What to Do with Our Short, Precious Life with Kate Bowler
December 28, 2021
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, loves. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We’re going to jump right in. I’m so looking forward to this episode, sister Amanda and I have been talking about it all weekend. And that is because we have our dear friend who we’ve never met in real life here with us today. And her name is Kate Bowler, PHD, I didn’t know, before Kate, wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Is a New York Times Bestselling author podcast host and a professor at Duke university. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether or not we’re capable of change.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s the author of Blessed, a History of the American Prosperity Gospel, so good. And the Preacher’s Wife, the Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities after being diagnosed with stage four cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times best selling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, and other lies I’ve loved, and her latest, No Cure for Being Human and other truths, I need to hear.
Glennon Doyle:
Kate hosts Everything Happens Podcast where in warm, insightful, often very funny conversations. She talks with folks like Malcolm Gladwell and Ian Lamont about what they’ve learned in difficult times. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her family, and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.
Glennon Doyle:
And I want to tell you all two things, first of all, Kate, I’m looking at her right now, she has a huge beautiful sign behind her, which is the title of her book that says, “No Cure for Being Human.” And when I asked her about it, she said, she’s trying to counteract all of the mandatory good vibes that people are always selling for walls.
Glennon Doyle:
And I’m just so excited, Kate, because I feel like with you and your anti good vibes in me and my passion for demotivational speaking, we’re going to do a lot of good. And also, I just want to say this one thing which is completely inappropriate as a feminist and person who believes in people’s insides, but you look so pretty.
Kate Bowler:
Oh, so nice. I had a moment right before I saw you, I was like, “Hey, this is not your A game.” Because I don’t know what game this is, but it’s not it. So thank you-
Glennon Doyle:
So pretty.
Kate Bowler:
… that makes me feel really special.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re also very wise, and kind, and brave, and smart, but also pretty.
Kate Bowler:
I accept as a Canadian, I’m just trying to push a compliment uphill with me is really hard. So I’m going to do that work. Thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
So take us to the moment to get all of the listeners up to speed. Kate at 35 was given a few months to live and her vow to herself was I want to be alive until I am not. And this haunting struggle that you talk about a lot is how do I know if I’m doing this right?
Kate Bowler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda Doyle:
We wanted to have you here for this whole community, because really what we’re talking about is just the reality that every single one of us shares, with Kate, which is that all of our lives will inevitably end, and we all have this shared struggle to wisely spend our finite time to be alive until we are not.
Amanda Doyle:
So Kate, can you take us to the moment you’re married to your high school sweetheart, you’re raising this precious two year old son, and you’re diagnosed with incurable stage four cancer. Can you tell us about that time for you?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. And I’m sorry for missing the part at the beginning where I say, “Holy crap, thank you so much for having me. It’s so nice to be here.” I was just so thrilled by being being here I just didn’t say holy crap. I just really love you both and I love these conversations, so thank you for having me in one. I feel very honored.
Amanda Doyle:
Kate, can you also tell me that I look pretty.
Kate Bowler:
Prettiest. I mean, truly? Gorgeous?
Glennon Doyle:
Thanks Kate, I accept. Okay. Carry on.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s the answer to our finite time, just going around, just telling everyone that they’re pretty.
Kate Bowler:
I got you, I do. What’s so funny too is that I think one of the very first moments that I knew that I maybe wanted to live a little bit longer and have, it was that when I knew that I was ready to have dumb plans when I was like, “Hey, do you think it’s okay if I maybe try to be a little decorative or starting being slightly slutty, looking close again?” Something that doesn’t just sort of bleach well, and dry well, and can be removed with only one hand in a post-hospital surgery moment.
Kate Bowler:
I just, yeah, man, isn’t it so fun just to be ridiculous, and decorative, and to do things for nothing at all that makes us feel special? And that was maybe the first feeling that went away was that I was like a body and that my body was good, because I think mentally, it was just so hard to switch into the moment where I used to just be a normal person, I was a joyfully boring historian who loved footnotes and very long dense pros, and I just wanted to have my dream.
Kate Bowler:
And my dream was just to be a professor and talk about wine and cheese functions and to have this very idea, heavy life. And then all of a sudden, my life was the one that blew up and it was the fall and I wasn’t supposed to make it to the spring. And I think the first moment was a surrealiness, like maybe all along, it was everybody else that mattered and it wasn’t somehow, it just wasn’t me.
Kate Bowler:
And so I accepted the devastation of it with a kind of awful acceptance as if it somehow made sense. And that I realized only maybe after writing the book, that it was a result of having begged for care for so many months and being turned away, that when my pain was not believed that just somehow in the mix of things, I stopped believing that my pain mattered. And so when I was finally diagnosed there was not a healthy moment when I was like, “Oh yeah, right, of course, it’s me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Sister, you and I talked about that.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. The rage that I have over the way you were told over and over that your physical problems were the result of psychological problems. So basically you were sick because you were crazy?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
And we know that this wildly disproportionately happens to women and even more so for black women, but what can you say to us about the inexcusable reality that women who are fighting for their lives also have to be fighting to be taken seriously.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. Because we’re told that there’s a good patient and we just need to be the good patient, just need to be cheerful, easy to care for, we need to be just a descriptive about our pain, but let’s not overdo it, don’t make me uncomfortable while you’re telling me about it. And by the time that, I mean, I had been sent home, it was about five months that I was bounced around between doctors when I could at times barely walk because I would double over in pain.
