Explore every episode of the podcast For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Don't Make It Worse: Surviving the Midterms and Thanksgiving Dinner with Pantsuit Politics | 28 oct. 2026 | 01:10:38 | |
With the midterms days away, Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics break down what is really on the ballot, how to make sure your vote counts, and how to survive the Thanksgiving table when your family lands all over the map. This isn't an episode about how to vote. It's about how to be a person right now. Thought-provoking Quotes: "It doesn't cost me anything to listen to people." - Beth Silvers "Your vote counts more in the midterm elections because fewer people vote." - Beth Silvers "If you ask people to silence that, you lose the opportunity to connect." - Sarah Stewart Holland Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Sarah and Beth's books - https://bookshop.org/lists/pantsuit-politics-book-club Up First from NPR - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510318/up-first The Daily - https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily The Ezra Klein Show - https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast For the Love with Priya Parker - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast Meander Bookshop - https://bookshop.org/shop/meanderbookshop Also mentioned: Start Here (ABC News), The New York Times, Axios, News Items, and Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are the Children? Guest's Links: Website - https://www.pantsuitpoliticsshow.com Substack - https://pantsuitpolitics.substack.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/pantsuitpolitics Sarah's Substack - https://stewartholland.substack.com Connect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen's Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| Kim Hill and Paulette Wooten: We Fell in Love and Lost Our Whole World | 23 oct. 2026 | 01:08:25 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’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 | 21 oct. 2026 | 00:59:02 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Encore: Jenna Kutcher on Taking Your Dreams Off the Shelf and Embracing the “What Ifs” | 16 oct. 2026 | 00:48:39 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://jennakutcher.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/jennakutcher Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenna.kutcher Connect with Jen! Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker | |||
| Barbara Kingsolver on Partita, First Love, and Who Gets to Make Art | 14 oct. 2026 | 01:06:32 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Stop Guessing About Perimenopause with Dr. Tiffany Lester | 09 oct. 2026 | 00:42:50 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’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 | 07 oct. 2026 | 00:57:05 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! | |||
| Liz Moore: Inside The God of the Woods, From Novel to Netflix | 02 oct. 2026 | 00:59:05 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’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 Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.&nbs ... | |||
| This Is What Happens When Women Read with Julianna Glasse | 30 sept. 2026 | 00:57:50 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’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 | 25 sept. 2026 | 00:54:43 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.galitatlas.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/galit_atlas Substack - https://wildanalysiswithgalitatlas.substack.com/ Connect with Jen! | |||
| Zibby Owens on Losing the Plot, Starting Over, and Building a Life Around Books Description: | 23 sept. 2026 | 00:57:57 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://zibbymedia.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zibbyowens/ Substack - https://www.zibbyowens.com/ Connect with Jen! | |||
| Encore: Psychologist Mary Pipher on Flourishing as We Age | 18 sept. 2026 | 00:40:37 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://marypipher.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authormarypipher Connect with Jen! Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| Secure-ish: The Real Goal of Self-Worth with Dr. Marisa G. Franco | 16 sept. 2026 | 00:46:29 | |
Description: 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:
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Encore: Barbara Brown Taylor on Being the Saint of Small Things | 11 sept. 2026 | 00:36:43 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://barbarabrowntaylor.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authorBarbaraBrownTaylor Connect with Jen! Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| Priya Parker on Fighting Well, and Why Conflict Is Not Sin | 09 sept. 2026 | 01:06:51 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Adrienne Brodeur on Family Myths, Wounded People, and Honest Fiction | 04 sept. 2026 | 00:48:57 | |
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:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Adrienne’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/adriennebrodeur/ | |||
| Your Life Is the Assignment: Jen Hatmaker Solo Episode | 02 sept. 2026 | 00:56:31 | |
Description: For twenty years, one question has followed Jen everywhere she goes: what am I supposed to be doing with my life? It comes in the comments, the voicemails, the line after every event. And for a long time, Jen answered it like a career question, as if somewhere out there was a slot with her name on it and her only job was to find it and climb inside. In this solo episode, she puts down the word calling and picks up a different one: assignment. Not the thing waiting for you in the future, but the work already in your hands, in this season, on this street, with these people. Jen untangles work from worth, names the theology a lot of us absorbed that rewarded us for burning out, and shares the questions she uses to tell the difference between an assignment that is actually hers and one that is simply available. She also talks about the assignments that end, and why finishing one well is its own sacred work. Ordinary, faithful, unglamorous work is not the consolation prize for people who never found their capital C calling. It is the actual thing. This episode kicks off September's theme, Sacred Work, here on the show and over in the AWAKE Collective. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Take the AWAKE Quiz: JenHatmaker.com/quiz Connect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ | |||
| Jodi Picoult on Banned Books, Buried Truths, and the Story Behind Hollow Bones | 28 août 2026 | 00:51:19 | |
Description: Jodi Picoult is back, and she brought her thirtieth novel with her. If you have been in a book club at any point in the last thirty years, you know the name. Forty million copies in print. Thirty four languages. And, as of this year, the fourth most banned author in America, which Jen considers a five star review. Jodi and Jen get into all of it: what thirty years of publishing actually teaches you (start with the underwear), why she refuses to coast when she could easily phone it in, what she believes AI will never do to a reader, and the career she never asked for as an advocate against book banning. Then they turn to Hollow Bones, out September 15, a novel that began with an anonymous postcard and a letter from a jail cell and carried Jodi deep into postpartum psychosis, the dismissal of women by medicine, and the long shadow of 9/11. She also brings back a character you have wondered about since My Sister's Keeper. One heads up before you press play: this conversation includes discussion of postpartum psychosis, suicide, the death of a child, and school shootings. Please take good care of yourself. Support resources are linked below. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest's Links: Website - https://jodipicoult.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/jodipicoult TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@jodipicoult Facebook - | |||
