You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garland. Hello everyone, welcome to I Choose Me, a podcast about the choices we make. So this week's guest is not only birdening a new book, she is also a brand new grandmother. But welcoming Weston Joseph is not her only new beginning. From the heartbreak of waking up to a marriage in crisis to the treacherous work of rebuilding a life, Jen Hatmaker has walked through fire and come out stronger, more vibrant,
and wide awake. Join Jen and me as we laugh and cry through choosing ourselves the hard way and reaping the rewards that only come from fierce self awareness and uncomfortable healing. Oh I'm so excited to talk to you. You have no idea. Okay, first, all things aside, you are a hattie.
Oh my god, this is the most important thing we could discuss.
It really is.
So.
I've heard women tell me in time, like lately more and more how becoming a grandmother has changed their life.
Oh my god, how does that feel for you? It's so it's so insane. This is my oldest son and his wife. So this is first grandbaby and in our family. This is first kid, first son, first grandkid, first great grandkid, first nephew. Like he's doomed, Like he's absolutely doomed. And we have this massive family prepared to over respond, over attend to him. I mean they'll just I don't suspect we'll have any restraint at all. And it's perfect, which is great news for us. We got a perfect baby.
Thank you, thank you. We're dreamy over here.
I bet West and Joseph.
Western, Joseph, I mean, I can't handle it. Like, and these are new parents, if you know what I'm saying, Like they're the young version of parents. They're different than we were, and so they have a lot of boundaries and like rules and whatever. And I just keep thinking, that's fine. I want to be respectful. This is your kid, you're the parents. But I swear to God if you revoke my privileges in any way, I will mutiny. Mutiny.
You have to. I mean, yeah, that's not going to be acceptable.
Thanks.
Oh gosh, I want to just talk about your.
Book, Okay.
I loved it. I felt so connected to your story, even though it is not mine at all. There are similarities in situations, but your upbringing very different from mine and the way your early life. I mean, I feel awake for you just from reading the book, because it is the ultimate story of like figuring out who the fuck you truly are, finally for yourself. Yeah yeah, And I love how you start the book from the end and then you go back and give it all context
and great storytelling. Well done, and clapping for you, I think.
No, wonder, Oh god, what a nice thing to say.
I mean it because I'm looking at a strong, vibrant woman, and before all this happened, you didn't even know how to pay your mortgage. You know, you were in a very different life than you are currently.
Yeah, it's so crazy to like say that. It's so crazy to hear it back because even you know, I lost my marriage five years ago after twenty six years of marriage. You know, I was a child bride. You were nineteen. It's insane. But even five years ago though, I still had like this kind of career and this
this big life. But then when you strip away some of the crutches, the places that I had been phoning it, in the places where I had simply made assumptions of trustworthiness or competency inside the marriage, that goes away and I finally went shit, I don't know how much money I make in a year? What am I doing? What have I been doing? Like? What have I been doing?
And so the process of it was so chaotic because on one hand, I am trying to simply get through the day because the marriage, the ending of our marriage was so disastrous and so traumatic and.
So shock for the people that don't know, give us the tragic to the dates of the tragic.
It just ended in an affair, but not the kind where I have something to tell you you I it was all shock and all accidental, just middle of the night discovery. Like everything, it's not original. It's not an original story, it really is. I am offering nothing new to the middle aged male lexicon here, but when it happens to you, it is so so disruptive. It is so tragic. And we have five kids, two of them were in high school at the time. You know, we're in it like we're in the thick of life.
And you're in business together. You're you know, you're doing everything together as you were taught you should.
We were in lockstap we were running a nonprofit together and previously had been in a ministry like that was sort of our come up and was this very specific subculture. And I just had never known as an independent adult minute in my life. Again, I was a nineteen year old bride, So we literally grew up together. We grew up together, and sometimes, like this isn't a prescription to say that never works. I've got plenty of friends who had young marriages and they grew together, and yes, I'm
nice for them. How nice for them? We felt the tension of our connective threads frying for quite some time as we grew up and into sort of different spaces, and well, we just grew up. You know, I didn't know what kind of adult I was going to be when I was a teenager, and neither he didn't know what kind of adult he was going to be.
