Kate Bowler: I’m Kate Bowler and this is Everything Happens. We try to drink the right amount of water. We make the fun plan. Maybe accidentally order a kayak at two in the morning and briefly imagine that we could become the person who kayaks, except that we don’t own the vehicle that can hold said kayak. Okay, so maybe happiness can be a little bit demanding, which just makes sense because the word itself comes from “Hap” meaning luck, chance, or fate. So, hap, as in happenstance, so happiness is circumstantial. It just requires enough things to go your way at the same time. But by the time we reach a certain age, most of us have accumulated enough evidence to know that life rarely cooperates. There are things that worked out, yes, and then there is a long list of disappointments. People we miss. The versions of our lives that we thought we would be living by now and the chronic issues that we just keep dealing with. So maybe joy is something slightly different, a little more durable perhaps. Maybe it can interrupt us. Maybe it could surprise us regardless of like whatever else is happening. My guest today is Jennifer Garner. Okay, you might know her as the award-winning actress and producer and perhaps someone who is… Unusually willing to dance in whatever circumstances she happens to be in. And today we’re gonna talk about happiness and joy and that particular ache in middle age and the friends who become witnesses to our lives. We will talk about all of the things. You will absolutely love her. Jen, my friend. Thanks for doing this! I know you’re in the middle of like busy, busy, busy, so the fact that you’re making the time in a lightly comatose season of life is incredible.
Jennifer Garner: You know, it’s like we all have to catch up with our girlfriends however we can. So, so this counts. We can just all do it together.
Kate Bowler: I think happiness is so wonderful and sometimes possibly overrated if we can’t always organize our life. I was trying to figure out the last time I was trying so desperately to be, like to organize everything in my life to be happy, and I realized probably the best way to do it is just check my Amazon cart. What is the, Jen, what’s the last thing that you bought that you immediately regretted? Cause it was never gonna help.
Jennifer Garner: You know, anything I buy online, I don’t, I’m not an online shopper for clothes. And it’s, I can see why. Because anytime I do, it is to fill a hole. It is like during a zoom meeting that I think is never going to end, so I have to put things in carts. And so I’m putting things in carts and then I accidentally, you know, check out on something, that is really when the problems start because inevitably it does not fit. It doesn’t. It’s, it’s only a hassle because it has to, I have to figure out how I’m getting it back and I’ve lost the tag and um, yes, but I think there’s a pair of jean shorts in my closet that I thought, oh, I’ll take these on location with me. I just got back from Dominican Republic and I thought that seems like a thing, but I don’t actually wear jean shorts. It didn’t work. And now I still, two weeks later, they’re still waiting for me to deal.
Kate Bowler: My friend the other day realized that she was really working hard on being a different person, that she hadn’t totally put together, when a full-size kayak appeared on her doorstep. And she was like, did I order this? And it turns out her ambient prescription had been renewed. And she’s just somewhere around 2 a.m., she was like I could be a kayak person. Am I in real lake? I am not.
Jennifer Garner: Wow, that’s impressive. That’s really good. One time I was sitting in here and makeup missing my kids. I must’ve been away for, I just was, this was, they were little and I ordered a playhouse online and I thought it was just a play house and it showed up and it needed like a foundation. And I was like, oh gosh, what do I do? Like, okay, that’s what happens. But yes.
Kate Bowler: That’s really funny. That’s a really funny…
Jennifer Garner: I have a question. Do you think, you know, I grew up Methodist, do you think that Mennonites and Methodists, like, do you think how you grew up, whatever sect, I don’t know, whatever your religious upbringing is, does it bend you toward happiness?
Kate Bowler: Yeah, that’s such a good question.
Jennifer Garner: Does it bend, like does it make you more available to joy, less available to joy, is there, are there some that are more just like, rah rah, let’s go. What do you think? You’re the professor.
Kate Bowler: That’s such a fun question. Because I do think that if there’s an expectation, like some religious groups really do expect that life will feel like progress and it will add up. But unfortunately, Mennonites were a tradition that grew out of enormous persecution. So they actually have huge coffee table books with horrible names called the martyr’s mirror. So you can learn about how people died badly in the 1600s if you want. So I noticed that my poor sweet Mennonite relatives, they really, they have a hard time with like Christmas, with like gifts, with like feeling like things are allowed to be nice. Like my sweet father-in-law, he, his whole dream, his whole life, was to have this big gleaming gold wing motorcycle. And then for his 50th wedding anniversary, his wife and family bought it for him. And then the look, the look on his face, they were like, surprise. He just looked concerned and then stressed. And then they realized he wasn’t, he was not ready for joy. So they had to find a chair cause he was gonna, he was going to pass out.
