Jen Hatmaker, AWAKE: A Memoir
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[0:45]Jen Hatmaker is the author of Awake, a memoir.
[0:48]Jen is the New York Times best-selling author of Feed These People for the Love and
[0:52]Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with 11 other books.
[0:56]She hosts the award-winning for-the-love podcast is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker
[1:02]Book Club, and leader of a tightly-knit online community where she reaches millions of people
[1:07]each week.
[1:08]Jen wants to inspire you to be delighted, find hope and humor, build connection, and
[1:12]keep going.
[1:13]She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas.
[1:18]Welcome, Jen.
[1:19]I'm so happy to welcome you back on Totally Book to talk about your new memoir, Awake,
[1:25]which I think is one of my favorite books ever.
[1:27]It is so good.
[1:29]I loved it so much.
[1:31]I empathized so much of you.
[1:33]As a book, it was amazing.
[1:34]As a story, it was heartbreaking.
[1:36]And I just, it was just so good.
[1:39]The whole thing.
[1:40]Congratulations, I guess.
[1:41]Wow.
[1:42]Well, that's an opening line.
[1:45]Thank you.
[1:46]God, what a nice thing to say.
[1:48]I am so glad to be here with you.
[1:50]I'm happy to see you.
[1:52]And I really appreciate that so much because you're a bookperson.
[1:58]And there's just nothing quite like that sort of encouragement from somebody who knows
[2:06]books as well as you do.
[2:07]And so, thank you.
[2:09]Thank you for saying that.
[2:10]That is just the kindest thing.
[2:12]I mean, I'm a very nice person, but I am not just saying that to the audience.
[2:16]Yeah.
[2:17]Yeah.
[2:18]I mean, I am clearly nice.
[2:19]I mean, I'm pretty nice, but I do want to ask it.
[2:23]I don't say that.
[2:24]I don't say this about your book lightly.
[2:27]I really, like, first of all, my favorite genre of a book is books where people get through
[2:33]something sort of terrible and make it to the other side.
[2:36]So I am well versed in that category, not at yours.
[2:41]I mean, the way you described your grief was so raw and so real.
[2:48]It was just, for some reason, it had more detail, color, um, than really anything.
[2:55]And I don't know how you remembered everything.
[2:57]Maybe talk a little bit, tell listeners, maybe I should back up.
[3:00]Tell listeners what happened, what your books about.
[3:02]And then how you infused it with so much, like, just stuff.
[3:08]Yeah.
[3:09]It's a great question.
[3:10]How'd you get that much stuff out of there?
[3:13]Yeah.
[3:14]How'd you get that much stuff in there?
[3:15]It says the bookperson.
[3:17]I get it, man.
[3:18]Let's see.
[3:19]You know, I'm brand new at talking about the book.
[3:21]Uh, this is the front edge of, like, how do I describe it?
[3:25]And so I'm not practiced at this and I don't have this, like, dialed in.
[3:28]So it just becomes a word salad.
[3:30]You could give me this.
[3:31]Wrap it up.
[3:32]I would say that rather so much rather a word salad than a polished media bit.
[3:37]Okay.
[3:38]Well, you're not getting that, sis.
[3:40]Good.
[3:41]Yeah.
[3:42]Not in that.
[3:43]Thank you.
[3:44]Probably the small story inside of a wake is the story of the loss of my 26 year marriage
[3:53]to a pastor and as someone who had spoken and written and taught and led around, among
[4:03]other things, marriage and family per year, my whole career.
[4:09]And it was, the small story is that, like, shock, the grief, the loss of everything,
[4:18]my marriage, my intact family, all the expectations I had for my entire life, certainly
[4:24]the second half of my life.
[4:25]For a while, I felt like it was going to be a loss of credibility.
[4:28]I, um, just the loss of so many dreams and then sort of the slow slog back up to the
[4:36]surface of the water.
[4:38]So that's probably the small story and that is nestled inside a bigger story that includes
[4:44]a pretty stark examination of, I'm like, all right, this house that I thought was going
[4:52]to stand the test of time crumbled.
