Podcast Category: Self-Care/Routines (Wellness)

The Sacred Yes: Jen Hatmaker & Tyler Merritt on Choosing Your Body

Some yeses cost us something. Some of them save us.

Jen sits down with her partner, actor, author, and speaker Tyler Merritt, hours after his chemotherapy infusion. Tyler is midway through treatment for colorectal cancer, his second diagnosis in six years, and the two get honest about making thoughtful decisions when your body is calling every shot.

They talk about the yes Tyler gave in the middle of radiation: booking a brand-new theater tour that opens seventeen days after his last chemo, a yes he says he “arguably shouldn’t have” given, made so he’d have something beautiful to walk toward. Jen turns the lens on her own year and the yes she almost took back: getting on the plane to Me Camp after a hysterectomy, a brutal spring, and a boyfriend in chemo two thousand miles away.

Tyler also flips the mic and asks Jen whether she regrets writing AWAKE. Her answer is about closure, discretion, and the two longest weeks of her life waiting to hear what her daughter thought of the book.

Plus: how to tell your intuition from everybody else’s fear, Jen’s top three Me Camp TV experiences, one Enneagram argument, and the one yes Tyler is still too scared to say out loud.

The Sacred Yes: What My Mom Taught Me About Courage, Curiosity, and Starting Again

In our Sacred Yes series, we’ve been exploring what it means to choose courage, curiosity, and joy in the second half of life. Who better to join the conversation than the woman who quietly taught Jen those very lessons from the beginning?

In this deeply personal episode, Jen calls home from MeCamp to check in with her mom, Jana. While Jana was originally supposed to be lakeside in Ontario with Jen this week, a last-minute discovery by Jen’s dad, Larry, revealed that Jana’s passport had expired back in April. Instead of catching up by the water, mother and daughter connected remotely—and thankfully, they hit record so we could all benefit from Jana’s wisdom.

This warm, funny, generation-spanning conversation explores the stories, fears, and freedoms we inherit. Jana reflects on growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, the cultural scripts of the time that told young women they couldn’t quite “make it” on their own”, and how her own mother (who died when Jana was just 33) refused to let her carry fear. Jen and Jana trace how that spirit of fearlessness rolled down through the family, for better and occasionally for worse. They dive into the gifts passed through motherhood: resilience, faith, independence, and the confidence to keep saying “yes” to new adventures, no matter how scary they seem.

Jana shares insights from 55 years of marriage and raising four resilient children in a home where faith was central and failure was never a dealbreaker. She also discusses her decades as an educator and the joy of discovering new passions after retirement.

We also talk about reinvention after 75—the “yeses” Jana has given herself lately, from traveling with her best friend to opening her own bank account (so she never has to explain a $78 lunch again!). Jana closes with a permission slip for women in midlife: it is never too late to try something new, and bravery is simply doing it even when you’re afraid.

Whether you’re navigating an empty nest, caring for aging parents, rebuilding after loss, or simply wondering what this next chapter could hold, this conversation offers the kind of gentle mentoring so many of us wish we could still receive from our own mothers. Because, perhaps the greatest gift a parent can give isn’t certainty—it’s the confidence to believe that no matter what happens, you can always get back up and begin again.

[ENCORE] The Sacred Yes to What’s Next: Leanne Morgan on Midlife Reinvention, Second Acts, and Dreams That Are Worth Waiting For

What if your biggest breakthrough hasn’t happened yet?

In this joyful and deeply encouraging conversation, Jen sits down with comedian, author, actress, and beloved storyteller Leanne Morgan to talk about dreams, disappointment, perseverance, and the surprising possibilities waiting for us in midlife.

As part of our Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife series, we’re bringing back one of our most-loved episodes because Leanne’s story embodies everything this season is about: saying yes to possibility, trusting your own timeline, and refusing to believe that life’s best chapters belong exclusively to youth.

Before sold-out tours, bestselling books, Netflix specials, and national recognition, Leanne spent decades raising children, caring for family, performing in comedy clubs, and quietly holding onto a dream that seemed increasingly unlikely. Then, in her fifties, everything changed.

With her trademark humor and warmth, Leanne shares what it was like to keep showing up long after many people would have given up. She reflects on motherhood, caregiving, marriage, becoming a grandmother, and the surprising freedom that comes with getting older.

Most of all, she reminds us that there is no expiration date on becoming who we’re meant to be.

Over this delightful hour, Leanne will regale you with charming hard-won life lessons including:

  • Why success arriving later can be a gift
  • The power of perseverance through disappointment
  • The balancing act of holding dreams, caregiving, and family life all with care
  • How humor helps us survive hard seasons
  • Why comparison is a thief of joy
  • The freedom that comes with embracing your own timeline
  • What it means to trust that what’s meant for you won’t miss you

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’ve missed your chance, whether it’s too late to pivot, or whether your most joyful years are already behind you, Leanne has a message for you:

You are not behind. You are not too late. Your story is still unfolding.

Dinner With Strangers: Jess Janz On The Friends We Haven’t Met Yet

In a world where we’re more connected than ever—and lonelier than we’d like to admit—what if the answer isn’t finding the right people, but simply pulling up another chair?

