Parents Have Feelings, Too: Why Your Emotional Health Is the Best Gift You Can Give Your Kids with Hilary Jacobs Hendel
Description:
If you have ever lost your cool with your kids and then felt the crushing wave of guilt that comes sweeping in after—this episode is for you.
This week, Jen and Amy sit down with psychotherapist and emotions educator Hilary Jacobs Hendel, author of ‘It’s Not Always Depression’ and the new book ‘Parents Have Feelings, Too’, to talk about what happens when we stop ignoring our own emotions and start bringing more calm, curiosity, and compassion into our families.
Hilary shares her groundbreaking Change Triangle model—a simple but powerful tool that helps us move from anxiety, shame, and reactivity to understanding what’s really underneath: our core emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and joy. Together, they unpack:
How to break cycles we inherited from our own parents
What “open-hearted parenting” looks like in real life
How to repair when we’ve said or done something we regret
And why healing our emotions may be the greatest legacy we give our kids
It’s a conversation full of science, self-compassion, and deep sighs of relief—a reminder that parents have feelings too, and that tending to them isn’t selfish; it’s sacred work. Whether you’re parenting toddlers, teens, or even adult children, there is something to serve you in this episode and it’s a great one to share with a friend.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
“It's always possible for relationships and the brain to change, and they happen hand in hand, so it is never too late.” – Hilary Jacobs Hendel
“What I needed to do was slow everything down and get curious. Get to know this kid, say, ‘tell me a little bit more about what's going on.’ Question my own values and the ways I thought it was going to be, all these fantasies that I came in with at the expense of my kid when I thought I was helping.” – Hilary Jacobs Hendel
“Self-awareness is an investment that comes back in dividends and capital gains beyond anything that we can imagine. And it's so much more relaxing to parent this way.” – Hilary Jacobs Hendel
“I can shout from the rooftops that emotions education is important, just like reading and math is important. In high school biology we learn we have a heart, lungs, and pancreas, but emotions affect us far worse. Every single day of our lives. You'd think somebody would want to pay attention to teaching us a little bit about them.”– Hilary Jacobs Hendel
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Parents Have Feelings, Too: A Guide to Navigating Your Emotions So You And Your Family Can Thrive by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga - https://amzn.to/4h3wtlf
For The Love Of Reconnecting Episode 03: Making Good Use of Our Emotions: Hilary Jacobs Hendel - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-32/making-good-use-of-our-emotions-hilary-jacobs-hendel/
It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self by Hilary Jacobs Hendel - https://amzn.to/3L3an6f
The Change Triangle - https://www.hilaryjacobshendel.com/whats-the-change-triangle
Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/4nCb9pi
Simple Habit meditation app - https://www.simplehabit.com/
The Change Triangle YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/thechangetriangle/videos
Guest’s Links:
Website - https://www.hilaryjacobshendel.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hilaryjacobshendel/
Twitter - https://x.com/HilaryJHendel
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AuthorHilaryJacobsHendel
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/thechangetriangle/videos
Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/
Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/
Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker
The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Lights on a Similar Path: ‘Awake’ Readers Reflect On Finding Their Way
Description:
In this moving episode, listeners share their own tender and personal stories inspired by Jen's bestselling book, "Awake," which debuted at number three on the New York Times bestseller list. The touching and heartrending voicemails coming in from readers of “Awake” highlight our yearning to build our lives on solid foundations, our propensity to reach for community and friendship, and the shared human experience we feel around suffering and pain. In this deeply emotional episode, listeners recount overcoming stories of adversity and finding hope, often describing "Awake" as a "life raft" during their own challenging times and Jen gets to hear the profound impact that “Awake” is having on readers everywhere. Tune in for an inspiring journey through the voices of those touched by "Awake."