Kate Bowler:
At one point I just went to the ER and I was like, “Guys, I can’t do this anymore.” But because I didn’t have the appearance of someone in that much pain, which is to read, gender, and half relative youth and all kinds of things onto not being believed, I was sent home with Pepto-Bismol.
Kate Bowler:
So it wasn’t until I yelled, and I’d never yelled at someone before, let alone someone in a doctor’s office and was like, “I’m not leaving, I’m not leaving until you give me a scan.” And it was only when I lost it and wouldn’t play the role anymore, that I got the scan that told me by that point, it had escalated to stage four cancer.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s amazing, that, that’s what you had to do. It’s not exactly the same but the time I first got help is when I was in high school and I walked into a guidance counselor’s office and said, “I’m not doing this anymore, I can’t do it. I’m not leaving here until you help me.” And that’s when I ended up in the hospital. But it was because I was like, “I’m just not going anywhere.” So-
Kate Bowler:
Yeah, it’s the showdown moment.
Glennon Doyle:
… they moved me. It’s a showdown moment. It’s amazing that that’s what women have to do.
Kate Bowler:
Yes. Yeah. There was the only glorious hysterical moment of joy I had about that was 24 hours later after I’d had the scan, and for it was so bad, it was the same man who was assigned to do my surgery.
Kate Bowler:
And in the pre-surgery moments, I grabbed him by his lapels and I pulled him really close to my face, in front of all the nurses when I was lying in the gurney and I said, “I better not die looking into your eyes.” And that is the most-
Glennon Doyle:
So amazing.
Kate Bowler:
… when the nurses burst out laughing, and then I burst out laughing, it was a good moment.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s why all of your work is good moments. That’s why all of your work-
Kate Bowler:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s so good because you take us to the brink of tears, and then the next paragraph we’re laughing, and the same as true of your podcast. One of the things I found cool and interesting is that you talk about this near death experience study that somebody did.
Glennon Doyle:
And then the reason it got your attention is because you had a similar experience after you got your diagnosis, and I found it interesting because we’re all so terrified of finding out when we’re going to die, we do all know we’re going to die, but we do find it very uncomfortable to think about.
Kate Bowler:
Yes, absolutely.
Glennon Doyle:
Is knowing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So we all want to know what will I do?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I have that Jerry McGuire moment, that’s like, “I’m not going to do what you think I’m going to do,” which is just freak out. But you say, it seems too odd to say what I knew to be true, that when I was sure I was going to die, I didn’t feel angry, I felt only love, which is what they had discovered in the near death experience study.
Glennon Doyle:
So can you just talk about that?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. It was very weird because it wasn’t even that I always just felt loving, I felt loved. I felt so all of a sudden loved, like it was glue that was holding together not just my sanity, but the ability when you look at someone who loves you and then they mirror back to you something true about you.
Kate Bowler:
And I then felt like I wasn’t in those moments, part of this disposable medical train wreck that I’d been a part of. And it was this study they’d done where they’d interviewed a number of people who had had near death experiences by just a variety of different causes, attempted suicide, like labor, all kinds of, like a car accident. And that there was a surrealness to a very sort of indescribable and socially surprising feeling, which is to suddenly feel loved.
Kate Bowler:
And I felt very intensely that I was loved by God, but also just all the gorgeous moon faced people who were just being people where they bring you socks and they know that you haven’t brushed your hair in five days. And I felt bubble wrapped.
Kate Bowler:
And that taught me, I guess, that all my hard work, all my attitude, all my striving that there’s a moment when we are so weak that there’s just no striving that’s possible. And in those moments, I really do think that there is like a spiritual community A game that happens where we can just be so flooded by other people’s love that it makes the unbearable somehow carryable in those moments.
Glennon Doyle:
Didn’t you say that that feeling, and by the way, you were as honest as always and you say that does go away.
Kate Bowler:
Oh, yeah. Gone, gone, gone. And I’m petty, and I’m a colossal dick again?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, of course, and that’s comforting also. But it was so strong that some of your first thoughts were, I don’t want to go back.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t want to go back. And did you mean when you wrote that? Back pre-diagnosis.
Kate Bowler:
I just felt a little, oh, I don’t want to unknow this. I guess, because you know when you feel like every thing in the world just breaks apart and then almost like you’re looking at life, but it’s like a shirt that’s inside out and you see all the seams for everything.
Kate Bowler:
Then all of a sudden in all the jagged seams, there’s just so much beauty in the world, you notice your pain, but then you notice everybody else’s, the person struggling to reach something and the person that helps them, someone in the cancer clinic smoothing their mom’s hair. And in all those moments it feels like you just get flooded by how fragile, and gorgeous, and ridiculous life is.
Kate Bowler:
And I just kept feeling like, man, I don’t want to, I really hope I don’t unlearn this because it’s so I wouldn’t have known it if my life didn’t feel so unbelievably fragile and somehow like crystalline in those moments.
Glennon Doyle:
And then you got some really cool advice from a dear guide and friend during that time, and I come back to this all the time, because it means something different to me all the time, but they said after a long beautiful conversation, they just said to you don’t skip to the end.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Talk to us about what that meant then and what that still means.
