Jen Hatmaker: How to embrace your truth, love who you are, realize your power & set yourself free, finally!

At 2.30 a.m.

on July 11th, 2020, out of a dead sleep, I hear five whispered words not meant for me.

I just can't quit you.

My husband of 26 years is voice texting his girlfriend next to me in our bed.

It is the end of my life as I know it.

I know this is the first time you're talking about.

I just haven't talked about it yet.

So

I am unpracticed.

We start in the ER.

It was devastating.

I was married for 26 years and I was married to a pastor and

together we had sort of built this whole life.

This will remain one of the most shocking things that has ever happened to me.

What happened in that moment?

You wake up, you hear that.

It was chaos.

I

decided to figure out what the hell was going on.

So I spent a couple of hours on his laptop while he's passed out in the middle of the night.

And it was becoming immediately clear: oh,

he has a whole different life.

And

I am a fool.

And it was so stunning and shocking and disoriented.

It's, I almost felt disassociated.

In those hours, I couldn't even cry.

I couldn't even, I was just in full shock, thinking, this cannot be true.

I said, I need the full truth, all of it.

I don't, don't,

we're not going to waste one second in denial.

I need the full truth.

And he said,

I'm not ready.

And I said, okay, pack your shit and get out.

And that was the last night he ever spent the night at the house.

We had five kids.

Four of them were upstairs sleeping that night.

The whole thing burned to the ground in one fell swoop.

We had been in ministry our whole adult lives.

He was the lead pastor.

I also preached a lot.

We had

literally and figuratively put ourselves on a stage.

And

not just a stage but a stage of leadership of spiritual leadership everybody knows our kids they knew our adoption story to topple from that mountain

left

left us all so injured

Today's episode's your permission slip to embrace your own truth love who you are realize the power inside of you, and set yourself free finally with our incredible guest and friend, Jen Hatmaker.

Today is a wake-up call that just might change the way you think of living your best life.

So let's get really real for a moment.

Right now, are you living your life fully awake?

Or would you say you're more disassociated, overly busy, or numb?

Are you awake to life's pain and awake to life's beauty?

Awake to the truth about friendships and the relationships in your life and awake to what's possible when you believe you're worthy of it.

Awake to those things you've not dealt with and awake to the power you'll feel when you finally do.

Awake to just how often you might bury your truth and awake to the liberation that comes when you face your fears and decide to embrace who you truly are, how you truly feel, and how you have everything you need need inside of you to accomplish your biggest hopes and wildest dreams, even if the way they take shape is totally different than you could have imagined.

You just have to grieve.

And, but there's a moment on the other side of that, not

necessarily too far down the road, where you go,

okay.

I can either decide to be the victim of this shitty story forever, or I can decide to look at a lot of my codependent habits, which helped build a whole house of cards.

And then that's what I do with that is up to me.

What do I want to build in the second half of my life?

What do I want to take with me?

And what do I want to leave behind?

Because I was 46 years old when that happened.

That's a different woman than the 19-year-old bride who walked an aisle and got married as a literal teenager.

That's a different woman.

So,

what does she want to do?

What does she want to own?

What does she want to work on?

And

thank God we got to that part of the story too, right?

We either get to go through it, eyes wide open, facing it clearly, or we will bury that alive and it will come out later.

It will come out on the rest of our relationships.

It will come out on our health.

Feel it now or feel it later, but if we don't, if we decide to skip the hard work too soon

we'll end up paying for it were you ever tempted to

stay in the marriage and

and hide it that's a great question

this is so hard to say there were so many parts of our marriage that had left us both lonely disconnected,

functioning as roommates.

I remember we were on the on a phone call

and

I essentially asked him,

are we going to try?

Are we going to try here?

And

I was with my sons

and

he said,

Trying requires certain feelings to be there and they're not.

And I went, okay,

that was it.

You know,

you've got

to save a marriage, you have to want to.

Those were some of the earliest days when I learned to hate my body and to fear it and to wage war against it and to imagine somehow

that

it is my enemy.

And

I carried that sexual shame with me into my marriage for sure.

You're also told,

don't be slutty and have sex, but then when you finally get married and have sex, be awesome at it.

Be unhindered, right?

Be like a vixen.

Give it up.

Anytime the husband wants it.

What's your advice for the person listening who's like, I don't want to disappoint my parents, but this does not feel right to me and I don't want to duplicate the way I was raised.

It broke my heart.

I could cry right now just thinking about it.

Coming up in this incredible episode.

Are you ready?

I haven't talked about this yet, so I'm glad it's with you.

Get ready to ignite your own knowing and journey to freedom, faith, self-love, and ultimate liberation with our incredible guest and friend, Jen Hatmaker.

Jen is an author, podcaster, speaker, advocate, educator, mother, and amazing friend to millions.

From the power of her written word across 14 books, including four New York Times bestsellers, to speaking on stages, leading her own courses and book club communities, and interviewing countless visionaries on her award-winning For the Love podcast, Jen has an undeniable gift for reaching the hearts and minds of her community.

She's also a mom to five amazing kids, and her brand new book, Awake, a memoir, is absolutely incredible.

And I do not say that lightly.

I couldn't put it down.

A brutally honest, funny, and revealing memoir about the traumatic end of her 26-year-long marriage and the end of life as she knew it.

In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader to a divorced wreck, as she would say, on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, parenting five kids alone with no clue about her own bank accounts.

Having led millions of women for over a decade, urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationships, this seemed to Jen like nothing less than total failure.