Jennifer Garner: Oh boy.
Kate Bowler: So I do think some traditions don’t expect to be happy, which is a bit of a bummer, but some traditions are amazing at it. Like Pentecostals are very good at, they’re, they’re ready for joy, pretty much at all times. Methodists are like in the middle because they believe in methods, spiritual methods, so they kind of want to like climb the ladder slowly and they feel like they’ll get there. So they’ve always a little bit liked. It’s also just, I guess, because it’s kind of an interesting definitional thing. If happiness is a sense of ease, it’s what it feels like when life is going well, it’s like climbing a ladder, but then joy is this big, bright temporary enlivening thing, which doesn’t always feel like math. It might come in a minute and then be gone the next. I guess it really comes down to what kind of expectations are we given when our family, our whole upbringing, looks into our eyes and is like, this is what you’re going to get, sweetie. This is what your life is going to be like. Made me want to think first about like seasons in which we were at our happiest. So maybe want to ask you, what are like some moments in which you’re like, oh my gosh, this is it?
Jennifer Garner: Oh, gosh. I mean, I feel like I am, my clock is set that way, for the most part. So I wake up and I see the sun shining most days, which I think is such a lucky, it’s just a gift. It is truly a gift to feel that way. I do not take that for granted. I’m pretty happy right now.
Kate Bowler: That’s nice.
Jennifer Garner: Yeah. My kids are really fun. I love teenagers. I think part of it is I’m surprised because I love babies and little kids so much that I was like, teenagers, oh no, I don’t think that’s going to be. But I really love teenagers, I love their friends, I love them, I just love getting to be with them and listen to them chat. And yeah, and they’re growing up has allowed me more freedom to work a little bit more, which I feel very, very happy in that capacity.
Kate Bowler: Awe, that’s so nice. So beautiful when things, you just feel like you’re in this…I don’t know like there’s…oh, I read a lovely poem about happiness the other day. I thought it was perfect. It said what does happiness need? Nothing. Meaning like it’s already giving you everything you wanted and I thought that was, it’s like a little blessing on our accomplishments or things coming together. Or maybe what it feels like when you’re ambitious and you get to feel how it pays off and isn’t that so special. I loved all the, I saw a video of you on set and just the amount of you dancing is just hysterical.
Jennifer Garner: I mean, dance is so primal. It just, it doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t to be trained. I mean even better not, it’s just moving to music. You see little kids do it standing in their diaper, you know, where their diapers is like chook, chook, chook. It’s a kind of a shortcut. Putting music on in the morning is a shortcut to a little burst of joy.
Kate Bowler: That’s so good.
Jennifer Garner: What do you think? What are your, where are your happy spots?
Kate Bowler: I guess I felt…Cause for happiness, it usually has to add up. Like you can’t, you know, it has to feel like things are kind of slowly building up into like this overflow feeling. And I really felt it in the fall. I just had this one little stretch where I got to do things I honestly never thought I’d ever get to do. I went to Pakistan with some friends, just traveling. I never thought I would see it. It’s such a spectacular, like, it’s such a gorgeous country. But we went on this insanely dangerous–and I’m so scared of heights–like this insanely danger is, it looks like a little lawnmower is attached to like a paragliding chute thingy. And we were like soaring through the sky and I like, tears threw down my face, I was like, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lucky. Like, just lucky. And I know that when I was diagnosed with cancer, one of my first thoughts was like, I’ll never get to see like the pyramids or, you know, so just to see these mountains and I really felt like I was finally a lucky person.
Jennifer Garner: Mm-hmm. Don’t you think that um travel is another just just getting out of your your zone and being somewhere being somewhere else looking at the world with fresh eyes seeing…it’s like like everything Artemis made me, brought me joy, and they’re kind of they’re how emotional they all were about holding everything at once. How small we are, how vast we are, how we’re just a moment in time, and the preciousness of our connection because of that.
Kate Bowler: That’s so true. And I think that’s kind of the, I think, that’s why happiness and joy are cousins, because joy will, particularly, like happiness will feel really relaxing. Joy will give you that weird feeling of scale. Like everything matters and nothing matters. I’m here, and like the astronauts felt, or like when you feel like at one with everything, even though, you don’t have a plan for how you’re gonna fix your life. Like, it’s this temporary, gorgeous, like aliveness, which is so precious. And what’s amazing, I think about it, is you can have it where you can’t be happy and sad at the same time, that you could be joyful and sad, which is I think just like a super neat trick. It’s just a weird, weird magic.
