120. Jen Hatmaker’s Back! Forgiveness & the Audacity to Rebuild

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I walked through fire.

I came out the other side.

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

It's our favorite day because one of our favorite people in all the land.

is back with us today.

Her name is Jen Hatmaker.

You may know her from all the other things.

Okay.

What we're talking about today

is

this rhythm of life.

Yeah.

Okay.

And this rhythm of life that I started noticing

was when I looked back at the time that my marriage imploded, my first marriage, because of infidelity.

And it felt like not in the moment, I didn't know what the hell was going on in the moment.

When I looked back on it, it felt like there was a distinct rhythm to that time, which was first, it was just utter pain and shock.

Then there was this waiting time where the shock started to wear off and I actually had to do something.

Yeah.

Right.

It's like the pain is your house falls down.

The house you're living in falls down.

And then the waiting is, okay, now I have to like brick by brick start building.

And then there's this third phase that is the rising.

where you look at this new house that you were forced to build that you never wanted to build and you're like, oh shit, this house is even better than the house I lived in before.

It's almost like it was all necessary to have a more beautiful life.

And then this, this rhythm of life, you know, I think in the, in my first book, I wrote about it as Easter.

It's like Good Friday is the pain and then Saturday is the waiting.

And then Sunday, Easter Sunday is the rising.

It's like fall, winter, spring, dusk, night, dawn.

This pattern of

growth is built in

to the rhythms of science and religion and all of it.

So to discuss this life rhythm, our dearest, fiercest Jen Hatmaker is back.

Jen, if you haven't listened, please go back to, not you, Jen, the pod squad.

Please go back to episode 86, Jen Hatmaker, What We Win When We Lose It All.

If you haven't listened, you must listen to that.

In that episode, Jen discusses the sudden implosion of her marriage, the pain.

But what we didn't get to, in that episode was the waning and the rising about what happens after the life you built implodes and when you have no other chance but to painstakingly build it back.

So Jen Hatmaker is the New York Times best-selling author of For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with 12 other books.

She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast.

So freaking good, so helpful.

Is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club and leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week.

Jen is a co-founder co-founder of the Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars towards sustainable projects around the world.

She is a mom to five kids and lives just outside Austin, Texas.

Jen Hatmaker, thank you for coming back.

We love you so much.

So much, Same.

Hello, darlings.

And worth noting is that I would like your listening community to know.

that we had full intention to squeeze all this into one podcast.

What we said was, let's do the rhythm.

Let's the rhythm, the rising, and we're going to do it.

And it'll be an episode.

And we got approximately one tenth into it.

And we're out of damn time.

Like, what happened here?

Because the four of us are verbose.

Yes.

And we have a lot of pain.

And we have a lot of pain.

We have a lot of pain.

It's a lot of content.

It's a lot of material.

So

everyone was like, oh, yeah, me too.

Like, also in my, like, we had so much to say.

Exactly.

So thank you for round two.

Let's get to the rest of it.

Let's get to the good stuff.

Let's do it.

Okay.

So set the scene for us first.

If there's anybody who

has not listened to the first one, but tell us what you, because everybody has something like this.

I think that's what happens in your 40s or your, or maybe I don't know when it happens, but where the rug just whoosh gets pulled out from under you.

So what was your that's right.

Really, for all four of us, we understand this in the context of marriage.

That was sort of, we share this particular story of

sort of a disintegration, a catastrophic season of loss, and then a rebuild.

This is a very, very common story arc.

Just fill it in.

It could be health.

It could be your career.

It could be other relationships that follow this rhythm.

As you said, it's mimicked in science, in our poetry, in our religious texts.

We pin it to the board with marriage, but I think our listeners can go, oh yeah, me too.

Different story, same trajectory.

For me,

it looked like

the end of a 26-year marriage.

And so I got married literally as a child.

I was 19, couldn't even drink on my own wedding.

Not that we would have in the Baptist fellowship hall.

Okay.

That's a no.

That's a slippery slope right there.

It's a glass of wine.

The next thing you know, you're clapping in church.

You know how much Jesus hated in wine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, and Jesus hated that stuff.

Jesus was always talking about how we shouldn't drink wine, wasn't he?

Oh, hated parties.

He's like, don't gather and celebrate.

No, not on my watch.

And so I was married literally my entire adult life.

I didn't have a single second.

um of adulthood in which i was not a part of a marriage of a one part of a couple and then right at the beginning of the pandemic in july of 2020 um

i sort of lost my marriage overnight.

So, not so much of a slow loss, although to some degree, and in our first conversation around this, to some degree it was.

But that wasn't something I was willing to admit at the time.

I wasn't willing to admit the erosion as it was happening.

But the actual finale of it was overnight.

And so, one day I was married, and the next day I wasn't, and I was in a house by myself, and and we never shared a house again after that day.

So,

and so, and we had five kids.

At the time, they were

14 to 22.

They were sort of in this complicated space of being teens, teens and young adults.

And then, of course, in my world,

as a leader, as a writer, as a speaker,

a person who's visible, fairly visible, at least in my world.

I had spent a great deal of my adult energy centering a lot of my work around marriage and family.

And

that

was incredibly disorienting to all of a sudden not be a wife and having lost a marriage, one that I had championed.

Right.

And

so it's been a two-year process, almost on the dot, two years and four days.

Right.

Yeah.

Four days.

Two years and four days.

You know, isn't it funny how our body knows those dates?

Yeah.

Do y'all have that?

Yes.

Do you have any dates where even if your brain is not paying attention to the calendar, your body starts being weird?

