This week on GET REAL Podcast...JEN HATMAKER!
JEN is a mom, speaker, podcast host, and New York Times bestselling author FOUR times over. She has created a life and message out of WHO she is and shares it so effectively.
IN THIS EPISODE, we talk:
• Knowing when to PIVOT and REBUILD your life
• Paying forward MENTORSHIP & GUIDANCE
• Her love of COOKING
• Following and trusting YOUR PATH
• Focusing on your MESSAGE and your MISSION
You can grab a copy of Jen’s New York Times bestselling cookbook, “Feed These People,” HERE!
Listen to JEN HATMAKER on GET REAL Podcast...NOW!
Connect with JEN:
Website
ME Course
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Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Carol, she's a queen of talking, so she's getting not
afraid of thing, So just let it flow. No one
can do with quiet cal learn this time for Carole,
I am so excited to be here with gin Hatmaker.
(00:30):
You are truly an inspiration. You really are you the
thing I think I'm I admire so much about your life,
but I'm really admiring how willing you are to be
open all the time and vulnerable, because that's hard, Like,
that's really hard, and you're open about like all of
it is that intentional? Did you like become that way?
How did you get in your Also, I have your book?
(00:52):
You have a new book. Actually you've already had a
birthday feed these people. Yeah, sure has she has. But
you're like, think you that's selling author, You've done it all,
but you share about it all. I thank you. First
of all, that's a really nic thing to say. I
am not. The best way you can answer that is
(01:15):
just to tell you that this is just genuinely how
I am. Like, I don't I'm not doing a thing
like I'm not doing a strategic how to share with
your audience and for easy stay, I just am like
this And so it's a little for better for worse, frankly,
(01:35):
because I've always been kind of and just an outward
facing person. I'm I don't know, I never felt like
super embarrassed or shy about all the things in life
that were constantly going sideways. And it occurred to me
really early on that the shiny version of life was
(01:57):
a big lie. And so you know, I just I
figured that out from the jump, and I was like, oh,
wait a minute, because I lived, because I lived real life,
and everybody around me was living real life. And I
mean there's not a single one of us who wasn't
alerted to the scam, all of us, every one of us.
(02:18):
If you've got if you've got an Instagram account and
you also have a real life, then you know this
isn't a mystery. You know, this is not what life
is like. It just isn't, not literally for anybody that
I know, nobody. And so I was like, oh, okay,
people are lying or they're omitting, it's probably a little
bit closer. And so that's I started now. To be fair,
(02:43):
I'm just kind of that way and always have been.
So that was one thing back in the olden days,
when like all that we really had was Facebook, and
I had a personal account, which meant it kept at
five thousand. Like I had that ac out after I'd
already published bi seven books. I had not gone over
(03:04):
five thousand followers. Now it just there's just more eyes
on it. There's just more eyes on that sort of
outward facing way to live. But I don't know, I
don't have another gear. Yeah, I admire that so much.
I mean, I feel like that's how you really can
be a guide, Like you really when you let someone
see it all, and when you're talking walking through hard
(03:26):
seasons in your life, like you've shared about some really
painful things and from divorce to you share your family
life to you're all everything in your book. You're so
honest about navigating different seasons and dating again, like I've
loved following your dating journey. It's just you're letting yourself,
like you said, because I lived, I lived real life,
(03:48):
but you're like, you're letting yourself live it. And I
feel like that is I'm turning forty this year, and
I've been at this breaking point because I had been
just a serial people pleaser, like my whole life, it
has been just like such a to my detriment, Like
I think it kind of guests served me in my
twenties because I was able to like chameleon my way
into a lot of cool opportunities. Yeah, but now I'm like,
(04:10):
who am I? What am I? I need to do
only things that resonate with me, but then having strength
to be honest and share it and like you like
you're sharing real things from your life and then you're
letting all these people in on it, So like what
if people have judgment for you? You know, being able
to hold that just being so secure in your message,
which I love about you because when you take it
(04:31):
into where you are from where it's just like for me,
it's been like I've been doing so much healing that
it's been such a personal journey. But you're I feel
like on the side where now you are like sharing
to really use your message to heal others, Like it's
like so much bigger than you, which I think is
just amazing. Thank you. Other people did that for me too,
So I didn't create the path. I'm just walking on it.
(04:55):
And I can think about plenty of people in my
life who were ahead of me in all sorts of ways. Faith, evolution, pain,
divorce recovery, Like somebody has gone ahead of me on
the same roads I'm walking and they held up lanterns
along the way, and I used them so much and
(05:15):
they served me so well. So I mean, it was
just it just feels like it's my turn to hold
up lanterns and say, there's people ahead of me, but
there's also people behind me. And you don't know a
road until you've walked it, and so I think I
really am just paying it forward. I'm paying forward the
mentorship and the leadership and the guidance that other people
(05:38):
provided for me. Really, what did all that guidance and
mentorship do for you? Well, in a lot of ways,
it just gave me. I mean, let's just pick my
most sort of recent huge life change, which was divorced
after twenty six years of marriage and a shocking divorce.
(05:59):
So that included a lot of like trauma and recovery
work and pain, and there's like family disintegration and then
a rebuild, a slow rebuild. So in that case, which
is not ever a road I expected to walk on.
So I didn't have my eyes on that path. I
had not paid attention to that path. I did not
(06:19):
have any sort of crumb breadcrumbs on that path and
your X were very public together too, sure, I mean
I've we've been a super public marriage and family for however,
like but particularly the last you know, ten fifteen years,
and marriage and family huge part of what I talk
(06:41):
about it, teach about and write about it. So I
mean it was not a small piece not obviously not
a small piece of my life, my marriage, but it
wasn't a small piece of my public life either. But
looking at the lanterns other people were holding up for
me gave me a vision for my future, have one
I didn't know I could. I had never imagined a
(07:05):
life as a single person in my upper forties, parenting
by myself and rebuilding alone. I mean I literally had
never had that thought. So um, those lanterns said this
is what's possible, This is what you can do, this
is what you're capable of, and brazenly, this is even
(07:26):
how good it can be if you just keep going, like,
if you just keep walking it out, if you can
get through the rubble, and you will. Um. Yeah, they
were telling the truth. They were shocking it so good.