[4:54]Let's look at the bricks that built it.
[4:56]And so it's a look at the bricks, patriarchy, religious, shame and dogma, gender limitations,
[5:06]body hatred, which, you know, by the way, no women just invented body hatred.
[5:12]We were taught to hit our bodies unless we do and have purity, culture, all of it.
[5:18]So I'm like, you know, if we start taking apart this house brick by brick, maybe it's
[5:23]not such a surprise than it crumbled.
[5:27]And so, you know, when I was talking to publishers about this book, I told them, I said,
[5:32]look, my story is not special and it's not, it is not special.
[5:38]There are so many women sitting in just a really similar chair.
[5:42]I said, my story is not special and I think that's what makes it important.
[5:46]This is going to be not a like sensationalized memoir that is so outrageous that kind of
[5:52]reads like fiction, you know, where you're like, whoa, what a story can't relate.
[5:56]You know, but wow, this is more like, I feel like most of my readers from one entry
[6:03]point or another are going to go saying, saying, I identify with that.
[6:10]I relate to that.
[6:11]I've experienced that.
[6:12]I'm also trying to overcome that.
[6:14]Anyway, because what I tell you, word salad, I don't know, I'll tighten this up.
[6:18]I swear, but I'll do better, I know, like in the future, they do better.
[6:22]That was perfect.
[6:23]Okay.
[6:24]Because it is and I would not consider your story small.
[6:26]This is your life.
[6:27]I mean, if you want to say that you're one life is small, then I guess it would follow,
[6:33]but who could say that is your life.
[6:34]It's all we have.
[6:35]Yeah.
[6:36]And the overwhelming grief you felt in your marriage and then yes, within the context
[6:42]of the church and everything you were taught and all that, the way that you were supported,
[6:46]specifically by your siblings and your close friends is something I found quite unique
[6:53]as a grown up, right?
[6:54]Not like when you're living with your siblings or you're in college with your friends,
[6:59]but that you have such close relationships and you had one moment where you were talking
[7:04]to your ex-husband and two of your best friends husband said they would just sit in the
[7:08]car and wait outside the whole time just in case and that just made me cry.
[7:12]I mean, it's so nice.
[7:14]And the way your siblings didn't let you sleep alone and somebody was on either side
[7:18]of you for so long, I mean, that is just love.
[7:22]It's just proof of love.
[7:23]It's just love.
[7:24]One of my earlier readers said, you know, because everyone's going to take what they need
[7:29]or want from this book and there's several roads inside of it.
[7:34]And she said, what I'm walking away with is like, this was a love letter to the people
[7:39]that love you.
[7:41]This was a love letter to your family, to your kids, and to your friends.
[7:46]And I love that description because truly I don't have any imagination for how any of
[7:51]that story would have gone without them.
[7:53]As you saw, I mean, they're on every other page.
[7:57]And the way that they stepped in and just said, we are here, like, you are not alone
[8:04]and I felt alone, right?
[8:06]I mean, I was kind of betrayed and abandoned by the one person that I thought was going
[8:11]to be by my side for my whole life.
[8:14]And they were like, that may be over, but we're not over.
[8:17]there's still your people, you're still our person.
[8:20]And honestly, they love me back to life that's dedicated to them.
[8:24]The whole book is, oh my gosh.
[8:27]You had one moment where you drove away from the house and I think you were testing
[8:31]out some sort of calm app or something like that and you just drove away and you sat
[8:35]a few blocks from your house and just screamed and just let it all out.
[8:40]Talk about that moment and how you just see yourself at that point and finding your way
[8:46]back to here.
[8:47]That was in the first week.
[8:50]So I was still just, I was sunk.
[8:54]I mean, I don't, to be honest with you, I had to go back and reconstruct my memories.
[8:59]It was just such a fog of pain and shock and confusion and grief.
[9:06]And so it was that first week and my whole family, we all live in Austin.