Jennifer Garner: The glitch in the system.
Kate Bowler: I totally agree…I think by like our 40s and 50s, and I’m curious what you think, whether we get to a stage where we realize how many things have happened to us, like we carry our successes, but also disappointments and mistakes. And I think for some people, it just sort of sneaks up on us. And one day we’re like, oh, wait, where did this like achy feeling come from? Where is this? Is there something wrong with me? I think having more, I know one thing that was really nice for me about working on this Joy Project was just getting the sense that like, there isn’t something specifically wrong with me, though I’m not saying that there isn’t, but there might be something that we all feel that feels like this bittersweet longing. And that ache, like will I ever have everything that I hoped for, will I feel valued, will I ever feel connected? Is this it for me? I just wonder if maybe middle age is like the first time, women in particular, need permission to say that, despite moments of joy and despite the hope for happiness, that we do sometimes find at this point, we’ve got a couple missing pieces.
Jennifer Garner: I do think it’s important, it’s important, right, to acknowledge and to give your friends room for it and your kids for it, and there is something about like the push-pull of, oh, this didn’t go like I thought it was going to go. I didn’t plan to be in this place at this age. I didn’t think this would happen, or I had this loss or I had this hell, this one, like that tension, there’s such beauty in the acknowledgement.
Kate Bowler: I totally agree. And being that person for our friends, especially when we know, I mean, the people we love, we like, know they deserve, even though we find it hard to say about ourselves, like, you can look in the face of your friend and be like, oh, I know you deserve better than you got.
Jennifer Garner: Mm-hmm. But also just the friendships that you have where you can launch into wherever you are in your ache without having to give context or history or an update because you’re just already in it. Even if you haven’t spoken, you can just launch right in and your friend who’s been holding it with you all this time will…is ready.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, that’s right. I think we should rename friends, just witnesses, like they were the ones who were like, I was there. I totally know this did happen. It’s so true.
Jennifer Garner: I mean, you have that. You have such a, I love, you know, I don’t know your best friend and I’m kind of mad about it and I kind of guess I have to come to North Carolina and go for a walk, although I’m nervous about the snakes. But you and your best friend are that for each other in spades, it seems like.
Kate Bowler: I’m always kind of wowed by the power of female friendship, and I know that my best friend’s memory, like someone to keep your past for you and then give it back to you, the moment in which you would have forgotten.
Jennifer Garner: Yeah, and you need that perspective. And you need a reminder of your own strength, or your own capacity, or resilience, whatever it is. Or just to remain a little bit mad.
Kate Bowler: Yeah. Exactly. Didn’t your mom say exactly that way before? Or didn’t your brother? I mean it just clicks in a way of believing yourself that I think I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Jennifer Garner: Can we talk about the snake bite for a second? You know, during COVID, a really good friend of mine in West Virginia, Corey Palumbo, if anyone’s wondering, was on a walk in, I think, Coonskin Park in my hometown, and he was on walk with several people, and like somebody stepped on a rock, and when he stepped on the rock after them going, he got bit by a copperhead. And, the fact that you kept walking and were just like, what is…do you guys know the story? Okay, I’m gonna tell you the story. Kate and bestie are on a walk together and they’re walking, walking and they are chatting, chatting. And she, Kate, felt like something nipped her on the ankle like a mosquito, you said, or like a bee. It wasn’t like, ahhh!, you know, the way you think of Viper getting you. And then as you walked, that poison started to get into your system and you started feeling it more and more.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, that’s right. It feels like labor contractions is what it feels like because it moves in a circle where you’re just like, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. It’s like weird. Yeah, so then I was hopping, instead of walking, for a while.
Jennifer Garner: That’s right. Yeah, and then and then you look down and saw two little fang marks?
Kate Bowler: I took a magnifying mirror and realized it was two puncture wounds, but then I still tried to play it cool. I went to the local walk-in doctor and was like, let’s just see how this plays out.
Jennifer Garner: And they were just like, get out of here, straight to the hospital?
Kate Bowler: They were like screaming and then yelling, I mean, get out, get outta here, you’re crazy. And I think because they just saw that I’d casually put it on a piece of paper and been like, you know, just poisonous copperhead. So, but, and the truth is I was just, I think in my heart I knew I just didn’t wanna, I didn’t want to go back to the place where every bad thing had happened. I didn’t want to be in the ER and I didn’t want to have to hear the same everything. So I yeah, but yeah, it turns out there were amazing advantages to being poisoned. You can breeze right through the metal detector. When you are asked to fill out paperwork, you can be like, I’ve been poisoned, thanks, thanks. So yeah. And then that was like a two, it was a two day process of envenomation in which I just lived in the hospital and I honestly, it was like immersive therapy. I used my 48 hours to air every grievance I’d ever had about the medical system. And it turns out to have been a like shockingly healing experience for me.