You begin the book rooting for Jen and you end it finding that passion to root for yourself.

Jen speaks to your soul through her own story that somehow feels exactly like your own.

Awake is truly a permission slip to embrace your own truth, love who you are, ignite your own knowing and journey to freedom, faith, self-love, and ultimate liberation.

And whether today you're listening for yourself or because someone that you love shared this episode with you, I want to welcome you to the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast family.

Thank you so much for being here.

And can you take two seconds and please hit the subscribe or follow button on the app that you're listening or watching on?

Thank you so much.

It truly means the world to me.

And you can get inspiration right into your inbox from me for free.

Just join my newsletter community at jamiekernlema.com.

Also, this incredible podcast episode today, it's not just for you and me.

Please share this with every single person that you know who might need some inspiration today or perhaps a boost in their self-belief because what you're about to hear can truly impact mine, yours, and their lives too.

Welcome to the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Oprah, how have you defied the odds?

Her show is unlike any I've ever done.

A revelation.

When you listen, it feels like a hug, but your brain and your spirit and your heart is like, wow.

Melinda French Gates.

When I look into Jamie's eyes, I feel like I am on some other cosmic level with her.

I could see the light around her.

She's infused with light.

Imagine overcoming self-doubt, learning to believe in yourself and trust yourself and know you are enough.

Welcome to the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Jamie Kern Lima is her name.

Everybody needs Jamie Kern Lima in their life.

Jamie Kern Lima.

Jamie, you're so inspiring.

Jamie Kern Lima.

Jen Hatmaker, welcome to the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Oh, that was so nice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being my friend.

Thank you for having me here.

I'm just delighted.

I'm so grateful you're here.

And I know this is the first time you're talking about

Awake and your story that you share.

Right.

I told you, like, this is, it's early enough

that I just haven't talked about it yet.

I've written a whole book

sharing things with the community that I have never even said out loud.

So

I am unpracticed at

telling this story with my mouth, which is why I'm really glad to be here with you.

I'm so happy to be sitting with a friend and in a way,

in a place that I feel, okay,

we're just two women.

We've both been through a lot.

We care about each other.

This is the perfect place to sort of launch it out here.

So, you know,

every one of us can relate to someone blindsiding us or someone, you know,

betraying our trust or pulling the rug out from underneath us.

And those moments can change everything, literally everything in our lives.

You open your brand new book, Awake,

with these first three sentences.

At 2:30 a.m.

on July 11th, 2020, out of a dead sleep, I hear five whispered words not meant for me.

I just can't quit you.

My husband of 26 years is voice texting his girlfriend next to me in our bed.

It is the end of my life as I know it.

Whoa.

We start in the ER.

I,

it took me years to write this story.

Obviously, it's located primarily in 2020 and 2021, but I needed to live it first.

I needed to heal.

I wanted to definitely write from

a scar, not a wound.

And so

I decided, though, to take my reader right

immediately with me to the worst moment of my life.

Let's just start there.

I'm not going to ease in.

Let's not, this is who I am.

This is what my marriage has been like.

I'm just, let's just start at

just being in critical condition and then we'll go from there.

It was devastating.

I was married for 26 years and I was married to a pastor and

together we had sort of built this whole life that very much included marriage and family

and

the

shared value of what that meant and what we meant to each other.

And so

when I tell you,

this will remain one of the most shocking things that has ever happened to me.

Like it wasn't the kind of thing where I thought, I

we're creeping up on something that I know or we've been having hard conversations, you know, that we're sort of coming to some sort of inevitable conclusion together.

It was more like you go to bed with one kind of life and you wake up with another.

And so just like that, everything that I knew to be true about my life was over.

What happened in that moment?

You wake up, you hear that.

It was chaos.

Some of those details of that night, I kind of

kept behind the firewall a little bit, but it was four hours of chaos.

And

he was

eventually not engaged with me anymore, passed out.

Passed out.

And I

decided to figure out what the hell was going on.

So I spent a couple of hours on his laptop while he's passed out in the middle of the night.

And it was becoming immediately clear, oh,

he has a whole different life.

And

I am a fool.

And it was so stunning and shocking and disorient.

I almost felt disassociated.

In those hours, I couldn't even cry.

I couldn't even, I was just in full shock, thinking, this cannot be true.

And

so

I woke him up at 6:30 in the morning.

I had digested all I could handle

by myself.

And I said,

I need the full truth, all of it.

I don't, don't,

we're not going to waste one second in denial.

I need the full truth.

And he said,

I'm not ready.

And I said, okay, pack your shit and get out.

And

that was the last night he ever spent the night at the house.

So it was scorched earth.

We did not ease into a change.

We did not build some sort of

off-ramp to make it all a little bit more palatable.

We have five kids.

Four of them were upstairs sleeping that night.

And it was just

the whole thing burned to the ground in one fell swoop.

I'll never forget it.

And this is so many parts of your life, right?

Can you share what you you two had built together

professionally, how public so many people, you're both public figures in different ways and

met when you were a baby.

I mean, you're young.

A baby.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

I was a 19-year-old bride.

So let that sink in.

Geez.

We met in college.

I was a freshman.

And

so I had really never had

a single adult moment

without him.

I didn't have an adult moment when I first met him.

I was a teenager.

So

we had, we grew up together and

we had three kids like

the way that you have them, like out of your body.

And then we adopted our youngest two.

So we had we had built our family, we had expanded our family, and then we'd been in ministry our whole adult lives.

Well, him particularly, that was his full-time work, which meant that was my second job.