| Your House Is Talking to You with Myquillyn Smith | 26 août 2026 | 00:38:40 | |
There is a specific kind of overwhelm that hits when you walk into your own living room and everything in it seems to be asking you for something. Finish this puzzle. Put me away. Read the rest of me. Myquillyn Smith, better known as The Nester, says your house is talking to you. It is not shaming you. It is telling you the truth about your stuff. Myquillyn is back in the guest chair, this time on her own, and her new book House Hushing is out now. She walks us through backwards decluttering (pull the loose stuff out of one room, stash it somewhere else, live with that room for 48 hours, and let it prove its case), the threshold where a room tips from fine to too much, and why so many of us cross it earlier than our mothers did. We also get into the confession she hears most from women about their homes, the difference between a room that is quiet and a room that has no soul, how pattern and contrast work like volume dials you can turn up or down, and why she owns seasonally instead of just owning less. Plus a dead butterfly hot glued into a frame, and the ten minute fix for anyone whose house is currently yelling at them. We are in our Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud series, and there is plenty most of us never say out loud about our own homes. This one gives you permission and a plan. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://thenester.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/thenester Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ | |||
| Listener Voicemail Day: Five Women Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud | 19 août 2026 | 00:53:47 | |
Description: There is no guest on the mic today. There is you. It is Listener Voicemail Day, one of Jen's favorite episodes to make, and it lands in the middle of our permission series, right after Jen asked you to find your one true sentence and say it out loud. You did. This episode is what came back. It comes in two halves. First, the women who called about Jen's mom, Jana King, who, as Jen puts it, a genre. Have something you need to say out loud? Head to JenHatmaker.com/Podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button, and tell us the quiet thing you finally said, or the one you are still working up to. We are listening. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! Jen’s Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker | |||
| Encore: The Conversation You Have Been Avoiding for Years: Dr. Rick Hanson | 14 août 2026 | 01:05:11 | |
Some of us will sit in years of low grade misery rather than have one uncomfortable conversation. Jen will be first to raise her hand. She has put off a confrontation so long that the frustration outlasted the thing she was frustrated about. Saying the quiet thing out loud is not only about the truths we tell ourselves. Sometimes it is the sentence we owe another person, the one we have been rehearsing in the shower for eight months and still have not said. Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author of Making Great Relationships. He reframes the whole problem in a way that took the air out of Jen’s dread: confrontation is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is a skill, which means it can be learned and practiced. In this episode, Jen and Rick explore:
If you have been carrying something for months waiting for the right moment, consider this a nudge and a toolkit. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://rickhanson.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rickhansonphd Podcast - https://rickhanson.com/being-well-podcast/ Connect with Jen! Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker | |||
| Amena Brown on Getting All the Way Free | 12 août 2026 | 00:56:11 | |
Description: Nine years is a long time between visits. When Amena Brown was last on the show in 2017, she was a spoken word poet booked solid inside white evangelicalism, doing one poem at a time between worship songs and quietly wondering how much longer she could keep walking back in. She came back to tell Jen what happened next. This conversation traces the whole arc: the green rooms where she was told her grief was divisive, the healing circle where a Black woman looked her dead in the face and said you have to get out, the three months of panic attacks that followed, and the call from Tracee Ellis Ross that showed her a bigger world was possible. It is a story about leaving before you have a new boat built. Then there is the book. Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl started as a poetry collection and became something wilder, funnier, and more free. Amena talks about Black Girl as a verb, the essay she cried writing, her list of qualifying reasons for a Black Woman Day Off, and why the audiobook has a live Black girl audience hollering back. Bring your cheekbones. They are going to be sore. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest's Links: Website - https://www.amenabrown.com/ Connect with Jen! The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| Bonus Book Club edition. Guest: Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts. | 07 août 2026 | 00:46:30 | |
Description: In this Book Club edition of For the Love, Jen sits down with novelist Annie Hartnett to talk about The Road to Tender Hearts — a book Jen calls heart-wrenching, heartwarming, weird, hilarious, and deeply satisfying all at once. They open with a very funny catch-up from Me Camp, the solo month Jen takes every July. This year she’s in a tiny lake town in Canada, cooking, meeting neighbors, reading on the deck at sunset — and buying blueberries for scones instead of checking her calendar. From there, Annie traces her path from high-school art major to novelist, and the two teachers whose offhand comments redirected both of their lives. She unpacks the real backstory behind the novel: a Providence rental house that delivered basement floods, gas leaks, black mold, vicious rats, a falling tree, and a neighborhood tragedy — all in 2020 — and the anxiety that followed her to a new town anyway. Her answer was to write down every bad thing she feared could happen to her family, then make it as funny as she possibly could. Jen and Annie also get into:
Jen closes by asking what Annie’s reading, and Annie makes a hard case for Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.anniehartnett.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/annie_hartnett Newsletter - https://www.anniehartnett.com/newletter Connect with Jen! | |||
| Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud: Jen Hatmaker solo episode | 05 août 2026 | 00:48:13 | |
Description: Jen is coming to you from the last two days of Me Camp in Canada, eyeballs on the lake, four weeks into having the volume turned down on every channel. And when the static quiets, the truer things rise up. In this me-to-you episode, Jen kicks off August's theme of honesty with the idea at the spine of the whole month: there is the thing we say, and then there is a truer sentence sitting an inch underneath it. And usually one inch under that. Jen shares what her own silence cost in the last years of her marriage, names the difference between truth-telling and truth-throwing, and offers the gentlest possible place to begin: one true sentence, one page, just between you and you. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| The Sacred Yes: Jen Hatmaker & Tyler Merritt on Choosing Your Body | 29 juil. 2026 | 01:20:43 | |