Jennifer Garner: I get that. And what it also did, is it kind of catapulted you forward into, I’m going to consume life right here right now. And I’m like, talk about putting yourself in the way of joy. You went hurdling off mountains looking for it. Just because that is one of the things that you believe, right? That I think is something so important for all of us to hold onto that you have to put yourself in the way like, directly. You’re on the train tracks with joy coming at you. You don’t have a lot of shot of missing it, right? And one of the things that you did for that, to go hurtling off a mountain with a, what’s it called? When you have wings, but you’re a human.
Kate Bowler: Basically that. Paragliding.
Jennifer Garner: That. Yeah, paragliding. Exactly. Yeah.
Kate Bowler: Human bat. And I was so scared of heights. But it was because I remember that when I was very first diagnosed, I had a couple trips still on the books that I was I felt like I had to kind of go through my obligations. And I remember being there at the base of a mountain and looking up and seeing someone sailing above and being like, I guess I’ll never get to do that. And so I thought, well, why not, even though I’m terrified, like… I just noticed that fear, especially, just fear has a way of making your life very small. And I remember I remember for a while I was kind of scared of everything. I remember I was scared of like bumping into people with shopping carts or just like in a strange way I was so physically scared that I, sure my life shrunk so much. So even though it was all the things I’m the most scared of doing, I just didn’t wanted to figure it like can I have a different relationship with fear? Because if I can, then maybe I won’t get so stuck in the way I thought things were going to go and maybe it’ll like clear out a little space to be surprised. And also, I think I was tired of being so bitter. I was really, and frankly, I deserved it. I deserved to be that bitter. They did turn me away from the ER with Pepto-Bismol. I did see that doctor again, like come on, man. I’m entitled to my grievances. And there’s kind of only so long you can have those rocks in your backpack and still feel like you’ve got enough energy to do other things. And so, I think I just felt ready.
Jennifer Garner: Yeah. Yeah. You just feel ready.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, I did. I don’t think what I did made a lot of sense in retrospect. Like I signed up to work at a shark lab. I was like reeling lemon sharks out of the ocean. My like $15 sunglasses fell off into the ocean and I could feel myself reaching for it, even though there’s like the face of an ocean dinosaur effectively right under there. I was, like, Kate, maybe you don’t need those sunglasses anymore. Maybe you can let go of that and just let, let that go. But I was briefly fearless. Briefly. And then now I’m full of fear again. It’s great.
Jennifer Garner: Great.
Kate Bowler: It’s wonderful. I love it.
Jennifer Garner: All of those experiences live inside of you, and maybe they nudge some of the old stuff out of the way, and take over?
Kate Bowler: Oh, well, I also made a rule that, and it’s of course impossible to ever have rules for anyone else, but a rule for myself is because I do have a real list of actual grievances. And I think that I know that as a woman, I wouldn’t have felt empowered to write it down unless my friends were like, no, this all really happened. But I try to keep them only five years old. Like if there’s something that I’m really holding onto from 10 years ago, I try to, honestly, and I do this with my friends, my best friend, we’re going to see each other in July. And we really noticed there was a couple sad stories that were really kind of starting to be one of those things where like, well, of course that would happen, or must be nice about other people. So we just make up these little rituals to be like, okay, can we like, you know, just like try to clear a little space and let go of things that are…so yeah, I like to keep my grievances fresh. They’re all five.
Jennifer Garner: Ritual is so important. Don’t you, like, whatever your ritual is, whatever you and your friends have come up with, which if it’s on New Year’s Eve, writing down the things you want to let go of and putting them in the fire and what you want bring to you and all of that. You know, I’m all for it. I remember when I was little, a sermon that I’m sure I was doodling on the program and not paying attention, except my sisters and I all remember this. But it was just imagine something, some way that someone has grieved you and walk to the river and put it in the river and watch it float away. It’s like a story of forgiveness. And so my whole family has had since then, like, can you put that in the river? Can you know, can this go in the the river? And then some things that I get to the edge of the river, and I’m like, well, I’m turning around. It’s not yet. Still holding onto that for a minute. But I do think like, what is your ritual of letting go? And how? Because it’s so helpful.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, that’s so good. And I did have friends write in the other day about what they did after their dad died. They were so sad that their community didn’t rally around them. So they got together around a fire and all read the worst cards they’d received about themselves, said the worst thing. And they read it out loud and they like cried hysterically and then like threw it in the fire. I think that’s so funny. It’s so good. But sometimes people almost hold, like I have a friend with significant memory issues, and she won’t go back to the person she was. So she asked her friends to kind of hold, in a way, a funeral for the person that she was and help her then create more language for the person she might be. And she just felt like other people needed to be there so that she wouldn’t feel like there was someone she was supposed to get back to.
