Culture Study Podcast - Who Gets a Mid-Life Reinvention？

00:00:00.140 Hey, it's Melody. It's my turn to tell you about the episodes we're working on and to

00:00:04.340 hopefully inspire you to submit your questions. First up, an episode about baseball culture.

00:00:10.480 Anne says that I have to co-host this one, and I am a Royals fan, which is the American

00:00:15.980 League. Our guest is a Mets fan, National League, so I think we can cover all the bases.

00:00:23.280 I'm really excited, so give us some good stuff to talk about. We are also working on an episode

00:00:27.940 about different ways of hanging out and the different functions that those hangouts serve.

00:00:34.400 Another one in the pipeline is with Avery Truffleman of the incredible podcast Articles

00:00:38.860 of Interest. We're going to talk about outdoor clothing and athletic wear. We've got an episode

00:00:44.520 on millennial hobby energy and another on what would make a society actually family-friendly.

00:00:52.320 And as always, we are taking your ideas for future episodes and your questions for Ask

00:00:57.300 and anything. You can submit everything at the same Google form, which is at tinyurl.com

00:01:03.540 slash culturestudypod. Okay, thank you. Enjoy today's show.

00:01:15.340 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:01:19.220 I'm Jen Hatmaker. Delighted to be joining you today. I've written a new book that just came

00:01:25.540 out called Awake, a memoir. And I live down here in Austin, Texas and thrilled to be a part of

00:01:33.140 this today. Thanks for having me. I just want to say I'm so excited to have you today. I've

00:01:37.460 been following your story for a long time. I reported from one of your women's conferences

00:01:43.520 the Saturday before the 2016 election. I remember this. I was just rereading that piece and I was

00:01:50.080 like wow was there so much in there that was a crazy time I had just like torpedoed my career

00:01:59.600 the week before yeah um that week was bonkers and then you're like hey I'm gonna come and

00:02:06.900 cover it we're all like oh god it's a weird time it's a really weird week

00:02:13.200 no and it was a weird week but also I think like a really interesting one

00:02:18.540 because i was you know in the crowd talking to these women who are trying to figure out

00:02:23.440 and like the election hadn't happened yet but like they're trying to figure out

00:02:26.800 what is my relationship to politics like i've kind of thought about this before but maybe not

00:02:33.080 as explicitly like depending on what kind of church they went to and whether their pastor

00:02:37.060 was preaching politics from the pulpit like just a really interesting moment and then some people

00:02:42.860 were like yeah i hate this guy like he's against everything i stand for and i would love to and

00:02:47.420 each person that I interviewed to talk to them today. That was such an interesting pivot in

00:02:53.860 culture. Having come off eight years of the Obama administration, it was just such a hard swing

00:03:02.820 culturally. And then I was having such a hard swing personally at the exact same time,

00:03:12.000 I mean, simultaneous.

00:03:14.240 And so all that to say, you and I have come a long ways in 10 years.

00:03:21.080 I know, we've become good podcasters.

00:03:23.440 That's right.

00:03:24.020 And I know, you know, like we're framing this as a larger episode about midlife reinvention.

00:03:31.380 And you described in your new memoir as a coming of middle age story, which I love.

00:03:36.900 So tell me what that means to you.

00:03:40.020 Awake is kind of like two stories.

00:03:41.660 I nestled my small personal individual story, which was kind of the loss of my 26 year marriage, and then like the subsequent suffering and reordering and ultimately reinvention inside a larger story, which is far more ubiquitous, even though so is divorce.

00:04:07.820 but inside the system, the systems really in which I built that house of cards. So

00:04:16.700 it's a pretty unsparing look at patriarchy and religious dogma and purity culture and body shame

00:04:28.680 and gender limitations. And those were all the bricks that built the house. And so I had to

00:04:37.540 examine those pretty deeply and come to the conclusion that it probably wasn't actually

00:04:42.840 such a shock that the house crumbled. And so a lot of this I experience, you know, as a person

00:04:51.180 who leads a large community of women, one way or another, whatever leadership looks like in these

00:04:57.020 day in this day and age, but that is a really common story in midlife. And you can kind of

00:05:03.460 swap out the loss or the change with a handful of things. But the story arc remains, like a lot of

00:05:14.180 us are going through, in my case, like the loss of a marriage. But in midlife, it's also, hey,

00:05:20.920 my body is not behaving like I expected it to. My career is not where I thought it was going to be,

00:05:27.900 or I'm unfulfilled. My age group is navigating. What is, how do we, our parenting has shifted.

00:05:35.500 Our kids are launching their young adults. What does that look like? Um, what about our adult

00:05:40.060 friendships? There's just this, there's this whole stack of things in midlife that most of us,

00:05:48.240 whether all of them or some of them are going to say that's me too. That's I'm right there.

00:05:55.040 You know, we on the newsletter and the podcast, we call it the portal. And how at the end of the portal, there is often a burst of creative energy in some way. And I feel like you're in that space right now. But then there's also like two portal, like in the portal. It's like you're being throttled. Like everything is happening all at once. And you're trying to ascertain like, why do I feel this incredible amount of rage?