[9:10]My parents, all my siblings, my five grown kids, we're all there.
[9:15]So we have quite a commune.
[9:18]And so nobody had not been at my house since the first second.
[9:23]Everybody had just been in, which I needed and I wanted it.
[9:26]That's not a complaint.
[9:27]I was so grateful for the proximity and just the motion around me.
[9:34]But a few days into it, I just remember feeling this knowledge inside like I need to be
[9:40]by myself for a bit.
[9:42]I need to grieve in a way that I can only grieve in the safety of my own body without
[9:47]also managing everybody else's grief.
[9:51]You know, I'm not though I lost a husband, but they lost a son-in-law, a brother-in-law
[9:57]and a best friend, like, we'll-
[10:00]for all hurting and I could no longer shoulder it all.
[10:02]And so I had a good friend who sent me a text
[10:05]and he said, you gotta get your body somehow.
[10:08]He's like, this isn't a meditation app.
[10:10]I like called simple habit.
[10:12]And I was like, whatever, man.
[10:13]And so I just thought, okay,
[10:15]I need to be by myself.
[10:16]This was during COVID.
[10:17]It was July 2020.
[10:18]You know, so we were all very,
[10:20]I already isolated and weird and collectively sad.
[10:25]And so I'm like, well, I can't really go anywhere.
[10:27]I'll just get in my car.
[10:28]I'll just drive.
[10:29]I'll drive for a while and that will constitute my alone time.
[10:32]And I, that was the first time I'd remembered
[10:35]that he had sent me that app.
[10:36]And I was like, well, hell, maybe I'll just listen
[10:39]to one of these meditations while I'm driving.
[10:41]And this will be some sort of, I don't know what.
[10:44]And so I'm in my driveway and I picked one.
[10:47]All these meditations said just for grief.
[10:50]That was what it was called for grief.
[10:51]I'm like, all right, well, that fits that shoe fits.
[10:54]It's like 11 minutes long.
[10:55]I'm like, great, let me just hit play on this.
[10:57]And I'm gonna drive and I expected to just kind of,
[11:00]I don't know what, I don't know what I expected to drive around
[11:03]and have somebody talk nice words to my ears
[11:05]is what I thought.
[11:06]And having not had any practice and meditation at that point,
[11:09]I did not realize that the guide was going to get me
[11:11]into my own body to feel my own feelings.
[11:14]And so I heard, I've been up back
[11:16]out of my driveway, it's playing.
[11:17]I heard him guide me through the process
[11:21]of feeling my own grief for maybe 30 seconds.
[11:26]And I drove 11 houses up my street.
[11:31]And I parked under my neighbor's pecan tree
[11:34]and I screamed in my car.
[11:37]I wailed for an hour, one hour.
[11:41]It was insane.
[11:42]I have never grieved like that in my life,
[11:45]not before and not since.
[11:46]And it just, it's just was cascading.
[11:49]Like out of every poor, just all of it,
[11:52]the humiliation, the shock, the trauma,
[11:56]the devastation, one hour.
[11:58]And I say this in the book of weirdly,
[12:01]it was like my first moment of relief
[12:04]was to let my body grieve in the way that it needed to.
[12:08]Anyway, whoo, the books full that kind of stuff.
[12:10]So what a good time, right?
[12:12]Everybody get excited.
[12:14]It's really, I'm so sorry that this happened to you
[12:17]that your life was ripped away in this way.
[12:19]Because especially, I mean,
[12:21]this would be a powerful book no matter what.
[12:22]But when I met you, like my first encounter
[12:27]you're this star of the show, keynote, mom 2.0,
[12:32]speaker telling these hilarious stories
[12:34]about your son at like the stop and shop
[12:36]or something like decorating some sweet cake
[12:38]and I was laughing so hard, whatever.
[12:40]And you're just like always on and made up
[12:42]and like I just assumed everything was like go go all good.
[12:47]Like, yeah, you just never know what's going on.
