Author: Jen Hatmaker

Listen, not trying to shock you today, but I am about to do some real sexy talk. This is heart-pounding, titillating stuff. I’m bringing the heat as I whisper into the universe: “Let’s talk about healthy structures and rhythms.”

I know, right? The sexiest conversation in the zeitgeist! Nothing gets my blood flowing like restored order. I am a real vixen like that. The thing is, I so enjoy Beginning of Summer Me when I become a loose, free-spirited bohemian and we are just “going to live like we want” and “relax into less structure” and “unplug our clocks”…for like two and half weeks. And then I no longer enjoy 2:30 p.m. teen wakeup times and middle-of-the-night “dinners.” In my core, I am an old lady with a map-studying habit and a weekly evaluation of my Money Market account. I like a tidy life, okay? 

Having said that, when I read a treatise on healthy rhythms and there are like 12 action steps, I immediately quit. I like tidy, but everyone take it down a notch, damn. So now that we have exited the wild west of summer and handed our children back to the real adults (teachers), these are my top three areas to wrangle back into submission, and you are only allowed to pick two at the most. So get excited! You get to automatically ignore one of these. You are already winning. 

One last suggestion: Choose the areas that feel the most out of control. Some of us managed summer eating okay but went full frat house on basic self-care habits. You maybe kept up your yoga practice, but the general budget went into cardiac arrest. We don’t all slide into sloth in the same ways. So turn inward, feel around for what areas seem the most chaotic, and just start there. 

1. The cooking and the eating sitch. 

It is how it is. The people want to eat every day. Now that the household is up at a normal hour again and mealtimes have resumed a sane schedule, the Fend For Yourself model has to be updated. It takes far more energy to resist this task (always last minute, never planned, generally frantic) than simply to organize it a bit. 

First order of business: if you have a partner, meals should be shared work; maybe not 50/50, but shared for sure. Configure this however makes sense for your family: someone takes breakfasts, someone takes dinners, someone has weeknights, someone has weekends, someone does lunches, someone takes three nights, someone manages the others. Whatever, man. Split it and share it. Feeding a whole family seven days a week is too much home labor for one person. 

I probably cook dinner three nights a week. The others are leftovers, takeout, sandwiches, or the thing I have now called No One Is Here. On Sundays, I open one tab for recipes and a second tab with Instacart. As I decide what to make that week, I pop the ingredients into my online grocery cart. This takes around 20 minutes (19 involve going into the pantry/fridge to see if I have that thing). This has now taken the decision fatigue out of the rest of the week. I’ve planned it and shopped for it. Food is handled. 

Also moms, I told my kids since elementary school that if they wanted to bring their lunch, they had to make it. If not, school cafeteria food it is. Sydney and Remy made their lunches for a decade and the boys ate I guess school instant mashed potatoes and chocolate milk. Idk. I can’t care about everything. 

2. The money and budget sitch. 

Summer money is a weird beast. Everything drifts into entropy. Costs are astronomical. More food, more activities, more trips, more expenses. It always blows my mind. 

The back-to-school season is the perfect time to adult the budget. 

Good news! You don’t have to figure this out alone. Three years ago, I had to track down every single financial data point, reorganize it, clean it up, and create a whole new budget as a divorced person. When I tell you I didn’t even know how much money I made. It was a full mess. I remember sitting in my financial planner’s office just crying. I couldn’t answer any of his questions. He gave me a short list to do and told me to come back in 90 days:

• Go through every bank account, credit card, and bill and write everything down. Total up your income and all your bills (including flex figures like groceries and Amazon Prime). Get two hard numbers. I couldn’t believe how much this alone helped me feel less out of control. There it all is. Exactly what is coming and going. 
• Cancel every unnecessary subscription and monthly fee. You can literally do this on your phone. Those “small” monthly costs add up. I had 23. TWENTY-THREE. Tidy up. 
• Make a budget. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. There are tons of online tools. The simple effort of HAVING A PLAN takes so much chaos and shame out of money management. Your budget will include paying off debt and/or creating savings, so everything is in there. The effect on your wellness will shock you. 

