HeyJaredThis Stays Here
A Substack about community for people who want to be better neighbors. Life in my small, rural, Iowa town is idyllic--and also really hard. I imagine the same can be said about wherever you live. Come join the conversation!
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 28, 2026
Latest issues
Wild Things (opens the original)
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When I was a young mom, I found a lot of comfort, encouragement, and inspiration in the writing of Jen Hatmaker. For those of you who don’t know her, she’s an author, speaker, podcaster, and cultural icon for Christian women of a certain age. Those of us who have followed her for years have watched her birth, adopt, and parent a small army of children, co-pastor a church with her husband, go through a messy divorce, deconstruct her faith, and re-emerge as a woman still living, loving, and wrestl
Fall into reading (opens the original)
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I won’t lie: the last few weeks have been a bit overwhelming. I am a positive person by nature, and that has carried me so far in my unexpected medical journey (see When life gives you lemons if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but the last several days have just felt heavy. I utterly, earnestly, don’t want to. I don’t want more tests, appointments, blood draws, or surgery. I don’t want to make impossible decisions and face follow-up forever.The whole thing reminds me of one of my kids̵
When life gives you lemons (opens the original)
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This is such a weird post to write. And I'm not quite sure how to do it other than to just come out and say it: I have thyroid cancer.It’s fine, really and truly. I’m fine, I promise. As far as cancer goes, thyroid is apparently the best one to get: the prognosis is excellent. The vast majority of people diagnosed with thyroid cancer go on to live full, abundant lives. And I am young(ish), healthy(ish), and have exactly zero symptoms. I have no doubt that a few months from now I’ll be back to no
Why we need DEI (opens the original)
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Want to hear something sad? When I was a freshman in high school, I tried out for—and was cut from—every athletic team (except cross-country and track; I’m not a runner!). Volleyball, basketball, softball, and soccer were all closed doors to me. The coaches were so kind, but in some ways that only made the rejection worse. I desperately wanted to be athletic, to be a part of something bigger than myself, to be included in a team, and to do something fun and active with my body, but at five foot
Embodied creativity (opens the original)
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I have been in a creative funk all summer. Every year as June approaches, I make big plans to sip iced lattes on patios and do my very best work—barefoot and sun-kissed. It never happens.And this summer was the worst.I mean, the best in some ways (a wedding, a nearly month-long West Coast adventure, lots of golf, time with my kids…), but I’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel creatively. It seems like every time I sit down to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I’m stuck staring at a b
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