Kate Bowler:
I work with these wonderful geriatrics, she said respectfully of all of her academic colleagues, but everybody was like, everybody was post 70 and meanwhile I’m like dying at 35. And I was like, “Guys, now’s the time, sit me down, what adds up? You’ve had these lives, what is it? What benchmarks did you get somewhere? Did you accomplish something? Were you at a kid’s wedding? Were you, did you become a certain kind of person? Just give me the math and I want to get there.” Is it because the math I was running is my kids too.
Kate Bowler:
This is how long it takes to launch a kid, this is how long until they have memories. Okay. Gosh, I have to live long enough for him to remember me. And I’m just like tick, tick, tick, tick, all just trying to make all the math work. And I was like, “Just give me the answer.”
Kate Bowler:
And my friend is like, “Oh, okay.” But then it comes undone. And if it comes undone and he’s saying it comes undone at 70 something, then I need to realize there’s no arrival, there’s no, I guess almost like bucket listy check list of experiences I’m going to get. And if there’s not enough and there never will be that feeling how do I learn to live like that?
Glennon Doyle:
Can you tell us?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. There’s seven steps it’s my new book, Seven Steps Ultimate Life Fulfillment going to become a self-help author. Guys, I’ve got a workshop. Wouldn’t it be amazing? We could just sell each other that.
Glennon Doyle:
No, I would die. Listen. What I said about No Cure for Being Human is I believe Kate Bowler is the only one we can trust to tell us the truth, that is for damn truth.
Kate Bowler:
Oh my darling. It’s-
Glennon Doyle:
So tell us the truth. How do we, if there’s no being done. There’s no-
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. There’s no done, and there’s no formula, and there’s no enough, except those moments where you feel it, and you know it, and you’re loved and it feels like transcendence for like aha to second, and then the second it’s gone, you feel like you’re going to starve to death because I think that is how the beautiful good stuff is, love it makes us hungry, beauty it makes us hungry.
Kate Bowler:
If there was a solution to the problem of being a person, we would’ve found it we wouldn’t be stuck managing our endless beautiful chronic stupid gorgeous lives. So yeah, the no formula thing it’s kind of killing me because I feel like it’s all I think about, because I think about cultural cliches as a historian and as a person who’s just trying to find a way to live is I’m always like latching onto another formula and then trying to realize, oh, there’s a historical construct there, there’s a reason why I believed it, now I just have to dissolve it in my hands and then live open handed again and I’m not loving it, I’m not loving it
Glennon Doyle:
Live open handed again, ugh.
Amanda Doyle:
The part that, the unformular part that just, Ugh, sunk in my soul when you said all of our masterpieces ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary, all of our work unfinished unfinishable, we do too much, never enough and are done before we’ve even started. It’s better this way.
Kate Bowler:
I just-
Amanda Doyle:
I mean-
Kate Bowler:
… Amanda, I just, because if I could finish it, I just… It’s the challenge of every day, right? It’s what happens when you look at the people who need you and love you, or you look at your inbox, or you look at all of the things you hope to do or the places you hope to go and it feels like it can’t possibly be better that way, wouldn’t it be better if we could just add it up.
Amanda Doyle:
But if you know your masterpiece could never be finished and it’s never supposed..
Glennon Doyle:
Then the point is just to keep painting, it’s not to ever have a finished product, right?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
When you talk about… This part got me in the soul, because you were talking really honestly about your fear of dying and I love this question so much because I think it’s mine, you said, “Do you think when I die I won’t have to feel a part?” In my mind I’m always making up 40 million ways that that won’t happen, that I’ll still I’m designing heaven.
Kate Bowler:
Yes Totally.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m a bit controlling, so I feel like maybe whatever it is that I might have a better plan, but can you talk to us about that fear of apartness and does it have to do mostly with Zach and Toban?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. I had been… As a very Jesusy person and I work in a Jesusy Divinity school and I get a lot of Jesusy email. And most of the solutions to the problem of pain that were handed to me, that to me were the most painful were attempts at Christian solutions to say, “Well it’s as if like you’ve your life is this like past, present, and future. And don’t worry, we’ve really freighted the future with some really great solutions to the problem of your horrible present. Heaven is going to be amazing, you can all be together there. God will dry every tear, et cetera, et cetera.”
Kate Bowler:
And as if, if I wasn’t thrilled about the possibility of heaven that I was somehow less faithful or less. Yeah, less good. And it just made me so angry. Faith can be many things and it just can’t lie. And I knew it was a lie to say that my child’s life would be somehow as good if I weren’t his mom, I knew it wasn’t true, it could still be good, would be as good not to compliment myself, but I’m kind of a good mom to that kid.
Kate Bowler:
I was just scared that heaven would be the moment when I miss it all. I don’t get to smell his head, I don’t get to see him graduate. It just felt ridiculous, what a ridiculous thing to say to someone who is so terrified about missing it.
Kate Bowler:
And I think that my vision of whatever a beautiful future with God might be, I do believe that hope is like this anchor that gets dropped in the future and there’s this like beautiful story about love that we are being pulled toward, but none of it ever feels like it’s, it can even make sense of the hungers we have as people who have people who rely on us.
Kate Bowler:
So I never think there’s going to be a spiritual solution to the problem of the future, but I do know that in the end it will all be love. But it’s just very hard to imagine that in the meantime when all I want is now and just endless now.