It's shocking. Our resiliency is shocking. What we're capable of
learning is shocking. Our capacity for recovery and healing is shocking.
(07:51):
And I mean, even when you've lost what feels to
you like the most treasured thing, even then, even then
we can recover and and then we can rebuild in
beautiful ways. And so nobody was lying. If any of
those lanterns I got up closer and they burned out,
I would not hold them up myself. And so they
(08:12):
were right. They were true. They led a real path.
And so hopefully and just whatever imperfect way I can
do it, that's what I'm able to do for women
who are watching from behind. So I have a couple
questions because this is so so fascinating to me, and
like I am so just I love women who've held
(08:33):
the lannards like you have and gone through it and
stuck with it, because there's sure a lot of times
in the middle of that journey that you want to
freaking drop the lantern, put it out and run back
into the comfort of the darkness that you knew you
know it's like, but you've got to trudge forward. And
so what is the difference like having a dream of
a life And like you said, no idea that your
life would change, but then having like one idea of
(08:54):
how your life would be, having it kind of totally explode,
but then having to read, having to pivot, having to
see yourself in a different way to create a new life.
What is the How does that feel to then have
a fully new experience that might even be more free
than before, but like something you would have met, you
had to work so hard to allow yourself to get
(09:16):
to and heal and enjoy. What does that feel like?
What does it actually feel like over there after coming
through all that, Because I'm sure there's so many layers
to the feeling. Yeah, I've just learned that two or
three or five or seven things can all be true
at once, even if they seem like they're competing. Because
I am here and I'm I've discovered that the person
(09:40):
that I've that I have become is enough for all
of this. I can handle all of this. It's really empowering.
I felt really proud of all I have learned and
how I held my kids and us kind of tightly
and together, and what I've rebuilt, And that part of
me feels really proud. There's another part of me this
(10:03):
it's so exciting. I'm in love. I have a different relationship.
It's beautiful, it's it's mature, it's healthy, and it's strong,
and it's lovely. I mean, I got married when I
was nineteen, I was a baby, literally, I was a teenager,
and so this version of me is better. I'm I'm better,
I'm a better partner than I was a wife, and
(10:26):
so that can be like so exciting and romantic and
it's just such a wonderful part of my life. And
at the same time of all of that, I still
really grieve, like the life I had, and I grieve
having a partner in parenting. I grieve having to make
(10:46):
so many decisions on my own. That part feels lonely
because it is, and I still am so sad for
all my kids have lost and I had. I think
I just I have sorrow for the vision that I
had for my life, and so weirdly in a way
(11:09):
that I just can't explain all of that exists at once.
I totally see that, and I think that's why I'm
so drawn to people like you, and people like my
closest friends and even like my husband and stuff has
been through so much, so resilient, Like I just really
am drawn to people who are resilient and who have
figured out how to hold all these things at one time,
(11:30):
because to me, it's like I am not someone who
can ignore any of it, but it's like it's all there.
That's what life is. And I feel like that is
why yours. I think people love to be around you,
of being your presence, because you are just so honest
about what it all is, and like sometimes it just
happens and you're just in this life and it's navigating it.
(11:53):
I feel like that's why I started this podcast about
six years ago as I was I'm looking for guides,
you know, I'm literally looking for people to tell me
how do we do this thing? It's so confusing, and
you have just really lived so much life and taking
great data and inventory and now you're sharing that and
I feel like with your me courses those are so cool.
(12:15):
Tell me how those got going, because that's just even
one step farther of you deep diving with people, like
you're really getting in there with people. That's a lot
of energy you give to people to help heal people. Well,
that is my work, I mean, it really is. My
work is women and that is what I am here
to do. Literally, I don't know any other way to
be on this earth, and so it wouldn't ever. There
(12:37):
was never, not even one minute where I thought I'm
going to parse these out. Over here, I'm going to
have my life and loss and my real story, and
then over here I'll have the women I serve. That's
just not the way I operate. And so I knew
I was going to have to bring all of this
to the community and experience it in community and talk
(12:59):
about what I was learning as I went, which is
what I've always done and um and so really the
meat courses came out of that. It came out of
that season of life of the like shock, loss, rebuild, recover,
because I just in a in the way that I do,
not some sort of stick, no, no, no master plan.
(13:20):
I was just happy. I was just talking as I
was going, like, Okay, this is what I'm learning this week,
this is this is what I'm learning about banking, um,
this is how I learned how to buy a car,
like um, this is what I'm learn learned in therapy,
And I would say something that my therapists had taught me,
this is um, this is this is what I'm finding
out about the way my body's storing trauma just as
(13:42):
we went. But the response was so overwhelming, first of all,
because we're all in life is so common. I mean,
what's so common to suffer like y'all are. That's not
I have no I am not special. I don't have
a special story. It's not unique. And so all it
really did was just shine a spotlight on a ubiquitous
(14:04):
human experience, which is pain. And so everybody was just like, wait,
can you explain that more? Can you say more about that?
I'm trying to learn that. I don't have anybody to
help me, so I just my community was telling me
what you're learning is valuable for us too, and we'd
like you to tell us more, like more than an
Instagram post can hold. And so my team and I
started like, well, hell, maybe there's something should we like
(14:26):
put this together for our community? Should we should we
like really get serious about making this accessible and give
it to people who need a guide. I didn't have
a guide. I was throwing it all together like just peace,
milling it together like the most manic puzzle. And so
really that's what me course is. It was like, oh,
all right, let's make this organized and accessible and practical
(14:47):
and let's put it in your hands. This is everything
I learned. So so what is it? How do you
do ME course? Like, how does one consume it? And
what do you cover? It's digital? And I just told
the team when we were like brainstorming, I do this
need to look like, I'm like, none of us have time.
We don't have time for twenty five hour E course.