And then I began to build my own career once I was in my 30s.

But both of them were centered in faith spaces.

And so

we started a church, you know, he was the lead pastor.

I also preached a lot.

And

both of us, for a decade or more, were pretty involved and invested in

sort of the strange subculture of church leadership.

It's a thing.

It's out there.

And

so, yeah, we had

literally and figuratively put ourselves on a stage.

And

not just a stage, but a stage of leadership, of spiritual leadership.

Not that we ever meant to say, Here's our family, we're a prototype, but when you're kind of so public,

when you're so forward-facing like that,

the whole family is a part of the deal.

So

everybody knows our kids, they knew our adoption story.

That was also really public.

And so to topple from that mountain

left us all so injured

and

I said in the book I

it's so interesting because I think so many of us can look backward

after something has collapsed something precious something

important

and go

If I am being honest, there were signs

that I ignored.

Of course I ignored.

I didn't want them.

Like I wrote, I wanted the story of our marriage, not our actual marriage.

And so

thus began

an absolute slog up a whole new mountain that I never thought I was going to have to climb.

And that is the story of awake.

Wanting the idea of a marriage versus what the marriage actually is.

I think so many people can relate in all different ways, right?

Some of us want this idea of a friendship,

but we really don't want to.

I actually have a couple friendships in my life right now.

I keep holding on hope because I love the idea of them.

I get it.

And there's red flags.

And I think that it's

in so many different ways

people have had that experience and just to kind of put into context one thing you said too is, you know, just for anyone maybe not familiar with that world, I think you wrote in Awake that when you're a pastor's wife, most churches or most, that they, it's a two-for-one.

That's right.

You're now

sustainable.

You're now also

in ministry and

unpaid.

And

it's a full-time thing.

And

so many people, I just think,

realizing it or not, look up to their pastors and seek them for guidance and counsel.

And you're on a pedestal in many ways.

And, you know, having five kids, being 26 years into your marriage,

everything on the outside looked so perfect.

It looked so beautiful.

It did.

And

once I

jumping ahead, just a hair,

there's a moment when your life implodes like that,

where you did not choose it, right?

Somebody else's choices

just absolutely impact you in such a way that a thousand things shatter.

There's a season after that, which

it's just chaos.

All it is is

it's not even recovery yet.

It's just reeling.

It's grief.

It is shock.

It is

that part of the story,

I can feel it in my bones still.

The panic,

the fear, the humiliation of it all.

That happens.

And there's no way through it but through it.

That's it.

Believe me, if there was a rat around, I would have found it.

I tried.

There isn't.

You just have to grieve.

And, but there's a moment on the other side of that, not necessarily too far down the road, where you go,

okay,

I can either decide to be the victim of this shitty story forever.

Somebody handed it to me and I'm stuck with it.

And now I'm just going to have half a life, I guess, for the second half.

And I'll just

piecemeal it together and try to just band-aid the rest of the story.

I can do that.

I can choose that.

Or

I can decide to look at my own patterns.

I can look at my own behaviors.

I can look at my own complicity.

I can look at

the places where I contributed to

the weak links in the marriage.

I can look at a lot of my codependent habits, which helped build a whole house of cards.

And then that's what I do with that is up to me.

So I can, I can, I can do nothing.

I can do nothing.

Because frankly, when you have a story like mine, I learned really early on, everybody,

virtually everybody,

was not just willing to, but absolutely handing me absolution.

You are innocent.

This was done to you.

You have been wronged.

This was a betrayal.

All true.

That's all true.

I'm not saying that that's not true.

But I could have sunk into that version of it forever.

But there was

much more to the story.

Thank God, where I went.

We need to pause for a super brief break.

And while we do, take a moment to share this episode with every single person that you know who this could inspire because this conversation can truly be the words and inspiration they need to hear today to keep going, to remember that they matter, and to feel less alone, more enough, more connected, and more worthy.

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Imagine what you'd do if you fully believed in you.

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Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief.

And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox each and every Tuesday morning from me.

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And now more of this incredible conversation together.

When you have a story like mine,

I learned really early on everybody,

virtually everybody, was not just willing to, but absolutely handing me absolution.

You are innocent.

This was done to you.

You have been wronged.

This was a betrayal, all true.

That's all true.

I'm not saying that that's not true, But I could have sunk into that version of it forever.

But there was

much more to the story, thank God, where I went,

what do I want to build in the second half of my life?

What do I want to take with me?

And what do I want to leave behind?

Because I was 46 years old when that happened.

That's a different woman than the 19-year-old bride who walked an aisle and got married as a literal teenager.

That's a different woman.

So,

what does she want to do?

What does she want to own?

What does she want to work on?

And

thank God we got to that part of the story too.

What you just said is so powerful because a lot of people,

it's easier in some ways to be like, this happened to me.

And

in many ways, I'm sure it's easier to also stay in it.

Totally.

Anger and hurt is pretty awesome fuel.

It has a pretty decent ROI.

Like, it feels good.

It feels good to be pissed.

It feels good

to be

furious.

There's something about that that is comforting because

it it keeps the focus out.

I get to still keep looking out here.

What did you do?

What was your problem?

How did you harm me?

How did you let us all down?

And so there's something fun about that for a while.

But eventually,

that leaves half of the equation out.

And so

I'm not even suggesting that there isn't a place for anger and sorrow.

There is.

That is a normal way to feel.

We should feel it.

And if we don't feel it now, we'll feel it later.

So pick, pick, right?