Glennon Doyle:
And you put a sign in your living room that said, “You are my bucket list” for Toban and Zach, my sister and I talked about that for an hour on Saturday. For different reasons, we felt, we were so moved by it for different reasons. I was moved by it one because I actually feel that way, whenever anyone asks me what do I want to do? I almost feel guilty because I have no bucket list, I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to do any other things, I don’t.
Glennon Doyle:
But that idea that your people are what you want to have the endless nows with. Is so beautiful I love that sign so much. Can you just tell me about this part of your story is extremely personal important to me, which is that right after your diagnosis, you started swearing a lot.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you? I felt so validated in that moment, I have not had to wait for a diagnosis to start swearing, I started swearing at maybe four. But just talk to us for a minute about that. Was it like some kind of honesty coming? Of course, I relate swearing with honesty.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. Me too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. You do?
Kate Bowler:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. I think that the tragic comedy of life is so terrible, and absurd, and awful, and usually funny in the same moment and none of it feels very polite. And I work in this, so I work mostly with these mainline traditions and those churches are more sort of like a lot of stain glass and a lot of like, “Oh, it’s 12:05, the organ’s playing let’s head out of here.”
Kate Bowler:
And I started to feel like everyone would’ve been fine if I just died very politely, just sort of quietly absented myself, and I just love it in a television show, or in a novel, or something where the character is like, “Fuck it,” and just like flips a table and says all the unscripted things, it was the beginning of the season of lent or like Jesus dies, blah, blah, blah.
Kate Bowler:
It’s big moment at the end, but like in the big time I was just so fucking enraged. I was enraged about everything. And yeah, rage really helped me feel like I wasn’t living in this sort of like precious moments, culture anymore, with little delicate figurines, and doilies, and women who had the vapors. I was like, “You know what? We were to do anything, we’re going to be brutally honest regardless of whether or not it feels acceptable anymore.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Let me ask you a question because I’m always curious about this and then we can move on from the swearing, because people give me a hard time for swearing a lot, that’s like a day-to-day-
Kate Bowler:
Oh, no. It’s wonderful.
Glennon Doyle:
But my question is, is the voice inside everyone else’s head not constantly swearing because I’m actually just supposed, I’m trying to match my insides with my outside. So reason I’m swearing is because that is honestly what’s going on, my inner voice all day, is just like, “What the fuck. Fuck. What the fuck. Fucking fuck.”
Glennon Doyle:
Every once in a while, fuck you, what the fuck, is all that my very brain says all day. And then every once in a while there’ll be a holy shit. That’s like one of those moments you’re talking about, that’s my awe. But Kate, is your inner voice not constantly cursing or is it, and then you’re translating to something that’s better.
Kate Bowler:
I wish I remember the exact study, but it was one where they let people either put their hand in like icy cold water and then they timed it and they tried to figure out people’s pain threshold based on whether they were allowed to swear while doing it.
Kate Bowler:
And it was the people who were screaming fuck that were able to keep their hands merged for longer. And I thought done, yes, of course, which is I’m always having needles, massive stomach incisions, painful, ridiculous conversations, and then a kid’s birthday, and then small talk at the… And I find the pendulum swings to be so insane, that I need a big vocabulary to manage the wide spectrum of reality. And so it’s pain, and it’s joy, and it’s a lot of fucking intolerance, but the middle…
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Kind of that like demanding to be seen, because one of the themes that I love about your work is like this false dichotomy that we have of like, “Oh, Kate’s dying,” not the rest of us though. The rest of us are not-
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Exactly-
Amanda Doyle:
… like, and so it’s like let’s keep this like, “Okay, is over here so sad.” And like, “Surely, Kate’s going to find a way to present her problem to us in the regime that makes sense in our track and she’s going to keep it really sweet so we can all keep this going.” Is part of that just like asserting yourself of being like, “First of all, I’m still here, and second of all, y’all are too, okay? So get on board, because the train’s coming for all of us.”
Kate Bowler:
I wish that I could just have bottled that speech and then play it at every social gathering because that is a perfect summary of the like, because the inspirational genre is for people that we… You guys talk about this all the time, is the people that we pity and don’t want to solve fundamentally relate or solve build the bridge to where they are.
Kate Bowler:
And yeah, this is part of what someone said one time to me was I’m everyone’s and nobody’s friend. The grand pretending is that we are all not a breath away from the problem that irreparably changes our lives. And if everyone can live over here in the land of delicacy and precarity, then there’s a lot more, I just that is the thing that makes me scream. Thank you, Amanda. I think you-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I had a conversation about that with a friend when your book came out because she had just read it and she said, “I just can’t imagine.” And I was like, “But you actually don’t have to, there’s somethings we have to imagine, but that’s actually, this is a fact you don’t have to.”
Kate Bowler:
That is the perfect thing to say. Yeah, you do feel like you’re sort of breaking it to people gently where you’re like, “Hey guys, we’re all dying, we’re all we have moments of being resourced and lucky. And then the rest of the time, we’re not. And when we’re not, we’re going to want to remember that suffering is not an anomaly it’s part of the grand continual experience, and that you’re not either bad or unlucky, you’re just a person.” Again, turns out.
