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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The pandemic introduced many to living with uncertainty. But for some, uncertainty has always been their norm. Actress Nikki Deloach has starred in several Hallmark Christmas movies, but her life hasn’t matched the happily-ever-after plot-lines of her characters. Nikki’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia and her son was diagnosed with congenital heart defects in utero… all in the same week. In this conversation, Kate and Nikki discuss how to live with constant uncertainty, how to stay open to both the terror and the beauty of living close to the edge, and how to make Christmas meaningful when hope is hard to come by.
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent over there, too!
This episode originally aired December 2020.
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Well, here we are. December has arrived (shudder). And with it, the great cultural sprint: decorations, office parties, and the annual anxiety dream about whether you will accidentally forget someone on your gift list (spoiler: you will). Some of you already finished your shopping over Thanksgiving and have a freezer full of perfectly labeled Christmas cookies. (Who are you?! Come to my house and fix my life!) The rest of us are still trying to remember where we put last year’s wrapping paper.
It’s easy, this time of year, to let December carry us away. The shopping carts, the streaming playlists, the endless events. Advent, though, asks us to live by a different rhythm. The early church saw this season as one of watching and waiting—not just for Christmas morning, but for the whole story of God’s redemption. They began the year not by rushing, but by slowing down.
The prophet Isaiah describes this posture well: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). The church fathers loved this verse because it sounded like Advent: strength found not in frantic activity, but in patient trust.
So maybe the invitation this December is not to do more, but to intend more. To decide, amid the cookie dough and to-do lists, that this month won’t only be measured in packages mailed or tables set, but in moments of return. Little pauses of prayer. A fat candle lit on the dining room table that makes you take a breath. A quiet reminder that God is coming, and we don’t have to hold the season—or our lives—together by ourselves.
So welcome to December, friends. Whether you’re ahead of the game or already behind, you are exactly where you need to be: at the beginning.
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent over there, too!
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In this conversation, Kate and Anna discuss:
What do we lose when we don’t talk about hard things? And what might we gain if we do?
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.
Join us for Advent over on Substack!
This episode originally aired April 2022.
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What happens when childhood teaches you more about survival than safety? Poet and author Nikki Grimes joins Kate to talk about growing up with profound instability—and still choosing to see beauty, feel joy, and offer forgiveness. In this moving conversation, they explore memory, trauma, faith, and the small pockets of belonging that shape a life.
SHOW NOTES:
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Today, we’re sharing a conversation from the More Happier podcast between Kate, Gretchen Rubin, Priya Parker, and Francis Lam.
It’s easy to get swept up in a cycle of holidays that feels more like a relentless to-do list than a source of joy. In this Celebration Roundtable, we talk about how to embrace the holidays as opportunities for intentional connection and meaning.
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Tim Shriver—educator, author, and longtime Chairman of Special Olympics—joins Kate for a tender, funny, deeply practical conversation about dignity: what changes when we decide everyone matters, how relationships (not information) do the real work, and why service is more than “being nice.” Together they trace a family story from Rosemary Kennedy to Eunice Kennedy Shriver to millions of athletes, swap hospital-and-gymnasium epiphanies, and offer a simple lens for disagreeing better. It’s an invitation to the “really real,” where joy and sorrow live together and love makes people—and communities—more fully alive.
SHOW NOTES:
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What happens when you live on a planet where grief rewrites the language of everyday life? Kate Bowler speaks with writer and New York Times editor Sarah Wildman about her daughter Orli’s incandescent life and staggering courage while living with terminal cancer. Together they explore the limits of positivity culture, the fierce tenderness of caregiving, the sacred discomfort of truth-telling, and the love that carries us when nothing adds up. This is a conversation for anyone who has lived inside the ache—and chosen joy anyway.
Show Notes:
Jewish practices of grief (shiva) and care (bikur cholim)
Support Guides: Parenting a Medically-Complicated Child, When Your Child is in Pain, When You’ve Been Diagnosed
Orli, in all her joy: @orli_halpern on TikTok
For those of us who live on a different planet now: Small Talk Survivor Tee | Mug
Kate’s Substack – blessings, reflections, and our tender corner of the internet
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It’s tempting to be a very serious person in a very serious world. But what if staying soft was the most loving thing we could do? In this vulnerable and playful conversation, Kate sits down with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau—mental health advocate, speaker, and writer—to talk about childhood wiring, the masks we wear, and how we begin the lifelong work of coming home to ourselves. If you’re navigating heartbreak, trying to live in your body again, or just craving a little lightness without losing depth—this one's for you.
SHOW NOTES:
Gabor Maté – on trauma, addiction, and the pain beneath our coping mechanisms
Support Guides: When Your Child is in Pain, When You've Been Hurt as a Child, Those Who Give and Need Support
Come hang out in our new favorite corner of the internet: Kate's Substack.
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Loving people is a gift—and a liability. The more we love, the more there is to lose. In this hilariously honest and deeply tender conversation, Kate talks with beloved writer Catherine Newman about the strange pairing of love and fear. Together, they explore how parenting, grief, humor, and hospice care shape us into people who laugh while crying and keep showing up anyway. If you’ve ever whispered “I love you” and immediately wanted to bubble-wrap your whole family, this one is for you.
Show notes:
A Blessing for When Love Makes Us Afraid (as read on the episode)
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When someone you love is in pain—but can’t say the words out loud—what can you do? Kate speaks with beloved Canadian novelist Miriam Toews (All My Puny Sorrows, Women Talking, A Truce That Is Not Peace) about the silences that shape us: the kind that settle into families, into churches, into whole communities where mental illness is unnamed and suffering goes unspoken.
Together, they talk about the long shadow of religious shame, the courage it takes to tell the truth, and what it means to stay present with people we can’t fix. This conversation is tender, fierce, and unflinchingly honest.
This episode includes discussion of suicide at the beginning and end of the episode. If you're struggling, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
SHOW NOTES:
A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews — her newest memoir and the heart of this conversation
All My Puny Sorrows, Fight Night, Women Talking — beloved novels by Miriam Toews
Join Kate on Substack — katebowler.substack.com for blessings, essays, and kind conversation
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