Description: Some yeses cost us something. Some of them save us. Jen sits down with her partner, actor, author, and speaker Tyler Merritt, hours after his chemotherapy infusion. Tyler is midway through treatment for colorectal cancer, his second diagnosis in six years, and the two get honest about making thoughtful decisions when your body is calling every shot. They talk about the yes Tyler gave in the middle of radiation: booking a brand-new theater tour that opens seventeen days after his last chemo, a yes he says he "arguably shouldn't have" given, made so he'd have something beautiful to walk toward. Jen turns the lens on her own year and the yes she almost took back: getting on the plane to Me Camp after a hysterectomy, a brutal spring, and a boyfriend in chemo two thousand miles away. Tyler also flips the mic and asks Jen whether she regrets writing AWAKE. Her answer is about closure, discretion, and the two longest weeks of her life waiting to hear what her daughter thought of the book. Plus: how to tell your intuition from everybody else's fear, Jen's top three Me Camp TV experiences, one Enneagram argument, and the one yes Tyler is still too scared to say out loud. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest's Links: Website - thetylermerrittproject.com Instagram - @thetylermerrittproject Twitter - @TTMProject Facebook - The Tyler Merritt Project Youtube - The Tyler Merritt Project Connect with Jen! Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - | |||
| The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again | 22 juil. 2026 | 01:12:39 | |
In our Sacred Yes series, we've explored what it means to choose courage, curiosity, and joy in the second half of life. Who better to join than the woman who quietly taught Jen those lessons from the beginning? In this deeply personal episode, Jen calls home from MeCamp to check in with her mom, Jana. Jana was originally supposed to be lakeside in Ontario with Jen this week—until Jen's dad, Larry, discovered that Jana's passport had expired back in April. Instead of catching up by the water, mother and daughter connected remotely. Thankfully, they hit record so we could all benefit from Jana's wisdom. This warm, funny, generation-spanning conversation explores the stories, fears, and freedoms we inherit. Jana reflects on growing up in the '50s and '60s, the cultural scripts that told young women they couldn't quite "make it" on their own, and how her own mother—who died when Jana was just 33—refused to let her carry fear. Jen and Jana trace how that fearlessness rolled down through the family, for better and occasionally for worse. Jana shares insights from 55 years of marriage and raising four resilient children in a home where faith was central and failure was never a dealbreaker. She also discusses her decades as an educator and the joy of discovering new passions after retirement—including the "yeses" she's given herself lately, from traveling with her best friend to opening her own bank account (so she never has to explain a $78 lunch again!). Whether you're navigating an empty nest, caring for aging parents, rebuilding after loss, or wondering what this next chapter holds, this conversation offers the gentle mentoring so many of us wish we could still receive from our own mothers. Because the greatest gift a parent can give isn't certainty—it's the confidence to believe that no matter what happens, you can always get back up and begin again. Thought-Provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jen! The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| Introducing: Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger | 20 juil. 2026 | 00:24:50 | |
There’s a lot of dopey financial advice out there. Jill Schlesinger is here to call it out, answer your questions, break down the financial news that actually matters, and help you manage your money without losing your mind. No jargon. No judgment. Just clear, actionable financial guidance about saving, investing, buying a home, managing your career, and deciding how to spend your hard-earned dollars. When it’s time to panic, Jill will tell you. When everyone else is panicking and you shouldn’t be, Jill will tell you that too. Your money. Your move. Let’s go. | |||
| [ENCORE] The Sacred Yes to What's Next: Leanne Morgan on Midlife Reinvention, Second Acts, and Dreams That Are Worth Waiting For | 18 juil. 2026 | 00:40:45 | |
Description: In this joyful and deeply encouraging conversation, Jen sits down with comedian, author, actress, and beloved storyteller Leanne Morgan to talk about dreams, disappointment, perseverance, and the surprising possibilities waiting for us in midlife. As part of our Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife series, we're bringing back one of our most-loved episodes because Leanne's story embodies everything this season is about: saying yes to possibility, trusting your own timeline, and refusing to believe that life's best chapters belong exclusively to youth. Before sold-out tours, bestselling books, Netflix specials, and national recognition, Leanne spent decades raising children, caring for family, performing in comedy clubs, and quietly holding onto a dream that seemed increasingly unlikely. Then, in her fifties, everything changed. With her trademark humor and warmth, Leanne shares what it was like to keep showing up long after many people would have given up. She reflects on motherhood, caregiving, marriage, becoming a grandmother, and the surprising freedom that comes with getting older. Most of all, she reminds us that there is no expiration date on becoming who we're meant to be. Over this delightful hour, Leanne will regale you with charming hard-won life lessons including: ● Why success arriving later can be a gift● The power of perseverance through disappointment● The balancing act of holding dreams, caregiving, and family life all with care● How humor helps us survive hard seasons● Why comparison is a thief of joy● The freedom that comes with embracing your own timeline● What it means to trust that what's meant for you won't miss you If you've ever wondered whether you've missed your chance, whether it's too late to pivot, or whether your most joyful years are already behind you, Leanne has a message for you: You are not behind. You are not too late. Your story is still unfolding. Thought-provoking Quotes: ★ "I always just knew it was going to happen... I knew there were people out there going through the same thing I'm going through. I just didn't know how to reach them." — Leanne Morgan ★ "I really try to be present and enjoy it, because what a gift after all these years. It's just like icing on the cake, really." — Leanne Morgan ★ "I hope they take away: use humor to get you through hard times. I think it's the best thing that could ever happen to anybody, to be able to laugh through the bad times." — Leanne Morgan ★ "I've got to be me. I've got to do what I've got to do. If y'all love me or if you don't, it's okay." — Leanne Morgan
Resources Mentioned in This Episode: ➢ What in the World?!: A Southern Woman's Guide to Laughing at Life's Unexpected Curveballs by Leanne Morgan - https://www.leannemorgan.com/book➢ I'm Every Woman (Netflix Special) - https://www.netflix.com/title/81688708➢ You're Cordially Invited (Amazon MGM Studios) - https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0D9WF53QX➢ | |||
| Dinner With Strangers: Jess Janz On The Friends We Haven't Met Yet | 15 juil. 2026 | 01:05:02 | |