Glennon Doyle:
Talk to us about being a person, and this pendulum, and this ridiculous absurd thing we have to do, which is you just said go through the pain and then go to a kid’s birthday party. We’re in the midst of the very long holiday season, and you, my friend are one of those crazy Christmas people. You actually get mad at other people who claim to be Christmas people because they’re in fact-
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. Amateurs.
Glennon Doyle:
… not as Christmas sees you. You have one.
Amanda Doyle:
She’s a Canadian, she’s a Christmas Canadian, okay? They’re different breed, varsity.
Glennon Doyle:
There’s no cure for Christmas Canadians, that’s right.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah, we bring our own winter, but my dad is the historian of Christmas, written a bajillion books on the history of Christmas. So we’re next level, like someone’s going to break in and do a show about the number of ornaments we have for goat research reasons.
Glennon Doyle:
So tell us Kate Bowler, give us a full proof process for how one survives the holidays when there’s so much grief, and loss, and fear in all of us. And we are also being forced to be cheery and really, because that’s just a good metaphor for all of it, but you still love Christmas?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You love the holidays, so tell us-
Kate Bowler:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
… how do we do it?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah, you can see I’m like adjusting my chair to.
Amanda Doyle:
She’s like, ” [crosstalk 00:30:22] out the podcast, gets serious.” Finally, a question I’ve been waiting for.
Kate Bowler:
We have these intense and horrifying calcified scripts about how we are supposed to be, and especially women and especially during a holiday where there’s away that no one can tell the truth, we have the good linens out. And I’m sorry that we lost people we can’t get back, but aunt Linda’s here, and good God, we’re going to small talk.
Kate Bowler:
And of course, the second we’re locked into story of our lives, it’s almost always not true. And the truth of our lives is that the moments of the holidays are like feasting, and light, and music is, and we do that in the middle of the darkness because that’s when we need it most. And it’s not to say in our culture, which it does, it’s all bright sides, no setbacks, just setups.
Kate Bowler:
Everything’s always, doors closing and windows opening and the holidays or any other time is like a great moment just to say one, like what honesty is unacceptable here? What honesty has been made socially awkward? And could I just have a little more of it? And two, like a lot of permission that where there is joy, there is almost always sorrow.
Kate Bowler:
The way we sing a song, whether it reminds us of our dad or the way we might see other people’s kids gathering and we didn’t get to have that kid or that relationship. The joy is also like grief is like tucked right in its shadow. And just letting ourselves be, have 1000 different feelings about the same day in the same day. Because being crowded over onto one end of the emotional spectrum is something Americans are very good at.
Kate Bowler:
Apparently, the only acceptable emotions are joy, happiness, optimism, the Hallmark app, which is actually really good, if you want to check off that you’ve seen all of the movies, which I do. But the reason why I love holidays, or random bake-a-thons, or parties, or whatever is because life is so hard, is like the second you get a moment of joy, just like take it.
Kate Bowler:
And if it isn’t on the prescriptive day, let it go. But we need all, pain has scooped out something in us and now there’s a big space that Joy’s going to fill. So I let it, I go out of my way to pick big dumb things to be so thrilled about because I know the next day that might not be the day that I get to have the world’s largest Santa Claus waving in the wind in my lawn.
Glennon Doyle:
God, I love that. So it’s not, we celebrate because we’re not sad, it’s we celebrate because we’re so sad.
Kate Bowler:
Exactly. Because we’re so delicate, and we get it for a minute, and we should take it, just take it
Glennon Doyle:
Kate, you say as a mom and a controlling human being, I really resonate with this, and I’m sure that a lot of parents, or maybe just human beings will, but the idea that I am the center that must hold. I am the center that must hold. Do you still feel that? Is that a going back and forth too?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
What is, if we are not the center, I know intellectually, but I am not the center that must hold. I’m not sure, I know that in my bones.
Kate Bowler:
No, performatively. I mean, who’s going to make sure we all have towels, right? Who’s going to remember that? Insert two million errands. It is so difficult to see all the weight that you carry and not then imagine that life is not possible, if we’re not doing that work, smiling that smile, I always picture it turning the big wheel so that everybody else lives can function, which sounds a little like the machine and lost, which turns out was for no reason.
Amanda Doyle:
So an apt metaphor.
Kate Bowler:
You’re totally right. I put myself in the center of a world and then my world was ending and it has been… And, but maybe part of that is just the natural narcissism of love is we’re like, “You can’t live without me and you can’t live without me doing these things.”
Kate Bowler:
But tragedy is the time when you’re forced to rewrite all of the rules about how your ecosystem works, because you don’t get to have the pride of making sure everybody else’s needs are met before your own like I have, it has humbled me in my view of what I can even do in a day, but also just how much I really do need on other people and was unwilling to let anyone else carry it, mostly because of years of deeply ingrained patriarchy, my unwillingness to challenge that set of assumptions.
Kate Bowler:
I’ve needed food, I’ve needed people to physically wash my hair, to carry me, to push my wheelchair, to pick up my kid, that was the worst, like pick up my kid because I couldn’t. And all those things felt impossible, but in there was a challenge to that story that I was always going to be the only person who could love, and having a bigger picture of that has been an important truth, that has been hard for me to hear.
Amanda Doyle:
Part of that reminds me of what you talk about a lot, which is this kind of uniquely American ideal of like you are limitless, anything is possible and it’s meant to be hopeful and liberating, right?
