and I did a little cute girl thing about, oh, I don't know, taxes. Who can know about it? I guess the husband. And it's actually not cute at all. Oh, boy, what a mess was that? But that did turn into Be for me. One of the categories that has since given me the most amount of pride because I knew so little about it and now I'm so good at it that I'm like, okay, we can learn anything. We can recover from anything. And we're pretty trustworthy.
- [45:29]
Elise Lunan
Yeah. In my marriage, I'm the one who knows everything. And my husband, he's just willfully not. He will not engage. So I would love for him to engage, but he just cannot engage. So that's.
- [45:43]
Jen Hatmaker
Yes. So something happens to you, he'll be on the floor of the banker's office going, help me know something. Yes.
- [45:50]
Elise Lunan
But fortunately, I'm very responsible, very phobic and full of anxiety. Jen. And very organized. So he'll be fine.
- [46:00]
Jen Hatmaker
Here's his folder. All the instructions are in here for you. I have laminated. Yeah, I have that.
- [46:09]
Elise Lunan
I would love to be married to me. Jen. This was so fun. Let's do this again. We're going to create. You can be the chief librarian. We're going to create a reading retreat together. It's BYOB or go see Jen and she will check out and assign the appropriate book for you. And yeah, we'll have a great time. I'm so here for this.
- [46:31]
Jen Hatmaker
Want to come to our retreat?
- [46:38]
Elise Lunan
I have been blabbing about Awake by Jen to anyone who will listen. I just devoured it and it made me laugh as much as it moved me. And I don't know, I'm so grateful for people who are gifted in her way, who can create contacts and make these bigger containers that are so incredibly relatable even as they are singular. And I think for anyone, you don't have to have gone through the same experience to understand or watch her take this journey back to herself. But that's really what it is. And it's really, you know, in the way that we opened our conversation. I think for anyone who wants to understand how to walk that razor thin line between honoring yourself and the truth of your own experience and reaching for that very human desire to be understood and seen and not being the judge and jury of the people who you perceive have wronged you and not demanding justice and retribution in that moment is very difficult. And I think that many of us end up betraying ourselves and our own integrity when we try to litigate things that happen to us publicly. It feels so good and it's so compelling. And yet what do you get if you win? That's really, I think, one of those core questions. It also reminds me of the concept of the maze from Phil Stutz from True and False Magic, which is the book that I co wrote with him where we can just get stuck in the maze and you can spend your whole life waiting to get paid, to get even, to be vindicated, to get an apology. And I mean, maybe you'll get it. It won't be satisfying because in that process, you'll have paid ever more dearly for it by paying for it with your energy and your time and your life. And so I think about that as a really helpful metaphor of how do I get myself out of the maze as quickly as possible. It is completely natural and human to stay there for a time. And then you gotta move. All right, friends, thank you as always for listening. Go Get Awake By Jen Hatmaker if you got something out of today's episode, I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. Please rate and review the episode, follow pulling the thread on your preferred podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend who would also enjoy it. That's how we grow this thing. It's so helpful. Thank you. If you want more in this world, please sign up for my newsletter@eliseloon.substack.com or consider picking up copies of my book on our best behavior and the new workbook Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness. Thanks again, friends.
- [50:15]
Jen Hatmaker
Every caregiving journey is unique. But the isolation, guilt, and exhaustion we all feel, that's universal.
- [50:22]
Elise Lunan
It's reality. It's life. You know, I wish it could all be happy and joyous, but sometimes it's full of rage. And that is what it is.
- [50:31]
Jen Hatmaker
That's why this show exists, to be a safe place for caregivers to land. Listen to Squeezed Wherever you get your podcasts.