Dinner With Strangers: Jess Janz On The Friends We Haven't Met Yet We're more connected than ever—and lonelier than we'd like to admit. What if the answer isn't finding the right people, but simply pulling up another chair? This week, Jen sits down with writer, poet, and community-builder Jess Janz to talk about her new book, The Table Where We Meet, and the social experiment that grew into the phenomenon known as Dinner With Strangers. What began as a gathering around a table with a few curious questions has now welcomed more than a thousand people into conversations that move past small talk and into the territory we all secretly long for: belonging. Jen and Jess explore why so many of us feel disconnected, what makes a question powerful enough to crack a person open, and how vulnerability creates the conditions for genuine connection. Whether you're craving deeper friendships, navigating loneliness, or wondering how to build a bigger table in your own life, this conversation is a hopeful reminder that meaningful connection is still possible—and closer than you think. In this episode, you'll hear:
Quotes:
Resources Mentioned:
Guest's Links: Connect with Jen! The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| When Life Outpaces You, Rest Isn't Optional | 08 juil. 2026 | 00:34:11 | |
Every summer, Jen heads off on her annual Me Camp, a month dedicated to stepping away from the noise to reconnect with herself. But this year, Me Camp isn't a tradition or a luxury. It's an act of survival. In the wake of major surgery, while carrying the weight of parenting adult children, navigating family crises, supporting loved ones through illness, and trying to hold together a life once built for two people, Jen found herself physically, emotionally, and mentally depleted. She almost didn't go. In this deeply personal solo episode, Jen shares what finally convinced her to leave anyway, why asking for help has become one of the hardest and holiest lessons of this season, and what she's learning about the difference between escaping your life and stepping away long enough to return to it whole. If you're the dependable one, the fixer, the person everyone calls in a crisis, this conversation is a gentle but urgent invitation. Loosen your grip. Let people show up for you. Remember that rest isn't a reward for finishing the work. Sometimes it's the very thing that makes it possible to keep going. In this episode, Jen explores:
Whether you're recovering from something visible or carrying burdens no one else can see, this episode offers permission to stop white-knuckling your way through life, receive the care that's available to you, and trust that stepping away can be the very thing that helps you step back in with renewed strength. Thought-Provoking Quotes: "I think those of us who struggle to ask for help have some brutal combination of pride (the bad kind) and a false sense of self-sufficiency, and this is somehow wrapped up in how people think of us. Do they think of me as needy? Do they think of me as irresponsible?" – Jen Hatmaker "I'm gonna treat rest like it's sacred, as opposed to the go, go, go adventure energy I normally have." – Jen Hatmaker Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! | |||
| [ENCORE] The Sacred Yes to Rest: Katherine May on Retreat, Beauty, and the Healing We Can’t Rush | 03 juil. 2026 | 00:56:01 | |
Description: Three years ago, Katherine May gave us a language for something many of us experience but rarely know how to name: wintering. Those seasons of life when everything slows down. When grief arrives. When burnout catches up with us. When illness, loss, caregiving, parenting challenges, or unexpected change force us to stop and reconsider how we're living. As part of our Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife series, we're revisiting this unforgettable conversation because Katherine's wisdom feels even more relevant today than it did when it first aired. Together, Jen and Katherine explore what it means to stop treating ourselves like machines and start honoring our humanity. They discuss the value of retreat, the necessity of rest, and why healing cannot be rushed. Katherine challenges the cultural pressure to push through difficult seasons and instead invites us to trust that growth is still happening beneath the surface—even when life appears dormant. Nestled in this conversation is a gentle reminder that joy isn't always found by adding more. Sometimes it emerges when we create space. Space for solitude. Space for beauty. Space to notice what's growing quietly within us. If you've been feeling weary, stretched thin, or ready to step off the hamster wheel for a moment, this episode offers a different path forward—one marked by grace, patience, and the courage to rest before collapse forces it upon us. In this very gentle and generous conversation, you’ll hear:
| |||
| Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife | Jen Hatmaker Solo Episode | 01 juil. 2026 | 00:50:45 | |
Description: In this deeply personal solo episode, Jen takes us to the place where this journey began: Me Camp. What started as a spontaneous trip to coastal Maine during one of the hardest seasons of her life became an annual practice of restoration, adventure, healing, and joy. Six summers later, as she arrives in a tiny lakeside town in Ontario for another month of Me Camp, she's reflecting on the small word that changed everything: yes. This month, we'll be exploring what it means to reclaim joy, embrace rest, honor our desires, and create lives that are not just productive—but deeply satisfying. It's time to discover your own Sacred Yes. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| [ENCORE] Every Bit of You Is Cause for Pride and Celebration | Revisiting Our Most Downloaded Episode with Sydney Hatmaker | 26 juin 2026 | 00:39:56 | |
Description: As part of our Freedom & Flourishing series this Pride Month, we're revisiting the most downloaded episode in the history of For the Love—a conversation that has continued to ripple through families, friendships, and faith communities for years after it first aired. Six years ago, Jen sat down with her daughter Sydney to hand her the microphone and invite her to tell her own story in her own words. What followed was a brave, tender, and deeply honest conversation about growing up gay in the church, loving Jesus while feeling afraid and alone, and finding the courage to embrace the fullness of who you are. Sydney shares what it was like to navigate faith and identity as a young person, the messages she received from churches and Christian leaders, and the real impact those messages have on LGBTQIA+ kids sitting quietly in pews every Sunday. Together, Jen and Sydney discuss what true allyship requires, why affirmation matters, and how we can create homes, communities, and faith spaces where people are cherished exactly as they are. In this episode:
Content Note: This episode includes discussion of the mental health challenges, isolation, and discrimination often experienced by LGBTQIA+ youth. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect with Jen! The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. | |||
| He Built the Machine, Then He Survived It: Tim Schraeder Rodriguez on 15 Years Behind the Scenes of Evangelical Christianity | 24 juin 2026 | 01:16:16 | |