You guys, had you had the dreams. Sure you thought you knew, and it seemed like you were so in it together from the beginning of creating this magical, harmonious, beautiful life that your parents lived and that the people around you and your community are living.
And I was prepared because that structure works best when the woman has a degree of subservience, when she is saying you are kind of the leader of our marriage and of our family and home. Your job matters the most, your preferences. You're the tip of the spear, right and and the rest of us are kind of back here, just pushing you forward. And so, because that was the environment that I grew up in a faith world, I was prepared. I'm like, great, that's that's my gender limitation.
Like that is that I'm in lockstep with that job description. And I will be a very good wing man, and he will always be a trustworthy leader. And thus we plugged ourselves into this outlet that promised a handful of guaranteed outcomes. You know, everybody play their part, and you do your thing, and you do yours, and you stay here and you come forward, and then you get a happy life. That's the transactional like structure. And so I believed it.
Yeah, why wouldn't you?
Why wouldn't I work for my parents? I saw it work elsewhere. I you know, I didn't come up in a generation where a ton of the women in my ecosystem were questioning any of that. They were the cogs in the machine. Of course, women are. I mean, it's not as if the men are actually leading every system and structure that exists on earth with integrity and excellence. It's the women you know back there in the behind
the curtain. But it was fraying already. It was fraying already and then disintegrating toward the end until it was a catastrophe.
I have a certain level of respect for what you just said about that, you the cog in the wheel, like so many women feel. I have never felt that way. So that's how different our stories are, but also so parallel. Yeah, well I love I love hearing your story and hearing what a different version of this looks like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so interesting. Right when I talk about awake, I'm like, Okay, look, there's a small story in here, and the small story is the story of my divorce and recovery and rebuilding process. But there is it is nestled inside a larger story, which, on one level or another, virtually everybody in our generation and our age group would go, oh, same on that one, same on that one. We all grew up inside a patriarchal culture in various rooms that we all found ourselves playing in.
There were some gender limitations, and they those existed in different ways and they manifested differently, but we know what they look like. We certainly got a story about our bodies from the time we were what four younger, and so that is ubiquitous for our age group. This story. We this is what your body should look like, This is what your body is good for, This is how your body can be used. This is who your body.
Girl. Be a good girl, yep, make girl pleasant, smile.
Walk into every room, read it and give it what it wants. And the problem is we're good at that. We're so socially and emotionally competent that most of the women I know do know how to walk in a room, gauge the temperature, and adjust accordingly. And so it's a skill set that can be used for our own empowerment, but we were taught to use it for the comfort of everyone around us.
True, very true. Yeah, after I read what happened, where you came from, how it all transpired, I felt immediately excited for you, like genuinely excited for what is next for you, because yeah, it sucked, it hurt, it blew up your universe. But my excitement really comes from what is basically what it feels like your rebirth.
Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for saying that. I love hearing that, and that that thought, that perspective comes from women who have already figured out how to live in their own freedom, in their own autonomy, in their own agency. And here's the good news about that that perspective. It's true. You're right, it is true. We are so interesting and capable and powerful. And I don't love the system that sometimes something has to die in order for that truth to live. But it is the truth. That
is how it is sometimes. And had I been more honest back then, before I lost my marriage, I would have already known that. I've already said that, And if I would have been more courageous, I would have chosen that before all this trauma chose me. Ye, But I'll never know. I was too afraid to lose it all. I couldn't. I didn't have vision for what it might
look like on the other side of that. The disruption of it was such a deterrent that I was willing to sit in my own unhappiness, in my own misalignment. I guess forever, I think I would have stayed. I think I would have stayed, So.
I feel exactly the same again. Completely different situation and circumstances, but I hear you. I felt the same, like I am supposed to keep this family together. I am supposed to be the glue, you know, and if i am not, then I'm a failure and I'm ashamed and all the things we do to ourselves.
Totally totally and then even lacking the imagination for what my kids, how resilient they are, I felt also in a codependent way, responsible for their life experience, which meant, if I'm a good mom, i am absolutely shielding them from pain, from disruption, from loss. I'm certainly not going to choose it for them. I you know, that is such a ridiculous way to live and not true, not
true at all. But also so that kept me from thinking with a clear head, what was the right thing to do, what was the next best thing in my life because I had this overdeveloped sense of responsibility for literally everybody else in my life except myself.