We either get to go through it, eyes wide open, facing it clearly, clear-headed, clear-minded,

or we will bury that alive and it will come out later.

It will come out on the rest of our relationships.

It will come out on our health.

It will come out sideways.

And so feel it now or feel it later.

But if we don't, if we decide to skip the hard work too soon,

we'll end up paying for it.

Were you ever tempted, especially given how much you had built together, how many overlapping circles are in

your lives?

Some people would say the kids, right?

There's all these things.

Were you ever tempted to

stay in the marriage and

hide it from the kids or decide it never happened or or stay anyway?

It's a great question.

It's interesting because

in those earliest days of just mayhem,

just absolute mayhem, and it was COVID.

It was July of 2020.

So we were isolated.

We were hurting collectively, we were cut off from our sources of community and comfort, so we were already pretty tender and bruised.

And so I can absolutely understand the instinct to go, what if we just patch this up?

What if we patched it up enough so that it could function

okay, put in a drawer drawer and shut it.

I get the impulse.

But

it was interesting.

It's certainly interesting in hindsight.

Because at the time,

I was just so taken out of the portion of my brain that

does that emotional maneuvering, that...

figures out how to shape-shift, that is thinking about damage control, that is thinking about what does this mean for our work.

Those chambers are usually fairly activated in my brain.

I was so traumatized and so brokenhearted, I had access to none of that.

So it's interesting to look back at what I did and how I responded instinctively.

Because that's all I had.

I wasn't being strategic.

I could not have located strategy

on the side of a barn, right?

So

instinctively,

I knew this marriage is over.

And

this is so hard to say.

And

I talk about this in a wake,

but I had to get to it.

It took me a while to say it, to admit it, and then it took me a little bit longer to analyze it.

But I

didn't want to stay married.

When your spouse creates such an alternative life for himself

and

abandons everything, his own character and will and story and marriage and family and place in the world,

there are red flags.

Something is wrong.

That is not the product of a healthy, functioning marriage.

And so

there were so many parts of our marriage that had left us both lonely disconnected

functioning as roommates

and so my instinct said

i didn't want any of this i don't want this how this went down this is the most disastrous catastrophic painful thing i've ever experienced And at the same time, I also didn't want to stay.

And you knew that.

I knew it.

I knew it.

Pretty early on.

I remember we were on a phone call

and

I essentially asked him,

are we going to try?

Are we going to try here?

And

I was with my sons.

And

he said,

trying requires certain feelings to be there and they're not.

And I went, okay,

that was it.

You know,

you've got,

to save a marriage, you have to want to.

But again, I can look back with clear eyes at my response, still not being strategic yet, but my response was like, okay, it wasn't, no, we must.

No, I want to.

How can I convince you?

What can we do like let's go back to marriage counseling let's let's let's let's hear each other out let's see each other again that was not my response at all my response was okay

and so

something in me was leading me to what was the right path

and I didn't know what else to do except follow it

When you talk about that period of not just of being so aware of,

not just this happened to me which it did but also thinking about who you are and and and what you want and all those things and you know in a wake

you share for the first time

everything that happened

not only with you know with with the end of your marriage with with with it's really in so many ways a coming of age story I think so many women are going to connect with in so many different different ways.

I know I said this earlier, but

it's almost like when you read your book, and this is such a gift you have, Jen.

I know you know this, but and millions of people agree,

you are one of the most gifted writers and communicators.

hands down.

And as a person reading this, whether I knew you or not, I just not only am just instantly like I couldn't put the book down and also

I think everyone listening and watching right now is gonna feel like it's their story.

They're gonna see the things they've gone through and the way that you tap into the depths of the experience and the depths of the emotion and the depths of all of it.

I mean, you're just as a reader, you're immersed in it.

And I feel like in different ways, people will go through their own journey with you and have a lot of questions they might ask themselves.

And I know,

you know,

sort of a zoomed out view also in awake, there's some themes in there as well that you talk about that I think a lot of people might reflect on in their own life from patriarchy, religious dogma, gender roles, all the ceilings men created for women.

Can you talk about

that and about your realization and just all of it?

Yeah, thank you, first of all, for saying that.

That was really kind.

Awake is

kind of on the micro level, it is the story of the loss of my marriage and the recovery and rebuilding process, but larger,

it is an examination of what built that house that was so easily shaken down to rubble, stone by stone.

What built the house?

And so

it is a deeper look at all of those things.

What compelled a 19-year-old girl to get married?

What sort of religious environment suggested that

men had all the authority?

And our one path as women was to be their helpers, their subordinates, and their their followers, essentially.

What did it mean to grow up in a culture

that, at least for our age, absolutely

told us

we should hate our bodies, that everything about them was wrong.

Absolutely everything about them was wrong.

What did it mean for me to grow up in a subculture that handed us such

sexual shame at our earliest moment, just as we are coming into adolescence, as we are learning about our own sexuality, about

that the story that I got was

sex and sexual desire.

Everything is wrong about that.

Everything is bad about it.

It is dirty.

You're dirty for having it.

That's all reserved for marriage.

And

what did that create inside my psyche?

And

those stories are common.

So

you don't have to have experienced a divorce to see yourself in these pages.

And

these are conversations

that matter to women.

And I've written this so differently.

God,

as we sit here, you know, it's not out yet as we're recording this.

And I'm just thinking, how's it going to go?

Because my history as a writer is that

I've taken an idea, whatever the idea is for that particular book.

I have spent billions of hours thinking about it, reading about it, parsing it out,

processing it in my own brain.