00:06:23.080 is it because i can no longer master the systems that you're referring to like you know when you're

00:06:28.940 in your 30s you're like i got this down to stomach like some people can feel like they have that

00:06:33.960 mastery but then when you no longer are like an agent of power within this how do you grapple

00:06:41.580 with that but then i think it's also like i feel all this rage because that is a natural byproduct

00:06:47.120 of perimenopause and menopause like this is something that my body is we're just like rage

00:06:51.260 factories like walking around in like an internal heater just prepared to unleash no it is such a

00:06:58.040 weird time isn't it yeah no and i think like you know and this is part of the the narrative of the

00:07:05.680 book is like with this transformation like it's a a cauldron that is like really difficult to just

00:07:14.100 hang out in there but then there is also life on the other side right like there is reinvention

00:07:19.320 and there is like excitement about that but i also like and this is what we're going to talk

00:07:24.000 about throughout this episode is like there are complications oh my god has the opportunity to

00:07:29.320 portal like think about our grandparents generation like i'm sure a lot of those women wanted a portal

00:07:34.680 they were just totally they got they had to live with what they had they their options were so 0.87

00:07:41.460 you and the systems and the culture were not set up with exit ramps yeah and that stage of history

00:07:50.360 and so you are right like we have more options at our fingertips but even then even even how old

00:07:58.940 are you am i'm 44 okay yeah so you're younger than me but we're kind of you're just you're

00:08:04.620 south of me enough, but you're up here where this middle part kind of exists. And we certainly have

00:08:12.600 more options, but we also still have complications. So awake is not a tidy story and really none of

00:08:20.520 ours are. So I don't, I don't, I don't buy that like real clean version of a midlife loss and

00:08:30.020 reinvention is it's just not clean it doesn't mean we don't get there to somewhere new and

00:08:35.320 somewhere better um but boy it could be a real clunky ride from a to b and like sometimes when

00:08:43.260 you have to narrativize it yeah it becomes more like bold this happened in act a this happened

00:08:49.100 in act b but there's always complications so on that along those lines like the fact of your

00:08:55.100 divorce was very public but you and your ex-husband kept the details private for a long time

00:08:59.460 what made you feel like you were ready to share it now yeah um I just kind of went underground

00:09:06.640 for a while there was just a portion of time right after that loss where trauma and grief

00:09:14.300 encompassed everything I had no other gear and and that certainly was not the time to disclose

00:09:20.340 the details we have five kids and at the time I still had two in high school I mean they weren't

00:09:26.380 all launched. And a couple of them were in and out of triage as I like to call this home once

00:09:31.740 they leave and come back. Um, so I was still parenting my kids pain and we were trying to

00:09:38.720 find a new normal and I was trying to rebuild an independent life having literally never lived one

00:09:45.420 when I got married when I was 19 years old. Um, and so there was just a season in which

00:09:52.940 Every ounce of spare energy went to just our real life, our real family here on the ground.

00:10:00.620 Also, thank God I didn't write this three years ago.

00:10:03.180 I don't know what I would have said before I had worked, before I had been therapized

00:10:08.620 and really recovered and even had a reckoning with my own patterns, my own complicity, like

00:10:16.780 my own contribution to this sort of decline it would have been a um tidier villain and victim

00:10:27.160 story but way less true um yeah so now five years later having experienced so much healing

00:10:34.960 and what I hope is ownership I hope I have a degree of of self-awareness that comes through

00:10:45.220 in the book um this felt like the time to talk about it to be honest with you as a writer as a

00:10:51.760 non-fiction writer pulling up my chair to the table of creativity knowing that writing is what

00:10:58.900 I do in the world that is my work there was no credible or feasible way for me to write about

00:11:05.660 anything other than the last five years yes what am I gonna do right right be like hey guys last

00:11:10.580 time I saw you things were a little different anyway let's talk about this thing over here

00:11:14.680 in left field. And I learned a lot. And I feel like it was my responsibility, because this is

00:11:22.320 my work in the world. And kind of my honor, to be honest, to write through my experience and

00:11:30.240 offer it to my community. You said something in your interview with the New York Times, which is

00:11:35.060 phenomenal, by the way, and we'll link it in the show notes. But you said like,

00:11:38.880 that you always think of a difference between discretion and privacy. So like, there are some

00:11:43.860 things that you feel that yes I can be honest about these things and I want to be honest as a

00:11:48.700 leader but then there are some things that are like I it's okay for me to have privacy too

00:11:53.480 that's right and listen nobody will hand it to you everybody wanted every sordid detail and I'm

00:12:02.060 sorry spoiler alert future readers those are not all included in the book either there is so much

00:12:08.960 that I have kept behind the firewall because discretion, because privacy, because those

00:12:16.360 details do not serve the story, nor do they change it. Um, because that is my kid's other parent

00:12:23.220 forever. And this is our real life. Like we have a real life that we live here. Um, that is not

00:12:29.420 this public thing in the New York times. I mean, that, that is the anomaly. My, our real life is

00:12:34.760 over here and it deserves care. And I have the right to privacy and discretion. And so even

00:12:42.300 though I have now written about my divorce, when up until this moment in time, I'd never even said

00:12:49.200 there was betrayal. And we never said one detail about what had happened. And now I've done quite

00:12:55.640 a bit of fleshing out of it. Even then, it is still highly discreet. And my North Star, when I

00:13:04.140 was writing it because the whole time I was writing it the entire time I kept thinking I

00:13:08.560 can't do this I can't say this I can't admit this I can't include this I can't um I can't

00:13:16.240 believe I'm going to expose myself like this I I at all points along the way I thought I was going

00:13:22.660 to capsize the project but the north star that I hung on to the whole time when I was deciding

00:13:29.080 what do I say? What do I include? What do I exclude? Was, will I be proud of this in five

00:13:38.740 years? Will I be proud of this whole book? Will I be proud of this paragraph? Will I be proud of

00:13:46.080 this sentence? Will I be proud of this word? And I will tell you that that question kept that delete

00:13:52.480 button in working order. Um, no, sometimes you need to write the sentence and then delete the

00:14:01.020 sentence. I put it down to write it first. I didn't self edit. I told myself, you have permission