We don't nobody nobody wants that. We don't need a
(15:07):
lot of blah blah blah. We don't need a lot
of Like everybody's just like just teach me, just get
me to it, like give me the bullet points. And
so we were like, what we have to do is
come we do a lot of front in work, Like
let's combine to everything there is to know about this,
including I have an expert who's with me on every
ME course and let's condense it. Well, let's pack it
in there. And so it's like four digital sessions. Each
(15:31):
one's about twenty minutes long, like it's super digestible. And
then we have a thing that comes with it called
me sources and those are all like digital additional worksheets, exercises,
additional articles and it just builds around it. And so
there's video component and then there's digital resources and literally
(15:52):
it's everything I know. And then I had my experts
flying in film with me, and so they are teaching
and we tell them brass tacks like get us right
to the point, like the best stuff, the heart of
the thing, the meat of the thing, and so this
is for this is usable stuff for normal people. So
you have just been on a big mission of life,
(16:13):
and you've been on a healing journey, and you've lived
through a lot of stuff, and you're someone who has
seeked out the best, highest, most elevated answers and the
true ways to have happiness and peace and acceptance in
your life. You have gone on like a huge journey
to find that and you found a lot of great
(16:35):
information and you're sharing it like that. That's amazing because
a lot of people don't have the time, resources, know how,
you know, whatever, to want to do it, and so
you're saying, I do, here's what I'm learning, let me
share it. That's incredible. That's amazing, and I ended just
because of my work, I have access to access some
of the most incredible thinkers and leaders and practitioners and clinicians,
(16:59):
and I just that's a lucky that's a lucky break,
That's all it is. And so I'm like, oh, this
is this is great information to share and not necessarily
always super accessible or easy to find. And so I
don't know if it's the best and the highest and
all that. It's only what worked for me, That's what.
(17:19):
It's what I've been exposed to and what I've experienced
and the stuff that I put into practice in my
life that really moved the needle forward from me. That's amazing?
And is that why you love to write? And like
does it just flow out of you? Because even with
like this book, feed these people, like you can't so
much about it is if yes, it's the food, but
(17:41):
it's more than the food. It's what's around the food.
It's the nourishing the people at your table. It's the
putting your table together. It's the energy of what a
meal does for people. Is that just like you have
such an awareness of capturing it and putting it into
a tangible form for people. Is that kind of what
was happening with this book? What inspired this to be written?
(18:01):
A gathering and food and community and like that has
always been like a north star for me, So that's
not new. Always between I have a really big family,
extended family and personal family, and we all live here,
and my best friends all live within point zero two
miles of this house, and that is my real life.
(18:26):
Those people are my real life. And so this sense
of being together and making time and eating all that
is just a through life. I also loved to cook,
and so I wrote the cookbook during the pandemic, just
after I lost my marriage. And I always say this,
I said this to my agents when I wrote it.
(18:47):
I'm like, I don't know if anybody's ever going to
read this, but if not one person buys this cookbook,
it will have been so worth it, like every second
of making the project, because for me, there was value
in the creation of it. There was value in the
writing of it, the storytelling of it, the recipe testing
where I just bet everybody for a year and they
(19:09):
were like, this is our favorite project you've ever done.
It's boring for us when you write a regular book,
because all you do is just say you're busy. But
when you're writing a cookbook, you call us at like
two thirty in the afternoon and say I have four
unrelated recipes, please come over and taste them. And so
it was it felt like a really natural extension of
what I do. I was talking to Tyler, That's who
(19:31):
I'm dating. I was talking to Tyler a couple days
ago about the cookbook and he was just like, people
read your cookbook like a book, And I said, my
cookbook is what happens when a writer writes a cookbook
instead of a cook I wasn't really a cook that
wrote a cookbook. I was a writer who cooks, who
wrote a cookbook. I don't have to make sense. But
(19:54):
in its family and story and friends and tables and
old recipe and grandmas and moms and siblings, it's all
in there. It's like everything that matters to me. And
so it was such a joy. I just would absolutely
love to write another one. It was. It was just
such a fun project. I cannot believe how much I
enjoyed that project and how healing it was to me.
(20:15):
If that's really because you're gathering not only are you
writing these stories that means so much to your heart,
you're gathering all your favorite people. You're sharing these meals,
and yeah, I did. HiT's all the nerves, all the nerves.
Writing is generally very isolating. It's just a very lonely practice.
It is you are in your little hidy hole. Nobody
can help you, nobody, like no one's coming to save you,
(20:36):
like you've got to figure it out. And so normally
when I'm in a season of book writing, it's kind
of lonely. And this time it's just completely different. It
was entirely communal, and and it was it kept my
hands busy when my heart was so full of sorrow,
and so I got to do what I love, the
(20:57):
feed my favorite people and then write about it. It
was just just the most therapeutic project I have literally
ever ever engaged. It was fantastic. You can feel it
in the book too, like you can feel the energy
coming through, you can feel the love. And I love
that you prepose it in the beginning, like you don't
have to be a great writer a great cook like you,
(21:17):
because I am so intimidating a fiction. I cannot cook
at all. I find it very intimidating. But like your
cookbook lets, you know, like all are welcome, come on in,
Like oh oh yes, I always say this is a
cookbook for normals, like just everybody can do this. There's
nothing hard. None. I don't I don't cook like that.
I'm not a I'm a I'm not a technical cook
(21:40):
like that. I'm not a chef. And so yeah, this
is for everybody. And I didn't know how to cook.
I didn't grow up learning to cook, So I didn't
learn how to cook house in my thirties and I
was just self tied. I just learned by watching the
Food Network. So it's not like I have credentials or
I had some fancy training. It was gonna be opposite.
And so really, genuinely, if I can learn to cook,
(22:01):
and all I used to ever do was put chicken
nuggets and tighter tots on a sheet pan and put
in the oven for my kids. And if I can
learn to cook, really, jen anybody can. Really, that's about
I'm in that phase of my life, the chicken nuggets.
But I don't even do the oven. I do microwave gin.
So that's where we are, Okay, Yeah, that's a place
for that, and there's a time. Yeah, my daughter is
(22:24):
three and a half and I can't cook, so she
eats like raw avocado and put tons of fruit and
then chicken uggets in the microwave, and I'm like, you know,
you know it is and it's okay. And I try
to make that super clear in the cookbook too. I'm like, look,
if I cook two maybe three nights a week, I
am winning. So let's let's take the bar all the
(22:45):
way down to real life what it looks like. And
there's just a season for avocado and strawberries, Jess, So
I feel great about that. Gen You're one of those
people that makes everyone feel like it's gonna be okay.