Oh, this is where it gets good, because it wasn't until your rebirth, I like to call it that that you started to live in a completely different way, and this is where choosing yourself really started to happen for you.
Yes, I mean At first it was so terrifying. I felt like I was in a constant free fall where I was so used to my safety nets. I had always had a partner, another person. I'd always had these institutions that I had a lot of traditional success inside, which looked like marriage and to some degree like the institution of church or faith or however you want to put that. And I had so I had these like big systems as my scaffolding, and so having like fail
fail on both of those, having lost a partner. So now I'm all by myself in my upper forties trying to figure out how to pay my taxes. So at first it was just like a tailspin. Every single thing was new, like everything, and everything was sort of consequential. I mean, these weren't small things. But once I figured out pretty quick, oh my god, I'm good at all this. I'm smart, I'm super capable in my story, and this
is what mattered to me the most. I am trustworthy, like I do not have to outsource my will being to another person who is not safe ever again, ever again, and hope that they treat hope that they have integrity, and hope that they I will never do that again, and I don't have to do it again because I'm good enough for all of this, Like because you don't.
You never know when you put that kind of like faith or responsibility or whatever it is that on someone else, the good in you wants to think, if I have faith in this person and I just believe it will be so and they will take care of their end of the responsibilities and treat me with respect and grow old with me. But that doesn't do it.
It doesn't. And I had that story for a really long time. You know, I didn't have twenty six years of a tragic marriage, right, you know, I a lot of that muscle memory was built in in a genuine way where we were partnered and we were in the same boat, growing in the same direction, and those were like really lovely years and really beautiful years. And I don't have regret. I don't know how to. I don't know that regard wrehat has a place in anyone's story.
If I regret my whole marriage, I would have to regret my whole life.
And all the good things that you learned.
That's right, and the children, that's right, the all of it. Yeah, that isn't I can't. That doesn't actually make sense to me. But I think integrity would have been way more honest when the train was beginning to leave the tracks, And hindsight shows me I knew my body, knew my wisdom, knew my intuition, knew my body was raising the flares yep and going listen. We got some alarm bells, and we would like you to pay attention.
And that always happens, but we don't. We either ignore it or we pretend that it's not happening and we just shove it aside because it's real inconvenient.
Oh my god, it's so inconvenient. And you know, I've had some folks ask me, do you feel like you ignored your own red flags, your own sense of knowing that things were absolutely going wrong because of optics? Because you have this public life and you had a public marriage, and you want you wanted people to think of you in a certain way. And I would never be like so unself aware to say that had No, that's a
non factor. But I feel like I can say, truthfully, it's less that I wanted to appear a certain way to other people and more that I actually wanted my marriage to work. I just didn't want to face what I knew I needed to face. I didn't want to look directly at all these red flags waving in front of my face because I did not want them to be true. It's not that I didn't want to I just didn't want it to be true. I'm like, I know, I'm going to find our way through this.
Yes, you want that picket fence life, you know, and you're building it and you seem to have and you don't want to break it down.
No, And I even though I knew things were going so wrong and we were so sideways and something at the time, I couldn't exactly say what it was. Now, of course I know, but something was very, very, very wrong. But my little brain of denial just kept going, we'll get through. We'll get there. I don't know how, but he will get over this. He will come back to himself, and then he will come back to me and this marriage, and this will be a rough bump on the road,
but we will get over it. And I just told myself that over and over, but without the necessary subsequent steps of actually engaging everything that was wrong. It's like I just kind of closed my eyes hence the title of the book, awake and just went maybe this will just work itself out while I'm not looking at it seems like a great approach, like what could go wrong? Why didn't that solve problems?
One of the things that I admire about women and about you in situations like this, and I honestly admired about myself. I spent a good amount of time and blame and pointing the finger and being the victim. But there comes a point when you have to stop pointing the finger and start pulling the thumb and you have to look at your pardon things. Yeah, and that's when real change starts to happen.