00:14:06.560 to write everything into the first draft, absolutely everything, which was helpful and

00:14:11.260 useful. Um, and then we're like, all right, let's come back through this and, um, and decide what,

00:14:18.340 what meets the five-year pride test. So for listeners who aren't as familiar with your

00:14:24.880 work, like it's hard to overstate how important of a figure you were within evangelical women's

00:14:32.720 circles. And, you know, one thing that you say now is that you used to be the darling of evangelical

00:14:37.980 women's subculture, and now you are the problem child or a problem child. Can you, for listeners

00:14:44.880 who aren't familiar, run us through a little bit of this reinvention. Again, this goes back to when

00:14:50.700 you and I first met. Yeah. I had my, my comeuppance through evangelical women's subculture,

00:14:58.880 which is a thing. Because you said that gay people are people, right? That like they are people, 0.99

00:15:04.280 like God loves them. That's right. I mean, when you say it like that, it seems pretty plain and

00:15:09.340 obvious, right? Um, but in, in 2015, you know, in the, in that world and, and to put a real

00:15:17.840 fine point on it, I came up Southern Baptist, which is the right, the right twig of the right

00:15:23.800 branch of the right limb. Um, and so there was very unambiguous theology around same sex,

00:15:32.640 anything um which was uh no that was the theology no um no you you aren't that you don't get to be

00:15:40.780 that you don't get to be included um if if you are that though if we're wrong um then your only

00:15:49.340 path is settled the same it was bleak very very bleak and so highly destructive we'll never mind

00:15:58.060 the depths of the pain that not just the pain of the death that that theology created and still

00:16:05.580 creates. The cost of conversion therapy is that we'll never get to put a price tag on it. It is

00:16:13.860 so high. And then just the loss of dignity and personhood and belonging is, it is catastrophic.

00:16:23.980 And so just with my eyes and my ears back then, I was watching all this unfold, going, this theology that I've been handed my whole life, which was never even honestly discussed, this wasn't even a talking point.

00:16:40.120 It was just like, this is what this is, moving on to more complicated things.

00:16:45.080 But I'm paying attention because I now have much greater visibility into the world.

00:16:50.260 I'm older.

00:16:51.240 I'm wiser.

00:16:52.020 I'm more mature.

00:16:52.680 my experience has widened out my perspective has widened out going the results don't match

00:16:59.140 the theology if the theology says this is how we're going to find life here this is this is

00:17:04.560 how people are going to flourish then why are they all killing themselves um why are their

00:17:09.180 families all broken why are they why are teenagers homeless because their mom and dad kicked them out

00:17:14.000 because they're gay so anyway i'm getting in the weeds here but the cognitive dissonance and the

00:17:20.060 misalignment became too much. And so, as you mentioned, um, in 2016, a week before the 0.81

00:17:27.420 election, I gave an interview, um, to RNS and said, I changed my mind on this. And I essentially,

00:17:35.680 as you put it so succinctly, like, I'm like, okay, yay for gay, you know, like be gay. We love you. 0.55

00:17:43.640 You matter. You count. You are gay. This is not that monumental, frankly, but I was like, I

00:17:49.600 affirm gay people like at every level and that ended my career I mean it really did I I I it

00:17:56.620 effectively ended my career um and then I that was my decent from darling to problem child well

00:18:04.880 and if people aren't familiar with like how this works within like the the evangelical like

00:18:09.560 publishing industry like they're like your publisher was like we disavow this the next day

00:18:15.400 not disavowed press release they pulled off of course bookstores everywhere pulled my books off

00:18:23.900 their shelves yeah but my publisher put my most successful book out of print and it was the one

00:18:29.600 still selling it was like my financial engine at the time um and so I mean it's very very punitive

00:18:36.180 and and then of course the social community followed suit and so it was just it was just

00:18:44.020 scorched earth. It was honestly scorched earth. Um, it was a really low time actually, not because

00:18:49.460 I regretted my decision. The only regret I had is that I didn't get there sooner. That was my only

00:18:54.080 regret, but it was a really lonely time of loss. And to be the center point of that much long-term

00:19:03.900 sustained negative attention was harmful. I mean, I can just remember people, friends of mine that

00:19:13.100 live elsewhere in the United States texting me going, Jen, you are the subject of like our Sunday

00:19:19.900 sermon and not in a good way. That happened so many times. I couldn't even tell you like

00:19:24.920 on college campuses, every, every media outlet, you know. Um, so it was very overwhelming time.

00:19:36.340 And in hindsight, right. It, it's not about you. It's not the backlash had to be that strong

00:19:42.500 in order to underline like what was actually, what is actually an incredibly vulnerable

00:19:48.020 point of theology that is being challenged every day. That's right.

00:19:53.060 Right. And so it, it's not like it, obviously it was about you, but it wasn't about you.

00:19:58.100 That's right. Also that behavior is used to reinforce that particular hard boundary

00:20:05.880 inside evangelicalism. So in other words, everybody pay attention. That's going to be you

00:20:11.980 if you step out, if you step out, we will level you down in this way, in this manner and to this

00:20:19.340 degree. And so it's very effective. I mean, what a, what a deterrent. I mean, who wants that?

00:20:25.060 Right. God. And also that teed up a lot of things that were to come. So like,

00:20:30.460 this is what I think is so interesting is you were reinventing your faith and your belief system.