It remembers.

It just remembers.

I noticed last week, I was like, what's wrong with my blood pressure?

So this has been that story of recovery, honestly.

Yeah.

And then the audacity to rebuild,

which still feels a little audacious.

The recovery and the audacity to rebuild.

Okay.

So let's talk about the recovery, the waiting, right?

So did you have a moment where you actually remember understanding that you have had moved from the pain and shock and awe period to the rebuilding period?

Like did the brick by brick,

what did that look like and feel like for you?

The trudging.

I remember that time with you.

The what do I do next?

Because when you're a mom, you also don't have any choice.

That's right.

I would say that for me, I don't think there's any one path to recovery, by the way.

So for everybody listening, this isn't a template.

Grief, grief is its own deal and it will do what it wants in our bodies and it affects us differently.

In my experience, it was a little bit, came a little bit more in waves.

And so at the beginning, it was just a tsunami an endless relentless pressing you up against the wall drowning in debris like um you just there's no escape you're gonna die like you are going to die this is going to get you you cannot fight for the surface for one more second um the tsunami will take you out and then in my experience it began to ebb and flow a little bit like

I would notice all of a sudden, I would have a afternoon where I felt like genuine joy and I laughed.

And I didn't have a single bad thought for like 49 minutes.

And I was like, I just did 49 minutes.

That's my longest stretch.

Like,

let's write it down.

You know, it was growing toward me, this sense of stability.

And I was just like pulling my way on a rope bit by bit.

If I were going to do it from a higher level, I would say right around the year mark

is when I thought, I'm going to live.

That's when I knew at the year mark, I'm past survival and I am going to thrive.

But it took every single second of that year, every single second.

What did it look like?

Like, what did the rebuilding mean?

You're sitting there in the rubble.

You are a wife.

You are a mom of this little nuclear family.

I think it's so funny we call it nuclear family and we never talk about like nuclear things are really dangerous and always explode.

By the way, anyway, okay, okay.

Anyway, so

yes, nuclear can go either way, right?

So

talk to us about what that looked like.

What did you have to learn?

What did you have to rebuild?

Like the logistical things.

Oh, man.

Oh, man.

At first, the question on the table was, how do I get through the fucking day?

That's it.

How do I manage a 24-hour period?

The awake part and God in heaven, the sleep part.

The sleep part was a nightmare.

Don't you remember?

Yes.

And then you wake up in the morning and have to remember it every morning.

Oh, that nightmare.

That's true.

Nightmare.

So right at the very beginning, y'all,

Brene called me.

This was before I had even said in public what was going on, what had happened.

I was notably and visibly rattled and weird publicly.

Something was wrong, but I hadn't yet said.

And somehow she knew.

And so she texts me and she's like, I have one hour.

I'm going to call you.

Do you have one hour?

And you know, when Brene asks you that, you just clear the deck.

And so

we got on the phone and she said, Here's what you're going to do to survive.

So this was survival.

This was stage one.

She said, number one, you need to take absolute radical care of your body, radical.

Like, this is your number one priority.

She goes, I know you don't think this.

I know that you don't think this is your number.

This is it.

You're going to take radical care of your body.

You are only going to eat good food.

You are going to drink this much water a day.

I think she gave it to me in ounces.

You're not going to drink.

You are going to start moving your body every single day.

I don't care what you do.

if it's yoga if it's i don't care what you do you're going to move your body every single day you are going to figure out a way to sleep at night So, if that means you got to go to your doctor and get help sleeping, whatever it means, you are going to give your body sleep and you're going to meditate.

I've never meditated.

Are you meditating now?

Do you meditate now?

I still do it.

It was so monumental.

I didn't know.

And then she told me, which I talked to you guys about this last time, but she was like, right the second you're going to order the book Code Dependent No More by Melody Betty.

And that's going to be your Bible.

And that's what you're going to read.

And that's what you're going to start filling your brain with um

and and i did all that i did what she said number one because i'm scared of her yeah and number two it felt smart

um and so those like very primal measures i mean like we're just in the in the bones and the guts of the thing right like we're not talking about how to rebuild your finances yet you know we're not talking about how to make a new power of attorney um we're talking about here's how you breathe.

This is the way that you breathe.

This is the way that you drink water.

I credit her intervention in my life

with giving me some first steps to hang on to and just sort of get just to survive the tsunami,

find a way to stay on the surface.

That was at the beginning, just to kind of stabilize my body a little bit.

Because our body tells us what's going on.

My body fell apart.

Did y'all have physical symptoms?

Jen,

I never talk about this publicly, but before I found out about the infidelity, I was in bed for a year with an autoimmune disease.

Like, who knows?

But I'm just saying that's freaking weird that my body was like, there's some poison here, and we don't know what it is, and we're shutting down.

Then I moved to Florida to heal that.

And that's when all it all came out.

That's right.

The body, it's wild.

I think our bodies are, we're trying to tell us.

And if we don't give them the, if we don't give them the attention they deserve and need, if we don't pay attention to what's all our body is trying to say is, you're in danger, girl.

Right.

Like ghost.

Molly, you're in danger, girl.

You're in trouble, man.

That's like,

you may not want to admit this, but we see it clearly.

And we spend all of our times trying to tell our bodies, will you please?

We have all these things we need to do.

It's just, it's important that we'll get to you.

We'll get to you.

One minute, body.

And so, all of those things that she was telling you were really just ways to

make sure the voice came in louder so that you could hear it, right?

I heard that during that period, you started to refer to your body as

she or her, yes,

As opposed to it.

