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For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Advertise on podcast: For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Rating
★★★★★
4.6
from
6386 reviews
This podcast has
635 episodes
Language
English
Publisher
Jen Hatmaker
Explicit
No
Date created
2017/07/12
Latest episode
2026/10/23
Average duration
55 min.
Release period
4 days

Description

New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker and her longtime friend, Amy Hardin, have arrived in the middle years — and they couldn’t be happier about it.  Each has navigated the ins and outs of life — from careers, to parenting, marriage (and, for Jen, divorce), spiritual evolution, and the joys of being hardcore Gen Xers. With each weekly episode, Jen and Amy serve as our “everywoman” guides to all the seasons — past, present, and future — as they walk excitedly and tenaciously into the second half of life. While Jen and Amy have plenty of wisdom to share — and some pretty hilarious stories, too — they don’t claim to know it all. That's why they invite some of the most interesting and accomplished guests to the podcast, bringing insight, expertise, and understanding to the most relevant topics of our time. From Jen and Amy’s compelling conversations with guests to their witty banter (and the occasional eye-rolls at the absurdities of life), they’re here 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.

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Kim Hill and Paulette Wooten: We Fell in Love and Lost Our Whole World
2026/10/23
Kim Hill had the kind of run most artists only dream of: number one songs on Christian radio, arena stages, and the biggest women’s conferences in the country. Paulette Wooten was a songwriter, musician, and ordained music minister helping build the modern worship movement from the inside. Then they met at a worship school, played a 45-minute set together as near strangers, and a year and a half of friendship on the road quietly turned into love. In a world where that was not allowed, they chose each other anyway. As part of our Courage to Change: Do It Scared series, Jen sits down with Kim and Paulette, now the Americana duo Wooten Hill, to talk about the long, slow road out of the world that built them. They share the disastrous wedding venue chapter (Billy and the squirrels!), what changed when they stopped hiding from themselves, why they chose not to blow up their lives, and how they’ve kept love at the center even when it wasn’t returned. Plus, the summer they waited on a grandbaby in Nashville and ended up making the truest record of their lives. Their first full-length album, How Did We Get Here, is out now. Thought-provoking Quotes: “If I am gay, I’m gonna be gay and have a real relationship. I’m not gonna have some no man’s land.” - Kim Hill“I feel like someone plugged me into an amp. I feel like I sing better.” - Kim Hill“This is the truest art I have ever put out.” - Paulette Wooten“You’re not too late, you’re not broken. You are enough.” - Kim Hill“I find that kind of faith the most faithful kind of faith.” - Jen Hatmaker“Your story has made you softer, not harder.” - Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: How Did We Get Here by Wooten Hill (streaming, CD, and vinyl) - https://wootenhill.comThe Road to Wooten Hill podcast (launching October 30) - https://wootenhill.comWooten Hill on Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wooten-hill/1539129507The Treehouse + Co - https://www.thetreehouseandco.com“How He Loves” by John Mark McMillan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_He_LovesLeave us a voicemail - http://jenhatmaker.com/PodcastGuest’s Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wootenhillmusic/ Website - https://wootenhill.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wootenhillband/ Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wooten-hill/1539129507 Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker// ...
