From The Church to The Pride Parade: Sara Cunningham with Free Mom Hugs
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
Release Date: 06/14/2023
For the Love of Peace: You Deserve Time To Rest with Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
Are you one of those people that says “I’ll rest when I’m dead?” We can relate. As busy people–partners, parents, career drivers, caretakers and a host of other hats we wear, rest seems like an elusive and sometimes impossible task–especially during the holidays. To kick off our new series, For the Love of Peace, we’re here to tell you–you need and deserve rest. And lest you think rest is just getting 8 hours of sleep at night (wouldn’t we all love that), it’s more. We need emotional, creative, physical and mental rest, just to name a few. The stats are real; when we...
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For the Love of Therapy: Two Friends Compare Notes On Therapy: Jen and Kelly
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
We’re bringing a close to our series on therapy, and we couldn’t be happier to have Kelly Corrigan with us to have a candid conversation with Jen around their thoughts on therapy, including when it first entered their awareness, and now, in a more enlightened age, how the next generation has more access to therapeutic help. Even as recently as 20-30 years ago, therapy was not talked about a lot in public. For Jen and Kelly, they didn’t see it modeled from their parents, it wasn’t mentioned in their church circles, and only earth shattering situations seemed to require it. But as they...
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For the Love of Therapy: Freedom From Codependency with Melody Beattie
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
We’re back with some more therapeutic goodness as we approach the tail end of our therapy series with another fire episode! Awareness around mental health, trauma, dysfunctional family systems and more has been coming into the national awareness on a bigger level over the last 10 years. But back in 1986, the concept of codependency was really new. And unless you were deep into studying sociology or psychology or seeing a therapist yourself back then (also something that wasn’t as widely accepted), Melody Beattie’s book, Codependent No More, gave words to the masses who never had a way to...
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Jen’s Favorites: 7th Annual Christmas Gift Guide
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
It’s that time of year again, and we’re back with another *fire* gift guide for all your giving needs this season. And not only are we showcasing amazing and thoughtful gift finds, every gift we feature gives back as well! This year, we’re partnering with Ten Thousand Villages to present a beautiful array of artisan products. Ten Thousand Villages is a global maker to market movement that addresses economic injustice. We love to shop with intention, and Ten Thousand Villages gives us that window into ethically-sourced, handcrafted wares so that our dollars empower makers all around the...
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For the Love of Therapy: Wellness Doesn’t Come From a Product, It Comes From Within: Dr. Pooja Lakshmin
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
In this latest installment of our For The Love of Therapy series, we delve into a timely discussion on mental wellness with a focus on genuine self-care. Our guest, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a renowned psychiatrist and advocate for women, offers fresh insights that urge listeners to break free from the superficial beauty and wellness industry's narrative that is steadily being pushed at us through all kinds of media, but in a dizzying fashion on social media, in particular. Steering the talk away from quick-fix solutions, Dr. Lakshmin illuminates the essence of true self-care, which, in her...
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For the Love of Therapy: Are You Happy? Dr. Sara Kuburic Wants Us To Stop Lying To Ourselves and Take Ownership of Our Choices
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
It’s time for this week’s podcast therapy session and we’ve got another great therapist in our “office” as part of our For the Love of Therapy series. Dr. Sara Kuburic is an existential psychotherapist, author and the force behind The @Millennial.Therapist account on Instagram. Dr. Kuburic believes that each of us is a free and responsible agent who determines our own development through acts of our will. Though this isn’t always a popular view to take, as we often look to outside forces to blame for our unhappiness, Dr. Kuburic wants us to understand that we have this amazing...
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For the Love of Therapy: Jada Pinkett-Smith on Trauma, Grief, and the Power of Embracing Your Journey
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
We’re in the thick of our “For the Love of Therapy” series, and this week we’re getting a full helping of candor and insight from the multifaceted actress and author, Jada Pinkett Smith. Jada candidly reveals another side to her journey that many might not know from her highly public persona, a story where she takes charge of her narrative in the face of what people have decided for themselves who they think she is. Jada recounts the formative and often traumatic events of her past, and talks in stark terms about her present day pain points. Without sparing the hard parts, Jada leans...
