I’m Kate. I’m a professor, speaker, podcast host, and New York Times bestselling author.

Which makes it sound like I believe in living your “best life.”

(Don’t worry—I don’t.)

My motto is: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard. So, if you have ever ruined some perfectly good small talk at a party with your honesty, we’re already friends.

Kate Bowler, Ph.D. is a 4x New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and professor at Duke University.

She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She wrote the first and only history of the American prosperity gospel—the belief that God wants to give you health, wealth, and happiness—before being unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. While she was in treatment and not expected to survive, she wrote two New York Times bestselling memoirs, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). After years of being told she was incurable, she was declared cancer-free. But she was forever changed by what she discovered: life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.

Kate is determined to create a gentler world for everyone who wants to admit that they are not “living their best life.” She hosts the Everything Happens podcast where, in warm, insightful, often funny conversations, she talks with people like Malcolm Gladwell, Tig Notaro, and Archbishop Justin Welby about what they’ve learned in difficult times. Author of seven books including Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, and her latest, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, she lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.

Everything Happens for a Reason

(And Other Lies I’ve Loved)

Irreverent, hard-won observations on mortality and the ways it has taught Kate to live.

The Lives We Actually Have

100 Blessings for Our Imperfect Days

Warm and witty blessings found within the struggles of our shared humanity.

No Cure for Being Human

(And Other Truths I Need to Hear) 

How do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose?

Have a Beautiful Terrible Day

Daily Meditations For The Ups, Downs & In-Betweens

Witty, honest, and wise spiritual reflections that invite readers to embrace the bad, not just the good

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. 

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Want to start living your Okayest Life Now? Look no further.

Kate loves to challenge the clichés we use to think about success and failure. She celebrates the necessity for courage, honesty, and the embarrassing amount that we rely on each other. (Sorry, individualism.) Join her at an event near you.

Give up on good, better, best.
Ground yourself in what’s still true.

Everyone loves free stuff. (Especially if it helps?!)

These free resources are designed with you in mind. Encouragement. Meditations. Conversation starters. Pick what fits whatever day you’re having. 

As leaders of faith you are often called to enter into the holy space of lives coming undone, such as the waiting room, the hospital room, or even the dreaded family rooms. You are so brave to enter into these spaces, realizing you may be the only person who enters into this room who has no agenda, no answers to give, no blood to take, no updates to share. You are the courageous one entering into the chaos bringing only love and compassion. This is the work of a Chaplain.
Maybe you are in the first days of starting to name and understand all the complexities of family relationships that have long been a part of your world. Or maybe you are starting to sense the beginnings of healing.
We don’t pretend we can solve the problem of grief, but hope this curated care package will offer some comfort, support, and encouragement as you mourn, and, in the meantime, sending you so much love.