Do people tell you that all the time, Like you
just make people it's going to be okay. Thank you.
It's a nice compliment, and I think that is I
(23:09):
think I say that because I believe it. And I
have been around a while and I've served women for
a long time. So I have a lot of women
in my world, in my community, in my inbox and
my ears, and we've been through every imaginable thing. Literally,
I honestly don't think there's something you can say that
(23:30):
I don't have an experience ancillary with somebody else with
in and it is going to be okay. Like we do,
we do heal, and we build and we create things
and we dream things up and then execute it. And
we have big ideas and they come to life, and
(23:51):
we suffer, and our kids suffer, and our marriage is suffer,
and our bodies suffer, and we keep going. I just
I've seen it too many times now to not believe it.
And so now it's more like we can be okay,
we will be okay. So how do we get there? Like,
how do we get there? Nobody is without hope? Nobody
all of us have it. I love that so much.
(24:12):
That is so true. So what are you after all
the life you've lived, everything you've seen, what would you say? Like?
True love is? What is true love? I think it
has a lot of there's a lot of slivers to
that pie chart, and and a lot of people occupy
the true love little chamber in our heart. You know,
that's a very romantic idea, a very romantic term, and
(24:36):
tends to have sort of a narrow idea of what
true love is. But like, for example, you know, we
just passed Valentine's Day a few weeks ago, and I
sent a text to my three best friends and I said,
you are the loves of my life and I'm in it.
They're the greatest loves of my life and my kids
are and my sisters, my nephews. I just I'm high
(25:01):
on true love. What is the actions of it? Like
when you're in the true love experience with these people
in your life, what does that give and take of? Like?
What is that feeling that's going on? Because I feel
like people can say they love someone, but saying it
and living it are different. I mean, I don't know
if I have a tidy definition of it, but I
can say that when I think about the greatest loves
(25:24):
of my life, they all exist outside of really anything
I'm doing or producing or creating or achieving. That is
a completely different chamber. So if all of this went away,
if I had never wrote another book, if I never
record another podcast and never had another show, none of
those relationships would be affected to zero. And so they
(25:45):
exist way outside the realm of whatever I feel like
I'm producing in this world, and they live more in
my flesh and in my bones. And and I think
at the bottom of the thing, if I just burrowed
down to the bottom of it, it's just this kind
of idea that no matter what, literally no matter what,
(26:07):
no matter what we gain or lose or win or
don't win or do or no matter what, I am
yours and you are mine. I am here for you
and you are here for me. I love you and
you love me, and it's just unshakable. It's just it's
(26:31):
it's unshakable. And so we don't get a lot of
people like that in life. That's not a big category.
It's not a huge pool of people. But the ones
that are in it, they're worth at all, they really are.
They're worth our time, they're worth our energy, They're worth
our effort and our sacrifices and our attention and our
affection and whatever it is that relationships of that magnitude
(26:55):
require it's worth every second to give it. I've got
it and say it's huh, yeah, that's amazing your thank you.
I don't know if that's a good definition, but it's
what I got. I love it. I love it. You're
just like to You're just to the bone with all
of it, with your love, with everything you do. You're
going all in and you can feel it, and I
think that it's just incredible. Um. I always wrap up
(27:17):
with one question, which is leave your lights. And basically
it's like in particular, like what is your mission statement,
what do you want people to know? What is what's
guiding you? And all of this? It's like what do
you hope people can walk away and just know about life?
And it's in particular in you, Like I would love
to know, like what is your mission? What motivates you?
Because you do so many amazing things? What is it
(27:38):
that makes you put your feet on the ground and
get up and get going? Like? What is that thing? Um?
I generally, because I'm a doer and an achiever and
Anyagram three, I can get real lost in the what
do I want it? What's my motivation? What's my hustle,
what's my deal? What's my grind? What's my So I
have to work, I have to practice. It's really hard
(28:02):
at hanging on to what matters. And so I take
a really really long road approach to this idea. And
so I think regularly about myself. I think about my
like ninety five year old self a lot. I think
about her being ninety five and almost my entire life's
(28:25):
behind me, almost nothing left in front of me and
all my relationship everything, And I think about her and
what she will be proud of and what she would
tell me right this second at age forty eight. Oh,
(28:46):
don't worry about that, honey, that's not it. That is
not it. Let that one drop right to the ground
that you won't even remember that in ten years like
or that, that's not the one that matters as not yet, June.
Not spend your precious energy on that, But do spend
it here that when you're ninety five, these will be
(29:06):
the things that you cherish. And so that's my north star.
I think about her. She guides me a lot when
I'm trying to decide does this matter or not? Do
I do this or not? It's just a yes or no? Um,
should I hang onto this or not? Should I forgive
this or not? My ninety five year old self usually
instructs me. Right, I feel like she's pretty cool. Yes,
it's pretty cool. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah, she had a
(29:30):
good life, really good life. Yeah, and she chose well,
oh man, that should that be your next book. She
had a good life and she had a good life.
Old I want to read that book. Man. That's a
safe Oh that's beautiful. What a way to do it, Jim,
that's a great idea. That's a really good visual to
(29:52):
think about. I love that. Thank you. So much for
your time. Amazing. Can you tell everyone where they can
find you? I know you have a cruise coming up. Mom,
you're so cool, like you're doing a cruise, Like, who
doesn't cruise? Many things? Yeah, so many irons in the fire.
We're always just like coming up with stuff. Yeah. I
just said, what do I want to do? Yeah? I
(30:13):
want a vacation. I want to have fun. My friends
want to have fun, my community wants to have fun.
Can we make fun a thing that we do? And
so you say that this is not a self help cruise,
This is not you're not coming here to better yourself.
You're coming here. Do you have a great time? This
is a vacation. Please get a margarita. Like, don't post
all these pictures because, oh my gosh, I'm the only
(30:35):
gin hat maker. It's such a weird day. So I'm
jin hatmaker everywhere on all the socials, and jin hatmaker
dot com is way more stuff over there. And so
that's it. I mean, if you find another gin hatmaker,
let me know. As far as I know, I'm the
only one. Okay, great, And everyone who's like thinking they
want to have a vacation, check out this cruise. I
think it's amazing. You're awesome. Thanks, thank you, Thanks for
(30:55):
having me on. It was great to shout with you.