What do you think that did for you?

I didn't invent this.

I learned this from Dr.

Hilary McBride.

She's one of my best teachers in terms of embodiment.

Embodiment is new to me.

That's a new idea.

I don't think any of us grew up being taught how to be deeply in tune with our bodies or that our bodies, right?

I wasn't.

Were you?

No,

I was brought up to kick my body's ass and keep it in control and not let it get the best of me.

That's right.

Damn her, you know, like she's just our enemy.

Yeah.

You know, I just always thought that my body was just kind of an unfortunate container, like carrying around my brain.

A thing, not even a, not even a her, like it.

It is bothering me.

I don't like it.

I don't like it.

And then, of course, you guys, you know, I got to layer on

a faith.

layer of oppression onto my body, which also said, in addition to this not looking right or being right ever, ever.

Um, I was also taught that literally everything about my body, my instincts, my gut, my inner sense of knowing something is untrustworthy.

That's right.

Like, lean not on your own understanding.

Lean not.

The heart is deceitful among all else.

Who can trust it?

That's literally words out of the Bible.

And

I believe that.

So I thus thought: if I like it, if I sense it, if I want it,

if I prefer it, if I know it, if I suspect it, none of that can be trusted.

No.

So thus it steered me into dangerous waters simply because I was picking the opposite of what my body was telling me because I thought that was called faithfulness.

And so that is a hell of a thing to overcome and reverse.

And so embodiment is new for me.

And Hilary McBride and her PhD work is all around this and it's so profound.

And she's the one who said, why don't you start calling your body a she and a her because she is you.

That isn't, that isn't separate from your brain and from your heart and soul.

That is you.

Your body is you.

And she is team you and only team you.

And her only agenda in this entire world is to keep you safe and flourishing.

That's it.

She is looking out for you.

She won't tell you a lie.

She will tell you what's true.

Now, you may not listen to her.

That I can attest to.

Because I can look backwards and go, well, I didn't know.

And we talked about this in our first, in our first episode, but yes, I did.

Yeah, I did.

I didn't want to know.

I didn't admit to knowing.

I pretended like I didn't.

I told myself a new story, but my body actually did tell me all along.

Wake up.

And so I started referring to my body as a she and as a her.

And I talked to her in the most loving of ways.

And I think of her as my best friend.

Like, this is my best friend.

I don't know if I can trust anybody in the whole world.

I can trust her.

I can trust my body.

And when she tells me something, I'm going to be like, I'm going to listen to you.

Like, I'm going to pay attention to your wisdom,

knowing that that is the highest good for my life.

It's still hard.

I don't know.

How are you guys overcoming your problematic relationship with your bodies?

Not just the way they look, but who they are.

Like, I'm done with mine.

I feel like I'm done with that.

And I have,

I'm, I'm over it.

I'm past it.

Jen.

How am I over?

Congratulations.

As everybody here knows, I would, I will pass this question to, to other people on this podcast who are a little better at this.

It is the battle of my life.

It is the confusing thing of my life.

So I'm, yeah,

when you're saying these things, I'm listening to you and I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time.

Like it's the most beautiful, revolutionary thing I've ever heard.

I don't know why it always feels like a brand new idea to me.

You've always been honest about this, and I appreciate it.

Oh, I appreciate you saying this, this is my crucible.

I understand that.

I understand the biggest mountain we each have to climb.

And I appreciate you being honest and not making this tidy for everybody who listens to you.

There hasn't been a single message we've ever received since the day we were born that wants us to know this, right?

Nobody, nobody.

There's a lot of benefits to us hating ourselves.

And so there's an enormous financial incentive for us to continue to hate ourselves.

We have to fight for this one.

Like we have to claw and fight our way to victory on this exact thing.

And so I really appreciate your honesty.

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I had to catch my breath when I heard you say all of your work

around

recovery, including with your body, is

to believe what I know.

And

for me, that feels like the final stage.

Of course, I have like this body dysmorphia and all that like physical things, but

that made me think,

how much do I actually, you know, the voices, I try to keep that on the side of not knowing.

Well, because we know with our body and we believe with our head.

Right.

Right.

So, so.

I guess I was just thinking about that a lot of, am I actually believing what I know?

Am I willing to receive that message enough to believe it?

And then I think the final frontier for me is how do I distinguish between

what I know, what I'm feeling, and then either my trauma or anxiety response.

You know, what is a knowing message?

And what is a message that is a trauma response that I'm like, I hear you telling me that.

And that's because you don't feel safe, but you actually can feel safe in this situation.

That for me is like the trickiest final frontier.

When I feel something, is that just me overly protecting myself because of this trauma or rightfully protecting myself?

Is that it's like Brittany Packnet Cunningham just tweeted: is it my intuition or my anxiety?

Yes.

I see what you're saying.

Yes.

Yes.

Right.

We don't want to have an overdeveloped fear response, which is possible too.

I think the distinction is, it's a tricky needle to thread.

I can occasionally give this maybe a 50% fail rate,

but I can occasionally discern the difference by noticing at what point is that response rising up.

Sometimes, not always, because sometimes it's correct, but sometimes in the moment.

like when that whole trigger thing goes off and our systems like go into overdrive and

our adrenaline starts surging all those trauma responses to keep us safe.

Sometimes that, whatever I'm thinking in that moment bears a second glance

simply because my body is over-responding.

I tend to be able to trust my instincts a little bit more when they come to me in the quiet of my own mind.

You know what I mean?

When I'm not,

I'm not in fight or flight.