Jennifer Garner: Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Kate Bowler: I thought that was lovely.
Jennifer Garner: Mm-hmm. To let go of the shame of that, or referring on other people’s expectations.
Kate Bowler: There’s also this lovely, John Swinton, I’ve learned so much from, he’s a theologian and a mental health nurse. He’s worked in mental health facilities for most of his career. And he says that one of the most, it really changed his theology because it helped him realize that like, sometimes we’re so desperate to hold on to the person we wish we were or we can’t get back to, that maybe instead of just picturing God as heaven and some kind of perfect future…but God is the one who holds all of our story. Our past, our present, our future. And especially people with memory loss, that even if we feel like we’re losing parts of ourselves, that those parts are never lost, that they are in fact entirely held. And I love feeling like our friends hold that part of us, but I really love believing that God holds each part of our deepest heart, so we don’t have to feel quite so scared.
Jennifer Garner: And unknown and unknowable.
Kate Bowler: Yes, that’s right. That’s right. That’s so good.
Jennifer Garner: That’s really good. Way to go, theologian friend.
Kate Bowler: I know, but with a great Scottish accent, John Swinton. Oh, that’s real.
Jennifer Garner: Oh that’s better and better. What has this year been? I mean, like, I think of you on this tour and all that you’re doing to share this beautiful book with us. And I think kind of the never-ending-ness. I’ve never done a book tour, but it seems pretty intense. I mean I’ve done a lot of press tours and they’re insane, and I think book tours are up a level from that. Where has joy met you unexpectedly on this journey?
Kate Bowler: What a lovely question. I think two things immediately come to mind. When I’m, I think I met 7,000 people over the last, you know, 35 days, and, or at least looked into their gorgeous faces and they are exactly who you hope is out there. This community is like kind. They are often in an emotionally expensive life where they care so much about other people. They’re like deeply empathetic. They’re really smart. Like this isn’t, they’re just really smart and funny. And I just think that combination, like you read the headlines and life feels very depressing, and then you meet 7,000 of the same person and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is like, the world is full, like full again. So that was like, I mean, I had, for instance, I was leaving an event. Friends from college had driven out. So I got to basically have a small episode of this is your life. And a person screeched to a halt, rolled down the window and was like, and said something like joy attack or like joy surprise. And then gave me like, uh, it was obviously a thoughtful card that they’d prepared, attached to enormous goggle glasses, and was like: thank you so much, I love you, bye! And it just said, thank you for making joy intellectually credible. That made me laugh. They’re perfect. That was lovely. Yeah. And I think the other thing that like genuinely made me laugh–and I’d love to hear your like last moment of recent joy–I’m part of an improv group, which I know is everybody’s like worst nightmare to hear the words “I’m part of an improv group.” But they’re so fun and they all flew out to London for this last week and then like forced all of my other friends to do improv games and like watching everybody be like suckered into like, just laughing hysterically with people they just met. I honestly, like, I don’t think anything is that beautiful.
Jennifer Garner: I don’t think it is. Yeah. Wow, I love those stories so much.
Kate Bowler: It was good, it was good. When was your last, like, couldn’t, like weird, surprise joy, I guess? That’s what she yelled, she yelled surprise joy.
