For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Kate Bowler, historian and theologian at Duke and bestselling writer who studies faith, suffering, and joy. She names the persistent ache of grief, guilt, and longing. She rejects pep‑talk joy and explores how joy sneaks in through absurd moments, embodied practices, roadside detours, and an unforgettable snake‑bite ER story. She offers small, brave practices to live with ache and still sing your song.

Jenny Lawson, bestselling author and professional weirdo known as The Bloggess, shares tiny, practical tools for messy brains. Short, funny takes on living with “tiny erratic squirrels,” imposter syndrome, and finding doable routines. Conversations about weird walks, body doubling, writing Zooms, and the radical courage of simply staying.

Description:For years, women in their late 30s and 40s have walked into doctors’ offices saying the same thing: “I don’t feel like myself.” They’re exhausted but can’t sleep. Gaining weight but eating less. Anxious, foggy, irritable, disconnected. And too often, they’re told it’s stress. Aging. Depression. Just part of being a woman. But what if it’s something else? This week, Jen and Amy sit down with board-certified OB-GYN and menopause expert Dr. Mary Claire Haver to talk about what’s really happening in perimenopause — the hormonal transition that can begin years before your final period and affect nearly every system in your body. Drawing from her new book The New Perimenopause, Dr. Haver explains: Why the brain may be the first organ to notice hormone shifts Why antidepressants are often prescribed before hormones are even discussed The dangerous legacy of outdated research and underfunded women’s health How bone density, cholesterol, muscle mass, mood, libido, and cognition are all connected And why midlife is not a decline — but a powerful window of opportunity This is not just a conversation about hot flashes. It’s about the “Zone of Chaos.” It’s about medical gaslighting. It’s about reclaiming your body as your ally, not your enemy. If you’ve ever whispered, “What is wrong with me?” or spent your sleepless nights up Googling dramatic questions like “is my brain broken?” — this episode is for you. You’re not broken. You’re not weak. And you are definitely not alone. Thought-provoking Quotes: “We got some bad f*cking advice…Power through! You built this life. You asked for this. Oh, and also be thin, and make yourself smaller, and don't take up space, and make sure you put everyone in your family before your needs. That's the only way you're gonna be rewarded, elevated, celebrated is on this altar of self-sacrifice. You know what that did for my mother and my grandmother? Dementia and sarcopenia. I’m saying we’re going to take a different path.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver  “Men build rockets. Women build healthcare systems.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver  “One of the good things about menopause is that women lose their give-a-shit filter.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver “I just want menopause to be taken half as seriously as erectile dysfunction.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The New Perimenopause: An Evidence-Based Guide to Surviving the Zone of Chaos and Feeling Like Yourself Again by Dr. Mary Claire Haver – https://www.amazon.com/New-Perimenopause-Evidence-Based-Surviving-Yourself/dp/0593736613/ The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts by Dr. Mary Claire Haver - https://amzn.to/4aUtrx3 The Blue Lagoon film (1980) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080453/ Menopause.org The International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) - https://www.isswsh.org/ The Pause Life - https://thepauselife.com/ MidiHealth - https://www.joinmidi.com/ Guest’s Links: Website - https://thepauselife.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drmaryclaire Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/drmaryclaire Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@drmaryclaire TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@drmaryclaire Substack - https://drmaryclairehaver.substack.com/ Podcast - https://thepauselife.com/blogs/the-unpaused-podcast 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.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Description:What do we do when the world feels like too much? When the headlines won’t let up, when grief and uncertainty sit heavy in our bodies, when we’re carrying more than we ever thought we could—how do we keep going without numbing out or falling apart? This week, Jen sits down with beloved writer and friend Shannan Martin to talk about her new book Counterweights, a tender, practical guide for living with hope in a heavy world. At the center of Shannan’s work is a deceptively simple idea: when life gets heavy, we don’t eliminate the weight—we learn to carry something equally weighty in the other hand. Not balance. Not denial. But both/and. Together, Jen and Shannan explore what it means to hold grief and joy at the same time, to resist despair without turning away from reality, and to find steady ground in the middle of it all. They talk about community as survival, faith that evolves and expands, and the small, ordinary moments that become lifelines when everything feels overwhelming. This conversation is a fitting close to our Wilderness & Wonder exploration—because if the wilderness strips us down to what’s real, Shannan helps us ask: what will hold us up now? If you’ve been feeling stretched thin, worn down, or just plain tired of carrying it all alone, this episode is for you. Thought-provoking Quotes: “Now, what are the things that are keeping me going? For me, it’s clawing for those little tiny moments where we can. I need to see myself take care of myself.” – Shannan Martin “We have to carry a lot of really heavy things in one hand. We don't choose these things. We would never have asked for them. And we can't just put them down. We don't have control over them. We can't just set them aside. So how do we carry these heavy things? We fill the other hand with heavy goodness.” – Shannan Martin “The world feels catastrophic right now. My bowl of curry for lunch cannot cancel that out. There's no amount of beautiful sunsets that can cancel out a diagnosis that nobody wants or these heavy, heavy things that we are tasked with carrying because balance is impossible.” – Shannan Martin “When wholeness is our goal, beauty is our emergency.” – Shannan Martin “Anytime I can disrupt the algorithm, I feel it in my body.” – Shannan Martin “The abundant life is not getting all the things we ever wanted. The abundant life is you get this and this and the task now is to figure out how to carry it.” – Shannan Martin Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Counterweights: An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World by Shannan Martin - https://amzn.to/4sRdTRZ David Chang - https://www.instagram.com/davidchang/ 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker Rainer Maria Rilke - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke Sara Miles - https://sara-miles.squarespace.com/bio Shannan Martin Book Tour - https://www.shannanmartin.com/counterweights-events Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.shannanmartin.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shannanwrites/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/shannan.garbermartin Substack - https://www.shannanmartin.com/newsletter 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.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lively intro to Suzy Welch and her new Becoming You series. They tease practical, honest guidance for big life questions like purpose and career choices. The conversation highlights Suzy’s background as a decision-making expert and teacher. Expect candid, funny, and uplifting encouragement to take charge of your life.