I'm quietly in my life and my brain says, we know something,

my body, we know something here.

You know it.

Let's examine this.

This is a thing worth paying attention to.

That tends to be a more trustworthy message.

Although occasionally that fight or flight response is also right.

It is also saying, run, run for the hills.

It's a little bit of the next morning.

Now, what is my body telling me?

Yeah.

So when it's a one-on-one conversation between you and you, it's most trustworthy and intimate.

when it might be a kind of conversation involving

extra people to whom you're reacting, maybe a little bit less trustworthy.

Well, I have what some people call a history of melodrama.

And it is possible, it is possible that I occasionally over-respond.

Once in a blue moon.

So, Jen, I have a question for you about this.

This just came to me.

I remember in the early, early days of our friendship,

I have no idea what happened.

I can only guess what happened based on the fact that we got to this conversation, but I think my feelings got hurt about something.

I'm just guessing based on my whole life.

Okay.

And then we had a conversation, and you were like, here's the deal.

I'm not a sensitive person.

That's right.

You and me are going to just have to learn about each other because I am not a sensitive person.

And I just remember being like, what does that mean?

Wow.

Okay.

So, and I have learned that from you.

Like, I know what you meant by that over time, right?

Is there anything about this process that has made you more sensitive in terms of like, because sensitive can mean I will not sense that thing.

Oh, yeah.

I am, I have a shell outside.

I will not sense that thing.

I will carry on.

Yeah.

Is there any part of this?

Would you amend that at all?

because i'm actually trying to be less a little bit a little bit

right less so yes do you think you're sensitive now

or do you think you were sensitive then and just didn't recognize it that's right that's a really good question and an interesting observation um that armor was a part of the way that i denied all kinds of things that I knew that I suspect that I sensed literally, but I didn't want to.

I didn't want to sense that.

I don't want to sense that.

I don't want that to be how it is.

I don't want that to be true.

I want that to fit the way that I wanted it to fit.

And so thus, I would choose desensitization toward it.

Like literally, I will not sense this in the way that I should.

Some of this is Enneagram 3 stuff.

You know, it is my instinct to prop up.

It's just my instinct to be like, this is better than it actually is.

I'm not sensitive to the nuance of what's complex here or what is in trouble here because I want it to be shiny.

I don't want it to be shiny.

And I can will it to work.

I can will this to work.

I can take my efficacy, apply it to this situation, and victorious we will be.

You too.

And, Amanda, we can.

Yes, that's the problem.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

We sure shit can.

That's right.

And so,

I appreciate the observation, Glenn.

And

part of my recovery process and really rebuilding is that that armor didn't really serve me.

I thought it was at the time, but I can look back on it and see that that actually hurt a lot of people, not just me.

That was not at all in service to my marriage.

Think about being married to somebody who's impervious, who has an armor up at all times, who is self-reporting, not sensitive.

And and you are trying to crack through.

You are sending up warning flares everywhere that there's a disconnection happening and something is not great and this is not tracking and we are off.

And then your partner is so committed to the narrative,

so committed to the shiny version of the story that isn't even real, you can't even get through to her.

Like you can't even get her to engage what's real.

Guess what?

That's hard to be married to.

That would be really hard to be in a relationship relationship with, period.

And so this is something that I have learned about myself through counseling and that I've also done with my kids.

This armored mom who can always just power us through the thing.

It actually makes people feel lonely.

That makes them feel alone in their feelings, in their response to something.

It makes them feel unheard

because they are.

They are unheard.

Because my quick response is,

this is fine.

It's not as bad as you think it is.

What a lonely person to be partnered to.

So

me dropping some of that shield and learning how to be sensitive to my environment, to my relationships, to

my own inner voice is new.

It's new work for me.

And I wouldn't call it easy for me.

I don't, I think it's hard.

I don't, it's hard.

I cry a lot.

I don't like that.

I don't like that.

I feel my feelings a lot.

I don't like them.

So it's not like I'm just going, this feels great.

Now I'm way more of a feeling person in the world.

I think it's kind of bullshit.

Like, it's hard.

And

then because I'm not practiced at it, too, I'm like, am I,

am I, is this, is this an appropriate response?

Like, is it okay for my feelings to be hurt right now?

You know what I mean?

Is it okay for me to be bothered by this?

Does this mean everything's doomed?

Because that's my old narrative.

If something's wrong, it's all wrong.

It's ruined.

It's ruined.

But where's the redemption?

It's broken.

Throw it away.

Again, that like, I don't have good practice here.

And so having to like be able to say, this one thing can be addressed and no one's going to die.

We're going to live.

Like, and maybe the thing will even be improved.

by like a genuine conversation around it where you can say, this is the way that this is making me feel.

And I just wonder if we can talk about it.

so anyway i'm learning this literally you guys when i sit down with my counselor parissa i have to get a notebook in front of me and she will like write me a script like i'm a kindergartner she'll be like then what you can say is

the way that this is making me feel and i'm like whoa wait what comes after that like a writing jail like a like a movie script

So I'm literally having to learn language around it, but it's hard.

Will I get better?

I don't know.

It's so beautiful.

You will.

I mean, here's the thing.

I feel like with all this conversation about sensitivity, I think what we're trying to figure out, especially women who either choose to armor or women who are like an open gaping wound,

I think it's really important that the goal isn't just to feel for feeling's sake.