Description: In this conversation, Tim joins Jen and Amy to talk about his new memoir, Conversion Therapy Dropout, and the full arc of his story: growing up adopted with a sense of "anxious apartness," signing the purity pledge as a kid who already knew he was gay, eight years in the loosely-held and deeply damaging world of conversion therapy, and eventually a breaking point that brought him to his knees — and then, slowly, to himself. Today, the conversation swirls around what conversion therapy actually looks like from the inside (football coaches, Mary Kay consultants, and all), the complicated grief of leaving a community that was also your career and your family, how the Pulse Orlando shooting became Tim's personal line in the sand, and what it took to find his way back to faith — this time, in church basements with other sober queer people finding a God of their own understanding. They also get into the current state of conversion therapy in America, why it's more active and accessible than most people realize, and what the rest of us — regular people who just live on their street and go to their jobs — can actually do about it. This one is hard and beautiful and hopeful. Don't miss it. Thought-provoking Quotes: ★ "I was living proof of their unspoken rules. I was useful in the shadows, but unacceptable in the light." – Tim Schraeder Rodriguez★ "It really kind of disintegrates you in body, mind and spirit because you're acting and being something and someone that you're not." – Tim Schraeder Rodriguez★ "Freedom wasn't finally becoming who they said I was supposed to be, but finally embracing who I believe God created me to be." – Tim Schraeder Rodriguez★ "More transformation was happening in church basements than was ever happening upstairs." – Tim Schraeder Rodriguez★ "I finally feel like I'm living from a place of honesty and truth. I sense and feel God's presence with me today now more as an openly gay man than I ever did in the years I was in conversion therapy." – Tim Schraeder Rodriguez
Resources Mentioned in This Episode: ➢ Dissenting Harmony - Amy’s Rage Choir - https://dissentingharmony.betterworld.org/➢ Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith and Belonging by Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez - https://amzn.to/48smCCv➢ Conversion Therapy Dropout audiobook - https://amzn.to/3OZULmD➢ Exodus International - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_International➢ The Trevor Project — thetrevorproject.org➢ ... | |||
| Juneteenth, Justice & the Next America: Lisa Sharon Harper | For The Love | 17 juin 2026 | 01:14:23 | |
Description: Fresh from a powerful march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, Lisa reflects on what it means to stand in the footsteps of civil rights heroes while confronting the realities of the present moment. Drawing from her own family’s legacy of resistance, she shares why her hope no longer rests in institutions, laws, or political systems, but in ordinary people willing to bend the arc of history toward justice. The conversation moves from the unfinished work of voting rights to the spiritual courage required for this cultural moment. As Lisa puts it, perhaps our task is not simply to recover what has been lost, but to become “the architects of the next America.” Whether you’re marking Juneteenth, wrestling with questions about democracy and belonging, or searching for hope in uncertain times, this conversation is a timely reminder that freedom has always depended on people willing to imagine—and build—something better. Thought-provoking Quotes: ★ “The Supreme Court has effectively placed us back into the time of Plessy vs Ferguson, which said separate and equal is okay, the time of even Dred Scott, which says a black man has no rights that a white man need abide by. That’s what they’re gunning for.” ★ In the past, my hope was in the law. In the past, my hope was in the dream of America. My hope was in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights. My hope was in the church. But what I’m learning is that the arc of the moral universe has bent toward justice because people have bent it.” ★ “What can they do to us? What can they do? They can put us in jail. God is there. They can deport us. God will be there. They can kill us. And God will be there. So what can they do? They can't do anything to us. Not really.”
Resources Mentioned in This Episode: ➢ (The Gospel of Shalom) Unequally Saved: The Church’s Role in Racism with Lisa Sharon Harper - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-08/unequally-saved-the-churchs-role-in-racism-with-lisa-sharon-harper/ ➢ Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All by Lisa Sharon Harper - https://amzn.to/43LTXW1 ➢ “All Roads Lead To The South” Rally - https://blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction/ ➢ A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer - https://amzn.to/4dK3RNS | |||
| [ENCORE] Beyond the Hug: How Sara Cunningham Built a Movement of Radical Welcome | 12 juin 2026 | 00:47:57 | |
Description:It's Pride Month, and we couldn't think of a better time to bring back one of our most beloved episodes. Sara Cunningham — founder of Free Mom Hugs — first joined Jen back in 2018, when she was a Christian mom from Oklahoma City who had just started showing up at Pride parades with a handmade sign and a button. A lot has happened since then. What began as one mom extending her arms to strangers has grown into a global movement. Free Mom Hugs now trains advocates, lobbies legislatures, and shows up year after year for LGBTQIA+ people whose own families walked away. Sara hasn't just built an organization — she's built a lifeline. In this conversation, Sara and Jen revisit the journey that started it all: how Sara moved from the church to the Pride parade without losing her faith, what it meant for her son Parker to come out into a family still finding its footing, and how the stories of people who had lost everything — their families, their churches, their sense of belonging — fell into her arms and changed the course of her life. They also talk about what it takes to turn personal pain into structural change, and why showing up — physically, politically, and relationally — for the LGBTQIA+ community matters more than ever right now. This one is worth every minute. Enjoy this encore conversation with our beloved friend, Sara Cunningham! Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Testify to Love: Avalon's Untold Story | For the Love | 10 juin 2026 | 01:12:34 | |
Description:If you grew up on Christian music in the '90s, there's a good chance Testify to Love wasn't just a hit song—it was the soundtrack to a season of your life. Three decades after Avalon first released the iconic anthem, Jen sits down with original Avalon member Michael Passons, longtime Avalon vocalist Melissa Greene, and country music star Ty Herndon to talk about the remarkable re-release of a song that has found new meaning for a new generation. But this isn't simply a conversation about music. It's the untold story behind one of CCM's most beloved songs. Michael shares the painful reality of losing his place in Avalon after coming out as gay. Melissa reflects on the faith journey that transformed her understanding of inclusion and belonging. Ty opens up about his own path through addiction, recovery, faith, and finally living fully and truthfully as himself. Together, they revisit the song that connected millions of listeners and explore why its message of love, acceptance, and human dignity feels more relevant now than ever. Filled with laughter, tears, hard-earned wisdom, and more than a few moments that will leave you reaching for the tissues, this conversation is a beautiful testament to friendship, healing, and the courage it takes to live loud. Whether Testify to Love has been on your playlist for thirty years or you're hearing its story for the first time, this episode is a powerful reminder that love's truest testimony is not who it excludes—but who it embraces. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| May 2026: James McBride’s Deacon King Kong | 05 juin 2026 | 00:56:25 | |
We were supposed to talk about Deacon King Kong. We did not.
When Jen sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist James McBride to discuss the Jen Hatmaker Book Club's May selection, the conversation took a hard left turn into something far richer — a wide-ranging tour through one of the most remarkable lives in American letters.