[12:50]But how and you talk in the book
[12:53]about the way in which your story kind of leaked
[12:55]and how that became even another thing you had to deal with
[12:58]a little bit about going through all this
[13:01]and then going through radio silent on social
[13:03]and trying to carve out space and really not being allowed.
[13:08]Yeah, gosh.
[13:10]You know, the thing about sort of being a public facing person
[13:14]is that if you have your integrity intact
[13:18]and who you are out in front of the camera
[13:21]is still the same person you are behind the camera,
[13:23]which is how I am.
[13:25]That's for better or for worse,
[13:28]the online people get the brunt of exactly who I am
[13:32]and what my deal is and what I think
[13:34]and what my family looks like and what's going on.
[13:36]So I just did not have that there was no capacity
[13:39]to pretend or to be silent about it
[13:43]or to carry on as usual.
[13:45]I just couldn't do it.
[13:46]I could not even imagine.
[13:49]I couldn't even imagine it.
[13:50]So I just said nothing.
[13:51]I just went zeroed out on socials
[13:55]and which is unusual for me
[13:57]because that's where a big chunk of my work is located.
[14:01]And of course that's noticed
[14:03]and it wasn't that I was trying to hide or fake.
[14:06]It was that I was in paralysis.
[14:09]I mean, we were fighting for our lives in my home.
[14:12]So Instagram was the last thing on my mind
[14:17]like making sure that everybody knows what's going on.
[14:21]And we were starving for privacy.
[14:23]I mean, we were just crushed my whole family.
[14:26]And so anyway, this person who she calls herself
[14:32]a journalist and I don't know.
[14:33]But she and we had tried everything.
[14:37]We had and had gone off the line for quite a while.
[14:42]And so I was just not right.
[14:43]We hadn't even told all of our family yet.
[14:45]And she kind of found the public filing of our divorce
[14:49]which we tried really hard to keep behind the paywall.
[14:53]Like we tried really hard with initials
[14:55]and so that it just wasn't public domain.
[14:58]But you know, that stuff's easy to break through
[15:00]and she figured it out and she wrote this huge article
[15:02]about our divorce and called my credibility into question
[15:08]and she's kind of a lightning rod
[15:10]for fundamentalist Christians.
[15:12]That's her space.
[15:14]And so it was so interesting and not everybody
[15:17]in our life knew at that point.
[15:20]So it was so exposing.
[15:22]And so, oh, that just was like a layer of pain
[15:27]under what we were already experiencing.
[15:29]And it was interesting to watch all of her followers
[15:32]come for me.
[15:34]This is, we knew this was gonna happen.
[15:36]She, she is not a real Christian.
[15:41]Like everybody came for me and blamed me.
[15:45]And my husband's omitted in the reckoning altogether.
[15:49]It was just really interesting to go,
[15:51]ah, in this world, the women are blamed and shamed
[15:56]for virtually everything.
[15:58]And so that was really, really painful
[16:01]and really disappointing.
[16:03]And if I would give anybody credit,
[16:06]I would say that the community at large
[16:08]really let her have it for that.
[16:10]Even though they were also finding out that day
[16:13]from her that they were like, this is low.
[16:16]And this is, this was beneath you
[16:20]and this had no dignity, no honor in it,
[16:22]no kindness, no compassion.
[16:24]And so it didn't matter.
[16:25]The damage was done.
[16:26]So I'm so sorry.
[16:29]And you talk a lot about your relationship to the church
[16:34]and your family's relationship and your community
[16:38]and how, you know, sort of by the end of the book,
[16:41]you've decided not that you're not going to church
[16:44]for a little bit, like you're on a pause
[16:46]while you recalibrate essentially.
[16:48]What do you want readers to know about this journey
[16:51]that you went on?
[16:52]I hate that I was learning.
[16:52]But you know, like what are, you know,
[16:54]is it that we're all supposed to find,
[16:56]you watch the beat of our own drum or what is it?
[16:59]I don't know.
[17:01]I, I don't have that answer.