Have a great day you two ye
Carol, she's a queen of talking, so she's getting not
afraid of thing, So just let it flow. No one
can do with quiet cal learn this time for Carole,
I am so excited to be here with gin Hatmaker.
(00:30):
You are truly an inspiration. You really are you the
thing I think I'm I admire so much about your life,
but I'm really admiring how willing you are to be
open all the time and vulnerable, because that's hard, Like,
that's really hard, and you're open about like all of
it is that intentional? Did you like become that way?
How did you get in your Also, I have your book?
(00:52):
You have a new book. Actually you've already had a
birthday feed these people. Yeah, sure has she has. But
you're like, think you that's selling author, You've done it all,
but you share about it all. I thank you. First
of all, that's a really nic thing to say. I
am not. The best way you can answer that is
(01:15):
just to tell you that this is just genuinely how
I am. Like, I don't I'm not doing a thing
like I'm not doing a strategic how to share with
your audience and for easy stay, I just am like
this And so it's a little for better for worse, frankly,
(01:35):
because I've always been kind of and just an outward
facing person. I'm I don't know, I never felt like
super embarrassed or shy about all the things in life
that were constantly going sideways. And it occurred to me
really early on that the shiny version of life was
(01:57):
a big lie. And so you know, I just I
figured that out from the jump, and I was like, oh,
wait a minute, because I lived, because I lived real life,
and everybody around me was living real life. And I
mean there's not a single one of us who wasn't
alerted to the scam, all of us, every one of us.
(02:18):
If you've got if you've got an Instagram account and
you also have a real life, then you know this
isn't a mystery. You know, this is not what life
is like. It just isn't, not literally for anybody that
I know, nobody. And so I was like, oh, okay,
people are lying or they're omitting, it's probably a little
bit closer. And so that's I started now. To be fair,
(02:43):
I'm just kind of that way and always have been.
So that was one thing back in the olden days,
when like all that we really had was Facebook, and
I had a personal account, which meant it kept at
five thousand. Like I had that ac out after I'd
already published bi seven books. I had not gone over
(03:04):
five thousand followers. Now it just there's just more eyes
on it. There's just more eyes on that sort of
outward facing way to live. But I don't know, I
don't have another gear. Yeah, I admire that so much.
I mean, I feel like that's how you really can
be a guide, Like you really when you let someone
see it all, and when you're talking walking through hard
(03:26):
seasons in your life, like you've shared about some really
painful things and from divorce to you share your family
life to you're all everything in your book. You're so
honest about navigating different seasons and dating again, like I've
loved following your dating journey. It's just you're letting yourself,
like you said, because I lived, I lived real life,
(03:48):
but you're like, you're letting yourself live it. And I
feel like that is I'm turning forty this year, and
I've been at this breaking point because I had been
just a serial people pleaser, like my whole life, it
has been just like such a to my detriment, Like
I think it kind of guests served me in my
twenties because I was able to like chameleon my way
into a lot of cool opportunities. Yeah, but now I'm like,
(04:10):
who am I? What am I? I need to do
only things that resonate with me, but then having strength
to be honest and share it and like you like
you're sharing real things from your life and then you're
letting all these people in on it, So like what
if people have judgment for you? You know, being able
to hold that just being so secure in your message,
which I love about you because when you take it
(04:31):
into where you are from where it's just like for me,
it's been like I've been doing so much healing that
it's been such a personal journey. But you're I feel
like on the side where now you are like sharing
to really use your message to heal others, Like it's
like so much bigger than you, which I think is
just amazing. Thank you. Other people did that for me too,
So I didn't create the path. I'm just walking on it.
(04:55):
And I can think about plenty of people in my
life who were ahead of me in all sorts of ways. Faith, evolution, pain,
divorce recovery, Like somebody has gone ahead of me on
the same roads I'm walking and they held up lanterns
along the way, and I used them so much and
(05:15):
they served me so well. So I mean, it was
just it just feels like it's my turn to hold
up lanterns and say, there's people ahead of me, but
there's also people behind me. And you don't know a
road until you've walked it, and so I think I
really am just paying it forward. I'm paying forward the
mentorship and the leadership and the guidance that other people
(05:38):
provided for me. Really, what did all that guidance and
mentorship do for you? Well, in a lot of ways,
it just gave me. I mean, let's just pick my
most sort of recent huge life change, which was divorced
after twenty six years of marriage and a shocking divorce.
(05:59):
So that included a lot of like trauma and recovery
work and pain, and there's like family disintegration and then
a rebuild, a slow rebuild. So in that case, which
is not ever a road I expected to walk on.
So I didn't have my eyes on that path. I
had not paid attention to that path. I did not
(06:19):
have any sort of crumb breadcrumbs on that path and
your X were very public together too, sure, I mean
I've we've been a super public marriage and family for however,
like but particularly the last you know, ten fifteen years,
and marriage and family huge part of what I talk
(06:41):
about it, teach about and write about it. So I
mean it was not a small piece not obviously not
a small piece of my life, my marriage, but it
wasn't a small piece of my public life either. But
looking at the lanterns other people were holding up for
me gave me a vision for my future, have one
I didn't know I could. I had never imagined a
(07:05):
life as a single person in my upper forties, parenting
by myself and rebuilding alone. I mean I literally had
never had that thought. So um, those lanterns said this
is what's possible, This is what you can do, this
is what you're capable of, and brazenly, this is even
(07:26):
how good it can be if you just keep going, like,
if you just keep walking it out, if you can
get through the rubble, and you will. Um. Yeah, they
were telling the truth. They were shocking it so good.
It's shocking. Our resiliency is shocking. What we're capable of
learning is shocking. Our capacity for recovery and healing is shocking.
(07:51):
And I mean, even when you've lost what feels to
you like the most treasured thing, even then, even then
we can recover and and then we can rebuild in
beautiful ways. And so nobody was lying. If any of
those lanterns I got up closer and they burned out,
I would not hold them up myself. And so they
(08:12):
were right. They were true. They led a real path.