Undoubtedly, I am so glad I did not write this book three years ago. I was still living inside a bit more of a trope of victim, villain, good, bad, guilty, innocent that the earliest version of the story, which maybe even has its place. Yep, I'm not even I'm not even judging us for sitting in that place of just absolute like betrayal and tragedy and loss to just go well, just you know, fuck that guy. There's a place for that.
But to your point, that runs out of fuel. And if we do not look at that differently and began to go, all right, what's my part here?
Yeah?
What? What? What did I bring to this table? Where was I complicit? And what did I sign on for? Then we will just become this miserable, resentful victim. And like my counselor told me a billion times when she was working with me on all those codependent behaviors that apparently I had deeply exhibited my entire marriage. She's like, look, this is your problem. She's look at your problem where
you either deal with it? But yeah, I was like, that's so, don't pay you to be mean to me, Like I came here for you to tell me this is his fault and poor me. But she's like, you'll just walk these habits and these patterns right into your next relationship. You will keep them up with your kids where you're already exhibiting it. And I'm like, yeah, so you're right.
And that's when you ask yourself, is that the life I want? Is that the woman I want to be?
That's right? Is that the rooleman I want to be? And I had nobody else left to take the blame. And so part of independence includes being responsible for yourself and your garbage and your dysfunctions. And that is where I finally found myself after I got through the just the bottom of the ocean season of grief where everything is just chaos. By the time I kicked to the surface and had some fresh air again, I went right, what's my deal? And I hope that that comes through
in the book. I hope that I was at least self aware enough to go, Here's where I made our marriage harder, worse, more difficult, and more unlikely to heal. And I can see that now with much clearer eyes.
Yeah, I think it happens for so many of us, because living in codependency or living in that world where you are catering to someone or supporting your husband, your kids, your household, you get so lost in it, and it's really easy to not look in the mirror, to not face the reality of your part in how things got to where they are. And that is hard work.
Oh, it's horrible. It's so horrible, and that is the crucible for everyone who struggles with dependency because, by definition, like our approach to all the people around us, the ones that we married, the ones that we birthed, the ones that we came from the friends that we've chosen. Is this sense of responsibility for them, how they feel, what they think, how they're behaving, how they are responding,
what is their environment? Is there any way we can control the outcomes of their choices, because I'll sure try.
Yeah. I also want to make sure that everybody sees them in their in their best light.
God, I know you, you know.
I read that in your book. That takes a lot of energy.
Well, and back to your point, I don't have time to look in the mirror. I'm too busy looking at everyone else's mirrors. I'm making sure their mirrors are all shined up for the world and for themselves, and I am taking on responsibilities that should be theirs. And so that's at least with my care I robbed them of a lot of independence because I came in with too much control, which, by the way, isn't even true. You were never in control of somebody else. That is a lie.
That's an absolute lie. That's what you learn. It's an illusion.
It's more fun to live in that illusion, isn't it.
It's just so much easier. I have so many ideas about how everybody else should live. I mean and they're such good ideas. If they would all just listen to me. I have a vision for your behavior, and I just if you'll sit down and listen for thirty five minutes, I will give it to you. But it doesn't work that way. That only creates resentment, that deteriorates relationships, It steals autonomy from everybody around you. It's that is a sinking ship.
For sure. Okay, So speaking of your children, you said that two of them were in high school when this all went down, but they had grown up in that house.
That's right.
They were suffering the dysfunction in their own ways, but probably oblivious also because that was just their life. Yeah, how did they take the news initially? And how are they doing now?
That first year when I was so afraid of their own of their pain, I was just so afraid of it. I remember one day my daughter Sydney, who at the time was twenty, and we were in the living room. I remember where I was standing when she was talking about how she was feeling and what felt sad and
what felt hard and what still felt really confusing. And I was so committed, I was so uncomfortable with her pain that I did what I do what codependents do, which is try to huh somebody else through their actual experience to get to the ending I want for them. So I'm I'm ten miles down the road trying to protect her future relationship with her dad, her future wholeness
and wellness. I have this thing that I want her to get to, like down the street, and so I'm shoving her that direction with you know, don't forget, and I'm massaging the truth. Well, you know one thing that you know, I hope you can understand, was And finally she just stopped me and she said, Mom, when you do this, when you do what you're doing right now, you are making me feel so lonely, like I am the only person still sitting here in this room, sad, hurt, confused.
