Stay ConnectedAre you living your best life now? Not always? This is a podcast for you. Duke Professor Kate Bowler is an expert in the stories we tell about success and failure, suffering and happiness. She had Stage IV cancer. Then she didn’t. And since then, all she wants to do is talk to funny and wise people about how to live with the knowledge that, well, everything happens. Find her online at @katecbowler.
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What happens when the people we built our lives around stop needing us? Or when we have to pick between our meaningful careers or our family? And what do we do with the ambiguous grief that comes with every expected and unexpected change? Today, Kate takes an honest look at juggling the demands on our time and on our heart with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.
Kate and Mary Louise discuss:
This may be a conversation about parenting, but I think there might be something in here for anyone who wonders: Who am I as my relationships change? Can I still find myself there?
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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
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How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness.
In this conversation, we discuss:
CW: suicide, adult language
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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
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Historian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews… or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity's enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.
In this conversation, Kate and Michael discuss:
Michael does not denigrate anyone’s attempt for comfort, but asks us to look carefully at the consolation that lasts. He asks: What is consolation? And why do we all crave that practice of meaning-making?
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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
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Supermodel Paulina Porizkova has been in the public eye all her life. But it has been a rollercoaster of soaring successes and deep heartache. Grief and pain comes to us all, and in those moments, we need our shared humanity (and not our super-anythingness) to build a bridge back to others.
In this tender conversation, Kate and Paulina discuss:
CW: Spicy language
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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
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The Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.
In this warm conversation (trust me! You will laugh!), Kate and Tom discuss:
No one likes to talk about funerals, but this one is a must-listen.
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Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
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Over thirty years ago, Elaine Pagels’ young son and husband died within the same year. In this tender conversation, Kate and Elaine discuss surviving the aftermath of such devastation, the painful explanations religion often offers, and how we love and keep loving even after so much tragedy.
Together, they discuss:
This episode is for someone who has ever had the thought “haven’t I suffered enough?” Elaine and Kate are trusted companions in a life that hasn’t turned out like we thought it should.
CW: death of a child, death of a spouse
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Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.
Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731
A big thank you to Jed Meyers for contributing his beautiful poem to today's episode.
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Every problem New York Times columnist Frank Bruni faced had a simple fix. Doctors offered reasonable solutions for reasonable problems. Preventative care guaranteed future health. That is, until he woke up one morning without vision in his eye. This experience forced him to rethink how much of life is in our control and how to live fully in the face of unfixable problems.
In this conversation, Kate and Frank discuss:
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Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731
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Beth Moore has been in the limelight for almost thirty years, but during that time, she revealed very little about her formative family history. Now, this world-famous Bible teacher is ready to tell her story for the first time.
In this episode, Kate and Beth discuss:
This was Beth’s first interview about her new memoir, and Kate felt so honored to get to ask this wise soul about the role of faith in lives that haven’t worked out like we thought they should.
CW: sexual abuse, mental illness
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Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.
Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731
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Welcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast!
I started this podcast as a way to create language and community around some of life's most painful moments. I was so overwhelmed by the question of how do we live in the after? After a diagnosis, after a death, after a divorce, after something that changes our lives or takes it apart.
I had just been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and I was only 35. I had a two year old at home with this giant lovey Disney eyes, and I had the job that I loved, and then suddenly, I had a picture of a future that was just never going to be. So I wanted to know, like, how do we do this? How do you find joy and hope and love even after life comes undone? And after years of treatment and years of uncertainty, I guess I realized somewhere along the way that this wasn't really a one and done kind of question. This is the sort of work that evolves over time as life continues to contract and expand and break our hearts and then put us back together all over again. And so thank you for being the people that I've had along the way. These are not, of course, the conversations anybody really wants to have, but we do, you and me and this gorgeous community here.
We have so many great episodes coming to you for SEASON TEN. We're going to be talking to tender and wise and funny people about what they've discovered during their before and afters. People like Beth Moore on long faithfulness when life really doesn't work out the way you thought it did. Mary Louise Kelly on empty-nesting and rediscovering yourself after the kids leave.Rabbi Steve Leder on how tragedies teach us and how we can just see beauty somehow. Plus SO MANY MORE.
New episodes coming your way every Tuesday this Spring.
This episode also includes a conversation between Kate and her producer, Jessica Richie about their new book of blessings, The Lives We Actually Have.
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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (releases TODAY). Learn more, here.
We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.
Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731
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As we approach the New Year, we might need a minute to look backward. What even happened this year? Who was I? What went well? What didn't? Before we start making those New Year’s Resolutions, maybe we could have a second of honesty together.
This week is about celebrating the fact that alongside some of our painful, horrifying moments, we did experience moments of levity and joy and pure delight. In our personal lives, in our inner circle, during our 9-5s, and one real Zinger bonus round that really takes the cake.
In this bonus crossover episode, Kate and Kelly Corrigan discuss:
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Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
Find Kelly Corrigan on Instagram or listen to her on Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
Subscribe to receive blessings in your inbox every week.
No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available in PAPERBACK. Order your copy, today.
Looking for some short spiritual reflections and blessings? Check out GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Available wherever books are sold.
Introducing THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (releasing February 14, 2023). Learn more, pre-order, and receive a free pennant, here.
Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731
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