I write it all down, and then I hand it to the reader, and I'm like, this is what we think.

Here's our conclusions.

I've done all of our work for us.

No need for you to just sit there and read it.

I've got it all sorted out for us.

Here it is on a silver platter.

Very prescriptive.

This is the opposite of that.

I prescribe nothing.

In fact, there's no chapters.

It's all told in vignettes.

Everything's a little memory, a little moment going back to when I was 12 or younger, just told in real time.

And

I don't do anything but lay it on the page.

And then it's up to the reader to figure out what they want to take from that or what conclusion they want to draw from that or what sort of house they see being formed from all those little pieces.

And so

I look so forward

to finding out

how this matters to other people and what they see in it and where they go.

Same, I was over here, but I had that same experience or I had that same feeling or I had that same loss.

And, you know, you, as you know too, you write a book.

And it's the one thing, and then you hand it to your readers and it becomes something entirely new.

And so I'm looking forward to see what the readers make of it.

You know,

you talk about this idea.

I would love for you to share,

because I think when you talk about

how did this house of cards get built, what led me to here, I think every one of us can relate, like, huh, how did I pick this as my, this person as my partner?

How did I end up in this type of a marriage or this type of a friendship circle or this type of a profession, whatever it might be?

And

I love that you really peel back the layers and

you really go there on a lot of things.

Can you share about your youth pastor's analogy of plucking the petals off a rose when you were a little girl?

Yeah.

We need to pause for a super brief break.

And while we do, take a moment to share this episode with every single person that you know who this could inspire because this conversation can truly be the words and inspiration they need to hear today to keep going, to remember that they matter and to feel less alone, more enough, more connected, and more worthy.

Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief.

And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox each and every Tuesday morning from me.

If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week, just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your one-on-one with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you.

If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love, hitting your inbox.

I'm your girl.

Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes.

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And now more of this incredible conversation together.

I love that you really peel back the layers and

you really go there on a lot of things.

Can you share about your youth pastor's analogy of plucking the petals off a rose when you were a little girl?

Yeah,

this is the

origin story of the cover design.

I guess I was probably, let me do the math, eighth grade, maybe, eighth or ninth grade.

And

geez kids who grow up in sort of evangelical subculture in my age group might remember this that was

the 80s

and the 90s were kind of the heart of purity culture which is sort of the catch-all phrase which was

abstinence only

Sex education.

I mean, sex education, I've got to put in quotes because there really was little education.

It was really just more like, don't do it.

And here's an entire shame-based curriculum to keep you away from it.

So there was this really popular curriculum at the time called True Love Weights.

And it was in every church I knew.

And

so we signed up, and it's whatever it is.

It's an eight or a 12-week course, and we're going to go through it systematically.

And the deacons, and their wives, or our teachers, or whatever.

And

so it is the beginning of True Love Waits.

It's like the opening session before we split out into guys and girls, of course.

And our youth pastor comes up to the front of the room and

God, I can see it in my brain like it was yesterday.

And we're all there and we're already nervous.

We're about to have 12 weeks of sex talks with the deacons.

Like it's already like, geez, why did my mom sign me up for this?

So we're already just kind of anxious in our little folding chairs.

And he comes to the front of the room and he's got like a rose.

It's in full bloom, like really pretty.

And he holds it up and he's like, Isn't this beautiful?

And we're like,

it is beautiful.

Check.

And

he says, and we're all in the room, the boys and the girls.

And he says, Girls,

this rose is just like you.

You are like this.

You are a gift.

You are pure and pristine when you present yourself clean to your husband on your wedding night.

And then he goes,

but

when you start

giving your bodies away to your little boyfriends,

you start ruining the gift.

And he starts going through this litany of things.

And with everything he would say, he'd pluck a petal off.

You take off your clothes, pluck.

You engage in sexual acts, pluck.

You have intercourse, pluck.

You let your boyfriend touch your body, pluck.

It's

so shocking and embarrassing and stunning.

And he's going through it all, still just speaking to the girls.

until all the petals are gone.

They're just on the filthy floor.

And he's holding this.

And he goes, until all you have to offer your husband on your wedding night is this.

And he holds out like the dead empty stick.

And I remember sitting there going,

What did I just hear?

And

what about the boys?

Like, are they

also a flower gradually losing their bloom?

Because, according to the story, some boys plucked those petals.

So, is

sexual purity just the girl's requirement and responsibility?

That was the first time in my life I had been told by a spiritual authority that I was a real problem, that my body was a problem, that I was in charge of not just my own sexual purity, but the boys.

And

any sexual deviance that came into play,

if it was mine, it was my fault.

And if it was was theirs, it was my fault.

And

that seared into my psyche.

I'm 50 years old and I'm still talking about it.

The sense that my body is

defective.

It needs to be policed.

It is the source of ruined marriages.

And I alone am responsible for keeping us all out of the bed before we get married.

And so

when you're handed a story like that

that early, it forms a worldview that is really hard to reverse.

And those were some of the earliest days when I learned to hate my body and to fear it and to wage war against it and to imagine somehow

that

it is my enemy.

And I'm not the only one.

That story was handed to so many of us at our age

at such a pivotal time.

And

I carried that sexual shame with me into my marriage, for sure.

And how did it impact that?

And how does,

and where are you at with that now?

Ugh, geez.

We were children who got married.

And so,

and both of us had sort of come in having sullied the story already, right?

So, we already walked into our relationship full of guilt, full of shame, full of secrets, because that's not something we were allowed to talk about or to be honest about.

