For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Description:
Some families run on rules nobody ever wrote down. Here is your role. Here is what we talk about. Here is who gets forgiven and who gets blamed. We accept those terms as children, and then one day we look up and wonder who exactly signed us up for the job.
August’s Jen Hatmaker Book Club pick is Little Monsters, and Adrienne Brodeur came with the whole story behind it. She spent thirty years on the other side of the pen, co-founding Zoetrope: All-Story with Francis Ford Coppola, editing at HMH Books, judging the National Book Award, and now running Aspen Words. She published one novel of her own in 2005, then waited fourteen years for the next book, a memoir that broke a silence she had kept since she was fourteen.
Adrienne and Jen get into the unspoken rules every family runs on, why estrangement takes love rather than indifference, and what Cain and Abel taught her about the gifts we give our parents. Adrienne explains why fiction can feel more honest than memoir, makes an unpopular case for Ken, and talks about writing mania with compassion rather than spectacle. Plus the stack of books a stepmother handed her that redirected her whole life, the screenplay she is writing, and the book club’s standing offer to cast the movie.
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Thought-provoking Quotes:
He’s wounded, and wounded people wound. – Adrienne Brodeur
Understanding someone isn’t quite the same as absolving them. – Adrienne Brodeur
Fiction can sometimes feel more honest than memoir. I don’t mean factual honesty. I mean emotionally unguarded. – Adrienne Brodeur
Who the hell decided that peacemaker was my job, or golden child, or secret keeper, or difficult one? – Adrienne Brodeur
Turns out dead mothers still have an excellent work ethic. – Adrienne Brodeur
Everyone wanted a flat version of themselves. – Jen Hatmaker
We have family stories that we’re telling too, even believing, that we’re trying to believe. – Jen Hatmaker
Some of our characters landed on their feet, but they landed on their feet in a different zip code. – Jen Hatmaker
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Little-Monsters/Adrienne-Brodeur/9781982198114
Little Monsters book club discussion questions - https://www.readinggroupguides.com/reviews/little-monsters-by-adrienne-brodeur/guide
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wild-game-adrienne-brodeur/1130010789
Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001HN38FI
Aspen Words at the Aspen Institute - https://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/adrienne-brodeur/
Zoetrope: All-Story, co-founded with Francis Ford Coppola

Guest’s Links:
Adrienne’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/adriennebrodeur/
Adrienne’s Faceboo ...

Description:
For twenty years, one question has followed Jen everywhere she goes: what am I supposed to be doing with my life? It comes in the comments, the voicemails, the line after every event. And for a long time, Jen answered it like a career question, as if somewhere out there was a slot with her name on it and her only job was to find it and climb inside.
In this solo episode, she puts down the word calling and picks up a different one: assignment. Not the thing waiting for you in the future, but the work already in your hands, in this season, on this street, with these people. Jen untangles work from worth, names the theology a lot of us absorbed that rewarded us for burning out, and shares the questions she uses to tell the difference between an assignment that is actually hers and one that is simply available. She also talks about the assignments that end, and why finishing one well is its own sacred work.
Ordinary, faithful, unglamorous work is not the consolation prize for people who never found their capital C calling. It is the actual thing.
This episode kicks off September's theme, Sacred Work, here on the show and over in the AWAKE Collective.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
"I have stopped asking what my calling is altogether. I started asking what my assignment is." - Jen Hatmaker
"Sacred work is not a waiting room for a more important life that hasn't started yet." - Jen Hatmaker
"The paycheck is not the assignment. The paycheck funds the life where the assignment happens." - Jen Hatmaker
"Burnout is not evidence that you are on assignment. More likely it is evidence that you have taken on someone else's assignment." - Jen Hatmaker
"A real assignment will cost you something. But an obligation costs you yourself. That's not the same bill." - Jen Hatmaker
"Something does not have to be bad for it to be over." - Jen Hatmaker
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
This month's Sacred Work lineup: Priya Parker, Dr. Marisa Franco, Zibby Owens, plus encore conversations with Barbara Brown Taylor and Mary Pipher
Worth by Dr. Marisa Franco
The AWAKE Collective monthly reflection guide. September's writing prompt: The work that is mine right now is...
Your challenge this week: name one assignment you are actually on, then do the very next small thing it requires
Leave Jen a voicemail: https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast
Take the AWAKE Quiz: JenHatmaker.com/quiz

Connect with Jen!
Jen's Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/
Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker
Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/
Jen's Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker
Jen's YouTube -

Description:

There is no guest on the mic today. There is you. It is Listener Voicemail Day, one of Jen's favorite episodes to make, and it lands in the middle of our permission series, right after Jen asked you to find your one true sentence and say it out loud. You did. This episode is what came back.
It comes in two halves. First, the women who called about Jen's mom, Jana King, who, as Jen puts it, a genre.
Have something you need to say out loud? Head to JenHatmaker.com/Podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button, and tell us the quiet thing you finally said, or the one you are still working up to. We are listening.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
"It is real work as moms to not take our own burdens and gently pick them up off of our own shoulders and place them on the shoulders of our kids." - Jen Hatmaker
"Hearing your mom describe a different way of loving and existing was incredibly freeing for me." - Stacy, listener voicemail
"It's just a new terror every day." - Sena, listener voicemail
"I betrayed myself to keep everyone comfortable." - Gina, from her poem "Backfire"
"The truth is, I'm sad because I've given up on myself." - Courtney, listener voicemail
"You do not have to have the answer, or even the path, in order to say the true sentence." - Jen Hatmaker
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again (Jen and her mom, Jana King) - [EPISODE LINK]
Say the Quiet Thing Out Loud, Jen's solo episode and the one true sentence assignment - [EPISODE LINK]
https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast
Letters from the Middle, Jen's Substack, where the honesty conversation runs all month - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/
The AWAKE Collective, Jen's subscriber community on Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/p/the-awake-collective
Tell us your story. Leave a voicemail at https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast, look for the Send Voicemail button.

Connect with Jen!
Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/
Jen’s Substack - https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/
Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker
Jen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/
Jen’s Facebook