It's like, hey, I need to embody this sensitivity to sense my surroundings so that I can learn how to manage those feelings and the world around me and have it be kind of this symbiotic relationship with with our environments with our inner worlds so that everybody myself included being the most important one can actually evolve and grow I think that sensitivity has a bad rap yeah because it's really self-care yes we all talk about candles as self-care but sensing what your brain is trying to tell you, what your body's trying to tell you and believing it is really what self-care is.

And then being able to manage it.

I think that what the word sensitivity has like a real negative connotation because it's like, oh, you're sensitive.

Like the world's going to fall apart.

The world tells women, oh, if you're too sensitive, then you're a fucking woman and good luck.

And it's like, no, men also are sensitive, but they armor themselves and that gives themselves a whole slew of problems.

Like it's about managing the sensing that we have.

And also paying attention to why.

I think in some ways, ways, when you're talking about desensitization, Jen, I think some people come by it just from little bitty up.

And then some people come by it

as an

adaptation to their situation.

You might come to a relationship like that, or you might become that in a relationship.

If you're not getting your needs met

as your sensitive nature, you might gradually as a survival mechanism over time, become desensitized.

Because why would you keep those open if it's never going to be met?

Right.

So, I think

it's interesting to actually look at yourself and be like, okay, is this a chicken or an egg?

You know, or is it both?

Because it might be that I am now this hardened, desensitized person, but that actually might be what I've been doing in this relationship to survive it.

Interesting.

That's a great point.

That's some deep diving right there to go back and find a version of yourself earlier to see, wait, has this always been the case?

Or did I used to be a different way?

Did I used to perceive the world differently?

Did I used to receive information differently?

And did I armor up just to keep going?

That's a great point.

And maybe it's a little of both.

I could actually see a little bit of both in me.

I think one thing that we sort of touched on last time, but this was a part of my rebuilding,

was

this whole truth that

because I, like y'all, I could point to these things that went wrong in the marriage

and just say that was the problem.

And I could be right.

People would sign off on that.

Yeah.

And be like, oh, yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

Yep.

You are absolved.

That's it.

That's the, that's a tidy story.

But the truth is that however I was operating inside my marriage, either by hook or by crook, whether it was a way that I just kind of, it's my instinct that I've got to work to improve or it's a response.

Either way, it doesn't really matter.

If I don't pay honest attention to my own patterns, my own responses.

my own way of assimilating information,

my own way of relating, that's my my problem.

I will walk that shit right into the next thing.

And I'm all, I'm frankly already walking it into all my other relationships as a friend, as a sister, as a mom.

And so that I don't care for.

I don't care for this information that this, this, this, this, and this are my problems.

Yeah.

Don't love that.

But either I pay attention to that

or I'm going to find myself repeating the exact same catastrophic relationship.

That is right.

That's

fascinating because I think we often, well, you're just going to repeat it in your next relationship if you don't deal with it now.

But you're saying, even with your relationship with your kids or your friends, what's an example of the way that those relationships outside of romantic relationships have

improved or disintegrated because of this new

self that you're bringing forward to them?

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Well,

as a mom, I think we touched on this, but my

new, fresh understanding of codependency has absolutely characterized the way I've parented

in that

my preference is to do everything in my power to manage outcomes for my kids.

I want to control their behavior.

I want to control the results.

I want to make things easier for them.

I want to clean up some of their messes.

And some of this is altruistic and some of it isn't.

Some of it is that I want this to look better than it is.

Yeah, that's good.

Um, turns out kids are a mess.

Just like we were.

They're just the worst.

They're the worst.

They're the worst.

And so are we.

Yes.

Like, they're not any better than we were.

They're doing all the same shit we did.

Like.

It's just that we know about it because of Instagram.

Yeah.

Right.

That's the problem.

It's just they could be less sneaky than we were.

In fact, my best friends are here right now with me.

They got here yesterday

in Minnesota, where I'm at.

And they were telling us that the Youngs, that's what we call them.

We all have all these Youngs, like all of our kids are like in their 20s and 20s.

The Youngs were telling them about this new app.

I can't with a new app.

I really can't.

I just, I, somebody deliver us.

Um, but there's like a new one.

called Be Real.

Oh, yeah.

And it's the front end.

Did you know about this?

Yeah.

Yes.

Front.

That's it, Abby.

Front, back, one second of a day.

It's just like a one-day thing.

And my girlfriend, Ginny, said, Caleb, that's my middle son.

He's 20.

She's like,

Be Real came up for me that said, hey, you may want to be friends with Caleb Hatmaker.

And she's like, and I didn't say yes.

You know why?

I don't want to see him being real.

No.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, I don't.

I want no realness.

I don't want real.

I kind of think I know what it is and I don't want it.

That's right.

And so I was doing this thing with my kids, like the way that I was structuring parenting where I would not let the chips fall where they may.

I would let the chips fall on my plate.

I would pick up all the chips,

stack them.

It's no good.

It's no shinga.

It's no good.

It is shinga.

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I wonder about this with you because there's a certainty that like religion can give us a certainty or our stories about marriage you said you were championing marriage i for one actually think you're actually a real

example of marriage now like that right i think you're like probably a stronger teacher about marriage than ever before because it's all like thank you real and but my question is i remember when i had to tell the kids that i was getting divorced It was awful to tell them that.

But the reason it was so awful is because I actually remember three months before Tish looking at me and saying, Promise me you'll never get divorced.

And my answer to her was, yeah, I'll never get divorced.

My narrative to these children, we talk about children, only understand story.

My story to them was, Our family is not like other families.

And I wouldn't have used those words, but like,

you're safe.

This,

we are special.

Like,

and so it was taking away the narrative that I had given them about world order, about the way being human is, that was the most shattering.