00:20:37.500 like this was happening that stuff was happening personally before the dissolution of your

00:20:42.560 marriage a hundred percent yeah yeah so it's not like oh I had a moment of trauma and then

00:20:49.160 everything changed right like everything was changed that's right I have had I've not had

00:20:56.220 one year exactly like the year before it in terms of stability since 2015 so I think a lot of people

00:21:05.040 would say that in middle age right like there's not agree yeah I agree that's kind of what I was

00:21:11.860 saying earlier like pick a category or all of them I apparently my life wanted to pick all the

00:21:17.640 categories like let's let's have people everywhere in every strata um but yeah like this is a time

00:21:25.740 it is a transitional season um of change and some of that change is chosen um some of it is chosen

00:21:33.400 for us. But these are the conversations we're having right now. And I find them so comforting

00:21:40.800 and instructive and useful. And so I'm glad to be having them with so many women here in the

00:21:48.720 middle of life. I think we're, we together collectively are very invested in writing a

00:21:55.060 different story, not just for midlife, but for our future. We're about to be this huge generation

00:22:00.860 one notch ahead of us that are our mom's ages. And I love that there seems to be,

00:22:10.620 to some degree, a bit of solidarity around these discussions that we're having like we're having

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00:25:33.820 Okay. We're going to go through a bunch of questions from readers. We'll see how many

00:25:40.780 we can get through that are just around this larger issue of midlife reinvention. So this

00:25:46.340 first question comes from Chelsea. I'm approaching my late thirties. I had two children in my mid

00:25:52.020 twenties and we just had two children in the last two years. Part of me wants to continue having

00:25:56.420 children for the reason that I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not wiping butts and 0.57

00:26:00.040 breastfeeding? Why am I so scared to have to reinvent myself, get to know myself, and find

00:26:05.280 new ways to spend my time as my children become more independent? So I wanted to include this

00:26:10.620 question because I think motherhood is sometimes such a welcoming identity, but then also sometimes

00:26:18.020 it can feel like, who am I outside of motherhood? And it can be difficult to get outside of there.

00:26:23.040 And you have five kids. Did you ever feel any of these things that Chelsea was feeling?

00:26:27.480 motherhood particularly young early childhood and elementary hood kind of right so all-encompassing

00:26:36.580 it was so overwhelming that I did not put the governor on the machine to go I want to throttle

00:26:43.500 back here and make this slow down that wasn't my experience I was so overwhelmed I'm like

00:26:50.380 when will this get easier? When, when can they make a sandwich? When am I going to get out of

00:26:57.720 this car? Like of just, that's all I did. My part-time job was driving people places and

00:27:03.180 picking them up. And so I didn't have that. And that could have just been from sheer volume of

00:27:08.280 children. It's very hard to wax nostalgic when you have five kids in your home. But also to

00:27:16.860 Chelsea's point. Um, there's something so all encompassing about motherhood that it is a full

00:27:27.380 brand like that. It dictates everything, your rhythms, your schedule, your budget, your

00:27:35.020 friendships, um, how you spend your weekends, what hobbies you have or don't, um, your marriage

00:27:43.720 relationship. If you're married, it very much is the lead horse in that race for a while. And so

00:27:50.400 because motherhood is not one line item, it's like all of them. It's almost defies our imagination

00:27:58.360 sometimes to go, what is this going to be when this isn't everything? When it's not ever,

00:28:04.740 right. Do I have a hobby? Do I like this spouse? Like, what will my career look like when I have

00:28:13.620 these extra minutes in every day. There's just so many question marks around it. And I think we

00:28:19.040 don't necessarily crave or love uncertainty in our stories. Some of us do, you know, there's those

00:28:25.800 kind of risk taking types that are like constantly going, Oh, what could I blow up this week? What

00:28:31.660 could I change? What can I reimagine? I love that personality type, but that is not what most of us

00:28:36.240 are. Most of us have a real affinity for stability and familiarity. And so thus the idea of motherhood

00:28:46.420 even changing can be scary. All I can say is that being on the other side of that, my youngest is

00:28:53.120 now 19. So I'm through it. I'm through it. My oldest is 27. I'm going to have my first grand

00:28:58.100 baby in two weeks. I hope that what Chelsea can do is not just trust the process, but trust herself

00:29:05.320 that she is a very real very whole human being outside of being a mom um that there are things

00:29:14.180 about her that are interesting that are useful um that are exciting um that are still awaiting

00:29:24.580 like this fresh new expression in her life and so if she can trust her own self we and also we

00:29:31.620 grow into that next iteration of ourselves. It doesn't just end on a Tuesday and we pick up a

00:29:37.360 new mantle on a Wednesday. It's not like that. We grow into that space. Um, and it is so exciting.

00:29:46.420 I mean, I have said this for years and years and years, and you probably know this, but like

00:29:49.780 parenting teenagers is fun. Like it's not this doomed experience, this aging motherhood thing

00:29:58.800 that people suggest. Wait till you get, wait till they're young adults. That's the best God. They

00:30:04.140 move out. They pay their own cell phone. It is brilliant. Like what if I was about to give me a

00:30:09.760 baby? This is awesome. So I don't need to have another baby. I have access to a baby that I

00:30:16.260 don't have to raise. That's the best kind of baby, the best kind of baby that there is. And so I have

00:30:23.040 so much hope for Chelsea and all the women who are going, who am I going to be when this season

00:30:28.100 of motherhood is over. And I'm like, wait till you meet her. You're going to love her so much.

00:30:33.300 Yeah. It's almost like, you know, you're in the thick of it and you open up the cabinet of like

00:30:39.340 who you are and you like just on the surface, it looks very bare. You're like, there's nothing

00:30:46.020 there. There's nothing interesting. Right. And so you slam it shut before you look in the back

00:30:51.940 and like, oh, it's all there. Like this is a well-stocked cabinet, but you got to look a

00:30:56.860 little longer. What a great analogy. It's so true. I have yet to meet a woman who does not actually

00:31:03.220 have a well-stocked cabinet. Women are so fascinating, so brilliant. We're such a great 0.96

00:31:09.400 and glorious good in the world. And there's nothing to fear about the next iteration of

00:31:15.180 who we are and the one after that and the one after that. We just keep getting better.