Kim and Penn Holderness on Starting Over, Aging Out Loud, and Getting Ahead of Alzheimer's
2026/10/21
Description: Twelve years ago, Kim and Penn Holderness made a Christmas card video in their pajamas, it broke the internet, and they both walked away from careers in TV news to make videos full time. With two little kids, two months of savings, and no health insurance. In 2013, when that was not even a job. They have been reinventing ever since, and they are right in the middle of it again. We recorded this conversation in a very tender week. They had just moved their oldest back to college, and two days earlier, Penn's mother passed away after nine years in skilled nursing with Alzheimer's. They showed up anyway, and I am so grateful they did. We talk about the leap of 2013 and the creators who told them every new baby was worth a million followers, what they owe their kids for putting them on the internet before any of us knew better, why every couple should have a podcast even if you never post it, and why they took their family name off their show to start Laugh Lines, all about aging better together. Then Penn tells me about the Alzheimer's prevention trial he joined, what he learned about his own genes, the changes he is making now, and how his mom's brain went to a research study at Duke within an hour of her death so it could help someone else. I was not prepared, and I cried. It is one of the most hopeful things I have ever heard about this disease. This is part of our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared. Still to come this month: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. Thought-provoking Quotes: There is no such thing as a podcast emergency.Don't get good at something you don't really want to do.There's a moment where you can't not do that thing.Every couple needs a podcast, even if you don't post it.When you can hear how you talk to your partner, it is so eye opening.We know what a gift it is to age. I don't want to be 20. I don't want to be 40. I'm really thrilled with the age I am.You start saying goodbye to someone the minute they go into skilled nursing.We knew, okay, we're helping. Her brain's going to help.We all do what we do. No one's right or wrong.Everybody behind us will do a better version of it. But it's kind of fun being on the front edge with y'all.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness - https://shows.acast.com/holdermess-the-holderness-family-podcastRetainYourBrain, Dr. Richard Isaacson's free brain health assessment platform - https://retainyourbrain.comAlzLabs, lower-cost at-home brain health blood testing from Dr. Richard Isaacson - https://alzlabs.orgADHD Is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD by Penn and Kim Holderness - [LINK TBD]Everybody Fights: So Why Not Get Better at It? by Penn and Kim Holderness - [LINK TBD]Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565a target="_blank" rel="noopener noref ...
Encore: Jenna Kutcher on Taking Your Dreams Off the Shelf and Embracing the “What Ifs”
2026/10/16
Description: Jenna Kutcher was a few years into a corporate career at Target when her boss slid a five-year plan across the desk. A promotion, more money, more responsibility, all mapped out by somebody else, and every step of it was something she did not want. She did not know yet what she wanted instead, but she knew exactly what she no longer wanted. So she bought a camera off Craigslist for $300. We’re in the middle of our Courage to Change: Do It Scared series, and I’m bringing back this conversation from January 2023, when it opened our For the Love of What If series. Jenna walks us through how that camera became a photography business, then the Goal Digger podcast, then the New York Times bestseller How Are You, Really?, and why she built the next thing quietly on the side while the paycheck was still coming in. We talk about what happens when more money doesn’t buy the life you’re longing for, why time became her real currency, and the question she asked me that I could not shake: not how does it look, but how does it feel. Stay for the end, because something happened after this tape. On the last day of 2025, after 968 episodes, Jenna paused Goal Digger while it was still going strong. She meant every word she said here. Thought-provoking Quotes: Her question is yours now. Not how does it look. How does it feel. (Jen Hatmaker)That is what courage to change actually looks like most of the time. Not a blaze of glory. Not a resignation letter thrown in the air. (Jen Hatmaker)A woman asking an honest question, hearing an answer she did not love, and then doing something about it anyway. (Jen Hatmaker)You are not in prison. You made that rule up, and you are allowed to change it. (Jen Hatmaker)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: How Are You, Really? by Jenna Kutcher - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063221949A New Chapter for Goal Digger - https://jennakutcherblog.com/a-new-chapter-for-goal-digger: Jenna on why she paused the podcastLeave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell us about the safe thing you walked away from, or the one you’re thinking about leaving.Guest’s Links: Website - https://jennakutcher.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/jennakutcher Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenna.kutcher Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - a target="_blank" rel=" ...
