Jenna Bush Hager Says Her Dad, George W. Bush, Helped Edit Her New Memoir

From Oprah Magazine

• Jenna Bush Hager's poignant new book, Everything Beautiful in its Time, was published on September 8.

• In the memoir, Bush Hager reflects on a span of time in which she lost her three remaining grandparents.

• Below, Bush Hager opens up about motherhood, anchoring the news during a pandemic, and being a member of one of America's most famous political dynasties.

Before she was a book club maven and a TODAY show anchor, Jenna Bush Hager was a daughter. Not just any daughter, but the First Daughter. Alongside her twin sister Barbara, Bush Hager spent the pivotal ages between 18 to 26 scrutinized as President George W. Bush's child.

In her new memoir Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss, Bush Hager is more interested in her identity as a granddaughter and a mother—and the small frame in which she was both at the same time.

In the span of a single year, Bush Hager lost her three remaining grandparents, all nonagenarians: Her grandmother, Barbara Bush, passed away in April 2018 at 92; her grandfather, former president George H.W. Bush followed in November at 94; and her mother's mother, Jenna Hawkins, died in May 2019 at 99. Her mother's father, Harold Hawkins, died in 1995.

"Grief is hard, and I've learned this past year that grieving in public is excruciating," Bush Hager writes in Everything Beautiful in Its Time, reflecting on Barbara Bush's legacy being examined by political pundits immediately after she died.

As this quote shows, Bush Hager isn't coy about acknowledging the undeniable appeal of the book's premise: The scion of a political dynasty gets candid about her famous family. Throughout the memoir, Bush Hager gives insight into her extraordinary upbringing, including idyllic summers at the Bush family compound in Maine and the time she and her sister were scolded by their grandmother for ordering PB&J sandwiches to the White House bowling alley. ("This is not a hotel!")

However, the book especially resonates in its universality: Though being the daughter and granddaughter of a U.S. president isn't typical, loss certainly is. Within the pages of the tear-jerker, Bush Hager waves goodbye to her grandparents, the keepers of her gold-hued childhood memories, and reflects on arriving suddenly at a new phase of life. "How recently I was at the beginning. Now I am in the middle. Three of the people I loved most in the world have just reached their end," she writes.

In an interview with OprahMag.com, Bush Hager opens up about processing grief in the public eye, the virtue of listening, and watching her parents becoming grandparents to Mila, 7; Poppy, 5, and Hal, 1.

Have you been having a conversation with your grandparents in your head about this time? Do you wish you could talk to them?

I would love to hear what they would have to say. They were such conversationalists. They liked listening to other people's opinions, and having really wonderful conversations about the state of the world. They liked to be seated with a lot of different people, with different thoughts. I miss talking with them about the news of the day, and hearing their opinions, but also being heard.

As someone who is a book club queen, I'm wondering what kind of conversations you hope your memoir sparks at book clubs.

I think it will be conversations about grief and love, but also about joy. About conversation, about change. Both my grandmother and my grandfather were open to discussions. They weren't so stubborn. They believed in listening to other people's opinions.

My grandmother, even in her 90s, changed her mind about some of her beliefs [ed note: Barbara Bush came to reconsider transgender issues after a lunch with an Atlantic reporter]. I was so moved by the fact that a 94-year-old woman could change her mind, could change her views, could say, "I learned something from this conversation." I feel like if we all had a little bit of that in us, we might be in a better place.

How did you decide how much you were going to speak to the state of the world in the book?

These stories are about a particular period of 13 months. They're reflections of how these three humans inspired me and changed me. If it had to do with how these people changed me, then I put it in the book.

There is obviously context of the state of the world, because it's hard not to have that as the backdrop of when I lost them. It's not a typical, political Washington memoir at all. But there is obviously conversation about where we are as a culture, because they would have wanted to have those conversations.

You write about how you're prone to crying. Has that become a theme during the tour?

I cry at the drop of a hat. The same technician did both my audio book and Hoda [Kotb]'s. Hoda said that he was like, "I felt bad, I felt like I needed to offer her Kleenex." To read your audiobook, which is filled with stories of people that you've lost, and also what it was like to actually lose them, in the midst of a global pandemic, where I hadn't really seen my family at that point...was really hard. I told my husband it was like therapy. The poor technician didn't realize that's what he was getting into.