And I just wonder, how have your stories changed with the kids?

Because were I able to do it over again?

Were I able to like tell anyone right now who's raising little ones?

It would have been, we are a group of people who are going to love each other one way or another forever.

Yeah.

But the thing about life is we never know.

what things are going to look like.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Totally.

Presenting a different narrative with more nuance and what-ifs and and less certainty so that when something happens it doesn't feel like you're pulling that jenga thing out and the whole thing's falling

it's actually more safe it's more safe

yeah

i didn't have even access to that

truer story before i wouldn't have allowed myself to think that or know it or believe it or certainly communicate it.

Even all evidence to the contrary, I would still and was still saying,

Everybody's safe.

You are tucked into our little nest.

The nest will never ever be compromised.

And I thought it.

I mean, I really believed that.

And so I think there's this is an interesting conversation to have with the happily marrieds.

Or

more true, not necessarily the happily married, but the ones pretending to be.

Whatever you are, like the marrieds, just simply give it a big, the marrieds.

I'm trying to go back to married Jen and think how I would have received what you just said as a married person.

Like, would I have been able to

recognize the wisdom of what you just said?

Or would I have been so committed to the thing that I've been like,

not here,

like, not this zip code.

But you're right, because we, none of us are exceptional.

I'm telling you, none.

Nobody.

Nobody is impervious to

betrayal, to loss, to change, to trauma finally rearing its ugly head.

None, zero.

There's no protection.

None.

There isn't one.

And so

I think that story told to families, I think it would provide a weird sideways comfort

that really no matter what happens, you will be loved.

We will love each other.

Like we will still belong to one another in this world.

Yes.

No matter what the arrangement looks like.

Yes.

And like, I don't think I could have done it.

Religion, like what we know is there is a force that loves whatever it is.

And like holidays, like I was like, there's a Santa Claus and I will die on this mountain.

Like what?

Then growing up just becomes a series of things your parents lied to you about.

Isn't that so weird that we all accept that?

That we're like,

and then we do it to our own kids.

Yeah, I remember telling them about telling Chase about Santa Claus and him going,

Oh, is that the thing about is that true about God too?

Totally.

And I was like, Shit, I don't fucking know.

Let's just

no one teaches us what to do, Chase.

Just

we're just doing the best.

Just let us be parents.

Yeah, exactly.

It was a bad call on somebody's part.

Totally.

What do you feel like gender?

This category of things blows my mind constantly and I don't understand what it is.

So I don't have any answers.

I'm just asking you.

What is forgiveness?

Is it real?

Is it a decision?

Is it a feeling?

Is it like Santa Claus?

Is it like Santa Claus?

That's right.

That's what we want to.

Is it like, is it

too

much in terms of it's not real?

Like, what is forgiveness to you?

What's your version of it?

Do you have it with your ex?

What is the situation?

Hmm.

That's a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've thought about this a lot and had to kind of pick my way through it too, because

as with anything, like, as with all of this, as as with both recovery and rebuilding,

I'm responsible for me.

That's it.

I am responsible for me.

I am not responsible for what someone else does, says, thinks, chooses.

I'm not responsible.

I am responsible for my words, my responses, what I decide to believe, what I decide to hang on to, what I decide to release.

That's all mine.

And so

it's not true that we're always powerless, that we are are just at the whims of what somebody else does to us.

It feels that way for a minute.

It does.

And it's tempting to lean into a victim model because also that plays better.

It's easy to be sympathetic toward a victim.

It's easy to rally the troops to your side.

It's just neater.

It's neater and it lacks nuance.

And that's my favorite thing.

Like, I love it.

Like, can it just be completely black and white where I am the hero?

You know, like, I love that story.

Forgiveness falls in this camp.

This is mine.

This is entirely mine to sort out.

I can just tell you that for me,

there's a minute where unforgiveness is my choice and I want to choose it.

I'm choosing it on purpose because it feels good.

It's keeping my adrenaline active.

It's keeping me vigilant when I feel like, oh, this lack lack of vigilance, look what you got for it.

This is a fucking mess.

You're going to have to pick up every one of these shattered pieces and figure out what to do with them by yourself.

So you stay, you're pissed.

You are,

that's how I'm going to be.

And for a minute, that feels self-protective.

And maybe it is, frankly.

Maybe it is.

I'm learning to not be super judgmental toward every iteration of myself in this process.

That it isn't just the one thing,

our reactions can run the gamut and it doesn't make them right or wrong.

It just makes them what we needed that day.

But for me,

unforgiveness, which has its cousins, are like resentment and bitterness,

fury.

There's a place for fury.

There's a place for all that, frankly.

But

after a minute, it's so corrosive to my insides.

Yeah.

I can't live like it.

I can't.

I just can't.

I cannot live like that in the world.

I cannot walk around in righteous fury in my brain every second.

I cannot walk around bitter.

I just, it's not my way.

Like it feels bad in my bones.

And I notice that every thought,

I'm constantly writing dialogue and rebuttals.

And I'm tidying up the story, by the way.

I'm shining up my parts of it, right?

I'm absolutely coming out better than i was just give me time like every month it gets a little better right like i can polish it and i do and then i just start to feel so out of alignment do you know what i mean yeah and it feels bad and i don't like it and so

the worst thing about forgiveness to me

It's so very helpful when that person is genuinely sorry.

You know, that's

that's helpful.

Why can't that be the system?

Right?

Why can't that be the system?

But the truth is, forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with that other person.

That's right.

Not one thing.

Not one thing.