Description:Sometimes a conversation lands so gently—and so powerfully—that it deserves another moment in the light. In this encore episode, Jen revisits her conversation with poet, writer, and visual artist David Gate, whose work explores themes of care, community, and spiritual resilience. Jen first discovered David the way so many of us discover the words that change us: late at night on Instagram, stumbling across a poem that made her stop mid-scroll and immediately send it to six friends. That was the beginning of a quiet fandom that eventually turned into this conversation—one that felt less like an interview and more like sitting in the presence of someone who has learned how to notice beauty in hard places. David’s work—including his collection A Rebellion of Care—is rooted in the radical idea that tenderness, attention, and compassion are not small acts. They are resistance. They are survival. They are a way through the wilderness. Together, Jen and David explore the ways language can become a lifeline during difficult seasons. They talk about the courage of softness in a harsh world, the sacred practice of paying attention, and how poetry can give us words for things we thought we had to carry alone. This conversation sits right at the intersection: the wilderness of grief, uncertainty, and fatigue—and the wonder that still insists on growing in the cracks. Thought-provoking Quotes: “I did not want to have an email job and I did not want to be in meetings that could have been emails. I did not want to be on Slack. I just didn't want that to be what I was spending my time doing. I loved caring for people, and I loved creating and writing, and I got to do that within the church world.” – David Gate “It’s a constant battle to speak the truth. Even things we all know It can be difficult to say, if it's not something that is normally said, and it's not something that is normally expressed, so you have to fight for that and you have to fight for your experience of the truth. You have to fight for your story. You have to fight for all of that.” – David Gate “I think it's very, very difficult for men to reach for emotional honesty because everything tells you that you're failing if you do that. But it's the most important work right now. And so much of what men are actually looking for in this world, intimacy, a sense of place, a sense of belonging, companionship, adventure, excitement, is on the other side of reaching for that emotional honesty.” – David Gate Resources Mentioned in This Episode: A Rebellion of Care: Poems and Essays by David Gate - https://amzn.to/4jjf87X Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand by Jeff Chu - https://amzn.to/3GnS21w Cultivating Belonging and Evolving Faith with Jeff Chu - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-64/cultivating-belonging-and-evolving-faith-with-jeff-chu/ Sarah Bessey - https://www.sarahbessey.com/ Armando Veve, Illustrator - https://www.instagram.com/armandoveve/ Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/3YHKgpw Sinners film (2025) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31193180/ Malaprop's Bookstore, Asheville - https://www.malaprops.com/ Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.davidgatepoet.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/davidgatepoet/ Substack - https://substack.com/@davidgatepoet 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.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anne Lamott, beloved author and writing teacher known for candid, humorous prose, joins to talk craft and collaboration. She discusses co-writing Good Writing with her husband, the dance between restraint and exuberance, the work of trimming clutter, and how voice, clarity, and daily practice shape sentences and life.

