Encore: Whales, Boats, and Vulnerability w/ Tyler Merritt

Kim Hill had the kind of run most artists only dream of: number one songs on Christian radio, arena stages, and the biggest women’s conferences in the country. Paulette Wooten was a songwriter, musician, and ordained music minister helping build the modern worship movement from the inside. Then they met at a worship school, played a 45-minute set together as near strangers, and a year and a half of friendship on the road quietly turned into love. In a world where that was not allowed, they chose each other anyway. As part of our Courage to Change: Do It Scared series, Jen sits down with Kim and Paulette, now the Americana duo Wooten Hill, to talk about the long, slow road out of the world that built them. They share the disastrous wedding venue chapter (Billy and the squirrels!), what changed when they stopped hiding from themselves, why they chose not to blow up their lives, and how they’ve kept love at the center even when it wasn’t returned. Plus, the summer they waited on a grandbaby in Nashville and ended up making the truest record of their lives. Their first full-length album, How Did We Get Here, is out now. Thought-provoking Quotes: “If I am gay, I’m gonna be gay and have a real relationship. I’m not gonna have some no man’s land.” - Kim Hill “I feel like someone plugged me into an amp. I feel like I sing better.” - Kim Hill “This is the truest art I have ever put out.” - Paulette Wooten “You’re not too late, you’re not broken. You are enough.” - Kim Hill “I find that kind of faith the most faithful kind of faith.” - Jen Hatmaker “Your story has made you softer, not harder.” - Jen Hatmaker Resources Mentioned in This Episode: How Did We Get Here by Wooten Hill (streaming, CD, and vinyl) - https://wootenhill.com The Road to Wooten Hill podcast (launching October 30) - https://wootenhill.com Wooten Hill on Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wooten-hill/1539129507 The Treehouse + Co - https://www.thetreehouseandco.com “How He Loves” by John Mark McMillan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_He_Loves Leave us a voicemail - http://jenhatmaker.com/Podcast Guest’s Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wootenhillmusic/ Website - https://wootenhill.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wootenhillband/ Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wooten-hill/1539129507 Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/</ ...

Description: Twelve years ago, Kim and Penn Holderness made a Christmas card video in their pajamas, it broke the internet, and they both walked away from careers in TV news to make videos full time. With two little kids, two months of savings, and no health insurance. In 2013, when that was not even a job. They have been reinventing ever since, and they are right in the middle of it again. We recorded this conversation in a very tender week. They had just moved their oldest back to college, and two days earlier, Penn's mother passed away after nine years in skilled nursing with Alzheimer's. They showed up anyway, and I am so grateful they did. We talk about the leap of 2013 and the creators who told them every new baby was worth a million followers, what they owe their kids for putting them on the internet before any of us knew better, why every couple should have a podcast even if you never post it, and why they took their family name off their show to start Laugh Lines, all about aging better together. Then Penn tells me about the Alzheimer's prevention trial he joined, what he learned about his own genes, the changes he is making now, and how his mom's brain went to a research study at Duke within an hour of her death so it could help someone else. I was not prepared, and I cried. It is one of the most hopeful things I have ever heard about this disease. This is part of our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared. Still to come this month: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. Thought-provoking Quotes: There is no such thing as a podcast emergency. Don't get good at something you don't really want to do. There's a moment where you can't not do that thing. Every couple needs a podcast, even if you don't post it. When you can hear how you talk to your partner, it is so eye opening. We know what a gift it is to age. I don't want to be 20. I don't want to be 40. I'm really thrilled with the age I am. You start saying goodbye to someone the minute they go into skilled nursing. We knew, okay, we're helping. Her brain's going to help. We all do what we do. No one's right or wrong. Everybody behind us will do a better version of it. But it's kind of fun being on the front edge with y'all. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness - https://shows.acast.com/holdermess-the-holderness-family-podcast RetainYourBrain, Dr. Richard Isaacson's free brain health assessment platform - https://retainyourbrain.com AlzLabs, lower-cost at-home brain health blood testing from Dr. Richard Isaacson - https://alzlabs.org ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD by Penn and Kim Holderness - [LINK TBD] Everybody Fights: So Why Not Get Better at It? by Penn and Kim Holderness - [LINK TBD] Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565 <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noref ...

Description: Jenna Kutcher was a few years into a corporate career at Target when her boss slid a five-year plan across the desk. A promotion, more money, more responsibility, all mapped out by somebody else, and every step of it was something she did not want. She did not know yet what she wanted instead, but she knew exactly what she no longer wanted. So she bought a camera off Craigslist for $300. We’re in the middle of our Courage to Change: Do It Scared series, and I’m bringing back this conversation from January 2023, when it opened our For the Love of What If series. Jenna walks us through how that camera became a photography business, then the Goal Digger podcast, then the New York Times bestseller How Are You, Really?, and why she built the next thing quietly on the side while the paycheck was still coming in. We talk about what happens when more money doesn’t buy the life you’re longing for, why time became her real currency, and the question she asked me that I could not shake: not how does it look, but how does it feel. Stay for the end, because something happened after this tape. On the last day of 2025, after 968 episodes, Jenna paused Goal Digger while it was still going strong. She meant every word she said here. Thought-provoking Quotes: Her question is yours now. Not how does it look. How does it feel. (Jen Hatmaker) That is what courage to change actually looks like most of the time. Not a blaze of glory. Not a resignation letter thrown in the air. (Jen Hatmaker) A woman asking an honest question, hearing an answer she did not love, and then doing something about it anyway. (Jen Hatmaker) You are not in prison. You made that rule up, and you are allowed to change it. (Jen Hatmaker) Resources Mentioned in This Episode: How Are You, Really? by Jenna Kutcher - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063221949 A New Chapter for Goal Digger - https://jennakutcherblog.com/a-new-chapter-for-goal-digger: Jenna on why she paused the podcast Leave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell us about the safe thing you walked away from, or the one you’re thinking about leaving. Guest’s Links: Website - https://jennakutcher.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/jennakutcher Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenna.kutcher Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen’s Twitter - <a target="_blank" rel=" ...