Jennifer Garner: I think a good laugh is as joyful, like that to me, that’s as good as it gets. And you have to feel pretty known and feel pretty comfortable to let yourself, you just will, you’ll restrain yourself otherwise, you know. And I was on set over the last couple of weeks and I’ve had two moments with John Sena, who is my scene partner. And he was so funny. He was so fun that I had to say, I can’t look at you doing this, like I will not. And they just started cutting together reels of me not being able to get through the scene. But the joy of that, like where you see the camera operator like wiping away tears, cause he’s trying to keep it together, watching us not be able to keep them together. And we all have talked about that moment so much because it was like, so, oh, it’s just so healing. It was so, yeah, it was so fun. But I have noticed the same thing, and I’m sure, I mean I’m everyone here has, but I travel a ton, you know, for Save the Children, all around rural America, and I love it so much. But what I’m always amazed by is, it doesn’t matter what sign you have posted before an election in your front yard, when people are chatting to people, it’s all the sameness; it so outweighs anything else. And it’s just like, oh my gosh, can we just remember this and just put headlines, all the headlines away and just see each other and connect and talk about our kids and talk? You know what I mean? It’s such a comfort to me that this is who we are. This is who are as a country. This is what we’re made of. People who would give anything to help their neighbor or a stranger off the street or, you know, yeah. And there’s another Save the Children thing that when, you know, I’ve gone to a lot of disaster relief or humanitarian places, whatever, and kids, when they’ve lost their home, they’ve lost everything. They’ve been through a terrifying traumatic event like a flood or say something like that, a hurricane. When they feel safe, they play. And it’s so amazing that kids need so little to feel safe and to play. And to feel like, and when kids play, parents fall asleep. The amount of times I’ve seen a parent sitting next to a Save the Children’s safe play space and the parents like, boom, and they’re just, just have no, they have no ability. And it’s like, is that happiness? You tell me.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, well, I just like, it goes to that, well I mean, it sounds, and kids are amazing at joy, but that does sound like they can recover that base level of like contentedness and then their personalities come awake. That’s so beautiful. I think watching children’s natural capacity…I read about this lovely sumac kid book the other day, and she said it’s almost like their attention, if our attention for joy is almost like a flashlight, we kind of notice specific things, it’s like theirs is like a lantern. And it sort of like, I’m just thinking of my son, like every tiny little bottle cap, and he’s like, “Dr. Pepper, the best drink of the day!” Like just like every, tiny thing. And I love the idea that joy, If we allow the granularity of that gratitude to settle, that it could be like a lantern.
Jennifer Garner: Can I ask you something about your son?
Kate Bowler: Oh, yeah.
Jennifer Garner: Yeah, your funny, adorable son. What has surprised you in his adolescence and early teenhood? Like, about his joy or where you find it in him? Or how does he feel about, you know, like you start to have to come to grips with who you are in the world, and much less if you’re a public figure. But it’s all the same for all of us. It’s just maybe on a larger scale, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s still, you’re still people, right? So it’s like, what do my kids think of my job? What does your son think of yours? And where are you seeing, like, where do you, like, you don’t want to show him, but you’re like, oh my gosh, I have joy watching that.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, and I think the question I had, because he’s 12, was can I allow him a little bit more of a window into really like the range of, you know, part of it is just like, can I let him see a little more of me? Is he ready? Is that the right time? And also just kind of like, or can we have a little bit more as moms, like can they ride the rollercoaster of just how big, how wonderful things have been and how difficult things have been, can I open that up a little bit? And so he’s never, you know, seen my stuff or, you know, I just never wanted him to look back and think that anything about his childhood was sad. Because the truth is, like, he really was, like has been like the heartbeat of my actual joy. Like, at every part of it, it was like, I wanted him to know that was a hundred percent. Whenever he was there, it was a hundred percent good. And anyway, so he saw, I let him come to two of my shows and he went with my best friend. And I asked how it went after, cause I was a little worried. And he said, he apparently he laughed really hard at the jokes, which I was very gratified by. And then after, at bedtime, I was like, “hey, was that okay? I don’t ever want you to have to hear things that make you feel sad.” And he put his little hand on my arm and he goes, “oh mom. I cried my tears for you.” And like, I actually thought that was like the kindest thing anyone has like…he was just like, I could feel he was like, “I’ll hold this part.” And he was so, you know, and then like made dumb jokes after and it was bedtime. But like, I really thought it was like the most amazing thing to get to graduate in our relationship into feeling like, like we were both, like our love could hold even a little bit more. Anyway those are my secret feelings about that. It was really special to me.
Jennifer Garner: You’re welcome for taking you there, but I do, it is part of the ache.
Kate Bowler: Yes, that’s right. Instead of just, I wanna make you happy. I think I was like, can you see my joy still though? And I think maybe just trusting like our kids can see, they can see like there’s like a bottom to all this, yes, but like we are all holding each other up, you know?
Jennifer Garner: Also, they know.
Kate Bowler: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jennifer Garner: You know, even if they weren’t aware and they were playing, it’s like, oh, okay, that helps. That makes more sense of something I felt intuitively. It’s respectful. He’s ready. You know. It seems like…I mean, you know your kid.
Kate Bowler: They are, it’s so lovely. I did wonder, my love, do you think we could do a couple audience questions?
Jennifer Garner: Oh yeah, yeah.