James opens up about a scrappy and troubled adolescence in Brooklyn, getting straightened out in the heat of the Louisville, Kentucky summers, and the music that quite literally saved him. He reminisces about touring Europe as a young musician and playing saxophone alongside Stevie Ray Vaughan at Antone's in Austin, traveling with Michael Jackson on the Victory Tour as a young journalist, surviving the Boston Globe's newsroom in the 1980s, writing songs for Anita Baker and Grover Washington, working with Quincy Jones, and getting dressed down by Harry Belafonte in a writers' room. Along the way, he reflects on race, art, faith, forgiveness, music, storytelling, old cars, and why the best writers are simply the people paying closest attention. He also shares what gives him hope about America right now — and it might surprise you.
Of course, we touch on Deacon King Kong—its unforgettable characters, humor, and heart—but this conversation became something even bigger: a portrait of the life experiences that shaped the storyteller behind the book.
Come for the book club discussion. Stay for one of the most fascinating conversations Jen has had in a long time.
Oh, and Deacon King Kong is a masterpiece. You should absolutely read it.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.jamesmcbride.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jamesmcbrideauthor/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JamesMcBrideAuthor/
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. ★ “I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer. We were just concerned about eating.” – James McBride★ “Years and years of playing $50, $75, $100 gigs prepares you for a life of good struggle.” – James McBride★ “People are trying to do their best. Just because you don’t agree with them, it doesn’t mean they’re not trying to do their best.” – James McBride★ “We have work to do and I'm proud of those of us who are doing it. And for those of us who are not, maybe their children will come to it or maybe they won't. The struggle is a beautiful thing.” – James McBride➢ Miracle at St. Anna (Spike Lee movie) - https://www.jamesmcbride.com/miracle-at-st-anna/➢ The Good Lord Bird: A Novel by James McBride - https://amzn.to/4eJBPDc➢ The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride - https://amzn.to/4d74l0a➢ Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride - https://amzn.to/4uLm4QP➢ | |||
| Big Baby and New Beginnings: Kevin James Thornton on Sin Clowns, Standups, and Second Acts | 03 juin 2026 | 01:01:56 | |
Description:He's back — and this time he brought a memoir. Comedian Kevin James Thornton returns to For the Love, and if you thought you knew Kevin from his hilarious auto-tuned TikToks and wired-headphone microphone bits, this conversation will lovingly surprise you. Kevin's debut memoir, Big Baby: On Endings, Beginnings, and an Interdimensional Cat, traces his journey from performing as a literal sin clown on a youth group mission trip in 1990s New York City, to grinding it out on the stand-up circuit in LA, to touring one-man shows across the US, Canada, and eventually the world — Helsinki, Stockholm, Paris — all the way to present-day Cincinnati, where he's navigating a major life upheaval with nothing but his 13-pound black cat Comet and an extraordinary amount of hard-won self-awareness. In this conversation, Kevin opens up about what it actually took to write a book — including the two-week-long Airbnb retreat where he mostly just slept and watched TV because his attention span had been completely obliterated — and what surprised him most about recording the audiobook (hint: he cried, more than once, and they left it in). He talks about the strange, freeing moment he realized he no longer needed to prove himself to anyone, and how that shift was the very thing that made his work finally land. And he reflects on the beautiful, sometimes maddening truth that life doesn't end so much as it just keeps beginning again. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Encore: Whales, Boats, and Vulnerability w/ Tyler Merritt | 30 mai 2026 | 00:49:55 | |
Recorded live from the Oregon coast on the final day of MeCamp, this special two-part conversation between Jen and her partner Tyler Merritt is the perfect blend of hilarity, heart, and honesty. In Part 1, Jen and Tyler share stories from their MeCamp adventures — including a whale-watching excursion that got a little too close for comfort, and a near-death boat ride they’ll never forget. They also reflect on the power of personal storytelling, how vulnerability has shown up in their lives and work, and why telling the truth (even when it’s awkward) can be both healing and hilarious. Discussing the impact of Tyler's viral video "Before You Call the Cops" to Jen's reflections on her upcoming book "Awake," this conversation reveals the transformative potential of embracing vulnerability. Tune in to discover how opening up about our most personal stories can not only heal us but also inspire others to see themselves in our narratives.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Bonus: Introducing Family Lore | 29 mai 2026 | 00:03:49 | |
Every family has its legends, the stories told and retold until they become gospel. Family Lore is a new weekly podcast that revisits those tales with curiosity, digging into the history behind each one to uncover what's true, what's myth, and what it all means. Enjoy this preview, then catch full episodes wherever you listen: https://link.pscrb.fm/f0281/FLFD | |||
| When the Floor Shifts: Belle Burden on Truth As Foundation | 27 mai 2026 | 00:56:44 | |
Description:There are some books you read with your whole body. Strangers by Belle Burden is one of those books. Belle was married for twenty-one years. Three kids. A life that, from the outside, looked like everything you're supposed to want. Then on the seventh day of the pandemic lockdown, a stranger left her a voicemail — and by the next morning, the man she thought she knew was gone. Belle is a former Davis Polk attorney, a descendant of John Jay, and the granddaughter of legendary socialite Babe Paley. She was raised in a world where women simply did not speak publicly about their husbands' transgressions. So she broke the chain — first in a viral New York Times Modern Love essay, then in her New York Times bestselling memoir. And now she's here with Jen. This conversation is everything. The night it all fell apart — the dinner, the mopped floor, the voicemail, the packed bag by morning. The myths we hand women about divorce and who gets to carry the shame. The money piece that nobody wants to talk about but everybody needs to hear. And the strange, hard-won truth that the most devastating thing that ever happened to you might also be the thing that finally gives you back to yourself. Jen and Belle are in an accidental sisterhood — two women who wrote the book about the thing that broke them, because it turns out a million other women are walking around carrying the same broken thing in silence. This one is for every woman who has ever stood in a kitchen in her pajama pants and felt the floor shift beneath her feet. If you can't yet imagine what's waiting for you on the other side of the hardest thing, let Belle and Jen show you. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.belleburden.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/belleburden/