Mandy Grass, board-certified behavior analyst and founder of The Family Behaviorist, translates behavior science into practical tools for busy families. She explains why behavior is communication, how parents’ regulation shapes kids, and simple shifts to cool chaotic nights. Conversations include real blended-family realities, consistency over quick fixes, and using function to solve problems without shame.

Description:What if you were handed a single piece of information that could change everything you think you know about your life? For this Jen Hatmaker Book Club episode, Jen sits down with novelist Nikki Erlick, author of the wildly imaginative and deeply human novel The Measure—a story that asks one unsettling question: What would you do if you knew exactly how long you had to live? In The Measure, every adult in the world receives a small wooden box containing a string that reveals the length of their life. What follows isn’t chaos for chaos’ sake, but something far more intimate: marriages tested, dreams deferred or pursued, fears amplified, and love redefined. It’s a novel about mortality, yes—but even more so about meaning, choice, and how we show up for one another when certainty is stripped away. Jen and Nikki talk about the origin of this unforgettable premise, the emotional weight of writing about death in order to illuminate life, and why the book resonates so deeply with readers navigating grief, anxiety, hope, and big unanswered questions. They explore what The Measure reveals about how we value time, how fear can quietly shape our decisions, and what it might look like to live more honestly—even without guarantees. Whether you’ve already read along with the book club or are just encountering this story for the first time, this conversation invites you to reflect on your own “measure”—and to consider how love, courage, and presence might matter more than the number of days themselves. This episode is tender, thought-provoking, and quietly life-altering. Come for the story. Stay for the questions it leaves you asking long after the last page. Thought-provoking Quotes: “I was preoccupied with these big questions in life, the things that don't have easy answers or any answers at all. Why do people have different fates? Why do bad things happen to good people? How much power do we actually have over our lives? That inspired me.” – Nikki Erlick “My process felt like people knocking on the door to my brain at all times, being like, what about me? What about me? I would be an interesting story too. I had to answer the first couple of knocks and bring these new characters in. Once I hit eight or 10, I felt like readers can't handle any more than this.” – Nikki Erlick “I wanted to pull on everything, for every community that has been marginalized to make this experience feel real for the people in this book.” – Nikki Erlick “The one thing that doesn't go out of style is hope.”– Nikki Erlick Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The Measure: A Novel by Nikki Erlick - https://amzn.to/3OmiJaK The Poppy Fields: A Novel by Nikki Erlick - https://amzn.to/49ZxdGf Allen Bradley, author - https://alanbradleyauthor.com/ Sandwich: A Novel by Catherine Newman - https://amzn.to/4a0bOwB Catherine Newman on the For the Love podcast - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-64/august-2025-catherine-newmans-sandwich/ Wreck by Catherine Newman - https://amzn.to/4bvUy3o This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman - https://amzn.to/4qnGIE3 Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.nikkierlick.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nikkierlick/ 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.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jay Stringer, a licensed therapist and author who studies desire, attachment, and healing, joins to rethink desire as a guide rather than a flaw. He reframes desire beyond sex, links it to early attachment and unmet needs, and urges curiosity instead of shame. The conversation explores how healed desire looks, practical first steps, and how longing can point toward growth, belonging, and moral courage.