[17:03]And I don't have a prescription.
[17:05]This book is really different from anything I've ever written
[17:09]and my readers, my readers are going to know that immediately.
[17:12]I have my history here as a writer,
[17:16]as a leader, whatever, has been to have an idea,
[17:22]spend a ton of time in my brain thinking about it,
[17:24]reading about it, learning about it.
[17:26]And then I write it all up
[17:28]and then I've just handed it to my readers
[17:30]on a silver platter and went here.
[17:31]Here's what we think about this.
[17:33]I've done the work.
[17:34]I've managed it.
[17:35]I've got the answers.
[17:36]I have the solutions.
[17:37]Here it is.
[17:38]You don't have to do anything, but just digest it
[17:40]and sign on the hoodot of the line, right?
[17:42]Very prescriptive.
[17:44]Very like hindsight or this is what I've learned
[17:47]or this is what I think.
[17:49]And this awake is not anything like that.
[17:51]It's not prescriptive at all.
[17:54]It's only descriptive.
[17:55]It's written in vignettes.
[17:57]It's not written in chapters.
[17:58]I don't give myself the benefit of hindsight.
[18:00]I just write it in little, as you mentioned earlier,
[18:04]how'd you get all that in there?
[18:05]Little moments, exact moments and memories
[18:09]and I wrote them all in real time
[18:11]like as if they happened that day when I wrote it on the page.
[18:14]So I don't draw conclusions about it.
[18:16]I don't say three years later,
[18:19]this is what I've sorted out.
[18:21]I just say here it is and I put it on the page
[18:23]and I leave it to the reader to do what she wants with it
[18:26]and to pick up what she needs from it
[18:29]and draw her own conclusions
[18:30]and that includes church.
[18:32]So I don't have a, this is what I think readers
[18:36]should do with this or this is what I think
[18:38]they should walk away with or this is I think the right path.
[18:41]I don't know and I say that in the book
[18:44]that I don't, I worried a little bit
[18:47]about that unresolved leadership
[18:49]but I'm like, then I just remembered,
[18:51]I'm not your leader, I'm your sister
[18:53]and I'm telling you my story.
[18:55]So for me right now, I'm still not in traditional church
[19:00]and I just, for reasons and I just can't be there right now
[19:04]which is not me saying, I'll never be there
[19:06]or I think somebody else shouldn't be there.
[19:09]It's complicated.
[19:10]It's complicated because part of my examination
[19:15]of the bricks that built the house included
[19:18]a lot of organized religion stuff
[19:20]where I had to say in honesty,
[19:25]this sort of men first, men only in some cases,
[19:32]women's second sexual shame environment
[19:37]worked exactly like it was supposed to.
[19:40]Like I didn't get it wrong, that was the message
[19:43]and that's the theology.
[19:45]And so I'm just still wrestling around with that
[19:49]and is there a version of that
[19:51]that I will someday want back in my life?
[19:53]Maybe I don't know what, but not right now.
[19:56]Okay, no pressure.
[19:58]Yeah, I'll get it.
[20:00]You write about managing, being a mom and managing your kids' emotions.
[20:07]You have five kids to adopt a kids, which you write about, and yet you are the one who
[20:12]is supposed to be there for them.
[20:13]And that is also a primary concern of yours that, yes, it is your loss, but it is their
[20:18]loss.
[20:19]And you want your family to be okay, and you have a rather dramatic, although you don't
[20:22]go into detail with something going off the rails with one of your kids and how that is
[20:27]sort of a precipitating event for you falling apart when you know that your child will
[20:30]be okay.
[20:31]Talk about that, because parents obviously can relate to that desire to protect, and
[20:38]also having it, how do you do all the things at once?
[20:43]Yeah.
[20:44]When this happened, when it first started, when it first happened, I had two kids in high
[20:51]school, two college age, and one recent graduate from college.
[20:57]So they were all in that later teen, young adult space.
[21:03]So that is not the same as somebody who loses the marriage, and they have got a kindergartner.