Kate Bowler: This one’s from Leslie. Do you ever feel joy even when you’re not at home where you grew up? She’s like, oh, this is nice. I’m from Manitoba, thank you. And I travel and enjoy it, but I always feel complete joy when I’m rooted in home. That’s interesting, like where, cause sometimes for people, I think home drums up a lot of complex. But it’s kind of lovely that it makes her feel so alive. How do you balance that, like home and away aliveness?
Jennifer Garner: Well, there are two homes. Home is West Virginia. And as soon as I see the trees and the mountains, it’s like, it’s more like I just take a different kind of deep breath.
Kate Bowler: Yeah.
Jennifer Garner: That, maybe, because the trees are giving us so much oxygen, but it’s just like, oh, my eyes rest. And I’m so grateful for the green or whatever. And then of course, home is LA, which is something about the fires. And my house is fine. I don’t, I lived in the Palisades for a long time, but I live nearby, but not there. But that was very much my community. But I think all of LA, we all felt it. And something about the fires made me realize, “oh, this is my home. This is my own home too.” You know, I think part of me has always felt like I lived in New York before coming to LA and I’ve always felt, like, well, I’m here, but I’m gonna go back. But it’s like, no, I’ve raised my kids here. This is where my people are. This is where I go to the grocery store and see teachers that I love or friends that I’ve, you know, neighbors or whatever. So this is home as much as anything, so that’s been, that’s nice to just claim it with myself.
Kate Bowler: Yeah. Home is a good place that claims you. And sometimes we only know that when we feel like the loss of it or the fear of it, or wow. That sounds, that really makes a lot of sense to me. Okay, from Audrey. How can a person stay joyful in the face of fear and despair and disillusionment about the state of our country, coupled with disappointment that at 51, I’ve not become the person I thought I would be when I was in my 20s? That sounds very relatable.
Jennifer Garner: Yeah.
Kate Bowler: Especially when people, I think, the story, particularly for Americans, has been a progress narrative. We will do things because we were given things by our parents and we will make them better for our kids. I think right now there’s a real question, with the environment, and AI, and headlines that everyone is scared that the sense of progress is evaporating. I think probably you by middle age were just like, we feel like if we didn’t climb that ladder feeling, like I didn’t mean to get here, that’s, I think losing a feeling of progress can feel very scary.
Jennifer Garner: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Well, also not being what you expected, not being married for 50 years with two-point-whatever kids with, you know, a picket fence and a second degree. Whatever that is or feeling like, oh, I wronged someone and now I have to live with that. And what does that make me? And does that, who am I if I had a lapse in judgment or whatever? All of those things are really hard. And where do you, where do you, Dr. Joy, where do find joy in the middle of those moments?
Kate Bowler: Well, I guess I just really relate to the desire to have it feel like it’s adding up. I really relate to that and I think there needs to be a bit of a grieving of that, of the loss of that feeling, but just because it won’t feel like progress. I just also think there’s the gift of joy is that it doesn’t need things to be better for it to find you and for you to feel like, not just alive, but to feel the goodness of your life. Like I really think that we can expect, even if we’re disappointed about how things are going and how things might go, I think we can expect these soul-filling moments of yes. In which we feel worthy of beauty and gratitude and delight, and that that more will still come our way. I think that it just makes us scared when we, that, I mean, this is also, I guess, a question about despair. Will despair be the loudest voice? And I think what’s so beautiful about joy is it really can shout down despair and say like, there is beauty for you here. It is so good for you to be. And then, and to be like, okay, and now I’m gonna stand. I’m going to try to let that light find me, even if I’m not exactly where I expected to be standing. What’s your most, what’s your like go-to dance song if you need the shortcut?
Jennifer Garner: Over time, I’ve been building my castle of love…just for two, though you never knew you were my reason…That one.
Kate Bowler: How do I not know that song?
Jennifer Garner: Stevie Wonder. It’s because I can’t sing it well. You know what I mean. You guys know what I’m talking about.
Kate Bowler: That’s so much better than my song. I really like that. No, mine’s inappropriate. And I wake up to it every day. It’s the Cypress Hill song. And it’s just like, it’s when the bleep goes down. And it was like, when the bleep goes down, you better be ready. I wake up laughing at that song every time, like it’s so true. Just, she calls to the darkness. It’s so true, so I dance it out.
Jennifer Garner: Alright, now we know what we’re waking up to tomorrow.
Kate Bowler: It’s called When the Bleep Goes Down by Cypress Hill. I do not recommend it to church folks, even though I am one, it really makes me laugh…One more question maybe. Let’s do, oh I kind of like this one. This is just about like when we’re talking about the progress narrative and feeling, particularly for women, getting older that their lives are beautiful and worthy. This is from Penelope. How do we keep the myth of invisibility at bay, like that older women are less, you know, just less fruitful and like, just like alive, capable of every beautiful thing. How do you feel good about aging and celebrating older women?