3. The health sitch. 

This one always gets wonky because of all the shit out there (and in here) (points to brain). It’s just that this matters so much to every other area. Back in May, I learned the reason I hadn’t had a period in four months was because I was in perimenopause. I’m a quick study! Tired of feeling weird, fatig

ued, emotional, and yucky in my body, I decided to just care. 

Over the last three months, I pulled some health levers. I met with a functional doctor, had a blood panel done, and found all kinds of issues. So I started supplements to improve stomach absorption, thyroid function, insulin resistance, inflammation, estrogen dominance, and all my vitamin deficiencies. I went gluten-free (my inflammation markers were sky high and I have an autoimmune disorder). I started intermittent fasting (strong links to menopause relief). I joined a pilates studio. Those were my levers. 

This was quite a frontload admittedly, but once the puzzle was worked out, the pieces came together and now this is just the daily stuff I do. My body responded immediately. I feel better in every way. It just feels good to care about yourself, to move and get stronger and sleep better and nourish your body. It’s like how you feel when someone else is really, really nice to you, but the person being nice to you is you. 

Also, pilates! I love it! The reason I always quit exercising is because I hate the exercise. But I genuinely enjoy pilates and thus I am doing it. Maybe just find some way to move your bod that doesn’t make you rage. All movement is good movement. It all counts. It doesn’t have to feel punishing. (If I didn’t live in Texas, I’d probably enjoy long walks but it sucks here. Pass. I’ll take my air conditioned pilates studio.)

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For me, these three areas take the hardest hit every summer. Even applying a small degree of order calms my overstimulated central nervous system. The tail doesn’t always have to wag the dog. And like all good rhythms, getting started is generally the hardest lift, and then the machine becomes operational and hums right along. 

Until next June of course…

Oh sure, NOW I am socialized and able to speak directly to other human people in full sentences, but I was the weirdest, quietest, most awkward kid.

I got plastic glasses in second grade that reeked of great aunt energy; I had homemade bangs thanks to my mom who I guess hated me; and my little nerd brain finished assignments so quickly, my teachers gave me Teacher Errands and Special Tasks solidifying my place as everyone else’s least favorite classmate.

You want to make friends in third grade? Don’t design Mrs. Branch’s bulletin boards while everyone else finishes their United States map. 

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Moise called my mom: “I’m worried. Jennifer doesn’t play with other kids during recess. She just reads books under a tree.” (Can I live, Mrs. Moise?? The Secret Garden wasn’t going to read itself!) Having mastered zero social skills and unable to satisfy my outrageous craving for stories, I read like it was my sole responsibility to advance literacy for my generation.

Side note on Mrs. Moise: For Christmas, she bought a book for each specific student, and my girl classmates got the enviable Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High delights, and I got the very dense A Wrinkle in Time. I cried to my parents that she hated me then proceeded to read it in one day. 

When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a librarian. Dewey Decimal System, turn up! Books were my first love, my best friends, and my portal into wonder. 

A non-exhaustive list of my earliest favorite worlds: 

• The Secret Garden
• A Little Princess
• A Wrinkle in Time (FINE, MRS. MOISE)
• Every Nancy Drew book in existence
• Sarah Plain and Tall
• Dear Mr. Henshaw
• The Call of the Wild
• The Ramona books
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
• Anne of Green Gables (all)
• Hatchet
• Stone Fox
• The Westing Game
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• The Outsiders
• Julie of the Wolves
• From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

And you better damn well believe I read every single book in The Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High series. Ain’t nobody keeping me from Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey.

How lucky we are as humans to be readers. I absolutely revere the written word. The utter magic of putting pen to blank paper and creating whole worlds out of sheer imagination is a wonder I’ll never get over. The way stories and characters reach us with precision, like the author knew us, like he or she uniquely understood our personal delights and demons, is unparalleled alchemy.

The way books bring us together, discussing plot points and story arcs like we were speaking of friends, enemies, or a favorite character gone sideways we might correct with enough robust conversation; what enchantment. 

Not to get too science-y, but reading is also a known accelerant for creativity, health, empathy, vocabulary, mental wellness, sleep quality, and even longevity. Reading makes us better. It is medicine for our minds and lives. In a world now trussed tenuously by screens and algorithms, books offer the old fashioned opportunity for actual nurture. Get a library card, and it is free sustenance. Reading will not return void. Ever. 