[21:07]You know, that is a different management.
[21:10]That is different language, that is different explanations, that in a lot of cases, even
[21:16]with my circumstance, there would have been like a joint custody situation too.
[21:21]I had never had any of that, like from day one, I was the only functional parent, and
[21:27]continued to be.
[21:28]So we never shared custody of my high school kids, never ever, you know, wasn't like
[21:34]you're going to their house on, he's going to dad's house with him.
[21:36]So I had the full weight, and it was COVID school.
[21:40]So what a disaster that year was, God 2020 can f off.
[21:46]COVID school, we're all just, we're just coming to come part of the seams.
[21:50]And I remember just feeling so anxious about my kid's pain, about their loss, about their
[21:56]process.
[21:57]I was worried about everything.
[21:59]What is the future going to look like?
[22:00]Is there a relationship with their dad destroyed?
[22:03]Will there ever be a resurrection here?
[22:05]Will, are they ruined?
[22:07]Are they doomed?
[22:08]Did we just doom them to just to trauma and I worried to the end of every peer?
[22:15]I walked my imagination to the end of every peer and imagine this, I'll just drop it
[22:19]off into the ocean.
[22:21]So my counselor was really the one who helped me recalibrate how to parent my kids.
[22:29]My daughter said me, who at the time, let's do, let's see, was 20, she was 20 at the
[22:35]time.
[22:37]And she was telling me something one day about how she was feeling and just how disorienting
[22:43]and disruptive and disappointing it was for her to have a dad who said, you know, these
[22:48]are our values for her whole life and then to abandon them and do the exact opposite of
[22:52]everything.
[22:53]But, you know, fair, it's a fair point.
[22:57]But because I was so anxious about getting all the kids, like hustling them toward healing.
[23:05]And I don't know if resolution is the right word, but like, I don't know what.
[23:10]And so I noticed that I'm just like, make, I'm exhibiting classic codependent behavior
[23:16]with my ex husband, which is me making excuses for his choices.
[23:22]So this is the thing and you know that this and, you know, you'll still want a future
[23:27]with dad.
[23:28]I'm doing the whole thing.
[23:29]And she finally just goes, mom, when you talk to me like that, you make me feel so lonely.
[23:35]Like I am the only one still sitting here in grief and pain.
[23:40]And you are just pushing me to be beyond it.
[23:43]And I was like, oh my God.
[23:45]And I took that to my therapist that week.
[23:48]And she said, she said, I don't know if anybody ever told you this, but parents don't
[23:52]get to shield their kids from bad things.
[23:54]Sorry.
[23:55]They're going to experience pain like every human being on the face of the earth ever.
[23:59]And it's not your job to fix it, to polish it, to hustle it.
[24:05]But that's not your deal.
[24:06]You're not that powerful.
[24:08]And she told me something that I put into play that day.
[24:11]She said, when it comes to parenting your kids right now, comfort over coaching.
[24:16]And I was like, hmm, I sit comfortably in the pocket of coaching.
[24:22]And I had to learn that day that I literally cannot.
[24:26]There's not enough right words or good speeches or whatever I was trying to do to fix
[24:33]a dad who walked away from his life.
[24:35]I can't fix that.
[24:37]I can't coach that.
[24:38]I can only comfort that.
[24:40]And so that was the day that I laid down my frantic interventions to try to make all
[24:48]of this better.
[24:50]And how do you think the book itself is going to affect the whole family system?
[24:56]Like how has your ex-husband, does he know about the book, how does the kids feel about
[25:01]the book?
[25:02]How is that landing?
[25:03]Well, there's a lot of players in that scenario.
[25:06]And so it's not all the same.
[25:08]Got five kids and one ex-husband.
[25:12]And then outside of that, I've got family.
[25:14]I have a family of in-laws that I was in their family for 27 years.
[25:20]So there's a lot of people here and a lot of opinions.
[25:25]For a while, I really let that anxiety steer the ship when it came to this book.