I think it's cathartic to cry. It's one of the lessons my grandpa [George H.W. Bush] passed on to me. One of the things that he said—which I think was such a gift, particularly to my dad and the other men in my family—is that you're allowed to cry. He made that rule for himself, because he just did so easily, and I do too. It's a sign of feeling. It's a sign of living and all that comes with it.

At some point, your father tells you just to "Write it all down." Has that always been an impulse of yours?

Yes. The way that I process things is by writing for myself. I found my childhood journal at my parents' house a couple of years ago. I watched the people before me do it. My grandmother [Barbara] was an avid journaler—she would write every single day. Even when she got older, and her handwriting got bad, she would type it in her computer.

I started writing the book the day my grandmother Barbara died. I was alone in my apartment. My husband was traveling in Texas, and my kids were asleep. I had the TV on, and I'd gotten the call that she'd passed away. I was watching the tributes. Some of them were beautiful, and then some were filled with just parts of who she was—the politician's wife.

I immediately picked up a piece of paper and a pen, and I wrote her a letter. It was hard for me to process that this person that I loved so intimately had passed away. It was a reckoning between this public grief and then the person that I still knew and loved. It started only in wanting to remember them. Then also, as a way to grieve them. Then it turned into this.

Throughout the book, you touch on that discord: The people the public sees on TV, and the people that you know. Was your intention with the book to introduce the world to the people you know?

Not in such a straightforward way. The reason I wrote the book was because I missed these people. Then also processing the fact that I will grieve publicly—that these figures who I know as a daughter and as a granddaughter, are known for other things. They always will be. It wasn't like intentionally like, "Let me show you this side of them." But if it does that, that's okay with me too. For the rest of my life, there will be this reckoning with the public persona versus knowing people, what that meant. I explored that theme, but not in any other way besides it's going to be part of my life, probably for the rest of it.

Was there anyone in your family that you spoke to while you were writing this book?

This is definitely the most personal book. I mean, these are my feelings, my personal grief. The juxtaposition between looking at my babies next to my grandparents when I knew they were dying.

I did talk to my sister. My dad read the entire book to help me edit it during my maternity leave. I sat down in the playroom in my building. I just had my whole book printed, and we went through it word-for-word. I wanted it to be well-written. He's a good editor. So he went through it and helped me chop it. I think he probably was like, "Is that how you felt about some of these things?" But he didn't change the meaning. I think they know that this is my feeling on it.

What has it been like for you to watch your parents become grandparents?

I was so thrilled. Watching my parents in this first relationship, falling in love with these little kids, and all that it comes with—the discipline, and the total spoiling—is really beautiful. When my kids get to see them, they wake up really early just so they can spend uninterrupted time in the morning with their grandparents in bed—which is what Barbara and I did. We would jump in the bed with my grandparents while they had their coffee. I am so thrilled that they get to have that same relationship with their grandparents.

I've realized is how fortunate I was to have my grandparents for so long. I had all these different relationships with them. As the grandparents of the little kids who were misbehaving, and then later, my grandmother and I sharing books, and then as teenagers, and then they got to watch me get married, and have children. I didn't realize how rare it was to have all these different relationships. I think that's why it made their passing really hard for me, because I got to be with them for so many years.

Has the book been healing for your relatives as well, who also experienced these losses? Have you gotten any feedback?

I do think my parents were proud of it, and happy that I put myself out there and shared these emotions. My sister has read it and loved it too. It's interesting, because as twins, we have such similar shared perspectives. But in this particular case, it was also my personal journey with overcoming this grief. They haven't told me one way or the other. But I do think they are proud of it, and proud of me.

Your husband's father recently passed away. How have you been speaking to your children about the loss of their grandfather?

They have seen their parents lose people they love. They watched my grandpa's funeral on television, and kept wondering where Great-Gampy was, why was he in the box? I was like, Oh my gosh, were they too young to watch that? I think when we listen to our children, their insight about life and also death is really comforting and almost wise. Poppy and Mila have said the most profound things about all of these losses, that have really comforted me. Henry unexpectedly lost his dad. To watch them cheer him up, unintentionally, has been really beautiful.

Finally, what has it been like to live through this and be an anchor on a news program during a pandemic?

It's been wild. We went from having a studio audience with Oprah as one of our first guests to leaving my office and not coming back for three months. Now, I'm back with these people that I care so much about. It feels good to be back in our studio, working. Also, that I would want to come back—that feels good, too. My work is a place of joy. I know it's not always like that for everybody, so I feel so fortunate.

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