Awake: A Memoir

by Jen Hatmaker

My therapist said triggers are clues revealing something important, something that needs attention, something not yet neutralized since it is still easily detonated. The trigger isn’t about another person; it is about me.

What if the appropriate response to this duplicitous world is confusion? What if bewilderment at social choreography is the only true thing happening in the room? What if decorum doesn’t grease the machine but grinds it to a halt? I’ve never lived in a world where we all say what we actually mean and feel and think and believe and want. Maybe she is the one standing in integrity and the rest of us are just following the damn script.

Annie Dillard wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.”

My mom, an accomplished master gardener, told me: You can’t tug on spring shoots of new plants. You have to wait. They are setting deep roots. You can’t grow a crop by pulling on leaves and stalks. You just create the right conditions… and you wait.

But like Rilke wrote: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Somehow I must hold on to both my pain and my hope; they each deserve my belief. They are both real, and they both matter.

“The trauma someone else created is not your fault, but dealing with it is your responsibility.”

This interview is centered on her latest book, a memoir about location, a sense of place, the various homes that make up our story. What places build us? What do we carry in our bones and memories, our palettes and senses? What does home mean, the one we were born into and the ones we later choose?

Our life’s work is to reject the message capitalistic, patriarchal systems have conspired to craft. They have a vested interest in keeping us at war with our bodies. If we hate how we look, they own us. If we hate what we want, they dominate us. If we hate what we crave, they control us. They get to master us with impunity when we despise ourselves; we do their dirty work and make it easy.

Because I spent a year of therapy focused on my own patterns (therapists are the worst), I am learning new ways of relationship-ing, which includes transparent conversations, saying when something feels bad, listening without defensiveness, and conflict resolution prioritizing connection. Here is how it feels in my body: Like I am being difficult. Because I believed “silence = I’m easy” and “hard = bad,” anything else makes me feel high-maintenance, my least-favorite trait. But turns out, grown-up conversations around feelings aren’t high-maintenance, they are just maintenance, which relationships require.

Forgiveness is not foolishness. Foolishness would include no boundaries, no responsibility, no honesty. Foolishness would bypass accountability for pretending. A fool would diminish the consequences to protect the offender’s conscience. Foolishness would open a door that should remain firmly shut. But forgiveness sets me free. I hope it hands him some freedom too, but that is his to alchemize. Rupture and repair may be the highest expression of humanity, and it is its own reward. Getting there means there is some combination of honesty, humility, vulnerability, compassion; these are high-water marks. This could be one-sided work if the only option was to forgive without any meaningful contrition, but it would be harder. It can be done because I have agency over my own emotional condition, but it would certainly, certainly be harder. But he closes the gap, and I am grateful he helps shrink the long road of healing. For both of us. His actions detonated the bomb, but he was not spared the carnage. Our joint disintegration only prolongs the recovery process for the entire family. It is a wondrous good for us each to heal. Our congeniality is a welcome contagion in what will forever be our shared ecosystem.

Questions I Am Done Asking Will this bother someone? Am I asking too much? Does he/she/they like me? What is wrong with my body? Can I handle this? Should I just be okay with this? Is it too scary to change this? Is this making everyone else happy? Are my needs an imposition? Am I smart enough? Am I brave enough? Am I maintaining my lovability? Is God disappointed in me? Is being alone worse than being unhappy? Should I keep hiding?

Questions I Will Ask Myself Forever What do I want? What do I love? What do I need? What does my body know? Why not me? What am I excited about? Am I free? Who does God say I am? What do I care about? How do I want to live? How can I love beautifully? Am I being honest? Am I being true? Am I happy with me?

Young Me One recurring feeling is, surprisingly, a sense of compassion for the young versions of me. Who among us can’t look backward and realize how far we’ve come or how much we’ve learned or how deeply we’ve changed? This is how growth works, and there is no fast-forward button; it is a function of time. It is tempting to disparage the earlier versions of myself, berate her for not knowing or doing better, but I prefer to be gentle with her instead. She was doing the best she could with what she knew. She got me to where I am today, and that counts for something. She ran her leg of the race. I am proud of her for trying her best and going as far as she was able. She was handed some harmful narratives that take most of us a lifetime to dismantle, so good on her for surviving those. Directing so much love to the young versions of us today, dear ones. Proud of them for getting us here. Let us be tender with our earlier selves, like wiser older sisters, like nurturing aunts, like good, good mothers.

Chase Wonder Listen to me: We do recover. Just keep going. Keep doing the work. Keep choosing your own freedom. Even better, we do more than recover. We thrive. We get to really, really live. Chase wonder and you will catch it by the tail no matter how much you have suffered. The magic has not run out. Women are the eighth wonders of the world. May we love this little life with exposed beating hearts, tender regardless, despite it all.