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For the Love of Therapy: Women and Emotions - No More Apologies: Dr. Anita Phillips
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
Have you ever been told you are “too emotional,” or if you display sadness or anger that you’re “overreacting,” or (gasp) - even “hysterical?” Women have long had their emotions weaponized against them. And as part of our For the Love of Therapy series, we have a trauma therapist and mental health expert Dr. Anita Phillips at the mic to share her thoughts and findings on why embracing our emotions can be the key to living our most powerful life. Dr. Phillips extensively explores the societal pressures that often lead women to suppress their emotions. She argues that emotions are...
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For the Love of Funny: It’s Funny Where Life Takes Us Sometimes: Anjelah Johnson-Reyes
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
It’s so fun when we get to have guests back on the show that we love, but it’s especially fun when we get to catch up after we haven’t talked to them for awhile! This guest joined us in the very first year of our show in the For the Love of Laughter series, and she was fire then, and she’s fire now, 5 years later. We’re talking about the amazingly talented and hilarious Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, one of our favorite comedians in the whole wide world! You know her from her awesome Nail Salon comedy sketch, which launched her career, or as her character from MadTV, Bon Qui Qui, and from...
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For the Love of Funny: Laughing Toward The Light: Comedian Kevin James Thornton Finds Himself at 50
For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast
We’re keeping the laughs going as we continue our For the Love of Funny series–and this week we’ve got Kevin James Thornton, a comedian and entertainer, who, after spending his youth in a fundamentalist church in the 90’s, found a lot to laugh about. After moving to LA to make his way on stages at the Comedy Store and as an actor, Kevin wasn’t sure he was happy with how his life was going. After a move to Nashville and some serious contemplation about where to go next, the pandemic hit. Bored at home, Kevin discovered a little thing called TikTok and decided it might be...
info_outlineWe’re back for more of our Being Seen and Heard series! In a time where it feels like we are struggling to really see and hear one another, there are some bright lights who make it their mission to help one another understand each other a little better. Our guest today, Sara Cunningham, the founder of FreeMomHugs.org, is one amazing example of what can happen when we really see people for who they are and begin to hear their stories. Sara was on the show right at the beginning of her journey with Free Mom Hugs, and now the org—which started with the simple idea of attending Pride parades and holding up a sign that said “Free Mom Hugs,”—has become a national and world wide phenomenon. She uses her own experience as a guide to how she advocates, and is absolutely passionate about connecting with faith, civic, business, and government leaders in efforts to make the world a kinder safer place for our LGBTQIA+ family.
Sara and Jen touch on these topics:
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Sara’s roots in conservative evangelicalism and how she found herself moving “from the church to the pride parade” after she reckoned with her son’s admission that he was gay and going to live in his identity
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The stories of people who, after coming out, lost their families, were kicked out of their churches, and felt completely alone and found solace and comfort in the simple act of a mom extending a hug
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Sara’s son Parker’s (as well as her own) journey of self-discovery and then coming to live authentically after seeing others, who had come out in faith environments, survive and thrive after loss
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How we can affect change with our voices as it relates to legislation that targets the LGBTQIA+ community
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Thank you to our sponsors!
BetterHelp | Visit betterhelp.com/forthelove to save 10% on your first month!
MeCourse: LGBTQIA+ | LGBTQIA+ Parenting e-course from Jen and special guests is available for order. Visit https://www.mecourse.org/lgbtqia-parenting for more info.
FOCL | Visit https://focl.com/ and use code FORTHELOVE at checkout for 20% off of your purchase
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
“I remember there was a time, at the beginning of that journey, I call from the church to the pride parade. It was like reality was setting in. The bubble that I was in, the evangelical conservative mainstream bubble that I was in where everyone looked like me and talked like me, had just shattered. And I wanted to take a banner and put it outside of my house on the front door, like, welcome to the real world. And suddenly it's like my eyes are truly open.” - Sara Cunningham
“I think about [my son] Parker early on in his journey of self-discovery and then coming to live authentically. He had people in his life that had survived the loss, who had survived being outed, kicked out of their place of worship and losing their family. Just seeing them go beyond that and thriving and having a place of their own and working and contributing to society; he saw people that had faced what he feared and then came out on the other side of it.” - Sara Cunningham
“Our mission statement is that we empower the world to celebrate the community through visibility, education, and conversation.” - Sara Cunningham, about FreeMomHugs.org
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
FTL Episode ft. Sydney Hatmaker
Free Mom Hugs Revolution Conference
How We Sleep at Night: A Mother’s Memoir by Sara Cunningham
Good Friend with Jamie Lee Curtis ft Sara Cunningham
Guest’s Links:
Connect with Jen!
Jen’s website