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. ★ “It's really connected me to humanity to hear people's very private stories, their very private feelings, and that they feel safe sharing them with me because I think I was so raw and open and honest about my own.”-- Belle Burden★ “Writing about pain is really something that we really don’t see enough of.” -- Belle Burden★ “It took me years to let go of the matronly woman in the pajama pants who he wasn’t attracted to anymore and to replace her image in my mind with something else.” -- Belle Burden★ “People really want to find the red flags because they want to know that this ending was predictable. I think that makes people feel safer because this is a scary story. It feels totally impossible and then also very possible. I think people really want those red flags.” -- Belle Burden★ “I never could have thought that that horrible thing could happen to me and I could end up in a place where I'm happier, where my life is more interesting, that I feel so much more myself and it's very hard to envision that when you're in it.”-- Belle Burden★ “I think when things kind of fall apart, you just are forced to become more relaxed because nothing is going as you intended it to go.” -- Belle Burden➢ | |||
| Somewhere Between the Mountains and the Spreadsheets — You Are Not As Alone As You Think You Are: A Listener Voicemail Episode | 20 mai 2026 | 00:50:34 | |
Description:Some episodes we plan. This one you created. This week, Jen and Amy are stepping back and letting the people they do this whole thing for take center stage. It's Listener Voicemail Day — and honestly? It might be our favorite kind of episode. Because nothing reminds us why this community exists quite like hearing your actual voices. So we're bringing your calls to you — from all kinds of moments and all kinds of women. Jessica calls in to reflect on our Awake Collective episode and where she is at in her own healing process, and feeling the loneliness that can settle in when you're deep in the work. Jen and Amy reflect on so much of the wisdom of our incredible Awake Collective panel – Kate Bowler, Nedra Tawwab, Emily Nagoski, and Kobe Cambell, whose words echo here: healing isn't supposed to feel good — it's supposed to feel like disruption. Sara brings it home with a call about raising young girls. Between them, Jen and Amy are parenting nine young adults, so they have thoughts. Amanda found Awake on vacation and came home having discovered something she didn't know she was missing — an invisible community of women who just get it. Deborah calls in from Canada with a story that will stop you in your tracks. A devastating and beautiful parallel between her journey losing her husband to terminal brain cancer and Jen's own story — and the breathtaking grace of how, by God's grace, we do recover. Tania reflects on the Wilderness and Wonder series and a recent trip to the mountains that cracked something open in her — the awe, the connection, the reminder that this podcast is its own kind of sacred space. And Diavianne closes things out talking budgets and spreadsheets, which sounds ordinary until you realize it's actually about power — the freedom and confidence that come from truly owning your financial life. Jen and Amy respond to each one with the honesty and tenderness that only comes from doing this long enough to know: you are never as alone as you think you are. This is the connective tissue. This is why we show up every week. Have something you need to say out loud? Head to JenHatmaker.com/Podcast, find the Send Voicemail button, and leave us your story. We're listening. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Dr. Thema Bryant: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture the People Who Truly See You (By Starting with Yourself) | 15 mai 2026 | 00:48:11 | |
Description:Some conversations are so good, they deserve a second life. As we've been building out our Chosen Family series — exploring what it actually takes to find, keep, and nurture the people who truly see you — we kept coming back to this tender conversation because it was resonant then but it hits differently now. Dr. Thema Bryant is a psychologist, author, professor, ordained minister, and former president of the American Psychological Association. Her books Matters of the Heart and Homecoming have resonated deeply with women navigating the beautiful, complicated work of belonging — and her clarity on what it means to truly come home to yourself is exactly the foundation this series needed. In this conversation, Jen and Amy dig into:
Because here's what we keep coming back to: you cannot truly choose people if you haven't first chosen yourself. This conversation is the starting place. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Matters of the Heart: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love by Dr. Thema Bryant - https://amzn.to/40XMql6 Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self by Dr. Thema Bryant - https://amzn.to/4hVYQ4c The Homecoming Podcast with Dr. Thema Bryant - https://soundcloud.com/dr-thema-bryant-davis Guest’s Links: Thema’s website - https://drthema.com/ Thema’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dr.thema/ Thema’s Twitter - https://x.com/drthema | |||
| Amy Grant: The Long Road Back to Yourself (The Me That Remains) | 13 mai 2026 | 00:59:41 | |
Description:There are artists whose music marks a moment—and then there are the ones whose songs stay with us for a lifetime. This week, Jen sits down with beloved returning guest Amy Grant to talk about her long-awaited new album, a project shaped by time, reflection, and a life that’s been fully lived. After a significant health crisis and a slow, intentional return to music, Amy is creating from a place that feels more open, more grounded, and more honest than ever. Together, they talk about what it means to come back to yourself after everything changes, how creativity evolves over decades, and why the stories we tell later in life often carry a different kind of weight. Amy shares how her songwriting has shifted, the role of memory and perspective in this new work, and what it looks like to keep making meaningful art in a season that feels both quieter and more expansive. At the heart of both this album and this conversation is Amy’s quiet but steady intention to be a witness—to tell the truth about a life as it’s being lived, and to honor the people who have shown up along the way. From deeply personal songs shaped by love and loss to collaborations with her husband, Vince Gill, and her daughters, this record reflects not just where Amy is now, but who has helped her get here. This conversation is thoughtful, unhurried, and full of the kind of wisdom that only comes from living a long time and staying curious along the way. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.amygrant.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amygrantofficial/ Twitter - https://x.com/amygrant Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/amygrant/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZSki0usQ84d5c ... | |||
| April 2026: Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of our Spectacular Bodies | 08 mai 2026 | 00:48:06 | |
Description:This month in the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, we’re reading a novel that doesn’t just tell a story—it inhabits one.
Jen sits down with author Maddie Mortimer to talk about Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, a breathtaking and formally inventive debut that explores what it means to live inside a body that is changing, remembering, and, ultimately, letting go. At the center is Lia, a woman living with terminal cancer—but this story unfolds as a chorus, with voices that include her family, her own inner world, and even the cancer itself.
Together, Jen and Maddie explore the deeply personal roots of the novel, including Maddie’s own experience of losing her mother, and how that grief shaped the book’s emotional precision. They talk about why she chose to move beyond a traditional narrative and instead capture the feeling of illness—the disorientation, the fractured sense of time, and the way memory lives not just in the mind, but in the body.
They also tap into the book’s striking structure—the visual and sensory journey it creates for readers—and how that imaginative form is now being adapted for the stage, bringing the story full circle to Maddie’s theatrical roots.
