Bonus Book Club edition. Guest: Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts.
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker PodcastShow Notes
Description: In this Book Club edition of For the Love, Jen sits down with novelist Annie Hartnett to talk about The Road to Tender Hearts — a book Jen calls heart-wrenching, heartwarming, weird, hilarious, and deeply satisfying all at once. They open with a very funny catch-up from Me Camp, the solo month Jen takes every July. This year she’s in a tiny lake town in Canada, cooking, meeting neighbors, reading on the deck at sunset — and buying blueberries for scones instead of checking her calendar. From there, Annie traces her path from high-school art major to novelist, and the two teachers whose offhand comments redirected both of their lives. She unpacks the real backstory behind the novel: a Providence rental house that delivered basement floods, gas leaks, black mold, vicious rats, a falling tree, and a neighborhood tragedy — all in 2020 — and the anxiety that followed her to a new town anyway. Her answer was to write down every bad thing she feared could happen to her family, then make it as funny as she possibly could. Jen and Annie also get into: PJ Halliday, built from Annie’s dad and grandfather — lottery dreams, storytelling, lollipop trees and all Pancakes the death-predicting cat, inspired by Oscar, a real Rhode Island nursing-home cat Why Ivy and Fred keep loving PJ, and what that tells us about him How a talking cat in chapter one bought Annie the freedom to go very dark Writing grief, addiction, and fear without losing the comedy The “year of floundering” that starts every new book Why readers mourn whichever character they want, no matter what the author intended Jen closes by asking what Annie’s reading, and Annie makes a hard case for Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Thought-provoking Quotes: “Life is suffering and joy.” — Pancakes, The Road to Tender Hearts “I realized in that class that I could be exactly who I am. I could be weird and I could be really accepted.” — Annie “Your words are not wasted. The stuff that you say into our little ears when we are formative and searching can absolutely set me on a path.” — Jen “She took my face in her hands and said, Jennifer, you have a gift for words and you should use it.” — Jen “I will put every bad thing that I think could happen to my family in a book, but I will make it as funny as possible.” — Annie “That’s how I feel like that’s the only way you get through bad things — to talk about them. But also to make them funny.” — Annie “I love people despite their flaws, sometimes because of their flaws.” — Annie “He has to be loved before he can really… he wants to be in the family.” — Annie, on PJ “The year of floundering, when you spend a year just flopping around like a fish out of water.” — Annie Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett Unlikely Animals and Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.anniehartnett.com/ Instagram - https://instagram.com/annie_hartnett Newsletter - https://www.anniehartnett.com/newletter Connect with Jen! ...
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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
People tell me I’m brave all the time. About the divorce, about the book, about rebuilding my life while everybody watched. And every single time, I feel a low-grade panic, because I know what it actually looked like from the inside: sitting in my parked car for 45 minutes because I could not make myself walk in, typing one sentence and deleting it 15 times, sobbing in the parking lot outside my brand new financial planner’s office. I was not brave. I was scared, and I moved forward anyway. We’re kicking off our October series, Courage to Change: Do It Scared, and today it’s just me and you. I’m handing you a much smaller word than “ready.” Ready is a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision, and you can make it on a Tuesday while you unload the dishwasher. We’ll sort fear into two piles: the warning you should heed and the fee you simply have to pay. And I’m going deeper on two stories: the months I waited too long to face what was happening in my marriage, and the years I coddled my fear before publicly changing my theology on LGBTQ inclusion in 2016. That was the best fee I ever paid. Coming up this month: Barbara Kingsolver, Kim and Penn Holderness, and Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics. You’re not going to feel ready. But you can get willing, and willing is available to you in the next ten minutes. Thought-provoking Quotes: In my life, ready never came. Not one time in my entire life did readiness already exist before the hard thing. Ready is something like a feeling, and you can’t schedule a feeling. Willing is a decision. Willing is a choice. Fear is not measuring whether or not you should. It is measuring whether or not this thing matters. There is fear that is a warning that should be heeded. And then there is fear that is just a fee. It’s just a cost that you’re going to have to pay. The first one has a real object, but the second one has an audience. The fear was a fee. It was not a warning. And I did have to pay it. It’s the best fee I ever paid. I may not be ready, but I am willing. You’ve done harder things than this. And you did those things scared too. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://bookshop.org/p/books/untitled-memoir-jen-hatmaker/22287565 Join the AWAKE Collective on Letters from the Middle - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com October AWAKE Collective Reflection Guide, with this month’s writing prompt: “The Thing I Would Do If I Were Not Scared” Leave us a voicemail - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast: Tell me the change you’re scared of, or the one you already did scared. Connect with Jen! Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http ...