Barbara Kingsolver on Partita, First Love, and Who Gets to Make Art
2026/10/14
Description: Barbara Kingsolver got the offer on her first novel the same day her first daughter was born. She came home from the hospital to a blinking answering machine, and the book came out the week that same baby learned to walk. Almost forty years later, she has a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Foundation’s medal for a lifetime of work, and a recovery house for women in Lee County, Virginia, built with her Demon Copperhead royalties. She has been one of my literary heroes and true life mentors for decades, and I still cannot believe I got to talk with her. We talk about what publishing looked like in 1988 versus now, why a slow-building career was a gift to a young mom, and the stubborn hand condition we both live with that ended her public book signings. She walks us through October on her farm in southern Appalachia, where the tomatoes are canned, the peppers are roasted, and she is the one who gets the call when a lamb gets stuck. And she makes the case that rural people are close to half of this country but almost none of what we see on screen, which is why she writes books that work as mirrors for her neighbors and windows for everybody else. Then we get into Partita, her new novel. Livia was a piano prodigy from east Tennessee who became a small-town piano teacher instead. In her fifties, the first love who derailed her calls and asks to see her, and she has seven days to decide. Barbara built the whole book like a Bach partita, with movements named for old dances and a listening list in the front. She tells us how a small-town girl fell for classical music on her living room floor, why nobody in America wants to talk about class, why revision is where art lives, and about the practice room scene her pianist friend had been waiting her whole life to read. Thought-provoking Quotes: I became a novelist and a mom the same day. (Barbara Kingsolver)I need my hands to write books. If you let me keep them, I will write you more books. (Barbara Kingsolver)Rural people are close to half of the population of this country, but we are just about zero percent of what you see on television, in the movies, or in the news. (Barbara Kingsolver)I want to write these books that are both mirrors for the people who need to see themselves and windows for the people who don’t know. (Barbara Kingsolver)When you’re in the flow state making something beautiful, that is love too. It’s another kind of love. (Barbara Kingsolver)I love revision. I feel like revision is where art really lives. (Barbara Kingsolver)When I’ve finished a book to my absolute satisfaction and send it out into the world, the work of it is only half done. (Barbara Kingsolver)When I closed Demon Copperhead, I remember thinking, I have just read a masterpiece. (Jen Hatmaker)Some people ask me, how can you be optimistic in these times? And I say, look who I’m dealing with. (Barbara Kingsolver)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Partita by Barbara Kingsolver - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063577541: Barbara asks you to buy it from your local independent bookstore. The listening list is in the front of the book.Labor: One Woman’s Work by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari - https://bookshop.org/book/9781668015407Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Pennington Gap, Virginia, founded with Demon Copperhead royaltiesBarbara’s earlier books we talk about: Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Veg ...
Stop Guessing About Perimenopause with Dr. Tiffany Lester
2026/10/09
Description: This episode is sponsored by Function. October is Menopause Awareness Month, and every time we talk about midlife bodies on this show, what you write back to me isn’t really about hot flashes. It’s about being dismissed. Walking into an appointment, saying something feels different, and being told it’s normal. Dr. Tiffany Lester, a board certified integrative medicine physician and the Women’s Health Medical Director at Function, has built her career on refusing that answer. We get into the wellness trend she went all in on and walked away from (and why so much of the research behind it was built around men), the moment her own lab results told her perimenopause had arrived, and what a standard annual physical tends to miss. She explains why markers like ApoB and fasting insulin matter so much in our forties and fifties, whether knowing this much about your body makes you healthier or just more anxious, and where the line sits between owning your health data and needing a doctor across the table. I share what happened when I brought my own results from Function to a new doctor, and we talk about who gets left out of conversations like this one and why health equity is so personal to her. Thought-provoking Quotes: As Dr. Stacy Sims likes to say, we’re not little men. We are separate. And that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)I knew intellectually that this transition was coming. But I still wasn’t ready for it somehow. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)We have in some ways been conditioned to accept the bare minimum. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)It’s much harder to dismiss a woman when she’s there with black and white data. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)We do not have to just grin and bear it. (Jen Hatmaker)A lot of people don’t even know what they don’t know. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)It starts with knowing your numbers and not guessing, because you can’t manage what you don’t measure. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Function - https://functionhealth.com/FortheLove: Join and use code FORTHELOVE25 for a $25 creditThe work of Dr. Stacy Sims on women’s physiologyGuest’s Links: Website - https://drtiffanylester.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/drtiffanylester Substack - https://drtiffanylester.substack.com
You Will Not Feel Ready: Jen Hatmaker Solo episode
2026/10/07
People tell me I’m brave all the time. About the divorce, about the book, about rebuilding my life while everybody watched. And every single time, I feel a low-grade panic, because I know what it actually looked like from the inside: sitting in my parked car for 45 minutes because I could not make myself walk in, typing one sentence and deleting it 15 times, sobbing in the parking lot outside my brand new financial planner’s office. I was not brave. I was scared, and I moved forward anyway. We’re kicking off our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared, and today it’s just me and you. I’m handing you a much smaller word than “ready.” Ready is a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision, and you can make it on a Tuesday while you unload the dishwasher. We’ll sort fear into two piles: the warning you should heed and the fee you simply have to pay. And I’m going deeper on two stories: the months I waited too long to face what was happening in my marriage, and the years I coddled my fear before publicly changing my theology on LGBTQ inclusion in 2016. That was the best fee I ever paid. Coming up this month: Barbara Kingsolver, Kim and Penn Holderness, and Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. You’re not going to feel ready. But you can get willing, and willing is available to you in the next ten minutes. Thought-provoking Quotes: In my life, ready never came. Not one time in my entire life did readiness already exist before the hard thing.Ready is something like a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision. Willing is a choice.Fear is not measuring whether or not you should. It is measuring whether or not this thing matters.There is fear that is a warning that should be heeded. And then there is fear that is just a fee. It’s just a cost that you’re going to have to pay.The first one has a real object, but the second one has an audience.The fear was a fee. It was not a warning. And I did have to pay it. It’s the best fee I ever paid.I may not be ready, but I am willing.You’ve done harder things than this. And you did those things scared too.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565Join the AWAKE Collective on Letters from the Middle - https://jenhatmaker.substack.comOctober AWAKE Collective Reflection Guide, with this month’s writing prompt: “The Thing I Would Do If I Were Not Scared”Leave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell me the change you’re scared of, or the one you already did scared.Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakera target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http ...
