Description:

Calling all book lovers, calling all readers, calling everyone who has faced down a reinvention in the middle of life. Zibby Owens is one of the book world’s most tireless and warm-hearted connectors: a podcaster who has interviewed more than 2,000 authors, a publisher, a bookstore owner, a self-described accidental activist, and now an author herself. Ten years ago she was a perfectionistic stay-at-home mom of four on the Upper East Side, up at 4:55 a.m. to sign up for parent teacher conferences, with color-coded calendars and no time to read. Then she got divorced, fell in love with her tennis pro, recorded a podcast into her phone from her bed on a whim, and rebuilt the whole thing: new career, new marriage, new name, new voice.

Her memoir in essays, Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot, is out now. In this Sacred Work conversation, Jen and Zibby get into what losing the plot actually feels like from the inside, the tiny unglamorous steps that add up to an entirely different life, why she sunsets things that are still making money, and how books became the connection vehicle for a whole community of women. Also: shy kids who grew up into very public careers, and the permission slip Zibby would hand her 39-year-old self.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

• "There is a way. You are not stuck. Your life is not over. You can take these small steps to remember who you are. And it is not selfish. It is imperative." - Zibby Owens
• "When you cannot remember the last time you belly laughed, that could be a red flag to pay attention to." - Jen Hatmaker
• "Save nothing for the swim home." - Jen Hatmaker, quoting her agent Margaret
• "Talking about books is really talking about life." - Zibby Owens
• "It’s not just, well, I guess this is it because it has to be. This is it because it can be, and it should be." - Jen Hatmaker

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot by Zibby Owens (Zibby Publishing)
• On Being Jewish Now, edited by Zibby Owens
• "A Mother’s Right to Sanity," Zibby’s essay that went viral overnight
• The Between Chapters essay platform on Substack, where readers write about their own chapters
• Authors in the mix: Dani Shapiro, Anna Quindlen, and Sarah Mlynowski, who told Zibby to start a podcast
• Childhood favorites: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, and Little House on the Prairie

Guest’s Links:

Website - https://zibbymedia.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zibbyowens/

Substack - https://www.zibbyowens.com/

Podcast - Totally Booked with Zibby https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-booked-with-zibby/id1366633318

Connect with Jen!

Description:

Mary Pipher has spent her whole career noticing the gap between what the culture says is happening to women and what is actually happening to them. She did it in her thirties with Reviving Ophelia, and she did it again decades later with Women Rowing North. In this Sacred Work encore, Jen sits down with the clinical psychologist and author of eleven books to talk about the second half of life and what it actually asks of you. Mary makes the case that women get happier as they age, and she has the research to back it up, along with a story about two locker rooms that lands harder than any statistic. She also talks about thanking her own worn out hands for a lifetime of work, why reasonable expectations are the one thing happy people everywhere share, and the line Jen has not been able to shake since: we all age, but we do not all grow. Only one of those is up to you.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

• We all age but we don’t all grow.
• If you don’t become better you become bitter. You either grow or you shrink.
• You should thank your hands for all the work they have done for you.
• We all find what we’re looking for.
• I have everything I need to be happy right between my ears.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age by Mary Pipher
• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher
• A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher
• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
• Complete list of Mary Pipher’s books: https://marypipher.com/books
• Margaret Mead’s idea of post menopausal zest
• Jane Jarvis, American jazz pianist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jarvis

Guest’s Links:

Website - https://marypipher.com

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/authormarypipher

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 - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker

The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy.

Description:
Dr. Marisa G. Franco is back — and this time, she's turning the lens inward. Marisa is the New York Times bestselling author of Platonic and a psychologist at the University of Maryland, and her brand new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, might just be the most important thing she's ever written. It is tender, personal, and research-backed in equal measure — and friend, it will find you.

In this conversation, Marisa and Jen dig into the central argument of the book: that trying to become a "secure" person — calm, confident, regulated, healed — is one of the most efficient ways to stay stuck. The goal, Marisa says, is not security. It's being secure-ish. That means making room for the anxious parts and the avoidant parts, the shame and the neediness and the grief, and offering those parts the care they never got instead of running from them one more time.

In this discussion, you’ll also hear:

• Why the goal was never to be fully "secure" — and what it means to be secure-ish instead
• Why your insecurities are messengers, not enemies — and how to stop whack-a-moleing them into silence
• The memories that are keeping you stuck — and the science that proves you can actually change how they live in you
• The messages installed in us by the wider world — faith, bodies, marriage, worth — and what it looks like to do this work when those messages came from somewhere we once considered holy
• And Marisa shares her own story, the one that cracked her open: a hike, a relationship unraveling, and the moment she finally stopped performing calm long enough to say the true thing out loud.

This is a conversation for anyone who has been trying to be better than they are instead of being who they are. Which is to say — it's for all of us.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

• “The struggle of not feeling worthy is that you're stuck in the same sense of reality. You're trapped and you don't know how to get out. People are loving you but you don't feel loved. The beauties of life slide off of you. I just want people to get free of that.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco
• “We have to start with allowing what is, with the truth. So many of us don’t think we can because we have to be something different than we are. But being where you are, that's where the healing happens.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco
• “I'm still learning for my first reaction to no longer be, what am I allowed to feel according to other people? What am I allowed to look like according to other people? And for my first question to be what expresses who I am and how I actually feel, even if that violates all of the rules as to how I should feel or how I should present myself? That's where I need to begin, in the truth.” - Dr. Marisa G. Franco

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/42N2MyE
• Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends by Dr. Marisa Franco - https://amzn.to/4dph3rm
• Friendship MeCourse - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/products/friendship-for-the-rest-of-us