In this conversation, we consider what it means to listen to the body as a narrator, how love shows up in the smallest moments, and why stories like this invite us to pay closer attention to the life we are living right now.
This one is tender, surprising, and quietly unforgettable.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Guest’s Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/maddiemortimer/ Twitter - https://x.com/MaddieMortimer
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. ★ “For me, the writing process was much more about thinking of cancer and the way that it moves through language and how language can metastasize on the page and the rhythm of this incredibly hyperactive virus, this illness kind of consuming a body, the way that a dark thought could consume a mind.” – Maddie Mortimer★ “I'm quite a restless reader and I think I get bored quite quickly. What I look for in books is that immediacy of how exciting a sentence is or how funny or moving or strange it is.” – Maddie Mortimer ★ “So much of the process of putting words on a page and writing fiction, specifically, is that you surrender yourself. I think it's less about me feeling like I know anything or have anything to say, but more about removing myself so that you feel like you're listening to the world and to the people that you've met, and the impressions that you, your body, whatever, have absorbed.” – Maddie Mortimer★ “The realm of the playground is the page. It’s where anything goes.” – Maddie Mortimer★ “There's something really special about a group of people in a room that are willing to give their time to writers reading their words. It’s got that kind of religious, congregational quality to it.” – Maddie Mortimer➢ Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer - https://amzn.to/3NRIPCC➢ | |||
| Jen Hamilton on Birth Vibes: Reclaiming Agency in One of Life’s Most Vulnerable Moments | 06 mai 2026 | 01:00:42 | |
Description:If you’ve ever felt the quiet fear of placing your body—and your baby—into a healthcare system you don’t fully understand, this conversation is for you. Today, Jen and Amy sit down with labor and delivery nurse, educator, and internet big sister Jen Hamilton to talk about her brand-new “book baby,” Birth Vibes. With more than a decade at the bedside and millions who trust her honest, compassionate voice, Jen has become a steady guide in one of life’s most vulnerable moments. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the delivery room—the expectations, fears, and surprises—and talk about what it actually means to feel prepared. Not in a rigid, checklist kind of way, but in a deeply personal, values-driven way. Because as Jen reminds us, birth isn’t something you control—it’s something you move through. Today, we talk about:
Whether you’re expecting, supporting someone who is, or simply curious about the intersection of care, advocacy, and the body’s wisdom, this conversation will leave you feeling steadier, braver, and less alone. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just about birth. It’s about learning to trust yourself in the middle of something you can’t fully control—and finding your voice anyway. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| Molly Sims on Midlife Confidence (That Doesn’t Come From Perfection) | 29 avr. 2026 | 01:03:13 | |
Description:This week, Jen and Amy sit down with actress, model, entrepreneur, and Lipstick on the Rim host Molly Sims for a conversation that starts light and breezy—backstage at a Hello Sunshine Shine Away event—and quickly moves into something deeper: what it’s like to live in a body that’s been watched, evaluated, and monetized for decades… and how your relationship to that body inevitably changes over time. Molly has spent most of her life being seen. But what she shares here is what it’s taken to actually see herself. Today, the discussion centers around the quiet (and sometimes jarring) shift into midlife. Molly opens up about figuring it out in real time, what surprised her most about this chapter, and the unexpected places where things have gotten easier. There’s also an honest look at what it means to keep showing up in an industry with very loud opinions about women’s bodies—and how Molly now navigates beauty, skincare, procedures, and wellness without losing herself in the process. Where’s the line between empowerment and pressure? And who gets to decide? But this conversation doesn’t stay theoretical. It lands in real life—in marriage, in motherhood, in the everyday negotiations of confidence and insecurity, and in the intentional ways Molly is trying to give her daughter a different starting point than the one she was handed. Along the way, the discussion turns to influence, identity, and the kinds of conversations Molly is creating now that she wasn’t having earlier in her career. And in one of the most tender moments of the episode, she reflects on what she would say to her younger self—not to fix her, but just to sit beside her with a little more perspective. This one feels like sitting across from someone who’s done a lot of living—and is finally comfortable telling the truth about it. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| We Will Not Be Aging Quietly: Claiming Your Most Powerful Season with Katie Fogarty | 22 avr. 2026 | 00:48:59 | |
We Will Not Be Aging Quietly: Claiming Your Most Powerful Season with Katie Fogarty Description: What if the years everyone warned you about turned out to be the ones you'd been waiting for? Today, Jen and Amy sit down with Katie Fogarty—a former journalist, career coach, and the voice behind one of the most vibrant midlife podcasts in the country, called A Certain Age—for an honest, energizing hour about what it really means to thrive in this season. Katie launched A Certain Age thirty-five days before her 51st birthday with one mission: blow up the narrative that women become less relevant as they get older. Five years and 230-plus episodes later, she's interviewed hundreds of midlife women—and she has thoughts. Big ones. They dig into the myths about midlife that refuse to die, why Katie calls this season an "accelerant" rather than an obstacle, what it looks like when women stop waiting for permission and start claiming their lives—and what she's hearing that gives her real hope for the women coming behind us. If you've ever felt like midlife was quietly trying to make you smaller—this episode is your push back. Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
| |||
| [ENCORE] Your Body Deserves Pleasure Too: A Conversation with Vanessa Marin | 17 avr. 2026 | 00:56:27 | |
Description:If any conversation belongs squarely in our “The Body Knows: Midlife In Our Skin” series, it’s this one, and for one simple reason — pleasure is a body conversation. Desire is a body conversation. And if midlife has shifted how you feel in your own skin, this episode meets you exactly there. Vanessa Marin is a licensed psychotherapist, sex educator, and bestselling author of Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life, co-written with her husband Xander. With over two decades of experience helping people dismantle shame and build genuinely intimate relationships, Vanessa brings the kind of candid, warm, and disarmingly funny voice this conversation has always needed. Whether you're partnered or solo, whether your sex life feels complicated or just quietly neglected, whether you're carrying shame you never asked for — this one is for you. Vanessa is here to help us say yes to communication, to connection, and maybe most of all, to pleasure. Here's what we're getting into:
Thought-provoking Quotes:
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Guest’s Links: Website - https://vmtherapy.com/about | |||