Liz Moore: Inside The God of the Woods, From Novel to Netflix
2026/10/02
This month’s Jen Hatmaker Book Club pick is The God of the Woods, and Liz Moore joins Jen straight off the set of the Netflix series she is co-showrunning in the Adirondacks. Liz talks about the family cabin with no TV and no internet where she read every old book in the house, her early years singing in New York clubs while working weekends at a guitar store, and the practical family that taught her to keep a day job. She explains the difference between a TV writer and a showrunner, why she loves casting local square dancers and first-time actors, and how the cast is deepening the characters she wrote. Plus how she starts a four-year novel knowing only the people, the place, and the first problem, her worries about what AI will do to developing brains, the title her publisher vetoed, the hand-drawn map at the front of the book, and what she is reading right now. Thought-provoking Quotes: You have to know people, you have to know place, and you have to know problem.You just sort of whittle down what feels right emotionally until you get to a place that feels right emotionally, and then that’s the end of the book.You have to experience frustration in learning and then get past it in order for the brain to grow.I want the title to have multiple meanings, and for those multiple meanings to become apparent as the reader moves on.I have too many jobs that I love, which is a huge blessing in life.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The God of the Woods by Liz MooreLong Bright River by Liz Moore (and the Peacock series)The Words of Every Song by Liz MooreRaven Black by Ann CleevesLondon Falling by Patrick Radden KeefeGet Down by Asali SolomonSing Sing (film)Louis L’Amour westernsTemple University MFA in Creative WritingGuest’s Links: Website - https://www.lizmoore.net/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lizmoorebooks/ Twitter - https://x.com/LizMooreBooks Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/lizmoorewriter/ Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.&nbs ...
This Is What Happens When Women Read with Julianna Glasse
2026/09/30
Description: Julianna Glasse was a Christian pop singer playing megachurches and arenas, married to a Major League Baseball player, and in January 2017 she sang at Donald Trump's National Prayer Breakfast weekend after voting the way her husband voted. Two years later she walked away from her faith, her marriage, and nearly everything she had built. Jen and Julianna trace the unraveling: the question she asked while holding her newborn daughter, the friend who handed her Plato's allegory of the cave, the "Christian drinkers" who changed clothes in the car after her concerts, and the day her then husband threw her books on the floor and said the sentence that became her title. They talk about love versus fear as a compass, why storytelling reaches people that shouting never will, and what Julianna would say to evangelical women quietly questioning how they vote. Now an Oxford alum, Julianna leads the This Is What Happens When Women Read foundation, which partners with Oxford's Saïd Business School to fund MBAs for women leaving high-control religions and cultures and has reached more than four million people in nearly 67 countries. Her memoir, This Is What Happens When Women Read, releases October 13. Thought-provoking Quotes: “You cannot know that which you do not know, but once you do know, it becomes your responsibility.” – Julianna Glasse“Does it feel like love or does it feel like fear?” – Julianna Glasse“This is actually what happens when women read. We notice the systems of oppression that we are in.” – Julianna Glasse“Bare your teeth at the institution, at the dogma, at the policy. Do not bare your teeth to the human.” – Julianna Glasse“It's just the teeniest taste of hope and freedom, and that is the most powerful taste you will ever have.” – Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: This Is What Happens When Women Read by Julianna Glasse (pre-order)Oxford Saïd Business SchoolMaria Popova, The MarginalianPlato's Allegory of the Cave (The Republic)Rebecca GoldsteinWalt Whitman and Ralph Waldo EmersonThe Measure of a Woman by Gene A. GetzGuest’s Links: Website - https://www.juliannaglasse.com/ Foundation - https://www.thisiswhathappenswhenwomenread.org/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/juliannaglasse/ Foundation Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tiwhwwr/ Foundation Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/This-Is-What-Happens-When-Women-Read/61566356275917/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliannaglasse/ Connect with Jen!