Among its many advantages, the increased capacity for empathy has me interested today. “Research has shown that people who read literary fiction — stories that explore the inner lives of characters — show a heightened ability to understand the feelings and beliefs of others. Researchers call this ability the “theory of mind,” a set of skills essential for building, navigating, and maintaining social relationships.” 

This makes sense to me. While spoiled and petulant, you better believe I was Team Colin Craven halfway through The Secret Garden, and I learned that difficult kids aren’t always as they seem. Sara Crewe taught me that kindness trumped circumstances and a rich interior life was its own comfort; long live A Little Princess. Annemarie Johansen left me speechless with her bravery in the WWII novel Number the Stars. (When I was a fourth-grade teacher, I read that book to my students every year, and I never once made it through without sobbing. One year, my most macho boy, Greg, had to stay inside during recess because he was so overcome by the ending. BLESS HIM.)

Books introduce us to other cultures, different types of families, experiences outside our purview. They stretch our understanding of trauma and give us insight into dysfunction. They help us see the good kernel inside the bad guy and the dark side of the good guy. Books give us a front row seat to conflict, repair, and resolution. They locate us squarely in 1961 interior Mexico, 1944 terrorized Poland, 1928 rural China, current-day inner-city Philadelphia. We get to imagine the smells and sounds, the cultural norms and relational structures. We literally walk a mile in others’ shoes, and it changes us for the better. 

It’s hard to formulate or codify; there isn’t an equation to apply or a template to overlay. In this case, the sum is simply greater than its parts: reading a bunch of fiction makes us more empathetic. It just does. How many books? I don’t know. How many years does it take? Man, just keep reading. We will experience the accrued effect without trying, like how crossword puzzles make you accidentally smarter. 

In a world gone plumb mad, reading fiction is a quiet antidote. It interrupts the freefall of dehumanizing our neighbors and slowly, like a river over a rock, makes us a little more gentle with each other. It is a tool in the hand of every parent intent on raising kinder kids.

Books tap into our most human parts and remind us that we mostly hope for the same things: love, belonging, forgiveness, meaning. It helps slow the avalanche of hasty judgment and holds the possibility of connection a bit longer. Reading does indeed make us better. 

And at the bare minimum, it offers a business plan to pre-adolescent girls interested in starting a babysitter’s club with elected officials like the one in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. 

Beat that.

 

Want to read together?

Join my Book Club

I recently told my friends: “I feel very cranky for undetermined reasons.”

 

I noticed myself being snappy and impatient and somehow both overstimulated and under stimulated. I decided I didn’t like people, any of them. People were out.

 

Obviously, my career was a catastrophic choice, and I’d clearly spent 20 years rowing in the wrong direction. I experienced active fury toward every single person who sent me a new email. Everything felt like too much and not enough which, if you are keeping score, is a tricky needle to thread.

 

I had a full sense of overwhelm. And why wouldn’t any of us? We have too much of too much. Too much input, too much bad news, too much noise, too much stuff, too much work, too much conflict, too much activity, too much anxiety. I cannot tell you how often I think about the generations before us who basically lived on their little block, watched the 10:00 news, read the Sunday paper with the obits and comics, and shopped at JCPenney. Can you imagine how scrambled our brains are with social media algorithms, a 24/7 news cycle, and nonstop outrage?

 

At this point, creating peace is a total act of defiance. So, I started a personal drip campaign of silencing some of the chaos.

 

Because to be fair, no one is FORCING me to scroll on Instagram for 47 minutes. Some of the crazy lives in my head because I rolled out the red carpet and invited it inside.

 

This is my version of spring cleaning, and it is having a profound impact on my feeling of mania.

 

1. Our social feeds are too crowded. Why are we following people who make us feel ragey? Or inferior? Or too _____ because we aren’t doing it like them? Seriously. Why? No, we don’t “have” to know what they are saying. We really do not. We are giving toxic people rent-free space in our heads, and no one will change this except us. I inventoried my social feed, and while most of my follows were great, a few did nothing but distract, disturb, and disorient me. And for what? What is the ROI except more brain scramble?