And so hopefully and just whatever imperfect way I can
do it, that's what I'm able to do for women
who are watching from behind. So I have a couple
questions because this is so so fascinating to me, and
like I am so just I love women who've held
(08:33):
the lannards like you have and gone through it and
stuck with it, because there's sure a lot of times
in the middle of that journey that you want to
freaking drop the lantern, put it out and run back
into the comfort of the darkness that you knew you
know it's like, but you've got to trudge forward. And
so what is the difference like having a dream of
a life And like you said, no idea that your
life would change, but then having like one idea of
(08:54):
how your life would be, having it kind of totally explode,
but then having to read, having to pivot, having to
see yourself in a different way to create a new life.
What is the How does that feel to then have
a fully new experience that might even be more free
than before, but like something you would have met, you
had to work so hard to allow yourself to get
(09:16):
to and heal and enjoy. What does that feel like?
What does it actually feel like over there after coming
through all that, Because I'm sure there's so many layers
to the feeling. Yeah, I've just learned that two or
three or five or seven things can all be true
at once, even if they seem like they're competing. Because
I am here and I'm I've discovered that the person
(09:40):
that I've that I have become is enough for all
of this. I can handle all of this. It's really empowering.
I felt really proud of all I have learned and
how I held my kids and us kind of tightly
and together, and what I've rebuilt, And that part of
me feels really proud. There's another part of me this
(10:03):
it's so exciting. I'm in love. I have a different relationship.
It's beautiful, it's it's mature, it's healthy, and it's strong,
and it's lovely. I mean, I got married when I
was nineteen, I was a baby, literally, I was a teenager,
and so this version of me is better. I'm I'm better,
I'm a better partner than I was a wife, and
(10:26):
so that can be like so exciting and romantic and
it's just such a wonderful part of my life. And
at the same time of all of that, I still
really grieve, like the life I had, and I grieve
having a partner in parenting. I grieve having to make
(10:46):
so many decisions on my own. That part feels lonely
because it is, and I still am so sad for
all my kids have lost and I had. I think
I just I have sorrow for the vision that I
had for my life, and so weirdly in a way
(11:09):
that I just can't explain all of that exists at once.
I totally see that, and I think that's why I'm
so drawn to people like you, and people like my
closest friends and even like my husband and stuff has
been through so much, so resilient, Like I just really
am drawn to people who are resilient and who have
figured out how to hold all these things at one time,
(11:30):
because to me, it's like I am not someone who
can ignore any of it, but it's like it's all there.
That's what life is. And I feel like that is
why yours. I think people love to be around you,
of being your presence, because you are just so honest
about what it all is, and like sometimes it just
happens and you're just in this life and it's navigating it.
(11:53):
I feel like that's why I started this podcast about
six years ago as I was I'm looking for guides,
you know, I'm literally looking for people to tell me
how do we do this thing? It's so confusing, and
you have just really lived so much life and taking
great data and inventory and now you're sharing that and
I feel like with your me courses those are so cool.
(12:15):
Tell me how those got going, because that's just even
one step farther of you deep diving with people, like
you're really getting in there with people. That's a lot
of energy you give to people to help heal people. Well,
that is my work, I mean, it really is. My
work is women and that is what I am here
to do. Literally, I don't know any other way to
be on this earth, and so it wouldn't ever. There
(12:37):
was never, not even one minute where I thought I'm
going to parse these out. Over here, I'm going to
have my life and loss and my real story, and
then over here I'll have the women I serve. That's
just not the way I operate. And so I knew
I was going to have to bring all of this
to the community and experience it in community and talk
(12:59):
about what I was learning as I went, which is
what I've always done and um and so really the
meat courses came out of that. It came out of
that season of life of the like shock, loss, rebuild, recover,
because I just in a in the way that I do,
not some sort of stick, no, no, no master plan.
(13:20):
I was just happy. I was just talking as I
was going, like, Okay, this is what I'm learning this week,
this is this is what I'm learning about banking, um,
this is how I learned how to buy a car,
like um, this is what I'm learn learned in therapy,
And I would say something that my therapists had taught me,
this is um, this is this is what I'm finding
out about the way my body's storing trauma just as
(13:42):
we went. But the response was so overwhelming, first of all,
because we're all in life is so common. I mean,
what's so common to suffer like y'all are. That's not
I have no I am not special. I don't have
a special story. It's not unique. And so all it
really did was just shine a spotlight on a ubiquitous
(14:04):
human experience, which is pain. And so everybody was just like, wait,
can you explain that more? Can you say more about that?
I'm trying to learn that. I don't have anybody to
help me, so I just my community was telling me
what you're learning is valuable for us too, and we'd
like you to tell us more, like more than an
Instagram post can hold. And so my team and I
started like, well, hell, maybe there's something should we like
(14:26):
put this together for our community? Should we should we
like really get serious about making this accessible and give
it to people who need a guide. I didn't have
a guide. I was throwing it all together like just peace,
milling it together like the most manic puzzle. And so
really that's what me course is. It was like, oh,
all right, let's make this organized and accessible and practical
(14:47):
and let's put it in your hands. This is everything
I learned. So so what is it? How do you
do ME course? Like, how does one consume it? And
what do you cover? It's digital? And I just told
the team when we were like brainstorming, I do this
need to look like, I'm like, none of us have time.
We don't have time for twenty five hour E course.