And so, you just bury that internally, and it's so corrosive.

And then that shame is, it becomes

the pool that you are swimming in.

And so I entered young adulthood ashamed, just period, in general.

That was my homeostasis.

And so obviously, when you're sort of taught

that way,

it certainly affected our marriage.

When you are told over and over and over that sexual...

feelings, desires, behaviors,

explorations, all of it are so dirty, and that you are dirty for having them, for thinking them, or for doing them, you believe it.

You just believe it.

And so I walked that sense of such conflict into my marriage.

Because, of course, in that camp, then you're also told,

don't be slutty and have sex.

But then when you finally get married and have sex, be awesome at it.

Be unhindered, right?

Be like a vixen.

Give it up anytime the husband wants it and be kind of wild about it.

That whiplash is the source of a lot of misery for a lot of young marriages that came out of that environment.

And it was for us too.

And so having to sort of overcome what we'd been handed and try to find a different story of like sexual connection and flourishing and joy.

God, it was hard and took year.

It took so long.

And I'm not sure we ever fully reversed it.

So

I am committed.

You know, I have a bunch of kids and they are, they're 19 to 27.

So we're in all the young adult years.

And I mean, I said early on, not on my watch.

And these kids are not going to be handed that story.

They are not going to, I am not going to teach them to be at war with their bodies and their normal desires a day in their lives.

And so I feel hopeful that this next generation is already being raised in a little bit more of a healthy sexual ethos than a lot of us were.

But for me and for a lot of people my age, it's been the work of my adult life to change that narrative.

Would you have changed it if you weren't blindsided and everything and the whole house of cards fell?

Or do you think you'd still be in that same spot right now?

I've thought about this a lot

because

the fast-forward version is I am so,

I'm so grateful for my life right now.

I am stunned at the joy that I

have discovered.

And so I've thought a lot about this because I did not know I could have, I didn't know about this.

I didn't know I was going to be happy again I did not know I could write my own way out I did not know that I had all this agency to build the life I wanted I didn't know that back then

I think Jamie

when I think about 2020 Jen and that's the one you're asking about

I think I would have stayed

I think I would have stayed lonely.

We were not having sex anymore.

I think I would have stayed disconnected.

I think I would have stayed disappointed

because

going back to what I said earlier, I kind of wanted the story of my life, not my actual life.

And the story of my life included a long marriage.

It included our kids growing up and getting married and coming home to us, their parents who will always be there.

It included us rocking our grandbabies on a porch.

I had a whole thing.

I'd written it.

It was beautiful.

It was Hollywood-worthy.

I saw it.

I saw it in my parents.

I saw it in my in-laws.

Both of them are north of 50 years married both.

And so I had written this beautiful script for us all.

And I was committed to the bit,

even though that wasn't what I was experiencing.

And so I think I would have stayed.

You know, it's conjecture at this point.

Would I have gotten lonely enough?

You know, we still had all the kids in the house back then.

And so we had the chaos of busyness and family as a distractor.

Maybe they'd have moved out and I would have figured out, like, what do we have left?

Maybe?

I just don't know.

But I will tell you,

back then,

I would not have made that choice 100%.

You know, you've shared how loving.

and amazing your family and upbringing

are.

And

I think for everyone listening, there's a lot of people who would describe their parents or the way they were raised as like just loving, like they feel so blessed and all of that.

And at the same time,

are now an adult,

now maybe middle-aged, now maybe at some point in their life

where they're like, I do not align

with some of the ways I was raised.

Certainly.

How have you,

you know, being raised around such love, love, such great intention,

how have you navigated that,

making different decisions for your kids?

And also, just what's your advice for the person listening who's like,

I don't want to disappoint my parents, but this does not feel right to me, and I don't want to duplicate the way I was raised.

Such a conundrum.

I have felt that tension

broadly

for the last 15 years

as an adult and as someone who, particularly back then, was in

spiritual leadership.

And I realized I don't believe all there's some things I don't believe anymore.

I have some, I have some pretty strong departures from some of the things that I was handed from a faith perspective as a kid, as a young adult, that I don't align with anymore and I don't agree with anymore.

And so, to some degree, the road has been forking for me for 15 years and and i have felt some anxiety around that because and then particularly when i was riding awake and i am literally going after some of those patriarchal religious systems yeah particularly my exact environment i'm not even speaking of it theoretically you know, or from a really wide view.

I was like, at my church in eighth grade, you know, know,

at my church in 10th grade.

So, I mean, I drilled in to my very specific and individual story, which is the one my parents put me in.

And so, I felt those tremors of

there's one thing that I wrote in there where I was like, just kind of speaking to the reader, where I said,

It feels important to me to examine

these

systems that have created such a breeding ground for abuse

and

loss of personhood and loss of agency and the subjugation of women.

And

that feels so important for me to turn a critical eye on what I see as failing systems that certainly fail not just girls, but boys.

without disparaging the individual people inside those systems.

How tricky.

What a tricky needle to thread.

Because it's important that we look at the way these are operating and they're operating as designed.

By the way, we're not misinterpreting the data.

Like systems that are meant to be hierarchical and

they work as

created.

So

laying an axe at the root of that tree is important, but what about the people?

What about the people?

Because there's beautiful people inside horrible systems.

And so I have always found that tension to be one that I have to figure out how to manage.

And

the best that I could do, God, the best that I could do in this book was just tell the truth.

And so I did.

I told the truth about the individual moments inside those systems, what it built in me, what it broke in me, what it created in me.