So I politely unfollowed (or hid) about 50 accounts. Just a simple tidying-up of my social input. Social media is already a largely unexamined soupcon rewiring our brains and tapping into our neuroses with sophisticated technology we can’t compete with, because we aren’t autobots with a capitalistic agenda. We are humans.

Take one week, and with every account that shows up in your feed, ask yourself: “Is this serving me in any positive way?” If the answer is ‘no’ or even ‘not sure’, hide it and see if your internal canary doesn’t quiet down in the coalmine.

 

2. Traditional spring cleaning has always waylaid me because it felt too big. Spring-clean my whole house? In this economy?? Look, I laid awake in bed last week thinking about my expired spices; I’m pretty sure some of them go back a decade. I can’t manage the whole damn house.

Pick one space. It can be a whole room, but it could also be your junk drawer, the front closet, your bookshelves, the office nook, your laundry space, the playroom. Just one. One space that lost the war against entropy. Don’t put it at the top of a list of ten spaces. It is the only thing on the list. Tackle it. Purge with ruthlessness. Throw garbage stuff away and donate a bunch more. Whatever you do, end up with way, way, way less in there. If it makes sense, gets containers or dividers or bins and organize the rest. The WAY this tames my sense of overwhelm. I cleaned out my garage recently, and about four times a day for a week, I’d just walk in there and look around. Order! Organization! Eff you, chaos!

 

3. Bob Goff famously said that he quits something every Thursday. Which always led me to wonder: How much stuff are you actively involved in, my dude? But I like the notion, because DEAR BABY MOSES we are doing too much. No joke, guys, I sent my assistant an email that asked her to start blocking off 30 minutes for lunch every day so I could eat because I was a crazed starving person by late afternoon. What in the actual eff. What kind of dumb day doesn’t even have time for a sandwich?? I am not that important; I can tell you that right damn now. That is just nonsense calendaring with no intention.

Quit something. Pick anything that has lost its joy, isn’t necessary, someone else can do, has outlived its usefulness, is crowding your week, makes you resentful, you’ve started to dread, doesn’t have value anymore. Survey your calendar and pay attention to your internal responses to each line item. It can be huge (like your whole job – go off, Janice!) or teeny tiny (like cooking on weekends). Just like that. Offload it right on out because you are grown. Clear a little room. Take a little breath. Quit something.

 

4. It’s no big newsflash that an author thinks words are a big deal, but I didn’t invent the concept. Ancient cultures believed words of blessing created actual blessings. Neuroscience tells us that positive words rewire our pathways and biologically change the way we interpret the world. The Bible has tons to say about speaking powerful words of life and love over each other. Beautiful, life-giving language becomes an invitation for belonging and connection and hope.

ANYHOW, when we speak total garbage, it creates the opposite. It makes our worlds small and hard. What is the least blessing-oriented language you slip into? Mean-spirited gossip? Nonstop complaining? Doomsday-ing? Catastrophizing? Criticizing? Arguing? Talking shit? What if you stopped for a week? It couldn’t hurt but it might feel amazing (I guarantee it will feel amazing to the people around you).

For one week, clear out the garbage talk in your worst category. Just bite it back. Don’t say that mean thing. Don’t pick the fight. Don’t complain about that thing again, whatever it is. (Notice I left out cursing because I enjoy a well-placed swear, but if that is your garbage category, FINE.) Clean out the self-created negative energy and just see how it feels. If you hate it, go back to daily complaints about your co-worker Jerry.

 

This is my version of spring cleaning.

 

It is mostly mental which is where my clutter resides. Some of the noise can’t be helped, but a good freaking bunch of it can be silenced. We have some agency over our input, our rhythms, our language. See if you can turn the dial to “less.”

Lower the volume and create some peace despite the world’s attempt to drown us all.

What a gorgeous act of rebellion.

 

P.S. I also have an e-course that explores how to calm the chaos and create simplicity in your own life.

I brought in two experts for this course, Myquillyn Smith AKA The Nester (I like to call her the Home Whisperer). She is our cozy minimalist and will help us to have the most amount of style with the least amount of stuff.

Then, Emily P. Freeman — the soul minimalist — will help us clear out the mental and emotional loads that we carry and cart around that clutter our thoughts, our actions, our wellbeing, and more. This course is simply amazing!