Learning to Be Joyful, Anyway: A Big Announcement

Kate Bowler: Hey friends, it’s me, Kate, and I have news. It’s the kind where I wanna send you like 47 all-caps texts, but simultaneously crawl under a weighted blanket because it feels too real. But okay, here it is. I’ve got a new book coming out and it’s called Joyful Anyway, or actually kind of more of a voice that’s like, Joyful! Because that’s really, oh man, that’s the moment we’re in. And yeah, I like that the title is kind of a dare. Because if you’ve lived through anything, which we all have, illness, grief, heartbreak, or just like a very long PTA meeting, you know that sometimes joy feels impossible, offensive even. Like how could we possibly be joyful when there is so much suffering in the world and every headline feels similarly apocalyptic? But then there’s this weird thing that happens, this uninvited surprising joy that just keeps popping up. This book grew out of the last decade of my life, cancer and marriage and parenting and faculty meetings that possibly could have been an email and somewhere just between Ivy Poles and Costco runs, I just kept noticing that there was a persistent I pause before I say it because it already makes me feel ungrateful to say, but there was just some kind of persistent, hummy… And yet there was also joy. Like not the Instagram kind, not the live, laugh, love, throw pillow kind. Just mean like absurd joy. The kind that like comes in the side door. Like the time my son woke me up by crawling into bed wrapped in a tortilla blanket, and he whispered, Mom, is there a place that children can go to practice using grenades? Very concerning. Also, it’s obvious that pacifism is just hanging by a thread in my house. Or like the time I dragged my friends on a three-hour detour to visit the world’s largest turtle made of spare tires. Yeah, I’m almost positive that’s in North Dakota. And it is worth it. His name is Tommy. It just reminds me of the time when I organized a walking contest that ended in a dislocated hip, but at least everyone looked fabulous in Dolly Parton wigs. And then there’s just the kind of joy that bubbles up out of this weird feeling of divine love. And this is just the kinda joy I mean, the kind that barges into the room while you’re busy falling apart or doing something else. I wrote it for anyone who was just secretly hoping that life would get easier after surviving the hard stuff, only just to find that the laundry piles up. When I was sick, I thought that I would graduate into permanent gratitude. Like every followup scan would just make me swoon with thankfulness. Every school email would feel like a sacred invitation to spiritual maturity. I suppose, spoiler, just never happened. Instead, I still complain. I still ache. I still buy fish oil. With a chilling label that reads minimal burp back guarantee, which is a lie. My son came up to me the other day, he smelled my arm and he was like, mmm salmon. I was like oh my gosh, I’m gonna not take those fish oil supplements anymore. Here’s what I learned. Surviving doesn’t make you endlessly grateful. It just makes you more honest. And maybe honesty is where the joy can sneak back in. So here’s my promise. This book will not tell you to stop aching. It will not you to put your grief away in a tiny storage bin. And it will not offer you 10 easy steps to permanent bliss. But it will keep you company. We need reminders that joy is possible, not instead of the ache, but right next to it, right in the thick of it. So we have this thing in book world where if you pre-order a book, then it signals to everybody that they like bookstores, like how many copies to stock and whether you can find it in places that you want to find it. So if you. By any chance would pre-order Joyful Anyway. Just know that it would be a small victory against the algorithm that rules us all. Oh, also, can I just, I know you can’t see this if you’re listening to a podcast, but I’m just going to, I’m going to just hold it up because Joyful anyway is, it’s so pretty. It’s like a whole bunch of medium sad balloons And I’m completely in love with it. So you can pre-order wherever you get your books, like your local indie, bookshop.org, or any manner of other places. But I just wanna say that I couldn’t possibly have written a book about joy without you guys. Like, I started this podcast when I was right in the middle of a tragedy. And you’ve walked with me through so much of the… Crystalline horror of the first moments, the grief, the side roads, the questionable road trip destinations, just all the ups and downs that make a life a life. So I’m really truly grateful for you and I’m excited to share this book with you. So hey, here we go. We ache, we mourn, and we will be joyful.