Kate Bowler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda Doyle:
Go get ‘em tiger, but it becomes this kind of cage of rage. You mentioned rage earlier and I’m fascinated by it because it’s like when our reality crushes against that promise, we feel duped or shamed or… And I’ve heard you talk about this in the context of recent, this unprecedented time we’ve been going through where you said, when you have less and less and are expected to create more and more, you just have to rage.
Amanda Doyle:
What is that, this American insistence that everything is still possible while the ladder is being pulled out from under us, a million different ways, what does that do to us?
Glennon Doyle:
And how do we replace it? How do we replace it?
Kate Bowler:
Yes. Well
Amanda Doyle:
Kate Bowler’s next webcast, three steps.
Kate Bowler:
It’s all problem with wisdom, so it makes us into self-help monsters, we’re like, “Guys.”
Glennon Doyle:
Kate, I know what is it, I know this. I only trust Kate Bowler and a couple other people. And I still, if you give me a Buzzfeed quiz on six ways to make me fixed and happy, I’m taking it, I’m taking it Kate.
Kate Bowler:
I bought one in the airport the other day. I mean, you cannot pry them out of my hands.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God.
Kate Bowler:
Because it’s in every genre, we are sold a story of unlimited agency, unlimited power to choose in every area of our life. Oh, is your inbox out of control? Try the, I just bought the happy inbox. There’s a whole management, there’s a whole management strategy, you haven’t tried. Are you not-
Glennon Doyle:
Even though inbox suppose to be happy.
Kate Bowler:
Oh, got to be the thrilled. And then have you not applied these same principles to health and wellness in the last smoothie regime? And have you detoxed recently and have you appropriately mastered your mornings time too? And then like insert 200 books I have previously purchased, and then there’s a plan for the excellent perfect, the mom, the partner, the boss lady.
Kate Bowler:
I mean, we can do it in every area and the lie is that you can always fix your life, anything, your life is just a series of choices just add them all up. And if the sums are too hard and you can’t get there and it’s impossible, it’s only because you haven’t done small enough actions, there’s always tomorrow.
Kate Bowler:
And it sounds very empowering because in so many ways we do all need to just take small little steps. But the big lie is that we are masters of our destiny, when most of the things that happen are the things that happen to us.
Kate Bowler:
And most of the solutions are not individualistic solutions they’re better policies, they’re the end of medical bankruptcy in this country, they are structural solutions to you, the evils of racism, and sexism, and phobias, which we’ve seen enshrined into the codes that build our society. None of those are going to make it into the seven steps to, gosh, anything. And I…
Glennon Doyle:
And as three white women, that is one of the hallmarks of white feminism too, that all we need to do is get a few of us higher. And so let’s just keep plugging and plugging away and optimizing ourselves, right?
Kate Bowler:
Optimizing, that’s the right word.
Glennon Doyle:
Instead of looking at the policies that screw everybody.
Kate Bowler:
Yes. Yeah. We have to of course work and think structurally about how change happens and also we have our regular dumb days, and so we can’t say nothing is possible and we can’t say everything is up to our agency. We do have to find a really gentle culturally appropriate language for limited agency. And I find people don’t love it because it sounds realistic, but I think it’s the work of hope, it’s just small, durable, beautiful hope.
Glennon Doyle:
Kate, can you add that to your new line of signs? Can we get rid of everything is possible? And can you add a few things are possible? That’s the sign I want, a few things.
Amanda Doyle:
I love it. I find it incredibly liberating, because-
Glennon Doyle:
So do I!
Amanda Doyle:
… it’s not, because when you say anything is possible, it means the fact that I see you not doing everything means you’re just not trying hard enough, right?
Glennon Doyle:
yes , that’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
But if I say to myself, it is literally not possible for me to do all the things for my kids that I’d be doing if I didn’t have employment, and it’s literally not possible for me to do all the things I’d be doing over here if I have these two things, that is freedom for me, I can just say, it’s not possible.
Glennon Doyle:
A few things are possible.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m going to prioritize in my life the things that are important to me, and I’m going to say, “I’m going to do these things.” And then I’m going to say to the rest of the world, that also means I’m not going to do these other things because it’s not possible.
Kate Bowler:
Yes. And there is a very boring virtue that… Because I was like, “What is that? What is the wisdom to choose there? What’s that called?” And hilariously, the virtue is prudence. Prudence is apparently the wisdom to choose and like what a great delightfully funny duddy sounding gift we all need right now, is how would I know? Huh, prudence.
Glennon Doyle:
Sissy. You’re such a prude. That’s what I’m going to be-
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve always been such a prude. This is really coming together for me. God.
Glennon Doyle:
I love that.
Amanda Doyle:
I love it too. What you just said about the how everything in life is these series of choices like that’s the… We’re also living by this myth too, often our experiences that most profoundly affect us are the ones we never chose at all, those are the things. And so I’m just wondering, you say I didn’t, I had to, I’m trying to remember, I had nothing to do, but survive the feeling that some pain is for no reason at all?
Kate Bowler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda Doyle:
Does that feel to you in your bones like a freedom? Does that feel cruel and crazy making?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
What does that feel like when you accept-
Glennon Doyle:
Especially in a culture that tells us that every pain is for a reason, every bit it is making us stronger, it is showing us the light, we must believe that, is that’s
Kate Bowler:
Yes. Its something.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a balance sheet. You’re losing it over here but over here, you’re going to get this other things-
Kate Bowler:
Secret game.
