Who Gets a Mid-Life Reinvention?

Sep 24, 2025

Jen Hatmaker, an influential author and former evangelical figure, dives deep into her transformative journey in midlife. She candidly discusses her divorce and how it became a platform for critiquing patriarchal structures and purity culture. Jen also reflects on the cultural shifts alongside her personal upheaval, from her changing stance on LGBTQ inclusion to the consequences of speaking out. The conversation touches on motherhood's identity challenge, financial constraints in career reinventions, and the importance of rest, making for a thought-provoking exploration of reinvention.

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INSIGHT

Broken Systems Cause Midlife Crises

Midlife reinvention often bundles personal collapse with systemic failures like patriarchy and purity culture.
Jen argues the house crumbled because its religious and gendered bricks were unstable, making reinvention unsurprising.

ANECDOTE

Staying Private Through Early Trauma

Jen stayed private about her divorce while parenting five kids and navigating trauma and recovery.
She waited until therapy and self-awareness made her ready to write honestly about those years.

ADVICE

Write First, Delete With Pride-Test

Use discretion: write everything in a first draft then cut what fails the five-year pride test.
Keep privacy boundaries to protect children and the real life behind public stories.

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By the mid-2010s, Jen Hatmaker had become one of the most important voices in white Evangelical culture. She had multiple best-selling books; she headlined massive women’s retreats; she was an influencer before we really even used that term. But then she broke with Evangelical doctrine when it came to LGBTQ people… and everything fell apart. More accurately, they started to fall apart — because the real life implosion wouldn’t come until 2020, when she woke up to the sound of her husband, a pastor, sending a voice memo to his mistress. Then things really fell apart.

Hatmaker hasn’t spoken publicly about the details of her divorce, but after five years, a lot of therapy, and her five children all entered into adulthood — she’s ready. Her life exploded. But then she was able to rebuild it using her own designs — not the church’s. Today she’s on the pod to answer your complex questions about midlife reinvention: how it happens, all the reasons it can happen, and who gets the “privilege” of pursuing it. I really loved this conversation, and if you like rolling around all the ways we can (and sometimes struggle) to change our lives, you will too.

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