[25:35]And then I just realized if I fragment this book so much to meet everybody's personal
[25:42]opinion on the story and the details even or the perception of the details in some cases
[25:49]and preferences, this book will be useless.
[25:53]I was able to just come down to just a sliver of the truth.
[25:57]And so I was left with the decision to just tell the truth as I saw it inside my own integrity,
[26:05]which means the worst of the details are not in there.
[26:08]And that was my choice and it was a good one.
[26:12]And it was the right one.
[26:13]And what I asked myself as I wrote this book was, will I be proud of this book in 10 years?
[26:19]When we are all 10 years down the road of healing and whatever reconciliation might
[26:26]look like I, or not, I'm not really sure.
[26:28]But whatever it is in 10 years, will I be proud?
[26:30]Can I stand by this?
[26:32]And that is something I can say yes.
[26:35]And my early readers who know our family really well, including my family members and kids,
[26:41]have said to me without exception, this is extraordinarily gracious and this is not
[26:49]salacious, it is not a tell-all.
[26:51]My daughter said, I do not feel overexposed by this.
[26:55]And I spent a lot of time in self-reflection in this book like, what's my contribution here?
[27:01]Right, where did I sign on for a lot of this nonsense?
[27:05]And what did I do?
[27:06]And where did I go wrong?
[27:10]And so I hope that's what the reader experiences.
[27:13]I hope that nobody reads it and goes, ooh, that made me feel slimy.
[27:17]Because that's not how I wrote it and that's not how it reads, I don't think.
[27:22]Yeah, I agree with you.
[27:23]I could talk to you about this book all day.
[27:25]I want to go over every single page.
[27:27]But thank you for writing it.
[27:29]Thank you for the added, you know, to-do list of putting a really difficult life experience
[27:36]into a form that is consumable for anyone going through whatever grief, past, present
[27:42]future, and learning that if you can do it, they can do it.
[27:47]It's incredibly inspiring.
[27:48]Absolutely.
[27:49]I'm not special.
[27:50]I don't have any capacity that anybody else doesn't have.
[27:54]I do not have some sort of secret reserve of strength or- I'm just a normal person like
[28:03]everybody else.
[28:04]And it is stunning to find out that you can lose something so precious to you and still
[28:12]recover and still rise right out of those ashes.
[28:16]I mean, I remember thinking, well, I'll never be happy again.
[28:19]My life is doomed.
[28:20]I will just muddle through until I die.
[28:24]That's my future and that's the best I can hope for.
[28:27]And so five years, exactly almost, nearly to the day where you and I are sitting right now
[28:33]from when it all happened.
[28:34]I can just tell everybody listening, we're made a more than we think.
[28:39]And we have more capacity and resilience and courage than maybe we ever even knew.
[28:48]And it is pretty amazing to rebuild a life when those old, like faulty bricks finally
[28:56]crumble and go, all right, I'm sitting here on a blank foundation.
[29:00]What I want to build for the second half of my life.
[29:04]And it is so exciting and it is so meaningful and possible.
[29:09]And so it isn't just a sad book about a lady's divorce.
[29:15]It's also about what to do when you lose something precious, whether you walk away from
[29:20]an on purpose as your choice or it chooses you and matter either way, monumental life change
[29:26]right here in the middle of life is not a death sentence.
[29:32]And in fact, it can be the beginning of the best possible second act.
[29:37]And so that's what I hope, that's what I'm experiencing.
[29:41]And so that is what I know that my readers have access to as well, whatever their story
[29:47]is.
[29:48]However, a like or dissimilar, it is from mine.
[29:51]It doesn't matter.
[29:53]We got the raw materials inside of us to rewrite a second half.
[29:57]It's great.
[29:58]It's great news.
[29:59]Jen, thank you.
[30:00]Thank you so much. I'm a huge such a huge fan of this book.
[30:03]Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
[30:05]My pleasure. Thank you for listening.
[30:09]To totally bucked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[30:13]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[30:19]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books!