And I also tell the truth about my parents and the beautiful home they built for us and the way that they loved us so completely and the moments where they broke from those systems and wrote a new chapter for me that I did not know existed and opened up doors for me that I did not know I was allowed to walk through.

And so two things can be true at once.

And I find the tension hard to manage.

And yet here we are.

Here we are.

And so

I give my parents so much credit for allowing us all, not just me, but my siblings.

I'm the oldest of four, to deeply evolve

as people of faith, as just adults who grow up

without constantly feeling triggered and threatened.

They've never done it.

They've never brought it to my door and said, this is making us feel bad because we're the ones who raised you like this.

Or you don't go to the church anymore that we raised you in.

Not one time have they ever said it to a single one of us.

And so

that's a credit to their

goodness and maturity and I think character

with everything

leading up to

the end of your 26th-year marriage, and then also

from that day,

that was the last day he was in the house

forward.

When it all happened,

and as it continued to unfold, what impact did it have on your sense of worthiness?

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Immediately,

it sunk me to the bottom of the ocean.

In that particular kind of betrayal,

the very first thoughts that just spike, the very first feelings are, oh,

I'm not pretty enough.

I'm not young enough.

I'm not sexual enough.

You know, when your husband has chosen another person,

I am not lovable.

Something about me isn't even

valuable enough to be faithful to.

Like,

I had no value to him.

I'm in nothing.

And

that's how little I matter.

That is how little I matter.

And

all of those feelings just, it's like a tsunami, like a tidal wave of

humiliation and

a breaking of worth.

And so

that is one of the biggest threads that I had to decide to do my work around.

We know that's not true.

I know it.

I've been saying that.

I say that to other women.

I've been saying that for 20 years.

I know that.

But when you experience that,

I could not get that knowledge to sync.

I could not access it.

I knew it like intellectually.

I could mean it for you.

And I could instruct all these women that I lead, but I could not access that truth.

And so I

felt so sad about myself for a while.

Not sorry for myself, sad about myself

that

I was so unloved.

The unloved part was the worst part for me.

It was not

the sexual violation.

It was,

it wasn't even like the deception of it all, which had gone on for a really long time.

It was the unloved part.

It broke my heart.

I could cry right now just thinking about it.

And so,

you know,

you steer, if you care about recovery, if you care about rebuilding, you steer into the sharpest curve on the road.

And for me, that was it.

And I went, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to deal with this.

I'm gonna have to face this, figure out what I really believe about myself,

figure out what's true, and figure out how to believe it.

And

that

it seems crazy, but that

is possible.

You can be be convinced that you are unloved and unworthy and

convinced and you can find your way out of that story.

And so

that

for me was probably the

heaviest lift I had

was going,

okay, because also

It forced me to examine where I get all my value.

You know, I get, you and I are public.

So people are real quick to assign value to us one way or another, negatively or positively, but even positively.

So I got all these dopamine hits from all these, from the people and the readers and the podcast listeners and the whatever.

And

so I had to go, wait a minute.

I'm going to have to learn how to not

If I'm going to have to learn how to not let all this negative input into my life that says you are not valuable if i'm gonna if i'm gonna believe all the hype then i'm gonna have to believe all the bad stuff too so i think i'm gonna have to take this out of the hands of other people and this is gonna have to be an inside job one way or another i'm gonna have to figure out my own worth my own value who does god say i am

why am i precious why do i matter

what is true about me what is always true about me no matter what anybody else says or does, period.

Like that has no bearing on what is true in my core.

So even though I'd preach that for a couple of decades, I finally got to figure it out.

I finally had to do that work my own self.

It's easy to preach that when everybody else loves you.

That was a real easy message for me to say for a really long time.

I had a husband who loved me, friends who loved me, a community who half loved me at least.

And so then that was really easy to say.

When I lost the one who was supposed to love me the most,

I went, okay, I'm going to have to rewrite this story.

It's possible.

What is true about you?

Boy.

What's true about me is that

I matter

because

I'm a human.

And I have mattered since I was born and I don't earn any of it.

And I'm loved and God loves me and I have value and

none of that is for what I do.

None of it.

And I am a doer.

Yeah, you are.

I am such a doer.

I am

an Enneagram 3.

I have forever received

value.

from external sources.

And so I've hustled for it my whole life.

And it works.

That is rewarded.

The world loves it.

The world loves a doer.

And I have been rewarded my whole adult life for it.

And so, but when I lost so much, I lost marriage.

I lost the institution of church.

Those were my two best institutions, and they both collapsed.

And so I lost all my gold stars.

And then I had to figure out: is this still true?

And it's so crazy that we have value intrinsically.

We are worthy.

Everybody is.

Everybody is, not just me.

And so tapping into that has been such a source of strength for me, which put me, it gave me agency back over my own story.

And I'll be so, I'm so grateful for that work.

And I hated how I had to get to it, but I'm so grateful that I did.

How did

everything that started that day in bed forward, how did that impact your kids?

Oh, boy.

At the time,

we had

two in high school, one had just graduated from high school, one in college, and one had just graduated from college.

So that was our, that was this

so this is not the same thing as when you have

a first grader

that rightly should be shielded from the story.

And

my kids were older, and

there's no

smoothing over a story for teenagers and young adults when a dad

goes to bed on a normal night and is gone the next morning.

You don't get to polish that up.

There's no shiny version of that.

There is no way to soft-sell that to a bunch of young adults and teens.

They know every, they're smart too.

When I tell you

there were signs, I'm not the only one who saw those, right?