This week, Jen sits down with writer, poet, and community-builder Jess Janz to talk about her beautiful new book, The Table Where We Meet, and the unlikely social experiment that grew into the phenomenon known as Dinner With Strangers. What began as a simple gathering around a table with a few curious questions has now welcomed more than a thousand people into conversations that move far beyond small talk and into the territory we all secretly long for: belonging.

Together, Jen and Jess explore why so many of us feel disconnected, what makes a question powerful enough to crack a person open, and how vulnerability creates the conditions for genuine connection. They discuss the courage it takes to gather people, the surprising magic that happens when strangers choose honesty, and why community is less about finding your people and more about becoming the kind of person who creates space for others.

Whether you’re craving deeper friendships, navigating loneliness, or simply wondering how to build a bigger table in your own life, this conversation is a hopeful reminder that meaningful connection is still possible—and it might be closer than you think.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • The hidden costs of loneliness and our culture’s growing hunger for belonging
  • Why “What’s your favorite movie?” might be the wrong icebreaker question—and what to ask instead
  • What happens when one person chooses vulnerability first
  • How gathering around a table can become an act of healing, resistance, and hope
  • Why community isn’t something we stumble into—it’s something we create

When Life Outpaces You, Rest Isn’t Optional

Every summer, Jen heads off on her annual Me Camp—a month dedicated to stepping away from the noise to reconnect with herself. But this year, Me Camp isn’t a tradition or a luxury. It’s an act of survival.

In the wake of major surgery, while carrying the weight of parenting adult children, navigating family crises, supporting loved ones through illness, and trying to hold together a life that was once built for two people, Jen found herself physically, emotionally, and mentally depleted. She almost didn’t go.

In this deeply personal solo episode, Jen shares what finally convinced her to leave anyway, why asking for help has become one of the hardest—and holiest—lessons of this season, and what she’s learning about the difference between escaping your life and stepping away long enough to return to it whole.

If you’re the dependable one, the fixer, the person everyone else calls in a crisis, this conversation is a gentle but urgent invitation to loosen your grip, let people show up for you, and remember that rest isn’t a reward for finishing the work. Sometimes it’s the very thing that makes it possible to keep going.

In this episode, Jen explores:

  • What happens when life outpaces your capacity
  • Why asking for help feels so uncomfortable (especially for capable people)
  • The hidden cost of believing you’re indispensable
  • How codependency can disguise itself as responsibility
  • Why retreat can be an act of courage—not avoidance
  • The simple invitation to “choose the lake chair anyway”

Whether you’re recovering from something visible or carrying burdens no one else can see, this episode offers permission to stop white-knuckling your way through life, receive the care that’s available to you, and trust that stepping away for a moment can be the very thing that helps you step back into your life with renewed strength.

[ENCORE] The Sacred Yes to Rest: Katherine May on Retreat, Beauty, and the Healing We Can’t Rush

Three years ago, Katherine May gave us a language for something many of us experience but rarely know how to name: wintering.

Those seasons of life when everything slows down. When grief arrives. When burnout catches up with us. When illness, loss, caregiving, parenting challenges, or unexpected change force us to stop and reconsider how we’re living.

As part of our Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife series, we’re revisiting this unforgettable conversation because Katherine’s wisdom feels even more relevant today than it did when it first aired.

Together, Jen and Katherine explore what it means to stop treating ourselves like machines and start honoring our humanity. They discuss the value of retreat, the necessity of rest, and why healing cannot be rushed. Katherine challenges the cultural pressure to push through difficult seasons and instead invites us to trust that growth is still happening beneath the surface—even when life appears dormant.

Nestled in this conversation is a gentle reminder that joy isn’t always found by adding more. Sometimes it emerges when we create space. Space for solitude. Space for beauty. Space to notice what’s growing quietly within us.

If you’ve been feeling weary, stretched thin, or ready to step off the hamster wheel for a moment, this episode offers a different path forward—one marked by grace, patience, and the courage to rest before collapse forces it upon us.

In this very gentle and generous conversation, you’ll hear:

  • Why every life includes seasons of “wintering”
  • The difference between retreat and isolation
  • How beauty sustains us during difficult seasons
  • Why sadness isn’t something to fix
  • Practical ways to create restorative space in everyday life
  • What it means to trust the season you’re in

Sometimes the most sacred yes isn’t a leap forward. It’s permission to pause.

Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife Starts Here

Welcome to the first episode in our summer series, Sacred Yes: Reclaiming Joy in Midlife.

After years spent saying yes to obligations, expectations, responsibilities, and everyone else’s needs, what happens when we finally learn to say yes to ourselves?

In this deeply personal solo episode, Jen takes us to the place where this journey began: Me Camp. What started as a spontaneous trip to coastal Maine during one of the hardest seasons of her life became an annual practice of restoration, adventure, healing, and joy. Six summers later, as she arrives in a tiny lakeside town in Ontario for another month of Me Camp, she’s reflecting on the small word that changed everything: yes.

But not every yes is created equal.