It doesn't require their anything, not their participation.

We don't have to sign off on the same version of the thing.

We don't need a an I'm sorry, although I did receive that.

But we don't need, that's not it.

That's not, that's bonus.

That's bonus content.

Forgiveness is an inside job.

And it just is me deciding that in letting somebody else off the hook, I'm really letting myself off the hook.

Like, I really am.

Like,

oh, God, I can just exhale.

I can lay the whole thing down.

It's so heavy.

It's so heavy to carry all that around every day and like keep hoisting it up.

And like, just, oh, God, it's exhausting.

So exhausting.

That clicked something for me.

When you said it's

right after,

where it's useful, it's like the unforgiveness and the rage and the fury is an engine.

It's like an energetic engine to get you through those periods where you really do.

You're looking at all the shattered glass and you are like, I need some fuel.

to start putting this back together.

Because if you don't use that fuel, if you don't have the unforgiveness and the rage, then all you have

is just catastrophic sadness.

That's right.

Those are the only two options you have then.

And catastrophic sadness is not an energetic

system.

So how are you going to do the pieces?

But once you get through that initial period where you need that engine to drive you, to keep you on autopilot.

Then that energetic system is going somewhere.

It's no longer outside of you.

It's inside of you.

And it's just living in you when you don't need it anymore to get through the thing you need to do.

And that's when it starts to do that

corruption because I'm still an energy.

Like, and by the way, it's not just to get you through.

It's to get you safe again.

I feel strongly about that.

Like the anger and the fury is useful when it helps you reset the boundary that made you unsafe.

So the first time I ever felt safe around Craig, I've said this before, was in the elevator.

Well, the first time I felt whatever the hell forgiveness is,

is in the elevator after our divorce mediation.

Because I finally was like, oh, I made, I made myself safe again.

I did the thing where I can't be hurt in this exact same way anymore.

Yeah.

So I do think that like trying to find forgiveness when you are still completely as vulnerable to the person who hurt you is like a cart before the horse thing.

Like maybe the anger and fury is to help us rebuild the boundary.

but then after that boundary is built, it's just poison.

I like that.

That's my experience.

That is my exact experience.

And I think there's so much compassion for women who are in the anger, fury, adrenaline space.

And to use it for what it's there for.

That's our body's response on purpose.

That's a biological response for a reason.

It is useful.

There is a place for it.

But I think we can feel when the scales start tipping, right?

When all of a sudden, I'm just starting to feel like a hateful person.

And that's not my nature.

It's metastasizing.

I don't want it.

I don't want it.

I don't want to go down like that.

And so at that point, it is work.

It is work to put the brakes on.

and to begin to choose healing.

Because that to me is the, that's the moment when I tip from survival to healing.

And which one do I want to pick?

And I picked healing and

part of healing is forgiveness.

It just is.

You can't have both.

Like these don't coexist well.

You can't heal while you are like absolutely blackhearted resentful.

You know what I mean?

You just

say, because people think of it as it should.

But what's interesting about what you're saying over and over again is it doesn't doesn't feel good.

It goes back to what we talked about in the beginning.

Like that,

it doesn't feel good in my body.

I don't like it.

I don't like unforgiveness.

Not like because somebody told us we should forgive, but it doesn't feel good.

She doesn't like it.

And nothing to do with what the other person deserves.

Right.

Like, I think that's the question.

Does that person deserve to be forgiven?

Is utterly irrelevant.

It's, do you deserve and wish to carry this inside of you?

That's right.

It has nothing to do with what they've done or what they're doing with it then.

But what it will do, if we don't choose it, if we don't choose forgiveness, it also

truncates any further work we're going to do on ourselves.

Because the longer I carry the story, which is this is all your fault,

and you have harmed me, and I am pissed.

That is a block for me being able to genuinely and honestly face some of my own stuff.

I just just can't do it.

I can't do both.

It's either all your fault

or I get to also face my responses, my patterns.

I can't have both of those things.

And so I have to make this choice.

Am I ready to move into the work that's going to be required on my own heart and soul?

And forgiveness is the front door.

to that moment.

And I want that.

I want that for me.

It feels better.

It feels better.

Yes.

That's shifting to me.

You hold on to it so you don't have to do your own shit.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

I hate the word forgiveness.

I honestly do.

I just hate the word because

it implies I now trust this other person.

Right.

And that's just like not what I think of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is all about personal work.

I think of forgiveness as like, oh, I'm letting go of that old story.

I'm letting go of that old wound.

I'm not carrying that with me anymore.

I don't actually don't really believe that I'm going to ever trust somebody truly who's wronged me in

a serious way ever again.

And that's what I think people assume forgiveness is.

Like, no, no, no, forgiveness is about self.

I think that, Jen, your reframe on that, that it's not about somebody else is really, it's beautiful.

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Jen, we only have a couple minutes left, so I want to ask you this.

So, we all know

the extraordinary

genocide that has happened over the last

year, I guess, when we moved from the pain to the waiting and the rising.

When you look at, you know, the house falls down, you build it brick by brick.

Have you had that moment yet where you look at your new house or your new life and think, huh, I don't think I would trade any of this.

You know, that Mary Oliver quote that someone once gave me a box of darkness, and it took me years to know that this too was a gift.

Yeah.

Does it feel that way, or does that feel like horseshit?

It feels 100% true.

100% true.

So much so that I feel shocked.

You know, I feel shocked by it.

I

made that shift over.

Like, this is what I have.

What am I going to do with it?

This is who I am.

What am I going to do with her?

I'm at the halfway point of my life.