You are making me feel all alone in my pain, like you are well past it, and you are dragging me try to get past it, and it's making it work. And I was like, holy shit, wow. And I took that to my therapist of course that week and told her all this and she goes, all right, Jen, here's what you need to know, especially the ages of your kids period. And this is probably a rule for me for the rest of my life. She's like, at this point,
you need to prioritize comfort over coaching. And she's like, if you reach for coaching first, you isolate your kids and you make them feel alone.
Oh my god, you're right, so true. I can relate to that as well. Trying to fix it for them, trying to give them the tools that you know they're going to need, help them get to where they can be healthy again and not be saddled. Oh my gosh, it's so true. And all you need to do is just hug them and just let them have their feelings because.
They're going to have them. It doesn't matter what we do or don't you do, they're going to have them. So we might as well get in there with them, hold their little hands and say I cannot fix this. You're going to have to just feel this and experience it. But I at least will never leave you alone in it. I'm right next to you.
You know. One of the things I learned in therapy was because I want to fix things too, I so badly want to make everybody feel better and know that you're going to end up okay. Yeah, But I learned a saying that I've used many, many times with my girls throughout the many years that we've gone through this. I say I wish I had a magic wand and I could change things h or make everything better perfect,
but I won't have that. And it kind of gave them a new way of understanding and also me that like realization that I can't fix it.
That's right, but it's such a nice thing to say, I wish I could. I do not wish this pain for you. I do not wish this suffering. I can't, but I wish. Yep. It's such a lovely that's sitting next to them saying I'm at least here, I'll feel it with you. I can't change it, but you at least will not be alone in it. I think that's everything. I think our kids are just going to have to live a real life like we did. It's unfortunate. I really wanted to work around Yeah, it's inevitable.
Oh my gosh. Okay, so let's widen out for a second. Okay, life exploded, hard work, self awareness. Now you're on what you rightly call a midlife renaissance. In this stage of life, you know you are reconnecting with yourself how are you doing that? And are you intentionally choosing how you want your life to look more moving forward?
Some of the some of the bones of that new person came from necessity, because I had to learn how to become just a functional, daily independent person for all. And I have a big life, just like we have big lives. They have a lot of moving parts, we have a lot of people in them. Work is big. I have a big family, like nothing as small in
my whole life. And so some of just the functionality of all right, here's all my own, here's my own retirement plan, here's I drafted a will like boring life adulting, which I had to do and had a incredible It was an accelerant to this deep, new growing sense of pride like I can not only can I do all this, I've done it, I learned it, I tackled it. I'm better at it than even my partner was. I'm more responsible, I'm more trustworthy, I am in charge of my own future. Period. I do not have a plan.
B You abolt to identify in that stage a newfound love for yourself.
Oh my god, every day felt kick ass for a while. Every day was just like I'm doing it. I am making so awesome. I'm so awesome, Like I've done so many hard things while by the way, we're all trying to recover emotionally and like psychologically, and then there's all these logistical things that just happen. So all of that together, I think coming to terms. And this is for anybody with what we are actually capable of is pretty incredible
to bear witness to. And so some of that was just by nature of doing which I don't need a parade because I had to. So it's not even like I like, I'm going to choose to figure out how to pay my quarterly taxes, you know, had Yeah, I had to. I had to. But then I did it, and then I was like, oh, wow, what else can I do? I guess I can do anything. I guess I can do anything.
And so that when you survive something like what you went through, what we go through, when these things happen, yeah, you realize like there is nothing I can't handle.
I kind of that is true, and this is a dark version of what you just said. But also it built something else strong in me, which was now I'm not there's nothing else I can lose like I lost what was so precious, what felt so important to me and so valuable that I didn't even have a vision for my life without my marriage, like without my intact family in the way that I had always known it and built it, And so having lost it, I also ended up going well, I'm way less afraid to lose
anything else at this point. I feel like I am less risk averse. I'm less attached to what anybody literally in the world thinks of me, or their assessment of me, or whether they understand me or they're misinterpreting me. I'm just less connected to it. I feel like I've already done my losing at such a high level, and I'd already lost a version of my career before, right, So
I'm like, what else? What else? I those external factors now have less power over me because I lost them and lived, And so I like this version of me on the on the downslope of suffering because I go, okay, okay, I don't have to make decisions just based on fear anymore, because I'm too afraid to lose something. I I think I can make decisions more out of integrity, more out of alignment, And that goes into a lot of categories, and so that was a really unusual and surprising outcome to loss.