We don't nobody nobody wants that. We don't need a
(15:07):
lot of blah blah blah. We don't need a lot
of Like everybody's just like just teach me, just get
me to it, like give me the bullet points. And
so we were like, what we have to do is
come we do a lot of front in work, Like
let's combine to everything there is to know about this,
including I have an expert who's with me on every
ME course and let's condense it. Well, let's pack it
in there. And so it's like four digital sessions. Each
(15:31):
one's about twenty minutes long, like it's super digestible. And
then we have a thing that comes with it called
me sources and those are all like digital additional worksheets, exercises,
additional articles and it just builds around it. And so
there's video component and then there's digital resources and literally
(15:52):
it's everything I know. And then I had my experts
flying in film with me, and so they are teaching
and we tell them brass tacks like get us right
to the point, like the best stuff, the heart of
the thing, the meat of the thing, and so this
is for this is usable stuff for normal people. So
you have just been on a big mission of life,
(16:13):
and you've been on a healing journey, and you've lived
through a lot of stuff, and you're someone who has
seeked out the best, highest, most elevated answers and the
true ways to have happiness and peace and acceptance in
your life. You have gone on like a huge journey
to find that and you found a lot of great
(16:35):
information and you're sharing it like that. That's amazing because
a lot of people don't have the time, resources, know how,
you know, whatever, to want to do it, and so
you're saying, I do, here's what I'm learning, let me
share it. That's incredible. That's amazing, and I ended just
because of my work, I have access to access some
of the most incredible thinkers and leaders and practitioners and clinicians,
(16:59):
and I just that's a lucky that's a lucky break,
That's all it is. And so I'm like, oh, this
is this is great information to share and not necessarily
always super accessible or easy to find. And so I
don't know if it's the best and the highest and
all that. It's only what worked for me, That's what.
(17:19):
It's what I've been exposed to and what I've experienced
and the stuff that I put into practice in my
life that really moved the needle forward from me. That's amazing?
And is that why you love to write? And like
does it just flow out of you? Because even with
like this book, feed these people, like you can't so
much about it is if yes, it's the food, but
(17:41):
it's more than the food. It's what's around the food.
It's the nourishing the people at your table. It's the
putting your table together. It's the energy of what a
meal does for people. Is that just like you have
such an awareness of capturing it and putting it into
a tangible form for people. Is that kind of what
was happening with this book? What inspired this to be written?
(18:01):
A gathering and food and community and like that has
always been like a north star for me, So that's
not new. Always between I have a really big family,
extended family and personal family, and we all live here,
and my best friends all live within point zero two
miles of this house, and that is my real life.
(18:26):
Those people are my real life. And so this sense
of being together and making time and eating all that
is just a through life. I also loved to cook,
and so I wrote the cookbook during the pandemic, just
after I lost my marriage. And I always say this,
I said this to my agents when I wrote it.
(18:47):
I'm like, I don't know if anybody's ever going to
read this, but if not one person buys this cookbook,
it will have been so worth it, like every second
of making the project, because for me, there was value
in the creation of it. There was value in the
writing of it, the storytelling of it, the recipe testing
where I just bet everybody for a year and they
(19:09):
were like, this is our favorite project you've ever done.
It's boring for us when you write a regular book,
because all you do is just say you're busy. But
when you're writing a cookbook, you call us at like
two thirty in the afternoon and say I have four
unrelated recipes, please come over and taste them. And so
it was it felt like a really natural extension of
what I do. I was talking to Tyler, That's who
(19:31):
I'm dating. I was talking to Tyler a couple days
ago about the cookbook and he was just like, people
read your cookbook like a book, And I said, my
cookbook is what happens when a writer writes a cookbook
instead of a cook I wasn't really a cook that
wrote a cookbook. I was a writer who cooks, who
wrote a cookbook. I don't have to make sense. But
(19:54):
in its family and story and friends and tables and
old recipe and grandmas and moms and siblings, it's all
in there. It's like everything that matters to me. And
so it was such a joy. I just would absolutely
love to write another one. It was. It was just
such a fun project. I cannot believe how much I
enjoyed that project and how healing it was to me.
(20:15):
If that's really because you're gathering not only are you
writing these stories that means so much to your heart,
you're gathering all your favorite people. You're sharing these meals,
and yeah, I did. HiT's all the nerves, all the nerves.
Writing is generally very isolating. It's just a very lonely practice.
It is you are in your little hidy hole. Nobody
can help you, nobody, like no one's coming to save you,
(20:36):
like you've got to figure it out. And so normally
when I'm in a season of book writing, it's kind
of lonely. And this time it's just completely different. It
was entirely communal, and and it was it kept my
hands busy when my heart was so full of sorrow,
and so I got to do what I love, the
(20:57):
feed my favorite people and then write about it. It
was just just the most therapeutic project I have literally
ever ever engaged. It was fantastic. You can feel it
in the book too, like you can feel the energy
coming through, you can feel the love. And I love
that you prepose it in the beginning, like you don't
have to be a great writer a great cook like you,
(21:17):
because I am so intimidating a fiction. I cannot cook
at all. I find it very intimidating. But like your
cookbook lets, you know, like all are welcome, come on in,
Like oh oh yes, I always say this is a
cookbook for normals, like just everybody can do this. There's
nothing hard. None. I don't I don't cook like that.
I'm not a I'm a I'm not a technical cook
(21:40):
like that. I'm not a chef. And so yeah, this
is for everybody. And I didn't know how to cook.
I didn't grow up learning to cook, So I didn't
learn how to cook house in my thirties and I
was just self tied. I just learned by watching the
Food Network. So it's not like I have credentials or
I had some fancy training. It was gonna be opposite.
And so really, genuinely, if I can learn to cook,
(22:01):
and all I used to ever do was put chicken
nuggets and tighter tots on a sheet pan and put
in the oven for my kids. And if I can
learn to cook, really, jen anybody can. Really, that's about
I'm in that phase of my life, the chicken nuggets.
But I don't even do the oven. I do microwave gin.
So that's where we are, Okay, Yeah, that's a place
for that, and there's a time. Yeah, my daughter is
(22:24):
three and a half and I can't cook, so she
eats like raw avocado and put tons of fruit and
then chicken uggets in the microwave, and I'm like, you know,
you know it is and it's okay. And I try
to make that super clear in the cookbook too. I'm like, look,
if I cook two maybe three nights a week, I
am winning. So let's let's take the bar all the
(22:45):
way down to real life what it looks like. And
there's just a season for avocado and strawberries, Jess, So
I feel great about that. Gen You're one of those
people that makes everyone feel like it's gonna be okay.
Do people tell you that all the time, Like you
just make people it's going to be okay. Thank you.