What do I want for the second half?

So, I went from like

management to vision.

Do you know what I mean?

I decided to build a new vision for my life.

I wasn't just going to manage trauma.

I wasn't just going to recover from suffering.

I was moving into vision.

What's with the vision for my life?

I got a lot of gas left in the tank.

That is when everything got exciting.

And that is when I realized I am way more capable than I thought I was.

I had phoned in big pieces of adulting inside marriage.

Like I just handed it to another person to manage.

Some of this is an ordinary division of labor inside a marriage.

Some of it was laziness on my part.

Some of it was this learned helplessness I had done.

Like, I don't know what my bills are.

I don't know how much money I make.

That's dumb.

I'm smart.

I am smart.

I am powerful.

I make a lot of money.

I have a big career.

What am I doing?

I'm not a dummy.

And, but I was acting like one.

And

that was a immature way to live.

I don't care if I had the happiest marriage in the whole world.

Me absolutely checking out of enormous decisions in my adult life that affected our future, our kids,

that was irresponsible.

So me now, guess what?

I don't get to do that anymore, right?

Like, Jen, grow up.

So me like pulling up a seat to the table of adults and going,

I've got to learn this.

I need to, guess what?

I am good at it.

I'm good at all of it.

Like, I am smart.

I am responsible.

I am forward-thinking.

I know how to save money.

I guess what I do.

I invest.

Girls, I invest money.

That's right.

I invest money in the stock market.

I have a whole new vision for my life.

And it's not just financial.

Like, I have a vision for

work, for what I want to do.

What do I want my 50s to look like?

I know what I want my 60s to look like.

I know what I want my 70s to look like.

You know why?

I've charted it out.

I made a vision.

Of course you have.

And

I like

shocked myself at like what a good adult I am.

I am such a good partner to myself.

Like I am my best partner.

I will, guess what?

I will never let myself down.

Never, never.

I will trust myself all the way

in every direction.

Like I am trustworthy.

And so

this bit of it, I just keep looking at myself going, you were in there all along, Jen.

It's not like, it's not like this is a new version of you.

You've always been capable.

You have always been wise.

You've always been thoughtful.

You just didn't choose it.

You didn't choose those things in a lot of categories.

And so being forced to choose them now, oh, hell.

I'm just like, I feel so empowered and powerful in my own life now.

So much.

So like that's recovery.

That's That's recovery.

It's recovering a version of yourself that you always were before you got all this stuff.

It's going back to the original plan for you.

This was always, I like that.

Thank God.

Jen, does it ever freak you out

from where you sit right now?

You just, what you just described, this was always you.

You were always in there.

You can fully trust yourself.

Does it ever freak you out to think back

and think,

what if this wasn't chosen for you?

Because

from where you were, it seems to me like it would be very, very unlikely that you would have chosen this for you.

So

is it part of you

in the oddest shit that could be possible,

feel sort of lucky that it got chosen for you?

Yes.

Yes.

When I tell you that, and I mean this, this is genuine.

I wouldn't pick the path to this moment, the way that it went down ever.

I wouldn't pick it.

I wouldn't pick it in this way.

I wouldn't have chosen

this story the way it went down.

It is so, it was so much collateral damage, so painful for so many.

I wouldn't pick it.

However,

at this point in my life, I feel so lucky.

and so excited that I get to choose and write the second half of my life.

And

it is mine.

And guess what?

I'm not a 19-year-old bride this time.

I'm about to turn 48.

I've lived.

I've learned.

I'm smart.

I'm wise.

I've learned how to trust myself.

I've learned how to trust my body, my instinct, my mind, my thoughts, my gut.

I've wisely chosen my relationships at this point.

They're on purpose, every last one of them.

This is the best me I have ever been by a mile.

And so now

I just feel like whatever, I can trust the story I'm about to write.

Do you know what I mean?

I was a baby when I started writing the first one.

So was Brandon.

We were babies.

Like

we were doing the best we could with like the weird little truncated story we'd been handed since we were born, right?

We did the best we could with all we knew.

But at this point, oh my gosh, like, how exciting is this for me?

Like,

love this.

And I'm not afraid.

I'm just not afraid.

I'm not afraid.

Like, oh, this could happen again, you know, or like,

you don't, you could be betrayed in the, no, it won't.

No, it won't.

I know.

Like, I, it will not.

I would know in advance.

I'm paying attention.

I'm, I'm eyes wide open in my world, in my life.

I'm, I'm learning how to be sensitive, which means having conversations before they're at level 10.

That's what that means, guys.

You have them at level one

at level one.

And it's a pretty level horse correction.

And then you just are like, oh, oh, now it's it's resolved.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

I was just going to wait six months and just have to move.

Yeah.

Okay.

Jen, I just, I need you to understand that of all of the people in all of the land, you are just one of my favorite human beings to talk to in the world.

In the world.

You are so honest and so smart and so vibrant.

And so I just, I just love you so deeply.

I loved old Jen and I love new Jen and I love whatever Jen is next.

I just, it's what you're saying is like, it won't happen again,

not because nobody else will betray you.

Who the hell knows?

But because you won't betray yourself.

Never.

Yeah.

I'll take my little self right into the next phase.

That's right.

That's right.

And to the rest of you, you don't have an extra thing.

Just freaking listen to this again.

That's your next thing.

Go be with your girls.

We love you so much.

Bye, everybody.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire.

I came out

the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on the map.

A final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard pain.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes

things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

A final destination

lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard pain.

We're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back on.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do hard

things.

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.

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