Mm hmm, it's the best outcome. Okay, So a little bit of a fast forward. I adore what you found your met Camp. Oh, I know, I love it so much. It like rings all my bells. Tell our listeners about that, because it's wow, what a thing you found for yourself that helped you through such a difficult time.
That was my favorite entry to write in the whole book, by the way. I loved it. And you know that the book is set up just in it's not in chapters, it's just in vignettes, and so there's just three sections, the end, the middle, and in the beginning, and met Camp is the first entry in the beginning. It's that back third of the story where the sun rose again, where the sun came out. And I'm like, I'm going to make it. I I'm not just gonna make it. I'm going to be happy again. I wasn't sure about
that my first year. I'm going to be happy again. I my life is in front of me. But me Camp was an accidental life changer. I we had come up on the first summer, so I was right at the one year mark, and my youngest was going to a month of camp, of summer camp, and she needed it. We were both broken. Our bodies were broken, our brains were broken, our hearts were broken. So she's going to
this pure, wholesome, beautiful camp in Maine. I had never been to Maine in my life, but I know that's the right response for anybody who's ever been to Maine. They're like, oh Maine. Yeah, so dreamy, so dreamy. But she's going to Maine. But she was still pretty fragile, and so, in an absolute spontaneous blaze of glory, I tell her, honey, how about this. This is three weeks before camp starts and I had just signed her up. We were just in crisis. That's a whole different story.
I'm like, if I come to Maine the whole time that you're at camp, so that if you need me for any reason, I can be there in two hours. I just felt like I needed to put this emotional safety net under her. Well, how am I saying?
Like?
What am I even talking about? I've never even been to Maine. I don't even know what I'm saying.
Have you ever been gone on a trip by yourself.
I've never even been in the movies by myself. Like, what am I doing?
You know?
And so in like a minute, I had to figure out what am I. I guess I'm going to have to figure out a town in Maine and then maybe a house. I don't know. So fast forward, I end up renting this house in Bar Harbor for the duration of her camp, this entire camp, and it changed my life. I know that that sounds hyperbolic, but here I am traveling by myself for the first time in my life. I'm forty seven years old, I old independent, I'm I'm paying for it myself. I'm on my own dime. I'm
in this beautiful, idealic Hallmark movie of a town. I am delighted beyond anything I can ever explain.
Everything is like fresh and new.
I'm in a movie. I'm in a movie. Every store, every dog, every sweatshirt. It was cool and beautiful. I just could not and all of a sudden I realized, oh my gosh, I'm good company. I like me. I choose me if you will, and I it changed me
so much that independent joy. It wasn't just independent. I've been independent for a year, but it was that independent delight to be able to just absolutely delight in life again on my own, not because somebody, because I got a new boyfriend, or you know, some some external thing came into my life to bring me joy. Agan, it was just just me, just me being happy by myself and so delightful that I have repeated I called it
me Camp and I didn't mean. I didn't mean to brand it, but remy my daughter was at camp and I was like, well she's at camp. I guess I'm at camp. I'm at me Camp, and I just branded it on the spot. I have now done it five summers in a row. So now every single July, I travel by myself one small little town somewhere. I've never been on the water somewhere, and it is maybe the greatest, most outrageous thing I've ever done.
I need to go to Mee Camp so bad right now, I mean that sounds just so good.
Go. I know so many women since I I've done me Camps now for five summers do him. And so every summer, like my community starts going off on their meat camp plans. I just nothing can make me happier in life. And seeing all these women and some of them are perfectly happily married. You don't have to have your life fall apart to do this. But they're just like and who travels for a month? I understand that's insane, But a lot of them will be like, I'm going for four days by myself.
I'm like, off, you go, there you go.
You're a good company, you don't need anybody, but you go do it.