Thought-provoking Quotes:
“These listener voicemail episodes are so resonant. I love them. Y'all always say the truest, most beautiful, hardest things. Honestly, I'm always grateful for your courage to come on this show and say your thing out loud.” – Jen Hatmaker
“I didn’t know Jen was about to curl up in my cave and hold me close. I didn’t know her story, which I expected to be irrelevant to mine, would tell me that I am okay, normal, and I won’t stay this way.” – Anonymous reader/listener
“The best teachers don’t tell, they show. Although you say this book is not prescriptive and you’re not telling us what to do, you’ve shown us how to live a life and get through hard things with integrity, honesty, discretion, and strength. You’ve shown us how to take responsibility and ownership of our own shit. Your friends have shown us how to show up fully and unconditionally. Beautiful examples of love and friendship. Your family has shown us how to be there as an unwavering and loving presence to get through their hardest things.” Reader/listener, Denise
“My life broke apart too and thankfully I had friendships to fall back on. It wasn’t a thing where I was grateful in hindsight. I was able to be grateful for it in the moment, which is not typically how stories unfold.” – Anonymous reader/listener
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/3KDAalt
107 Days by Kamala Harris - https://amzn.to/47aZ6tb
Poems & Prayers by Matthew McConaughey - https://amzn.to/473gy1Q
Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/48jrtXg
Emily P. Freeman Podcast episode 374: Tell the Whole Truth with Jen Hatmaker - https://emilypfreeman.com/podcast/374/
For the Love Podcast: A Lantern for Others in Dark Spaces: Jen Hatmaker on Sharing Her Most Tender Story - https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-64/a-lantern-for-others-in-dark-spaces-jen-hatmaker-on-sharing-her-most-tender-story/
7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/4mTSzrM
Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/
Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/
Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker
The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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September 2025: Shelley Read’s Go As A River
Description:
Sometimes you read a book that just wrecks you in the best possible way — the kind of story that stays in your bones long after you close the last page. Go As A River is exactly that kind of book. It is a lyrical and haunting coming-of-age novel set amid the rugged beauty of Colorado’s Western Slope in the late 1940s through the mid-20th century. Inspired by true events—the disappearance of the small ranching town of Iola beneath the Blue Mesa Reservoir—Shelley Read crafts a story that is both intimately personal and richly symbolic.
Shelley is a fifth-generation Coloradan who has spent her life in the Gunnison Valley, and you can feel that connection to the land in every line of this novel. Shelley has spent decades teaching writing and literature, but with this debut (now an international bestseller) she’s given us something timeless — a story about love, loss, and the courage to keep moving forward like the river itself.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
“I deeply value the long journey to becoming ourselves, especially as women, and the complexities of that journey.” – Shelley Read
“I think,so often, young people are boxed in and alienated from the very beginning to who their true self is and what their true journey is. And, I thought [as a teacher] that I could save these young people a whole lot of pain going forward and just help them discover who they are now, to follow their most authentic selves.” – Shelley Read
“I'm not so sure that I set out to actively reclaim my creativity and my writerly self as much as Victoria Nash, bless her heart, the main character of my novel. She came to me in whatever magical way. I didn't go seeking her. She came and claimed me in some way and she is who turned me back to my writing life because she came to me with such power and such insistence that I had to write her story whether I had time to do it or not. Little by little by little I started accepting this journey of coming back to my writerly self.” – Shelley Read
“I think the more generous we can be as writers with process and allowing the story to unfold over time, in the most authentic way, then we really get into the story that we really need to be telling.” – Shelley Read
I had to turn the story and the journey in this novel toward hope. I had to. Because ultimately, this deep well of strength and resilience and this ability to bear the seemingly unbearable that all of us carry. Hope is what's going to drive us to rise each time, and to continue to rise.” – Shelley Read
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Go as a River: A Novel by Shelley Read - https://amzn.to/4lIly0Y
Film Rights to Shelley Read’s Global Bestseller ‘Go as a River’ Head to Fifth Season, Mazur Kaplan - https://variety.com/2023/film/news/go-as-a-river-movie-shelley-read-book-1235667430
The River’s Daughter by Bridget Crocker - https://amzn.to/3Jy78mE
Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker – https://amzn.to/4n3WpPy
Guest’s Links:
Website - https://www.shelleyread.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shelleyread.author
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/shelley.read.50
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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[Encore] Turning Pain Into Possibility: The Beauty That Comes After Loss with Poet Maggie Smith
Description:
Sometimes the deepest growth comes from the hardest seasons. An untreatable diagnosis, a painful divorce, the loss of hard-earned savings—when life tears apart the script we imagined for ourselves, we’re left to wrestle with who we are, what we value, and how to begin again.
In this special encore episode, poet and bestselling author Maggie Smith joins Jen for a tender, hopeful conversation about finding light in the aftermath of loss. Jen shares how she first discovered Maggie’s work (spoiler: Shauna Niequist played matchmaker), and together they swap stories of navigating divorce, rediscovering hope, and daring to rebuild.
Maggie opens up about the unexpected end of her marriage, the daily pep talks she wrote just to survive, and how those words became lifelines for thousands of others. Along the way, she reminds us that even when our script gets flipped, we can trust “future us,” make peace with uncertainty, and emerge stronger, more grounded, and ready for what comes next.