Jen explores the difference between the “obligated yes” that leaves us depleted and resentful and the “sacred yes” that reconnects us to ourselves. Along the way, she shares hard-won wisdom about boundaries, people-pleasing, midlife exhaustion, and why so many women find themselves carrying responsibilities that were never meant to belong to them alone.

Most importantly, she makes a compelling case for something many of us have forgotten how to practice: unproductive joy. The kind of joy that doesn’t earn a paycheck, check off a to-do list, or justify itself with results. The kind that nourishes our spirits simply because it delights us.

Whether your version of Me Camp is a month by the water, a Friday afternoon reserved for lunch with friends, a stack of library books, or an hour spent doing something that makes you feel alive, this conversation is your invitation to begin.

This month, we’ll be exploring what it means to reclaim joy, embrace rest, honor our desires, and create lives that are not just productive—but deeply satisfying.

It’s time to discover your own Sacred Yes.

He Built the Machine, Then He Survived It: Tim Schraeder Rodriguez on 15 Years Behind the Scenes of Evangelical Christianity

For 15 years, Tim Schraeder Rodriguez quietly shaped the digital face of some of the biggest names in evangelical Christianity — Willow Creek, Hillsong, Elevation — helping mega-churches reach millions with a message of radical welcome. The painful irony? He was living proof of their unspoken rules. Useful in the shadows. Unacceptable in the light.

In this conversation, Tim joins Jen and Amy to talk about his new memoir, Conversion Therapy Dropout, and the full arc of his story: growing up adopted with a sense of “anxious apartness,” signing the purity pledge as a kid who already knew he was gay, eight years in the loosely-held and deeply damaging world of conversion therapy, and eventually a breaking point that brought him to his knees — and then, slowly, to himself.

Today, the conversation swirls around what conversion therapy actually looks like from the inside (football coaches, Mary Kay consultants, and all), the complicated grief of leaving a community that was also your career and your family, how the Pulse Orlando shooting became Tim’s personal line in the sand, and what it took to find his way back to faith — this time, in church basements with other sober queer people finding a God of their own understanding.

They also get into the current state of conversion therapy in America, why it’s more active and accessible than most people realize, and what the rest of us — regular people who just live on their street and go to their jobs — can actually do about it.

This one is hard and beautiful and hopeful. Don’t miss it.

Big Baby and New Beginnings: Kevin James Thornton on Sin Clowns, Standups, and Second Acts

He’s back — and this time he brought a memoir. Comedian Kevin James Thornton returns to For the Love, and if you thought you knew Kevin from his hilarious auto-tuned TikToks and wired-headphone microphone bits, this conversation will lovingly surprise you.

Kevin’s debut memoir, Big Baby: On Endings, Beginnings, and an Interdimensional Cat, traces his journey from performing as a literal sin clown on a youth group mission trip in 1990s New York City, to grinding it out on the stand-up circuit in LA, to touring one-man shows across the US, Canada, and eventually the world — Helsinki, Stockholm, Paris — all the way to present-day Cincinnati, where he’s navigating a major life upheaval with nothing but his 13-pound black cat Comet and an extraordinary amount of hard-won self-awareness.

In this conversation, Kevin opens up about what it actually took to write a book — including the two-week-long Airbnb retreat where he mostly just slept and watched TV because his attention span had been completely obliterated — and what surprised him most about recording the audiobook (hint: he cried, more than once, and they left it in). He talks about the strange, freeing moment he realized he no longer needed to prove himself to anyone, and how that shift was the very thing that made his work finally land. And he reflects on the beautiful, sometimes maddening truth that life doesn’t end so much as it just keeps beginning again.

[ENCORE] The Gift of Being Seen: Tyler Merritt On Why Vulnerability Is Worth The Risk

As we close out our Chosen Family: The Ones Who Stayed series, we wanted to revisit a conversation that beautifully captures something at the heart of every meaningful relationship: the courage to be fully seen.

Recorded live from the Oregon coast during the final day of MeCamp, this special conversation between Jen and her partner, Tyler Merritt, is equal parts hilarious, tender, and deeply human. Through stories of adventure, misadventure, and the kind of laughter that only comes from knowing someone well, they explore what it means to show up honestly—with ourselves and with the people who love us.

Throughout our Chosen Family series, we’ve talked about the relationships that sustain us through life’s joys, losses, and transitions. This conversation feels like a fitting finale because it highlights the vulnerability that allows those connections to flourish. Jen and Tyler reflect on the stories we tell ourselves, the truths we’ve had to confront, and the ways honesty can become a pathway to healing and emotional well-being.

From Tyler’s viral video Before You Call the Cops to Jen’s reflections on her book Awake, they discuss the transformative power of sharing our stories—and the freedom that can come when we stop hiding behind perfection, pride, or performance.

In this episode:

• Tyler shares the most awkward moment he’s ever experienced because he chose vulnerability over self-protection
• Jen and Tyler discuss some of the hardest truths they’ve ever had to face about themselves
• Tyler reaches deep into the archives to reveal one of his most embarrassing moments as a performer

Join us for a conversation that reminds us that the people who stay are often the ones who make space for our whole selves—the polished parts, the messy parts, and everything in between.