Isn't it the best feeling to be able to take tragedy in your life and turn it not only into something that changes your life for the better, but also you're able to change other people's lives because of it. Oh, It's like, it's like, it doesn't get me better than that.
It's everything. It's absolutely everything. I The joy and the loyalty and the support and the encouragement that I have received from my community just living the story in front of them for the last five years is it is unmatched. I don't even know how to I actually don't know how to describe it. But it's like we take turns, we take turns, going Okay, I have an idea. It's called me camp, y'all go, And then they're like, okay, we have an idea. How about you do this. It's
just beautiful. Women are the best. Women are literally the best.
I didn't know that until I found my community, and yep, it was on social like finding women that were in similar situations, are going through the same life phases. And I never knew how much comfort I could feel from that support and then in turn the just absolute joy of being able to help somebody else get there.
Oh my god, Jenny, it's the truth, and we're all just doing that for each other. I was just writing this to my community and telling them that because people ask me a lot, and this is a very fair question, why would you want to write such a personal memoir? Like it's it's in there, man, like it is very vulnerable, it is, and I put things in there that I don't know, and they're like, why would you want to
do this? And when it all fell apart in twenty twenty and I have such a public facing life and I have this huge community of women, and also I don't have I honestly do not have the gear to carry on as usual when something is tragic. So I just went radio silent. I just completely went offline. I canceled everything in my life, pulled out of everything on my calendar and went off social media entirely. So since my community is located there, that's noticed. So everybody's like,
what is what is going on? And so when I finally had to come and tell my community that this marriage that I have been putting in front of them for almost twenty years was destroyed, and I was so afraid had I blown my credibility?
Like had I had you let people down?
Had I let them down? I talked about marriage and family for so long, like I just had no idea. I just didn't even know. But the amount of love and encouragement that I got back of women saying endless, women less, I'll never get to the bottom, of them saying we've been there, We've already walked that road. You're gonna be okay, keep going, keep walking, keep coming. I promise you your life is not over. And at the
time it fell over. So I thought this, I don't know this truth yet, but I told them that for me felt like all these women holding up these lanterns from further and down the path, when at the time I could not see two inches in front of my face. Everything was I was in a dark night of the soul, and here's all these women holding up their lanterns going you're gonna be okay, keep going, we promise was so meaningful and important to my recovery process, and so thus
to me, I feel like awake is my lantern. It's my turn. It's my turn to hold up my lantern and to tell women keep going, keep coming. The second half of our lives, I suspect, are our best days, no matter what, no matter what we've lost, no matter what's changing, no matter what we're transitioning into or out of. This is my lantern to say, keep walking and you can do it. I believe it, I really believe it. Live my story is not special. Yeah, and I'm not special.
I'm not. Nothing about my story is special and I'm not so if I have lived it, anyone can period.
Yep. Oh it's the best, the best, the best message. Okay, you've had what sounds like just a season of choosing yourself, which brah bah. But before I let you go, yeah, jin hatmaker, I want to ask you what was your last I choose me moment?
M As you know, because you know this well, this is a real busy season, like anytime you're putting a book out. It is it is a it is a marathon, and it is on the gas at all times, so this is not a good time to take time off. However, my three best friends all live right here. One of them lives right across the street.
Oh my god.
Two of them live on the street over, so we are point zero two miles from each other. And in case that's too far, we have a golf cart so that we don't have to walk that far. And two of us have August birthdays, and so the other two planned this whole surprise three day birthday weekend. They didn't We did not know where we were going. We did not know what we were doing. They just told us what to pack, and this was not a great time to do it. I had I have enough work now
to last twenty days a week. And I just told everybody in my whole team, I'm like, these days are blocked completely. And they're like, oh wow, oh we hate that for us. Yeah, I'm like, I ain't going for you, but I know. And so I spent three days on the lake with my girlfriends, acting insane and being idiots and wearing matching pajamas they had made for us and eating food and playing games and drinking wine and laying by the pool, and it was just marvelous. That sounds so nice, doesn't it.
God, I'm happy for you.
Thank you.
The book, you guys, is called Awake, a Memoir, and it is out now. Be sure to get it because you are gonna love it.
Thanks Jenny, thank you.