00:31:19.780 This next question comes from Claire and Melody's going to read it.

00:31:22.880 I'm in my late 40s and have always pushed myself. Grad school, engineering, Ironman triathlon,

00:31:29.580 ultra marathons, three kids, plethora of reading and traveling and volunteering.

00:31:33.860 My spouse who doesn't work and I have accumulated a small nest egg and I'm feeling unmotivated.

00:31:39.320 I am happy, but the kind where I enjoy spending a lot of time in bed and on or listening to my

00:31:45.100 phone. I miss feeling that drive and taking off those accomplishments. I feel my mind and body

00:31:50.460 are telling me to relax and enjoy my wonderful life. But I don't feel like myself without some

00:31:55.640 big goals, especially as I lay in bed thinking about the state of democracy and how I'm not

00:32:00.340 doing much. What's going on? Am I going through the portal? Or am I addicted to my phone? Or am

00:32:05.740 I just old and exhausted? I think Claire is burnt out. I think she has been pushing herself towards 0.81

00:32:15.180 these goals for so long and has used the goals as a motivator. But at some point, like, and I think

00:32:23.100 she will understand this as an endurance athlete. At some point you could reach over training and

00:32:28.220 the returns diminish, right? Like your body doesn't do what you want it to do. And the only

00:32:33.120 way that you recover is through actual rest. But I also think she doesn't know how to give that to

00:32:38.640 herself because it's not an accomplishment. It doesn't feel like an accomplishment.

00:32:41.780 I cannot say that any better.

00:32:43.860 That is exactly what that is.

00:32:47.020 And it's so tricky, particularly in American culture, because I understand, Claire, I am

00:32:53.560 wired in a similar way.

00:32:55.300 I'm an achiever.

00:32:56.160 I'm an Enneagram three.

00:32:58.060 I am highly productive, big capacity.

00:33:03.140 I understand.

00:33:04.380 And then that is added to the fact that people like us who go, go, go, do, do, do.

00:33:11.780 achieve, achieve, achieve. We are rewarded for that. We are. Yeah. Our culture is like,

00:33:17.840 look at her go. And they give us the roses and they put us on the thing and they just say,

00:33:23.800 God, what a role model, you know, like she doesn't even need sleep. She, she works two 1.00

00:33:30.900 calendar weeks in four days. What look at her go. And we get applauded. Um, and we get rewarded 1.00

00:33:38.680 financially sometimes. And so that is a tricky reversal. Very, very tricky. But I am so convinced

00:33:49.780 that this pace that we have been handed and that we're complicit, you know, we're the ones who also

00:33:57.760 said, okay, we'll do this. We'll have no boundaries. We won't say no. We won't cut it off.

00:34:04.260 but I am convinced at 51, this is not the better story. I'm figuring it out. It is

00:34:11.220 dawning on me right now. Like I'm not going to get these years back. And some of them were so

00:34:16.420 packed and so exhausting, so endlessly busy. I can't remember that. Yeah. I cannot remember that.

00:34:26.960 So is that what I want? Do I want to get to age 75? Look back on 60 years of productivity

00:34:35.860 and go, wow, what happened? What did I do? Like, what do I have left? What remains?

00:34:46.260 I don't want it. I don't want it. And so I think what Claire's probably going to have to do,

00:34:52.800 which is what a lot of us are going to have to do, which means is she going to be able to weather

00:34:58.760 this discomfort long enough to get to the other side? Because that's uncomfortable when you're

00:35:05.640 used to a rhythm and a pace. And all of a sudden you're like, your brain says, let's enjoy this

00:35:12.280 life. But your body's like, get your ass out of bed and go run an ultra marathon. That's just 0.99

00:35:19.180 uncomfortable because you're out of alignment. You're misaligned. I think she can get back into

00:35:24.300 alignment, but she's going to have to weather, weather this feeling of discomfort for a minute

00:35:31.680 to get there. I, I suspect it's going to be worth it. Yes. And I think like the one piece of advice

00:35:37.980 that I would give is, and this, I get this from my Peloton instructors is to frame rest as an

00:35:43.480 achievement that might not be like, that's kind of a hack, but at the same time, it might be the

00:35:49.000 on-ramp that she needs in order to understand rest as something that is valuable, that is

00:35:56.200 necessary in order to get to this place.

00:35:59.220 Oh my gosh, it's so true.

00:36:00.640 I'm trying to get there right now.

00:36:02.080 Do you have an aura ring?

00:36:03.400 Do you do this?

00:36:04.500 Have you subscribed?

00:36:05.500 I don't have the aura, but I have a garment that I check my sleep.

00:36:09.860 Oh my God, me too.

00:36:11.000 I check my sleep every morning and I can't function without it.

00:36:15.500 so like there is something not just restorative but required about rest yeah do you have what

00:36:24.340 i have which is a slight amnesia about the process of writing any of your books oh my god yeah

00:36:29.980 yeah it's the only way we can keep writing it's the only way i'll tell you what i get amnesia for

00:36:38.920 where I, where my amnesia, um, becomes acute is less the process of writing, which, because I'm,

00:36:47.260 I'm, I know this is true. I'm highly introverted. So I very much like, like being at home in my

00:36:52.400 quiet little rooms with my little quiet laptop. I actually like writing where my amnesia comes in

00:36:59.000 is when I, I have forgotten what it is like to release a book that is what you're doing right

00:37:06.000 Like, I mean, the, like the, the number of interviews that you do a day and you say very

00:37:12.480 similar talking points. I feel like your brain has to turn off a little bit.

