EVERYTHING HAPPENS.
Hard Truths. Soft Hearts.
Joyful, Anyway
You Can’t always be happy, but you can be joyful, anyway.
Bestselling author and Duke University professor Kate Bowler reveals the surprising magic of joy—and how we can access it even when happiness feels out of reach.
This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more—feel more—by making room for small extraordinary moments. For anyone who has ever felt stuck, who is achy for meaning, who feels undone by loss, who feels that joy is just out of reach, who wants, simply, to have more fun, Joyful Anyway is a delicious, insightful tour through the questions that sit in the deepest part of our souls. It proves that for every time we ask: Is this it? Joy will answer: there is more.
Hi, I’m Kate. Let’s untangle our culture’s obsession with toxic positivity and self help, shall we?
I am a Duke professor, podcaster, and author with a single mission: giving you permission to feel human. (And letting you have whatever weird or boring hobbies you can’t explain to strangers. Do I love roadside attractions and exotic potato chip flavors? Yes. More than I should say.)
I believe that the world would be a gentler place if we took apart the well-meaning clichés we use when life is hard. (What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Maybe what doesn’t kill you might try again tomorrow. 🙂 )
I am determined to create a gentler world for everyone who wants to admit that they are not always “living their best life.” After years of being told I was incurable, I was declared cancer-free. But there’s no going back. I am forever changed by what I discovered: life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.
LENT 2025
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Life is this strange, tender mix, isn’t it? Joy and sorrow, love and loss, heartbreak and hope, all tangled together.
This year, embrace Lent as it is—raw, honest, and tender. Let these 40 days be a time to pause, reflect, and find the courage to stay with the hard part, trusting that the good part is still coming
Are you living your best life now? Not always? Well, this is a podcast for you.
Kate Bowler is a historian and 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.
You can’t always be happy,
but you can be joyful, anyway.
Events
A Trusted Voice on Joy in Hard Times
Kate Bowler speaks from the conviction that honesty is more sustaining than optimism. Her talks draw from scholarship, faith, and lived experience to name what many people already know but rarely hear said out loud: you can’t always be happy, but you can be joyful, anyway.
EVERYTHING
HAPPENS