Dr. Galit Atlas on the Wounded Child Running Your Love Life
2026/09/25
Description: Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over in love? Same argument, same shutdown, same spiral, same reach toward somebody who cannot or will not reach back. We are grown. We have read the books. And still, something inside us takes the wheel and steers us right back into the ditch. Dr. Galit Atlas says the one driving is probably not you. It is probably the child you used to be. Galit is a psychoanalyst in New York who has spent more than twenty years in a room with people trying to talk about love. Her last book, Emotional Inheritance, was an international bestseller translated into twenty-nine languages. Her new book, Come Closer, names six wounded children most of us are hauling around inside: the frightened child, the melancholic child, the ashamed child, the invisible child, the guilty child, and the chosen child. In this conversation, Galit walks us through all six, what each one actually looks like in an adult relationship, and why we keep reaching for the familiar even when the familiar is what hurt us. She unpacks the invisible child who learned to hide too well, the guilty child who is always bracing to be blamed, and the chosen child who cannot separate from the parent she was recruited to take care of. She also opens her own story: her father's childhood in Iran, the losses her family did not have the privilege to name, and what happened when he showed up for her at the hardest moment of her life. This is not a book about bad parents, and the rummaging is not for its own sake. It is the only way to stop the repeating. The goal is not an apology. The goal is getting the wheel back. Read it with a pen in hand. And you probably already know exactly who to send this one to. Thought-provoking Quotes: “The frightened child is afraid of closeness because they learned that the people they love and the people they depend on can hurt them.” – Dr. Galit Atlas“The familiar is our home. For better and for worse, even if it's filled with demons, it's our home.” – Dr. Galit Atlas“We repeat in order to repair.” – Dr. Galit Atlas“The invisible child masters the art of disappearing.” – Dr. Galit Atlas“As adults, we have the power to know ourselves, we have the power to evolve and to heal. It's on us.” – Dr. Galit Atlas“The goal is to get the wheel back and be in charge of the adult versions of ourselves.” – Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: Come Closer: Childhood Wounds, Adult Love, and the Secrets of Emotional Intimacy – https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Come-Closer/Galit-Atlas/9781668067147Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma by Dr. Galit AtlasD.W. Winnicott on hiding: it is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.galitatlas.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/galit_atlas Substack - https://wildanalysiswithgalitatlas.substack.com/ Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://instagram.com/j ...
Zibby Owens on Losing the Plot, Starting Over, and Building a Life Around Books Description:
2026/09/23
Description: Calling all book lovers, calling all readers, calling everyone who has faced down a reinvention in the middle of life. Zibby Owens is one of the book world’s most tireless and warm-hearted connectors: a podcaster who has interviewed more than 2,000 authors, a publisher, a bookstore owner, a self-described accidental activist, and now an author herself. Ten years ago she was a perfectionistic stay-at-home mom of four on the Upper East Side, up at 4:55 a.m. to sign up for parent teacher conferences, with color-coded calendars and no time to read. Then she got divorced, fell in love with her tennis pro, recorded a podcast into her phone from her bed on a whim, and rebuilt the whole thing: new career, new marriage, new name, new voice. Her memoir in essays, Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot, is out now. In this Sacred Work conversation, Jen and Zibby get into what losing the plot actually feels like from the inside, the tiny unglamorous steps that add up to an entirely different life, why she sunsets things that are still making money, and how books became the connection vehicle for a whole community of women. Also: shy kids who grew up into very public careers, and the permission slip Zibby would hand her 39-year-old self. Thought-provoking Quotes: "There is a way. You are not stuck. Your life is not over. You can take these small steps to remember who you are. And it is not selfish. It is imperative." - Zibby Owens"When you cannot remember the last time you belly laughed, that could be a red flag to pay attention to." - Jen Hatmaker"Save nothing for the swim home." - Jen Hatmaker, quoting her agent Margaret"Talking about books is really talking about life." - Zibby Owens"It’s not just, well, I guess this is it because it has to be. This is it because it can be, and it should be." - Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot by Zibby Owens (Zibby Publishing)On Being Jewish Now, edited by Zibby Owens"A Mother’s Right to Sanity," Zibby’s essay that went viral overnightThe Between Chapters essay platform on Substack, where readers write about their own chaptersAuthors in the mix: Dani Shapiro, Anna Quindlen, and Sarah Mlynowski, who told Zibby to start a podcastChildhood favorites: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, and Little House on the PrairieGuest’s Links: Website - https://zibbymedia.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zibbyowens/ Substack - https://www.zibbyowens.com/ Podcast - Totally Booked with Zibby https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-booked-with-zibby/id1366633318 Connect with Jen! a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="ht ...