Amanda Doyle:
… and get nets out.
Kate Bowler:
Yes. That’s why I do love it when you people rewrite cultural cliches like what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And people have given me ones like what doesn’t kill you will try again tomorrow. And that so much-
Glennon Doyle:
But also Kate, don’t you think it’s a way of keeping us in our place too? Because I’ll never forget just talking to a bunch of women who had survived sexual assault and almost all of them said, “But I’m stronger now, I’m stronger now.” Or a few people who were abused by their parents, but I’m stronger now. And I want to be like, but imagine how strong you’d be if you hadn’t been abused. What if-
Kate Bowler:
I think it is one of the hardest burdens that we put on survivors of anything is that we force them to say, and I’m glad that I learned or that I’ll never go back because or it made me who I am today. And I think all of those are sometimes, I mean, in there, and this is like the needle to thread, is like, there are hard glittering terrible truths, things we learn by going through genuinely awful things.
Kate Bowler:
And I want to celebrate each and every one of those bits of like incredibly hard one, bits of wisdom and simultaneously never ever, ever say that there is any math that is in any way going to compensate for what has been robbed from people.
Kate Bowler:
I didn’t know that until I was part of a clinical trial that I thought was for my betterment, I thought that I was getting the same treatment that somebody else would’ve gotten. I thought I was getting cutting edge because I was always a Lang, and I’m so lucky, everybody doctors, nurse, everybody I’m so lucky.
Kate Bowler:
And then in the end to find out that there was all kinds of protocols, chemo, things that brought my organs to near toxicity that were for the sake of the experiment and weren’t never for my betterment. And they never would have told me that if I hadn’t gone bananas, researching it to say, wait, are you saying that this was for you and not for me.
Kate Bowler:
And I want to be able to say something true about the fact that my life was saved, that one of those drugs was great for me that I’m so grateful, thank you so much for the resources I have, and in some very narrow way that I’m lucky, that I will never, ever accept when people say that aren’t I so glad that, well, didn’t it make it okay that. When I was used for purposes that were not my own, and can we just have a system where both things can be true at the same time?
Amanda Doyle:
So Kate, I have for very a long time had known that I live on this kind of horizon living world where I’m always looking beyond and always working for that but never, ever arriving, so not living. And I had never had the words for it until I read how you were talking about how your favorite topic is possible futures.
Kate Bowler:
Yay. Just totally.
Glennon Doyle:
Possible futures.
Kate Bowler:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And how you realized that when you really thought about it, it wasn’t the problem, wasn’t the not stopping to smell the roses, but you said, it’s this failing to love what is present and deciding to love what is possible instead.
Kate Bowler:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
Failing to love what is present and deciding to love what is possible instead. I’ve never heard anything that described my feeling before, and I love the way that you described it because it really does feel like love.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s confusing to have it because you’re tending to that thing, you’re nurturing it, you’re loving it into existence, you are loving. But you’re just loving the thing that is never the thing in front of you. And I just really want to honestly ask you, did you ever figure that out?
Kate Bowler:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
And also what’s the balance because-
Amanda Doyle:
How do you figure it out?
Glennon Doyle:
… for example, that study, if you had just loved what was present and not dug your heels in and tried to figure that out, you wouldn’t have saved yourself from that situ- right, so how do we know what-
Kate Bowler:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
… to let go of and what to not let go of four steps.
Kate Bowler:
Oh my gosh. That I… Yeah. And Amanda makes me want to ask you, when do you have that scrambly feeling you get where you’re just kind of like reaching, reaching, reaching?
Amanda Doyle:
I’m never, I’m always exci- I mean, Kate, we had someone come over into our house and was like, “If you buy this new boiler for your home, you’ll never have to get another boiler.”
Kate Bowler:
Amazing.
Amanda Doyle:
And I sat on the stairs and I wept because I was like, “No boilers come after this boiler.” It was like a… But I’m always for the next, it’s what’s the next? What will be our next thing? And I realize the next boiler, this is how I’m living my life, it is the next plan.
Glennon Doyle:
At least we now have our title, which is Bowler on boilers.
Amanda Doyle:
But that is what I feel like I’m doing and loving my bucket list, now by preparing a future for them-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
… I’m never with them in, I don’t know how to sit there and love what is, I don’t know how to love what is because I’m so busy creating what will be the thing that will be love next.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. Where it’s this weird, it’s this very strange thing we all have where we’re handed a whole pile of minutes and then there’s every now and then they transform into moments, and those moments are like stretchy, and taffy, and transcended, and gorgeous, and they’re always filled with, for me, someone doing something very dumb, always someone’s always yelling at 9:00.
Kate Bowler:
And someone is just, there’s like a heightened gorgeous moment. You feel like the whole world, you could just pause for a second just to watch you catch your breath, and like those. And then we’re stuck with minutes again or just garbage regular in traffic inbox minutes.
Kate Bowler:
And I think part of the difficult kind of frustrations we have every day is, well, we know that we can’t just turn all of our minutes into moments, that’s the version of be present, that I think is absolutely. And just another wildly inappropriate standard to set where you have to be the transcendent partner, and nature gazer, and et cetera. I’m like, it is not possible.
Glennon Doyle:
No. I don’t want to smell all roses.