Jennifer Garner: Hmm. I mean, I think anytime you want to feel good…it’s about going and sitting with someone else. It’s about making a meal for your neighbor. It’s about showing up in some way. That’s kind of the most selfish shortcut to feeling good.
Kate Bowler: There is that crazy alchemy between joy and service, and you do see that in these communities and friendships among people–like women in particular, who are carrying each other through life. I love being at the pool and seeing older women in the locker room and just laughing, being in their bodies in a way that I have found it hard to be in my body for most of my life. Maybe it comes from that deep acceptance of the life that is. And then allows, maybe, I hope, we’re aging into that capacity to say like, joy, wherever you are, in whatever season this is going to be with its limits and its possibilities, like just come find me.
Jennifer Garner: Hmm. Yeah, I love that so much. And I think that invitation can be as, you can put that invitation out there in as many ways as possible. You have jumping off a mountain or finding some way to someone to serve. Anything! Like truly it does not, you don’t have to do a whole lot for it to have that impact on you. But it can also be like, going out and looking for it, writing it down and making it happen, starting to notice the good things and writing them down, keeping a list of the glimmers or whatever, however you want to say it. Turning on the music…playing the music with the bad word that Kate is now trying to sell all of us propaganda.
Kate Bowler: I love that.
Jennifer Garner: It’s finding, like an improv group, or a group of people to sing with standing in the back or a group of people to dance with. It’s like what will get you out of yourself?
Kate Bowler: It reminds me of all the ways that older women, in seeing the gifts they have like, have, have been that form of like multiplied blessing. When I think like, it was older women in my church that sewed my prom dress because we couldn’t afford a prom dress and like, and like went to the fabric store and picked out a lavender sateen for me and like made it out of the pattern.
Jennifer Garner: My mom sewed mine.
Kate Bowler: Come on. It’s so sweet.
Jennifer Garner: Had a bubble skirt.
Kate Bowler: A bubble skirt, it’s so good. Or just like the, I remember when I wanted to be a camp counselor, the like $60 tax rebate checks that they just like wrote in my name over. Just the acts of small, like small gifts of people who are like, I know what enough feels like, so I will make more than enough for other people. I think it’s a gift when people can say, like, I know how to create enoughness, and so I’ll know it’s time to give, probably.
Jennifer Garner: That’s so good.
Kate Bowler: Jen, I know that you have been traveling 1,000 days. So being with us in this lovely community, it just honestly, it means so much to me. It makes me want to like fly over there immediately and then just put you in a wheelbarrow and take you to a quiet room after this, so thank you.
Jennifer Garner: You heard it here first, she’s gonna fly over here and put me in a wheelbarrow.
Kate Bowler: Just in a very non-terrifying…
Jennifer Garner: Well, this conversation has helped me land. So, thank you.
Kate Bowler: Maybe that’s one of the nicest things about joy. It doesn’t ask us to get everything else sorted out first. There can still be the thing that doesn’t happen the way you hoped. The old fear, the disappointment you’re trying not to hold on to forever. And of course, that friend who knows exactly why you’re still mad about it. But then, somehow, there can also be dance parties and something hilarious. And something beautiful. And someone you love walking in the door. Joy doesn’t make the rest of it untrue. And thank God for that. So, my dears, here’s a little blessing for when you could use a little more room for joy. Blessed are you who are tired of trying to make everything add up. You do not have to call this season good if it isn’t. You don’t have to forget what hurt or hurry past what you miss or grieve any differently, but may something find you today. An inappropriate song. An old friend, a moment to laugh, and what it does, may you let joy in, even for a moment. Alright darlings, a few practical things before you go. If you want more on this topic, hey, guess what? Big surprise. I wrote a whole book about it. And it’s called Joyful Anyway. And it is available wherever books are sold, or borrowed, or listened to. And you can also join me over on Substack, where I keep talking about all of this. We talk about the beautiful and the terrible and the occasionally ridiculous parts of being a human. And if you wanna know what Substack is, cause you’re a little confused, just know it’s a website. You can come find me. I’m at KateBowler.Substack.com and there’s like our amazing community over there. And you can find them in the comment section and they are a delight. Everything Happened Studio is made possible through the generous support of Lilly Endowment and my team; I love you: Jess Ritchie, Harriet Putman, Anne Herring, Hailie Durrett, Megan Crunkleton, and Katherine Smith. Thanks. This is Everything Happen with me, Kate Bowler.