Encore: Psychologist Mary Pipher on Flourishing as We Age
2026/09/18
Description: Mary Pipher has spent her whole career noticing the gap between what the culture says is happening to women and what is actually happening to them. She did it in her thirties with Reviving Ophelia, and she did it again decades later with Women Rowing North. In this Sacred Work encore, Jen sits down with the clinical psychologist and author of eleven books to talk about the second half of life and what it actually asks of you. Mary makes the case that women get happier as they age, and she has the research to back it up, along with a story about two locker rooms that lands harder than any statistic. She also talks about thanking her own worn out hands for a lifetime of work, why reasonable expectations are the one thing happy people everywhere share, and the line Jen has not been able to shake since: we all age, but we do not all grow. Only one of those is up to you. Thought-provoking Quotes: We all age but we don’t all grow.If you don’t become better you become bitter. You either grow or you shrink.You should thank your hands for all the work they have done for you.We all find what we’re looking for.I have everything I need to be happy right between my ears.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age by Mary PipherReviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary PipherA Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence by Mary PipherThe Second Sex by Simone de BeauvoirComplete list of Mary Pipher’s books: https://marypipher.com/booksMargaret Mead’s idea of post menopausal zestJane Jarvis, American jazz pianist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_JarvisGuest’s Links: Website - https://marypipher.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authormarypipher Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.
Secure-ish: The Real Goal of Self-Worth with Dr. Marisa G. Franco
2026/09/16
Description:Dr. Marisa G. Franco is back — and this time, she's turning the lens inward. Marisa is the New York Times bestselling author of Platonic and a psychologist at the University of Maryland, and her brand new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, might just be the most important thing she's ever written. It is tender, personal, and research-backed in equal measure — and friend, it will find you. In this conversation, Marisa and Jen dig into the central argument of the book: that trying to become a "secure" person — calm, confident, regulated, healed — is one of the most efficient ways to stay stuck. The goal, Marisa says, is not security. It's being secure-ish. That means making room for the anxious parts and the avoidant parts, the shame and the neediness and the grief, and offering those parts the care they never got instead of running from them one more time. In this discussion, you’ll also hear: Why the goal was never to be fully "secure" — and what it means to be secure-ish insteadWhy your insecurities are messengers, not enemies — and how to stop whack-a-moleing them into silenceThe memories that are keeping you stuck — and the science that proves you can actually change how they live in youThe messages installed in us by the wider world — faith, bodies, marriage, worth — and what it looks like to do this work when those messages came from somewhere we once considered holyAnd Marisa shares her own story, the one that cracked her open: a hike, a relationship unraveling, and the moment she finally stopped performing calm long enough to say the true thing out loud.This is a conversation for anyone who has been trying to be better than they are instead of being who they are. Which is to say — it's for all of us. Thought-provoking Quotes: “The struggle of not feeling worthy is that you're stuck in the same sense of reality. You're trapped and you don't know how to get out. People are loving you but you don't feel loved. The beauties of life slide off of you. I just want people to get free of that.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco“We have to start with allowing what is, with the truth. So many of us don’t think we can because we have to be something different than we are. But being where you are, that's where the healing happens.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco“I'm still learning for my first reaction to no longer be, what am I allowed to feel according to other people? What am I allowed to look like according to other people? And for my first question to be what expresses who I am and how I actually feel, even if that violates all of the rules as to how I should feel or how I should present myself? That's where I need to begin, in the truth.” - Dr. Marisa G. FrancoResources Mentioned in This Episode: Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/42N2MyEPlatonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/4dph3rmFriendship MeCourse - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/products/friendship-for-the-rest-of-usa target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/the-great-friendship-res ...