Kate Bowler:
I can’t even be a perfect gazer.
Glennon Doyle:
So many roses.
Kate Bowler:
Nature gazer partner. God, no endless rapture is awe at life itself. I’m sorry, it won’t happen, no one can do it. I’m sure we’ve all met one person, we’re like, “Maybe you,” but not even them. I’m like, “It’s not possible.” And like… Because and then we get transactional. Okay. Well, what if I just add up all my minutes, then they’ll become moments.
Kate Bowler:
And that unfortunately is also not true because people are magic and moments are magic and then they come and then they go, and we don’t even always know when in a day, like don’t you feel it in a day where there’s like a minute, there’s just where everything is alive and bright. And then it’s-
Glennon Doyle:
Gone.
Kate Bowler:
… it’s just fireflies, just blinking on and off. And we want so much to control it and we want so much to predict it. And it sounds like Amanda would be nice if you could also just count it and line them up, then make sure there’s just always going to be more of them.
Kate Bowler:
Part of that was taken away because I had to stop using future tense for a couple years, I could never say we will. And that to me felt like I couldn’t speak a language that everybody spoke and that used to be my favorite, it was like my mother tongue. Was like, “Hey, maybe we could, what about in the summer, we would?”
Kate Bowler:
And I was like, could be drunk on it, just the tomorrows. God, I love tomorrow. And, but I knew I couldn’t just live in today because today sometimes it’s like super shit blood work, and estate planning or just like a PTA meeting, things I just truly hate. And so all of the conventional wisdom about how you can solve the problem of pain by being in the present, I think we just have to agree is just wonderful and completely a lie.
Kate Bowler:
It’s the mindfulness will not make us less human mindfulness will never make us less, I just always think of hunger, but less like we’re going to starve to death just with the sheer want of more. I think we will feel like that until we die. And I think it is okay because it means we are alive and that we know what love is, there is never enough.
Kate Bowler:
So yeah, I really hear what you’re saying about even down to the dumbest boiler, the idea that it is finite, breaks our hearts and that I think is just because all we want is more.
Glennon Doyle:
And so, because of all of that, our next strike thing is going to be from boiler Bowler herself. This, I think I’m going to get this right because I’ve read both of your books, many, many times over, but-
Kate Bowler:
Oh, love.
Glennon Doyle:
… there’s this scene when you’ve seen, not a scene it’s an actual situation. God, I’ll tell Abby, “Abby, baby remember the scene from the soccer game?” She’s like, “No, that was a real life.” Okay. You come out of surgery, you’re still a little bit high on your pain meds-
Kate Bowler:
Oh, God.
Amanda Doyle:
… bowler high on pain meds. You could read it just for that.
Glennon Doyle:
You say this, okay, you come out of surgery, you’re surrounded by the people you love the most, friends, family. And you basically, to me, what I read it as is that you basically offer everyone a benediction in that room, okay?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You tell them the truth of things because you have no more time for untruth, okay?
Kate Bowler:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And because you’re happy. So this is when… This benediction is from Kate Bowler, but it is for everyone listening, okay? Because the truth of what Kate is telling us today is all of our shared reality, which is that we don’t know how much time.
Glennon Doyle:
So here you go. I’m sitting with a beloved friend. Oh, my dear one it’s time, it’s time to go. You can leave your career. Yes, it’s still undone, the work here is still undone. But if you stay here, a bitterness is going to eat up everything I love about you.
Glennon Doyle:
If you don’t go, I will hate you forever. A colleague is sitting beside me and I am for a reason I can’t let every member telling him what to do. You can’t be happy unless you forgive them and set them aside, there is no way around it, buddy, you have to forgive.
Glennon Doyle:
I save my most horrible love for Chelsea, my rock, my friendship twin, the nurses are changing my bandages and I have my phone pressed hot against my ear. Chelsea and I are trying to talk but there is too much to say. I think I’m running out of time, honey, I say, finally. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but here’s what I worry about, what if you are too?
Glennon Doyle:
She knows what I’m saying, she’s working harder than anyone I have ever known but her selflessness has caused her to surrender too much of herself to someday. And now someday has come at least for me. I have to go I say, finally, I’ve got to adjust my meds, but we just sit there clinging to goodbye before I say it last, go live your life Chells.
Glennon Doyle:
All these words I am tripping over are benedictions, live unburdened, live free, live without forevers that don’t always come. These are my best hopes for you that you press forward at last. Kate fucking Bowler.
Kate Bowler:
Oh, my gosh. I’m so bossy when I’m dying. Perfectly existed.
Glennon Doyle:
You are an honest dream come true on this earth of ours. We adore you-
Kate Bowler:
Oh, my gosh.
Glennon Doyle:
… pod squad.
Kate Bowler:
I love you guys. I love you.
Glennon Doyle:
When life gets hard, don’t forget, you can do a few hard things.
Kate Bowler:
Yes, that’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Not all of them.
Kate Bowler:
Yeah. Not many.
Glennon Doyle:
Not many, to tell you the damn truth.
Kate Bowler:
Not that many.
Glennon Doyle:
Maybe one or zero, honestly. We love you Kate, and don’t worry, we’re coming back with Kate on Thursday, we’re not letting her go.
Kate Bowler:
Oh, I love you. Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
I give you Tish Melton and Brandi Carlile.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts, especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. Nice time.