HGTV’s Jen Hatmaker is opening up about how her divorce from her estranged husband, Brandon Hatmaker, affected their five children.
“Having to watch my kids suffer and grieve and that loss, in some ways, I’ll never get over for them,” Jen, 51, said on the September 9 episode of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” podcast. “I’m so proud of them. They are brilliant young adults, and they dug deep, and they have recovered in so many ways that I’m so proud of. But that handed them a new story.”
During her 26-year marriage, Jen said she and Brandon, 53, raised their kids to know what integrity, faithfulness and character looks like.
But in her new book, titled Awake: A Memoir, Jen writes about the moment she caught Brandon being unfaithful. In the early morning hours of July 11, 2020, Jen claimed she woke up to the sound of her husband whispering on the phone to another woman. He left the house the next day.
“We don’t share custody, and we never have so it was just them and me,” Jen claimed to host Jamie Kern Lima about her life after separating from Brandon. “In that first early year, it was us just trying to keep our heads above water. I’m really proud of how hard they worked and how honest and truthful they stayed throughout their process.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Brandon for comment.
In a statement posted via Substack on September 22, Brandon addressed the claims made in Jen’s new book. In his post, the former My Big Family Renovation star expressed regret for some of his past actions.
“The lowest moment of my life was my very public affair five years ago. I caused so much pain and I brought so much humiliation into the lives of people that I loved,” he wrote. “It was the culmination of a three-year personal spiral in which I had lost my anchor, felt no hope and was the loneliest I’ve ever been in my life.”
In response to the narrative that Jen was left to parent five kids alone, Brandon said, “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“To be clear, at the time of our divorce, we had three adult kids and two teenagers. I know that I forever changed their story, but I was always available, was constantly engaged and always supported them… and still do,” he wrote. “Jen was certainly the sole parent who had to carry them emotionally through the trauma of my affair, but I have beautiful memories of heartfelt and honest conversations about that as well. … I continue to parent and will always parent where appropriate. But my greatest joy is seeing them as the strong and independent young adults I always hoped they would be.”
At the time Jen found out Brandon was unfaithful, the couple had two kids in high school, two in college and one college graduate.
While Jen acknowledged that her kids were older at the time of the split, each individual needed time to process everything.
“There’s no smoothing over a story for teenagers and young adults when a dad goes to bed on a normal night and is gone the next morning,” she said in the podcast. “You don’t get to polish that up. There’s no shiny version of that. There is no way to soft sell that to a bunch of young adults and teens. They know everything. They’re smart too.”
Brandon is currently married to Tina Hatmaker, while Jen sparked a romance with boyfriend Tyler Merritt.
When looking back on the end of her marriage, Jen acknowledged that the relationship wasn’t as strong as it could have been for quite some time.
“When I tell you there were signs, I’m not the only one who saw those,” Jen claimed. “Kids are not dumb. It’s one of the hardest parts of the story for me, for sure.”
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