Kids are not dumb.

And so

it's one of the hardest parts of the story for me, for sure.

Having to watch my kids suffer

and

grieve and

that loss

is

in some ways I'll never get over for them.

So proud of them.

They are

brilliant young adults and they dug deep and they have

recovered in so many ways that I'm so proud of.

But that

handed them a new story.

And, you know, from a parent who had spent a lifetime saying, this is how we value women.

This is what faithfulness looks like.

This is what integrity means.

This is what character looks like in a real life.

So when you've had a lifetime of instruction like that,

and then it all just is like

reduced to rubble overnight,

that's hard.

That's hard to process.

And it was hard.

It was hard for all of us.

And we don't share custody and we never have.

And so it was just them and me

in those,

that first early year, just trying to keep our little heads above water.

And I'm really proud of how hard they worked

and how honest and how honest and true they stayed throughout the process.

My instinct is to disassociate.

My instinct is to shine it up.

My instinct is to hustle it to resolution.

That is both my natural impulse and my conditioning.

Kids are better than us in a lot of ways, this next generation.

They don't do that.

They

stay in the story in an honest way and they say what they feel and they say what they mean.

And they say what they think.

And

actually, my daughter Sidney taught me one of my best lessons.

I noticed early on in our recovery process, everybody's in counseling, you know, of course.

I've got everybody just farming it out to the counselors.

And

Sydney had come to me, and she was in college at the time.

She was a junior in college

with her grief.

some version of it, some whatever was happening at the time.

And I so

so wanted them not to feel all that.

I so wanted us to be further down the road where this was,

if not resolved,

at least processed and less acute and less painful.

And I remember saying something to her, like, this is codependent behavior, by the way.

One of my most enormous lessons of this whole process was learning about my own codependency.

But me being codependent with her was saying,

making excuses for his behavior,

trying to fix up the story a little bit.

Let's make this a little bit better.

Let's put a little bow on it in a way that is a little bit more palatable for you.

And then, of course, projecting.

I'm projecting for the future I wanted, which was a mended relationship with the kids and their dad, which was something that wasn't so completely shattered, which is what we had at the time.

And so I'm sort of, I'm, I'm diverting her this way and that way, hear this, but don't forget about this.

And, you know,

what will you want in five years?

What a mess.

And I remember where I was standing in the living room when she said, Mom,

when you talk, when I come to you with my pain about this, and this is how you respond to me, I feel so lonely.

She's like, I feel like I'm the only one left back here in this like suffering.

And you are not only ahead of me, you are dragging me through it.

And I was like, oh my God.

I took that to my counselor that week.

And she said to me, Jen,

because I'm like, I just don't want my kids to feel this pain.

I just, I want to mend the family in such a way that they have something left.

And she was like,

you don't get to fix their story.

They're human just like you.

They're going to have pain and sorrow just like you.

You don't get to route them around a normal life.

And she's like, your job right now, particularly while they are in such pain,

is

comfort over coaching.

That's it.

And I was like, damn it.

I love coaching.

Coaching made me feel like I was in control of something.

It made me feel like I was tidying the thing up enough to get it where I wanted it to go.

But that's not true.

That's not even real.

That's not how life works.

And so I laid it down that day and said, all right.

I'm not going to do this anymore.

And I didn't.

That was the last day that I told any of my kids how to feel,

how to think,

or what to reach for.

If your kids could only remember one thing about the way that you love them through this, what would you hope that it is?

This conversation with Jen Hatmaker is so incredible.

We made it into more than one part.

And if you're ready to ignite your own knowing and journey toward freedom, faith, self-love, and ultimate liberation, even if it's for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time, you are not gonna wanna miss this incredible part two of our conversation with Jen Hatmaker coming up in the next episode of the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Remember, this episode's not just for you and me.

Please share it with every single person that you know because it can impact and change their life too.

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You never know whose life you're meant to change today by sharing this episode.

And thank you so much for joining me.

Before you go, I want to share some words with you that couldn't be more true.

You, right now, exactly as you are, are enough and fully worthy.

You're worthy of your greatest hopes, your wildest dreams, and all the unconditional love in the world.

And it is an honor to welcome you to each and every episode of the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Here, I hope you'll come as you are, heal where you need, blossom what you choose, journey toward your calling, and stay as long as you'd like because you belong here.

You are worthy.

You are loved.

You are love.

I love you.

And I cannot wait to join you on the next episode of the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

In life, you don't soar to the level of your hopes and dreams.

You stay stuck at the level of your self-worth.

When you build your self-worth, you change your entire life.

And that's exactly why I wrote my new book, Worthy, How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life for You.

If you have some self-doubt to destroy and a destiny to fulfill, Worthy is for you.

In Worthy, you'll learn proven tools and simple steps that bring life-changing results, like how to get unstuck from the things holding you back, build unshakable self-love, unlearn the lies that lead to self-doubt and embrace the truths that wake up worthiness.

Overcome limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome.

Achieve your hopes and dreams by believing you are worthy of them and so much more.

Are you ready to unleash your greatness and step into the person you were born to be?

Imagine a life with zero self-doubt and unshakable self-worth.

Get your copy of Worthy, plus some amazing thank you bonus gifts for you at worthybook.com or the link in the show notes below.

Imagine what you'd do if you fully believed in you.

It's time to find out with Worthy.

Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief.

And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox from me.

If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your one-on-one with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you.

If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love hitting your inbox, I'm your girl.

Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes.

And please note: I'm not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.