Encore: Barbara Brown Taylor on Being the Saint of Small Things
2026/09/11
Description: Barbara Brown Taylor gave us the question that ends every episode of this show, so it feels right to hand the Sacred Work series over to her. In this encore, the New York Times bestselling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest talks with Jen about the year she spent doing almost nothing impressive: the county fair with a couple of six-year-olds, an old racehorse nobody wanted, blueberry pies for friends going through hard things, and shifts at the public library. She calls herself the saint of small things, and she is honest about how hard that is to say out loud when people want to know what big thing you are working on. They also get into why she is wary of hope that functions as an escape hatch, how she keeps her heart from going wooden in a world of terrible headlines, and why friendship is worth protecting even though nobody rewards you for it. Stay to the end for the benediction Barbara wrote for this community. Thought-provoking Quotes: I’ll be the saint of small things today.Headlines give me omniscience but no omnipotence.I’ve got to attend to the sustainability of a supple heart.I’m real wary of hope unless it functions right here, right now.The years are short but the days are long, and that’s a blessing not a curse.Resources Mentioned in This Episode: A Rhythm of Prayer by Sarah Bessey, which includes Barbara’s contributionThis Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, who has also been a guest on For the LoveWhen God Is Silent by Barbara Brown TaylorLeaving Church by Barbara Brown TaylorLearning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown TaylorAn Altar in the World by Barbara Brown TaylorGuest’s Links: Website - https://barbarabrowntaylor.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authorBarbaraBrownTaylor Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.
Priya Parker on Fighting Well, and Why Conflict Is Not Sin
2026/09/09
Description: Think about the last real fight you had with someone you love, then think about what you did with it. Most of us swallowed it and called it peace. Priya Parker has spent twenty years walking into rooms where groups are coming apart, churches mid-split, companies that lost their founder, families with one topic nobody will name at the table. She is back on the show with a new book, The Art of Fighting, and her argument is that the peace we keep by avoiding conflict costs us the very thing we say we want most. Jen and Priya open with a hot takes round on pineapple pizza and whether a hot dog is a sandwich, which turns out to be one of Priya's actual tools: low stakes arguing is practice for the high stakes kind. From there, what unhealthy peace looks like inside a family, a team, or a church. Priya tells the story of her grandfather's funeral, where the minister's highest praise for a fifty year marriage was that the couple never fought. Jen names the four years she let a business partnership die rather than have one hard conversation. They get into how to diagnose the fight you are actually in, why “we’re not a ___” is the sentence to listen for, and what happened when Priya went looking for the best literature on group conflict and kept landing in the Christian tradition. Conflict is not sin. It is a skill, and every one of us can get better at it. Part of September's Sacred Work series. *** Thought-provoking Quotes: Low stakes arguing helps us approach high stakes arguing. – Priya ParkerWhen the going gets tough, add warmth to heat. – Priya ParkerHuman connection is as threatened by unhealthy peace as it is by unhealthy conflict. – Priya ParkerI learned from an early age that there is loss in avoidance. – Priya ParkerI invite you to think about conflict as a skill. And you can get better at it. – Priya ParkerConflict is not sin. Conflict is actually highly functional. – Priya ParkerFighting is about power. Avoidance is also about power. – Priya ParkerWhose mess do you want to be in? – Priya ParkerResources Mentioned in This Episode: The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict by Priya Parker (Riverhead, out 9/8) - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fighting-Transformative-Power-Conflict/dp/0593420225The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Gathering-How-Meet-Matters/dp/1594634920Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull - https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-Inspiration/dp/0593594649If You Met My Family, You'd Understand: A Family Systems Primer by Jack Shitama - https://www.amazon.com/You-Met-Family-Youd-Understand/dp/1732009368a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferr ...
