‘Awake’ and Thriving

Way before Awake, I first read Jen Hatmaker – where else? – on the Internet.

Back in 2013, I didn’t know that she’d built a sizable following of women as an in-demand Christian women’s blogger and author. I just laughed at her now-viral post about the last week of school: “Is there homework in the folder? I don’t even know. Are other moms still looking in the homework folder? I don’t even care.” Yes, Jen Hatmaker. You get me.

Awake  
By Jen Hatmaker
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster; 320 pages

Hatmaker parlayed her natural gregariousness and self-deprecating humor into a speaking and writing career. And then came 2016: Her repudiation of about-to-be President Trump and embrace of evolving church norms that welcomed LGBTQ+ people exploded her persona as a funny aspirational everyday Christian mom. Speaking engagements, publishing deals — all canceled.

But that paled in comparison to 2020, when Hatmaker woke up in the wee hours to discover her pastor husband of more than two decades whispering on his cell phone to another woman.

This implosion anchors Awake, her new memoir. Hatmaker shares her grief and vulnerability in gripping scenes about the dissolution of her marriage, but she wisely offers more than just her personal story. In vignettes, flashbacks and blog post-esque musings, Awake also digs into prescriptive religion, traditional gender expectations, and the many ways women ignore ourselves.

Awake arrives into the pantheon of books like Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, which chronicled how the Momastery creator left her husband for soccer star Abby Wambach and a new life, and the one-two punch of Elizabeth Gilbert’s blockbuster Eat Pray Love and her dark new memoir All the Way to the River. These are white women forced to shed the trappings of one public persona and remake themselves into something new.

And remake herself Hatmaker does.

Most readers will know going into the book that things have turned out OK. Hatmaker hosts the For the Love podcast and thriving social media accounts. You may have already seen her talking about Awake in The New York Times or on CBS Mornings. Her book tour interviewers include boldface names like country singer Trisha Yearwood, menopause influencer Dr. Mary Claire Haver and author and speaker Luvvie Ajayi Jones.

But she doesn’t shy away from showcasing the gutting grief of betrayal. “They don’t know,” she writes of her children that first night. “I don’t want to know. I want to go upstairs with them and not know.” Nor does she shy away from wrestling with the lessons she learned as a young girl in the church, that sexual experimentation before marriage renders you a “slutty, stripped rose” or that you should follow the rules of religion over your own intuition.

In fact, the traditional church really doesn’t come off well in Awake, although Hatmaker is quick to note how supportive her southern Baptist family was during her childhood and beyond. “So many people gathered under these problematic umbrellas are, to put it succinctly, my beloveds,” she writes. “How do I reject the systems without disparaging the people I love?”

While Awake isn’t the mix of reporting and personal essay we’ve seen from writers like Lyz Lenz (God Land), it’s damning all the same, whether Hatmaker means it to be or not. She tells us about not returning to her home church — which makes sense since her soon-to-be-ex-husband is the pastor — but years on, she still hasn’t found another spiritual home within church walls.

Hatmaker also tells us that this is her version of the truth, mostly shielding her five children’s response to the family splintering, and sharing few details about her spouse’s infractions. And of course, a memoir, as she notes in a helpful foreword, is only one worldview.

Still, I wanted more in some areas, particularly around her relationship to money and to race, both of which are only briefly touched on in the book. In Awake, money is something to be learned about, but not in short supply. We hear that some followers didn’t like it when she began to speak about antiracism, and also about a trip to Ethiopia to adopt two of her children and her current partner, who is Black. How did the personal intersect with the professional? How did her closest relationships influence (or not) her choices to amplify the realities of race in America? That’s not explored here. She wrote a searing call to action recently for Black History Month — I would have loved to see some of that in Awake.

Perhaps she’ll explore that in her next title. Because make no mistake, there surely will be one. Awake may be about Hatmaker breaking apart and putting herself back together, but no matter what stage she’s at, her spirit, humor and faith shine through.