Description: Barbara Kingsolver got the offer on her first novel the same day her first daughter was born. She came home from the hospital to a blinking answering machine, and the book came out the week that same baby learned to walk. Almost forty years later, she has a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Foundation’s medal for a lifetime of work, and a recovery house for women in Lee County, Virginia, built with her Demon Copperhead royalties. She has been one of my literary heroes and true life mentors for decades, and I still cannot believe I got to talk with her. We talk about what publishing looked like in 1988 versus now, why a slow-building career was a gift to a young mom, and the stubborn hand condition we both live with that ended her public book signings. She walks us through October on her farm in southern Appalachia, where the tomatoes are canned, the peppers are roasted, and she is the one who gets the call when a lamb gets stuck. And she makes the case that rural people are close to half of this country but almost none of what we see on screen, which is why she writes books that work as mirrors for her neighbors and windows for everybody else. Then we get into Partita, her new novel. Livia was a piano prodigy from east Tennessee who became a small-town piano teacher instead. In her fifties, the first love who derailed her calls and asks to see her, and she has seven days to decide. Barbara built the whole book like a Bach partita, with movements named for old dances and a listening list in the front. She tells us how a small-town girl fell for classical music on her living room floor, why nobody in America wants to talk about class, why revision is where art lives, and about the practice room scene her pianist friend had been waiting her whole life to read. Thought-provoking Quotes: I became a novelist and a mom the same day. (Barbara Kingsolver) I need my hands to write books. If you let me keep them, I will write you more books. (Barbara Kingsolver) Rural people are close to half of the population of this country, but we are just about zero percent of what you see on television, in the movies, or in the news. (Barbara Kingsolver) I want to write these books that are both mirrors for the people who need to see themselves and windows for the people who don’t know. (Barbara Kingsolver) When you’re in the flow state making something beautiful, that is love too. It’s another kind of love. (Barbara Kingsolver) I love revision. I feel like revision is where art really lives. (Barbara Kingsolver) When I’ve finished a book to my absolute satisfaction and send it out into the world, the work of it is only half done. (Barbara Kingsolver) When I closed Demon Copperhead, I remember thinking, I have just read a masterpiece. (Jen Hatmaker) Some people ask me, how can you be optimistic in these times? And I say, look who I’m dealing with. (Barbara Kingsolver) Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Partita by Barbara Kingsolver - https://bookshop.org/book/9780063577541: Barbara asks you to buy it from your local independent bookstore. The listening list is in the front of the book. Labor: One Woman’s Work by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari - https://bookshop.org/book/9781668015407 Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence in Pennington Gap, Virginia, founded with Demon Copperhead royalties Barbara’s earlier books we talk about: Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal, Veg ...

Description: This episode is sponsored by Function. October is Menopause Awareness Month, and every time we talk about midlife bodies on this show, what you write back to me isn’t really about hot flashes. It’s about being dismissed. Walking into an appointment, saying something feels different, and being told it’s normal. Dr. Tiffany Lester, a board certified integrative medicine physician and the Women’s Health Medical Director at Function, has built her career on refusing that answer. We get into the wellness trend she went all in on and walked away from (and why so much of the research behind it was built around men), the moment her own lab results told her perimenopause had arrived, and what a standard annual physical tends to miss. She explains why markers like ApoB and fasting insulin matter so much in our forties and fifties, whether knowing this much about your body makes you healthier or just more anxious, and where the line sits between owning your health data and needing a doctor across the table. I share what happened when I brought my own results from Function to a new doctor, and we talk about who gets left out of conversations like this one and why health equity is so personal to her. Thought-provoking Quotes: As Dr. Stacy Sims likes to say, we’re not little men. We are separate. And that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) I knew intellectually that this transition was coming. But I still wasn’t ready for it somehow. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) We have in some ways been conditioned to accept the bare minimum. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) It’s much harder to dismiss a woman when she’s there with black and white data. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) We do not have to just grin and bear it. (Jen Hatmaker) A lot of people don’t even know what they don’t know. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) It starts with knowing your numbers and not guessing, because you can’t manage what you don’t measure. (Dr. Tiffany Lester) Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Function - https://functionhealth.com/FortheLove: Join and use code FORTHELOVE25 for a $25 credit The work of Dr. Stacy Sims on women’s physiology Guest’s Links: Website - https://drtiffanylester.com Instagram - https://instagram.com/drtiffanylester Substack - https://drtiffanylester.substack.com