Adrienne Brodeur on Family Myths, Wounded People, and Honest Fiction
2026/09/04
Description: Some families run on rules nobody ever wrote down. Here is your role. Here is what we talk about. Here is who gets forgiven and who gets blamed. We accept those terms as children, and then one day we look up and wonder who exactly signed us up for the job. August’s Jen Hatmaker Book Club pick is Little Monsters, and Adrienne Brodeur came with the whole story behind it. She spent thirty years on the other side of the pen, co-founding Zoetrope: All-Story with Francis Ford Coppola, editing at HMH Books, judging the National Book Award, and now running Aspen Words. She published one novel of her own in 2005, then waited fourteen years for the next book, a memoir that broke a silence she had kept since she was fourteen. Adrienne and Jen get into the unspoken rules every family runs on, why estrangement takes love rather than indifference, and what Cain and Abel taught her about the gifts we give our parents. Adrienne explains why fiction can feel more honest than memoir, makes an unpopular case for Ken, and talks about writing mania with compassion rather than spectacle. Plus the stack of books a stepmother handed her that redirected her whole life, the screenplay she is writing, and the book club’s standing offer to cast the movie. *** Thought-provoking Quotes: He’s wounded, and wounded people wound. – Adrienne BrodeurUnderstanding someone isn’t quite the same as absolving them. – Adrienne BrodeurFiction can sometimes feel more honest than memoir. I don’t mean factual honesty. I mean emotionally unguarded. – Adrienne BrodeurWho the hell decided that peacemaker was my job, or golden child, or secret keeper, or difficult one? – Adrienne BrodeurTurns out dead mothers still have an excellent work ethic. – Adrienne BrodeurEveryone wanted a flat version of themselves. – Jen HatmakerWe have family stories that we’re telling too, even believing, that we’re trying to believe. – Jen HatmakerSome of our characters landed on their feet, but they landed on their feet in a different zip code. – Jen HatmakerResources Mentioned in This Episode: Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Little-Monsters/Adrienne-Brodeur/9781982198114Little Monsters book club discussion questions - https://www.readinggroupguides.com/reviews/little-monsters-by-adrienne-brodeur/guideWild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wild-game-adrienne-brodeur/1130010789Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001HN38FIAspen Words at the Aspen Institute - https://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/adrienne-brodeur/Zoetrope: All-Story, co-founded with Francis Ford Coppola Guest’s Links: Adrienne’s Instagram -  https://www.instagram.com/adriennebrodeur/ Adrienne’s Faceboo ...

Podcast reviews

Read For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast podcast reviews


4.6 out of 5
6386 reviews
★★★☆☆
Prof sha 2026/09/18
Sound Quality
I enjoy the content of the pod and I appreciate the emphasis on personal growth and discovery. I struggle with the sound quality. Often, either Jen or...
★★★★★
Hopesenuf 2026/07/28
Loveee
I absolutely have fallen in love with everything Jen Hatmaker , pod cast book club , Substack ,I’ m all in , just love Jen ‘s authenticity and humor ....
★★★★★
learnbyhand 2026/07/20
Raw Jen again
Loved the recent episode, “When life outpaces you…”. Not celebrating that you’re in that hard spot in life, but felt like the type of openness that br...
★☆☆☆☆
Meg Reynolds1983 2026/05/28
Please interview talarico
You should have James talarico on your show! Too much shilling. Ugh it’s like your hosting qvc. So bad. I’ve followed you for 12 years and I hope ...
★★★★★
MR2445 2026/05/10
Loved Jen Hamilton!!
Loved the Jen Hamilton episode!!
★★★★★
ZenPenguin 2025/12/04
YAY
Yay
★★★★☆
JlynnCO2018 2025/11/13
One suggestion
I truly love this pod. I’d love it even more if the commercial breaks weren’t shocking. Please consider a different way to do it
★☆☆☆☆
DeeCin7 2025/11/02
Let the Light of Christ Lead Us to Truth
I followed Jen Hatmaker from the beginning. Though I always had hesitations, I appreciated her humor and storytelling. Over time, after reading and st...
★★★★★
judes-g 2025/10/25
Right to the heart of the matter
I recently found Jen, her pod and her latest book after she guested on another pod. Parts of my story overlap but much of it is my own of course becau...
★★★★★
KasannahG 2025/10/09
Long time listener here!
I am two decades younger than Jen. I am so grateful to have had her voice, via her books and her podcast, as I’ve grown up!
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