If you’ve ever felt adrift in the dark or questioned your worth in the wake of loss, this encore episode will remind you that you are loved, worthy, and capable of carrying on—step by step, word by word.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
“Growth unfortunately often comes from the most uncomfortable or painful parts of life. I don’t want this to be true, and yet here we are.” – Jen Hatmaker
“My marriage ended… and part of what helped me stay anchored was writing. I was in too much pain to really write poems, so I started writing myself a little pep talk every day. What I found was that all these other people started sharing them… and that sense of purpose, and that sense of shared community, at a time when I felt completely alone, was everything.” – Maggie Smith
“Hope is imaginative—it allows you to envision what might be up ahead even when you see nothing.” – Jen Hatmaker
“I was lost at sea, adrift in the dark, but even one small light on the horizon showed me I was still on the right path.” – Jen Hatmaker
“I’ve built up a tolerance to ambiguity. Ten years ago, it would’ve undone me. Now, it’s a skill I’m grateful for.” – Maggie Smith
“We didn’t choose this. The script was flipped for us. But what we do with it—that belongs to us.” – Jen Hatmaker
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Shauna Niequist - https://www.shaunaniequist.com/
Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith - https://amzn.to/41YsuAb
Good Bones: Poems by Maggie Smith - https://amzn.to/469P6jA
Goldenrod: Poems by Maggie Smith - https://amzn.to/3Iwh7ZB
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith - https://amzn.to/46r9CuZ
Guest’s Links:
Website - https://maggiesmithpoet.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/maggiesmithpoet/
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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A Lantern for Others in Dark Spaces: Jen Hatmaker on Sharing Her Most Tender Story
Description:
The day has finally arrived—Awake is officially out in the world. In this episode, Jen Hatmaker opens up about a story she's held tightly for years, a story she's finally ready to share.
Jen takes us behind the scenes of writing Awake—a memoir told in vivid vignettes and written in real-time, as if each scene was recounted the very day it happened. The book is broken into three parts: The End, The Middle, and The Beginning, tracking Jen’s own process of healing and awakening to a number of realizations and truths.
Jen walks us down that path of recovery while honoring the many women who held up lanterns along the way and gave her the courage to keep going. She reflects on the process of confronting the deep-rooted systems of patriarchy, purity culture, body shame, and the shaky foundation that once defined her marriage.
This book isn’t just about the patterns, behaviors, codependency, and attachment wounds that shaped Jen’s story—it’s also about the joy of stepping into a new beginning. And most of all, it’s about you. Because it was your presence, your listening, and your courage that made her brave enough to tell it.
Now, it’s yours.
Thought-provoking Quotes:
“I was in the pitch black, dark night of the soul. Everything was so shrouded in grief and loss and fear but I could see all these little lanterns from my community going, ‘Keep going. We're here. We're with you.’ I'll never get over that as long as I live.” – Jen Hatmaker
“Awake is the lantern I am holding up.for women everywhere who need someone else to tell them, ‘Keep going. You're not alone. I understand your feelings. I understand your fear. I understand your trauma. Maybe also a teeny bit, I understand your future. I understand what you are capable of. What is possible for you. I understand your resiliency. I understand that no matter what you have lost, what has changed, what has shifted, no matter how brokenhearted you are, I still believe some of your best days are ahead of you.’” – Jen Hatmaker
“I can trust you, the reader, to do what you need to do with the information. I can trust you to take exactly what you need out of each and every moment, memory, everything, and to alchemize that into your own life, into your own story. I don't have to tell you what to do with it. I don't have to tell you what to think about it. I don't have to tell you how to process it.” – Jen Hatmaker
“The fits this book gave me, trying to write in real time! You know, writing an eighth grade memory took me a third of the book to finally get the tense of all my verbs right. I kept writing it in the past tense because it's in the past. The amount of times I had to comb back through and change all the verb tenses to present instead of past was every single paragraph.” – Jen Hatmaker
“If I'm gonna tell the story, then let's tell the story. Not like the shinier version of it or the less humiliating version of it or the one that would never indict me, only my partner. There's no integrity in that.” – Jen Hatmaker
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker - https://amzn.to/4pduwXb
Bumble – https://bumble.com/en-us/
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker and her longtime friend, Amy Hardin, have arrived in the middle years — and they couldn’t be happier about it.
Each has navigated the ins and outs of life — from careers, to parenting, marriage (and, for Jen, divorce), spiritual evolution, and the joys of being hardcore Gen Xers.
With each weekly episode, Jen and Amy serve as our “everywoman” guides to all the seasons — past, present, and future — as they walk excitedly and tenaciously into the second half of life.
While Jen and Amy have plenty of wisdom to share — and some pretty hilarious stories, too — they don’t claim to know it all. That's why they invite some of the most interesting and accomplished guests to the podcast, bringing insight, expertise, and understanding to the most relevant topics of our time. From Jen and Amy’s compelling conversations with guests to their witty banter (and the occasional eye-rolls at the absurdities of life), they’re here reassure you that you’re not alone in this game of life.
It’s “For the Love” of all that is good, justified, exasperating, exhilarating, real, fun — and so much more.
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