00:37:17.120 I'm still kind of on the front edge of them right now with you. Yeah. Yeah. But also for me,

00:37:21.560 it's the travel, um, like the book tour piece. Um, the only way I'm able to function right now

00:37:29.480 in my brain when I am like thinking about my fall schedule is that I almost pathologically

00:37:36.700 refuse to look at anything except today. And that's it. Like I have a daily email that comes

00:37:44.200 in from my assistant that goes, here's your today. And I'm like, Oh, great. I can, I can do today.

00:37:49.560 That is a day I can do. And I will not worry about tomorrow until tomorrow. And so anyway,

00:37:54.620 I don't it's very imperfect system but like as we give advice for this listener to rest I think one

00:38:01.440 thing I've tried to do is understand okay this is a season of hard work and then I'm gonna have a

00:38:06.440 season where I pull off right pull back on the throttle is everything right I am ending this

00:38:13.740 season in November with like almost two weeks with all my best friends and with Tyler my boyfriend

00:38:22.260 in Ireland and Scotland that's my price so I'm like I can get I can do it I can get there

00:38:28.340 you're gonna sleep so well it's gonna be like the perfect temperature

00:38:32.520 it's gonna be raining so much the beer the pubs the sweaters put me to bed like I can't wait

00:38:42.560 today's episode is brought to you by lola blankets i am recording this ad while wrapped in a lola

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00:40:53.500 HelloFresh. All right, so you might have heard of HelloFresh. They've been around for a while.

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00:42:25.560 10 free meals and one free item for life okay so our next two questions are about the practicalities

00:42:36.620 and i really wanted to include these because i think sometimes it's like oh must be nice to have

00:42:40.980 midlife reinvention with your middle class lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. So, okay. First

00:42:45.320 question is from Anne. How do people reinvent career-wise midlife when it feels like it

00:42:51.640 requires at least a temporary but significant drop in their income? Is it taking on debt and

00:42:58.060 having a partner who makes enough to support you with a single income? I just have trouble wrapping

00:43:03.700 my mind around it, but maybe I've just experienced too much lifestyle creep to feel like I can take

00:43:09.520 these kinds of risks. Would love to hear how people who are not independently wealthy and

00:43:15.260 living in urban areas do it. And then second question, which is also part of this first,

00:43:20.620 is from Elise. Is the midlife reinvention the purview of those with the right amount of privilege?

00:43:26.500 I have a quote unquote dream job and still would love to pivot. Unfortunately, I'm the primary

00:43:32.040 income earner with the benefits and two kids and even a supportive spouse, and it feels impossible.

00:43:37.100 So I remember the first couple years after your divorce, and also after, you know, like 2016, that you had to be pretty open about having to dive into your finances, figure out what is going on. Like, what has that learning process been like?

00:43:52.400 Oh, boy. These are such good questions.

00:43:55.580 I know, right?

00:43:56.240 Yeah, there's such good questions. And it does bear an examination of where does privilege fit in to this sort of story arc when it comes to reinvention, really of any kind, but particularly as I'm talking about a career.

00:44:10.960 And to some degree, they're right. Not everybody has the luxury of making a pivot without either

00:44:18.760 a cushion or an alternative source of income or a partner's income. They're right. But also,

00:44:28.920 I was just talking yesterday to my friend, Kirsten Powers, who was in the journalism CNN

00:44:36.440 machine forever. Yeah. And she'd seen enough, heard enough and done enough to go, this rat race is

00:44:44.980 not going to fix itself. And she's right. It will not. Nobody is ever going to care about our career 0.99

00:44:50.120 pivots, our dreams, the rhythms or pace that we would love to prioritize. Nobody, nobody, nobody's

00:44:57.620 going to bend their thing around us. And so she moved to Italy with her husband, which is a

00:45:04.900 fraction of the cost. Your dollars go so far on these little old houses. It's just crazy. When I

00:45:12.140 actually see the numbers, I'm like, is that in dollars? And she's like, yes. But anyway, we were

00:45:17.620 talking yesterday because I included her in a piece that I wrote on Substack. I'm inspired by

00:45:24.140 her. And the truth is, for most people, if what we want is a pivot, a career pivot, a, a energy

00:45:34.420 pivot, if we want to reallocate our time, something else has to change. So whether that means we

00:45:43.220 really took a hatchet to our expenses, the way we spend money, our debt, if that means we go,

00:45:53.280 okay, for this season, we're going to build the structure like this so that we have an off-ramp

00:45:59.860 here and we are able to get over. I think regardless of how people do it, there is some

00:46:05.320 degree of sacrifice that is included. Even if it's just the sacrifice of certainty, of assuredness,

00:46:13.020 of stability in a job that we've always had, that we've always going to be rock solid and go,

00:46:19.180 Oh, I'd like to, I like to set sail over in these unknown waters. That's a, that to me is a risk

00:46:26.000 and a sacrifice. But I think at the end of it, we can, it comes down to God, the amount of time I

00:46:33.360 look at my future self for, as a source of wisdom is often, I did it as a writer writing this memoir

00:46:39.900 and I do it as a person living a life, which is, I think so often about my 95 year old self.

00:46:46.780 That is my anchor. I can't tell you how often I go to her for wisdom. I just have a very good

00:46:54.120 feeling about my longevity, obviously. To be 95, I'm very optimistic about my lifespan.

00:47:01.560 But I ask her so often, what do you advise me to do right now? What will I be grateful that I did?