It's a nice compliment, and I think that is I
(23:09):
think I say that because I believe it. And I
have been around a while and I've served women for
a long time. So I have a lot of women
in my world, in my community, in my inbox and
my ears, and we've been through every imaginable thing. Literally,
I honestly don't think there's something you can say that
(23:30):
I don't have an experience ancillary with somebody else with
in and it is going to be okay. Like we do,
we do heal, and we build and we create things
and we dream things up and then execute it. And
we have big ideas and they come to life, and
(23:51):
we suffer, and our kids suffer, and our marriage is suffer,
and our bodies suffer, and we keep going. I just
I've seen it too many times now to not believe it.
And so now it's more like we can be okay,
we will be okay. So how do we get there? Like,
how do we get there? Nobody is without hope? Nobody
all of us have it. I love that so much.
(24:12):
That is so true. So what are you after all
the life you've lived, everything you've seen, what would you say? Like?
True love is? What is true love? I think it
has a lot of there's a lot of slivers to
that pie chart, and and a lot of people occupy
the true love little chamber in our heart. You know,
that's a very romantic idea, a very romantic term, and
(24:36):
tends to have sort of a narrow idea of what
true love is. But like, for example, you know, we
just passed Valentine's Day a few weeks ago, and I
sent a text to my three best friends and I said,
you are the loves of my life and I'm in it.
They're the greatest loves of my life and my kids
are and my sisters, my nephews. I just I'm high
(25:01):
on true love. What is the actions of it? Like
when you're in the true love experience with these people
in your life, what does that give and take of? Like?
What is that feeling that's going on? Because I feel
like people can say they love someone, but saying it
and living it are different. I mean, I don't know
if I have a tidy definition of it, but I
can say that when I think about the greatest loves
(25:24):
of my life, they all exist outside of really anything
I'm doing or producing or creating or achieving. That is
a completely different chamber. So if all of this went away,
if I had never wrote another book, if I never
record another podcast and never had another show, none of
those relationships would be affected to zero. And so they
(25:45):
exist way outside the realm of whatever I feel like
I'm producing in this world, and they live more in
my flesh and in my bones. And and I think
at the bottom of the thing, if I just burrowed
down to the bottom of it, it's just this kind
of idea that no matter what, literally no matter what,
(26:07):
no matter what we gain or lose or win or
don't win or do or no matter what, I am
yours and you are mine. I am here for you
and you are here for me. I love you and
you love me, and it's just unshakable. It's just it's
(26:31):
it's unshakable. And so we don't get a lot of
people like that in life. That's not a big category.
It's not a huge pool of people. But the ones
that are in it, they're worth at all, they really are.
They're worth our time, they're worth our energy, They're worth
our effort and our sacrifices and our attention and our
affection and whatever it is that relationships of that magnitude
(26:55):
require it's worth every second to give it. I've got
it and say it's huh, yeah, that's amazing your thank you.
I don't know if that's a good definition, but it's
what I got. I love it. I love it. You're
just like to You're just to the bone with all
of it, with your love, with everything you do. You're
going all in and you can feel it, and I
think that it's just incredible. Um. I always wrap up
(27:17):
with one question, which is leave your lights. And basically
it's like in particular, like what is your mission statement,
what do you want people to know? What is what's
guiding you? And all of this? It's like what do
you hope people can walk away and just know about life?
And it's in particular in you, Like I would love
to know, like what is your mission? What motivates you?
Because you do so many amazing things? What is it
(27:38):
that makes you put your feet on the ground and
get up and get going? Like? What is that thing? Um?
I generally, because I'm a doer and an achiever and
Anyagram three, I can get real lost in the what
do I want it? What's my motivation? What's my hustle,
what's my deal? What's my grind? What's my So I
have to work, I have to practice. It's really hard
(28:02):
at hanging on to what matters. And so I take
a really really long road approach to this idea. And
so I think regularly about myself. I think about my
like ninety five year old self a lot. I think
about her being ninety five and almost my entire life's
(28:25):
behind me, almost nothing left in front of me and
all my relationship everything, And I think about her and
what she will be proud of and what she would
tell me right this second at age forty eight. Oh,
(28:46):
don't worry about that, honey, that's not it. That is
not it. Let that one drop right to the ground
that you won't even remember that in ten years like
or that, that's not the one that matters as not yet, June.
Not spend your precious energy on that, But do spend
it here that when you're ninety five, these will be
(29:06):
the things that you cherish. And so that's my north star.
I think about her. She guides me a lot when
I'm trying to decide does this matter or not? Do
I do this or not? It's just a yes or no? Um,
should I hang onto this or not? Should I forgive
this or not? My ninety five year old self usually
instructs me. Right, I feel like she's pretty cool. Yes,
it's pretty cool. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah, she had a
(29:30):
good life, really good life. Yeah, and she chose well,
oh man, that should that be your next book. She
had a good life and she had a good life.
Old I want to read that book. Man. That's a
safe Oh that's beautiful. What a way to do it, Jim,
that's a great idea. That's a really good visual to
(29:52):
think about. I love that. Thank you. So much for
your time. Amazing. Can you tell everyone where they can
find you? I know you have a cruise coming up. Mom,
you're so cool, like you're doing a cruise, Like, who
doesn't cruise? Many things? Yeah, so many irons in the fire.
We're always just like coming up with stuff. Yeah. I
just said, what do I want to do? Yeah? I
(30:13):
want a vacation. I want to have fun. My friends
want to have fun, my community wants to have fun.
Can we make fun a thing that we do? And
so you say that this is not a self help cruise,
This is not you're not coming here to better yourself.
You're coming here. Do you have a great time? This
is a vacation. Please get a margarita. Like, don't post
all these pictures because, oh my gosh, I'm the only
(30:35):
gin hat maker. It's such a weird day. So I'm
jin hatmaker everywhere on all the socials, and jin hatmaker
dot com is way more stuff over there. And so
that's it. I mean, if you find another gin hatmaker,
let me know. As far as I know, I'm the
only one. Okay, great, And everyone who's like thinking they
want to have a vacation, check out this cruise. I
think it's amazing. You're awesome. Thanks, thank you, Thanks for
(30:55):
having me on. It was great to shout with you.
Have a great day you two ye
Host
Caroline Hobby
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