00:47:09.440 what will I be grateful that I risked? What, what will I be proud of? What will I remember

00:47:17.600 when I am surrounded on my 95 year deathbed with everybody who loved me and everybody who I raised

00:47:22.500 and all my people, what story will they be telling about me? And that helps me make decisions for

00:47:28.720 today. It helps me go, I don't actually think this is going to matter in one year, much less 45.

00:47:35.980 I like that one that the first question really brought up how lifestyle creep keeps us from things that we otherwise want to do. It's what keeps a lot of women that I know in unhappy marriages. 0.99

00:47:49.200 Yep.

00:47:49.980 And, you know, the statistics bear this out that, like, divorce rates are lower when you have higher education, like, oftentimes progressive high-income earners, or, like, at least the household income is higher because there is more fear of losing that stability and the power that comes with it, right?

00:48:08.680 Because we're talking about all sorts of privilege that flows from staying in that position.

00:48:13.300 You're right.

00:48:13.740 What I will say is that I think sometimes we as older adults are so scared of precarity. And sometimes it's because we've weathered it and we're like we grew out of it and we never want to experience that again. And I get it. Or like debt is something that you take on when you're 22, not when you're 42, whether that's student debt or credit card debt.

00:48:37.440 And, like, I think that we have aligned those sorts of things as, like, things that younger or irresponsible people do instead of things that we do to save ourselves.

00:48:47.140 That's great.

00:48:47.960 That's great.

00:48:48.480 And I think there's this space to go, I am going to put my chips on me.

00:48:58.120 Yeah.

00:48:58.780 And that might require financial risk.

00:49:01.780 Um, that whatever that might be, this sense of confidence in your own instincts, in your own decision-making capacity for your future and your own preferences and desires is that has value that is valuable.

00:49:21.380 And so I think women particularly, we want a version of the next season of life to match

00:49:33.280 our imagination and our like hopes and our aspirations and what we are really craving

00:49:39.220 out of life, but we do not want to take the risk to get there.

00:49:43.260 And so I think that stability is a great deterrent of happiness. 1.00

00:49:48.540 and I wonder what would happen if women go I'm gonna go for it I'm gonna whatever that is like 1.00

00:49:57.580 whatever that I'm gonna go for it and I'm gonna pay the cost and I'm gonna count on myself to get 1.00

00:50:04.600 there I love that story and I don't think it's rare I see this happen all the time with women 0.99

00:50:11.040 in midlife. It's so, it's very inspiring to watch. And so again, going back to an earlier

00:50:18.520 question, are we willing to weather the discomfort of making that transition? I don't know.

00:50:25.720 Yeah. And I think like women are often ascribed the responsibility of keeping the family together. 0.99

00:50:33.720 Like it's like this, the thing that feels like it's on their shoulders and somehow no one else's

00:50:38.120 right the stability of the family is the woman's responsibility yes it is I mean that is that is so

00:50:45.140 real and and that sense of responsibility is sincere like yeah I can tell you as somebody

00:50:53.360 who lost a marriage after 26 years I wanted to go the distance I did I had a vision for our life

00:51:01.860 together, which I craved so much. I wanted the long story. I wanted a long love story. I've got

00:51:11.620 my parents, my in-laws are both, they're on their 53rd year, both of them, 53 years together. And

00:51:17.320 their home is like this landing pad for all of us adult kids and now all the grandkids. And it's

00:51:23.100 just a beautiful story. Um, and so we're not, we're not lesser or weak for wanting that

00:51:31.200 or for feeling responsible, um, to, to building that kind of family. Um, but we are not the only

00:51:40.880 ones doing it. Like that burden is not ours alone. Um, and there is a, there comes a moment

00:51:47.620 when that vision is so compromised by reality and we're just, we're loathed to admit it.

00:51:55.920 I said in a way, I wanted the story of my marriage, not my actual marriage.

00:52:02.500 And so it's a big hurdle.

00:52:05.580 Yeah.

00:52:06.280 No, the story of your marriage instead of your actual marriage.

00:52:08.720 I think a lot of people can identify that or the story of your career, right?

00:52:12.760 Or the story of your motherhood.

00:52:14.540 Yep.

00:52:14.720 Did you feel like everything, like if you could just get like the kids out of your house, did you delay it?

00:52:20.720 Were you like, okay, I will finally refocus on marriage when the kids are out of the house?

00:52:27.380 God, it's hard to know if I was thinking that.

00:52:29.880 Maybe, I don't know if it was that cognizant, if there was like a real forward thought.

00:52:37.400 Like I will tend to my marriage after these kids leave, but I think it happened in the soft tissues.

00:52:44.720 for sure, in which the management of that many moving parts is so overwhelming that

00:52:53.820 it almost feels more rare to not become roommates at that point. When it is just go, go, you take

00:53:03.640 this, I'll take that, you pick up, I'll drop off, you pick up dinner, you go to this game,

00:53:08.540 I'll go to that game. And again, that we've opted into that system. Parenting does not have to look

00:53:15.320 like that. That is a optional system that we have all said, we would like to overschedule our

00:53:22.360 children to the point in which they do not have 10 minutes of free time in any given week. So

00:53:27.780 we've opted in. And grafted onto an American system that is incredibly hostile to families,

00:53:34.060 even though it says that we love families like it is incredibly difficult to parent in america today

00:53:40.480 in part because we still live with this fantasy that most families still have one parent one adult

00:53:47.000 in the home just totally work totally we built our systems on an antiquated structure um and then of

00:53:55.580 course i know there's so much ink has been spelled on this so i won't belabor the point but even as 1.00

00:54:00.760 the structures changed and most women work in full-time capacities. That's the biggest. 1.00

00:54:07.400 We are still tasked with the lion's share of invisible labor at home. So it's just set up

00:54:18.560 for failure kind of at every turn. And then you get the situation where when that mental labor

00:54:25.600 decreases significantly when and if the kids leave, you come up for air and you're like,

00:54:30.860 who are you? And that goes back to Chelsea's question. What am I going to do with all this

00:54:36.580 free brain space? Like, who will I be? Who will I become? Like, it's no wonder that we have no

00:54:44.440 imagination for it. We don't have time to dream about it. Like there just isn't a spare moment.

00:54:50.000 And so I, I just, I love these questions and it constantly like keeps my foot on the gas of going, is all of this inevitable? The way in which we live, the ships that we have all built that we now have to keep afloat. That's the deal.

00:55:07.700 like is there a way to sell these ships back into the harbor and pick a smaller vessel that requires

00:55:15.320 less manpower less fuel less staff to keep that thing on top of the water i just it's a question

00:55:23.300 i'm asking i have the luxury of asking it because i'm older and i've already raised the kids and so

00:55:28.720 i recognize the hypocrisy inside of it having raised my kids in the machine right but also

00:55:34.320 we should understand that as wisdom as well, right? Maybe so. That's a much more generous

00:55:39.900 way to look at it. Thank you, Anne. I think sometimes we're like, oh, well,

00:55:45.960 of course someone can say that if they're not doing it. And I don't have kids, but I think a

00:55:51.440 lot about parenting in the U.S. because I do have some of that mild objectivity of not being in the

00:55:59.020 thick of it. So I can really empathize and understand by asking a lot of questions and

00:56:03.880 doing a lot of listening about why it's so hard to deal with these realities today but i also can

00:56:10.640 say like it doesn't have to be this way and other countries other civilizations other societies are

00:56:15.600 proof that it doesn't have to be that's a hundred percent right i i a few years ago we were on a

00:56:22.160 trip with all of our my best friends and all the spouses this was pre-divorce but we were in italy

00:56:29.200 and we were on this tour in Rome and our little on a bike tour and our little bike tour guide had

00:56:36.580 his masters in Italian history so like he knew everything about every little rock on the sidewalk

00:56:41.920 and I remember sitting at one of our we'd stopped at a coffee shop to have some coffee and we're

00:56:47.500 just circled around the table with him asking him questions and he was a very he was an academic he

00:56:52.480 had like absolutely no sense of irony or humor he was very literal which made him very funny to us

00:56:58.440 Um, but I remember asking him something about the way Italians live, like their, their priority

00:57:07.480 around rest and connection and sensual experiences and food and wine and, you know, just a beautiful

00:57:14.880 lifestyle, if not somewhat glamorized by us, but I don't care, whatever I I'm, I'm in like,

00:57:21.240 I'm, I'm biting on that hook.

00:57:23.600 And I remember he said to us very just plain, he goes, oh, well, I mean, Americans, you

00:57:32.340 don't know anything yet.

00:57:33.480 You're just born.

00:57:34.580 You're just like, he goes, you guys need to live about 2000 more years and then you'll

00:57:40.120 know something.

00:57:41.100 And I was like, we are the middle schoolers of the universe, just impetuous and know it

00:57:52.500 all and impossible to govern and conflicted at every turn, needy, but also bossy. We just don't

00:58:05.240 know anything yet. We don't know it. We just need to live another 2000 years and then we will know

00:58:09.260 a little bit. And so yes, the rest of the world is very instructive to us if we have the humility

00:58:16.740 to look and learn from the wisdom of the ages, literally.

00:58:22.040 I think it's very appropriate that a conversation ostensibly about midlife reinvention 0.64

00:58:26.220 with questions from all women has turned into a conversation about the difficulty of the mental 0.62

00:58:33.980 load and just how much we're doing in intensive parenting practices. Seems right. We're for the 1.00

00:58:39.920 very last question. This is the last part of the show. If you can stick around and help me answer

00:58:45.340 one question for the ask and anything segment it's a bonus segment just for paid subscribers

00:58:50.300 so listeners if you want to hear our thoughts on changing friendships in midlife head to

00:58:54.900 culture study pod.substack.com and sign up jen it has been such a delight to talk again

00:59:01.040 where can people find you on the internet if they want to find more i'm just jen hat maker

00:59:05.580 everywhere you know there's just the one i mean how many jen hat makers can there be

00:59:09.080 and so that's what I'm on all the socials um I have a sub stack um channel too called letters

00:59:15.740 from the middle and and then it's just jinhatmaker.com is a great hub for all those

00:59:21.360 things but thank you for having me on thank you for talking to me about awake I I feel really

00:59:26.700 honored to be with you and with your community and there's just so many of us here and thank

00:59:32.340 goodness we do have podcasts because our generation is many things but we will not ever feel alone

00:59:37.720 That is a fact.

00:59:39.880 Thanks so much.

00:59:45.120 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

00:59:47.500 Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts because we have so many great episodes

00:59:52.140 in the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of them.

00:59:55.200 If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you or submit

01:00:00.000 a question for our subscriber-only advice time segment, go to our Google form at tinyurl.com

01:00:06.580 slash culture study pod, or check the show notes for a link. And if you want to support the show

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01:00:17.020 $50 a year, and you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive advice time segment and weekly

01:00:22.860 discussion threads for each episode. The culture study podcast is produced by me and Helen Peterson

01:00:28.260 and Melody Rowell. Our music is by poddington bear. You can find me on Instagram at and Helen

01:00:33.660 Peterson, Melody at Melodious 47, and the show at Culture Study Pod.

Culture Study Podcast - September 24, 2025

Who Gets a Mid-Life Reinvention？

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