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Complicated Grief and Complicated Love with

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KATE BOWLER Author. Professor. Incurable Optimist.

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Chautauqua Lecture Series (Chautauqua, NY)
10:45 AM Eastern In-Person: Chautauqua Institution (Chautauqua, NY)
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Aspen Ideas | David Brooks

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Kate Bowler and Lisa Kalanithi

KATE BOWLER AND LUCY KALANITHI

Stay Connected

Mar 23

“I’m here.” Bryan Stevenson ( believes that those can be the two more powerful words for anyone wanting to show up to this world, its pain, and its big big stories.You’ll love this story. Listen to our full conversation via the link in my bio.

Mar 22

March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month. Colon and rectal cancers are on the rise—especially for young people. Here’s your reminder to schedule your colonoscopy (starting at age 45!). To advocate for yourself if you have any symptoms (any weird stomach stuff, people!) and don’t let anyone say “You’re too young.” Always feel free to ask for a second opinion if you feel like you’re not being taken seriously. YOU. ARE. PRECIOUS.
This is a clip from my conversation with the indomitable @katiecouric. (Katie, I love you.) She is a fierce advocate for colon cancer prevention, survivors, and research.
#ColonCancerAwareness

Mar 21

Supermodel @paulinaporizkov has been in the public eye all her life. But it has been a rollercoaster of soaring successes and deep heartache. Grief and pain comes to us all, and in those moments, we need our shared humanity (and not our super-anythingness) to build a bridge back to others.
In this tender conversation on the Everything Happens Podcast today, Paulina shares her own experience of grief, how to show up to your friends in mourning, and why “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is just plain wrong. (I really need to bring out my favorite tank top which reads: “What doesn’t kill you will try again tomorrow.”)
Beautiful, brave, and kind—a trifecta. Thanks for sharing your life with us today, Paulina.Hit the link in my bio to hear more.

Mar 20

On the long list of what *NOT* to say to someone in pain: “When God closes a door, he opens a window.”I’m a huge fan of when people just say: “I’m so sorry. This is awful.” And then let me openly complain for as long as I need about how unfair life can be.What do you like it when people say in hard times?

Mar 19

A Blessing for When You Suffer Alone
(Adapted for a communal setting from The Lives We Actually Have, page 98)I see you there, suffering alone,
with the illness or pain that lingers
though friends do not,
—or cannot.
You, in isolation,
locked in, or locked out.
You, the caregivers
struggling in the certainty
that there is not enough
strength, time or resources.
You who counsel others in their trauma,
but suffer deeply from your own.
You who are grieving losses, too many to name,
too complex or unbecoming to speak aloud.
Blessed are you, dear one. Searching for someone to understand,
see your wounds and your hope for healing.
You are seen, as you walk that hard and lonely road.Blessed are you because your loneliness speaks a deep truth:
you were never meant to do this alone.God, comfort us, guide us,
that our hope for more—a prayer which will be answered—
might be protected too.

Mar 17

If you are a pastor or have a pastor in your life, well, thank you. You stick around. Tom Long, who wrote the actual book on what to say and do at a funeral, describes pastors so beautifully as the one who stay. The one who says “where else would we go?”Thank you pastors and chaplains for doing the hard work of showing up when no one else wants to. Tag the person who has been this in your life.Listen to our full conversation through the link in bio.

Mar 16

How long has it been since you let yourself have a good cry? Our culture has an INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL attitude about everything… even funerals.
I loved talking with someone who knows the limits of toxic positivity. Thomas Lynch has been a funeral director (AND POET!) for over 30 years. So when he says that there are some things that a funeral really teaches us, I start taking notes.
It might be easier to celebrate than to mourn. But what do we miss when we do? So here’s what I was wondering, my friends: what’s the best way that you’ve learned to grieve? I’d love to learn.
Listen to our full conversation through the link in my bio.

Mar 15

What makes Toxic Positivity so toxic? (Also stay tuned for more of my GIANT USE OF HANDS.)

Mar 14

Rev. Dr. Tom Long wanted to write a book about what to say and do at a funeral and, after 10 years, he realized that he had completely taken apart his own argument. He came to see funerals as The Big Moment when you say true things, not just about the person who died, but about God and life itself. Whew. He has so much to say about why our culture gets it wrong, how we can show up, and the power of a bigger story to shape what we are learning about God and ourselves.We spend so much of our energy *not* thinking about our mortality that, honestly, I find it so refreshing to have someone like Tom who decided to double down on figuring out what we can do to carry each other to the end. HE IS SO WISE. And he has the World’s Greatest Voice so let’s give that man his own podcast.Search EVERYTHING HAPPENS wherever you get your podcasts. Or click on the link in my bio.

Mar 13

What blessing have you noticed today? (The smaller, the better.) For me lately it is the sprawling height of oak trees and the number of places my son “needs” a cowboy hat.🖼: @tinypricksproject

Mar 12

A Blessing for When It’s Too Much To Handle
(Adapted for a communal setting from The Lives We Actually Have, page 108).God, our bodies remember the sleepless nights and cold sweats and unrelenting stress.
Show us how to process all that we suffer.“How frail is humanity!
How short is life, How full of trouble!”
—Job 14:1, NLTBlessed are we, when we decide to make room for all of it,
the fear and the gratitude, the complexity and the suffering.Blessed are we who pour out to you the whole of it—
unedited, all the terrible truths and fears and what-ifs.
The gratitude for those beautiful hearts in action who came willingly,
into the strange and awkward space that is my need.Blessed are we, learning as humans together that pain is inevitable,
nurses are wonderful, hospitals are loud, people are brave,
and we grow and we hurt and we heal, and then we will do it all over again.
Because this beautiful paradox is what it means to be human.

Mar 10

Elaine Pagels reminds me of how the precision of our language matters when it comes to grief.What language are you careful to use as to not pour more pain on the already-suffering?(Listen to our full conversation anywhere you download your podcasts.)

Mar 9

Let’s call perfectionism what it really is: TERROR.Click on the link in my bio to listen to my full conversation with @elizabeth_gilbert_writer

Mar 8

The best kinds of friends are the ones that let you show up when you're still in your bathrobe and not totally ready for the day yet. @hopeheals is that kind of person through and through. (Never leave me Katherine.) She responds with an immediate YES COME OVER YOU SAID TOMORROW BUT RIGHT NOW IS ALSO GREAT but also has scones.
The best kinds of humans don’t hide their humanity. Tag THAT kind of friend below.

Mar 7

This week’s guest on the Everything Happens podcast, is with Dr. Elaine Pagels, a renowned author, scholar, and professor of religion at Princeton University.Elaine’s personal story is one of profound loss and grief. Over thirty years ago, she lost both her young son and husband in the same year. In this touching and intimate conversation, Elaine shares her experience of surviving such devastation and the challenges of finding comfort and meaning in the face of tragedy. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of religious traditions, Elaine explores the often-painful explanations offered by religion for human suffering and the ways in which we can learn to love and keep loving even in the darkest of times.This episode is particularly poignant for anyone who has ever struggled with the question of why bad things happen to good people, and for those who have wondered if they have suffered enough.I hope you will tune in—available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mar 6

I loved joining @abcgma3 to talk about finding blessings when we’re tired of pretending we’re all living #blessed lives.p.s. but also, last time I was there I stepping fully INTO the metal basket chair, got stuck, and during the countdown the cameras could see me on my hands and knees trying to wrench a high heel out hysterically. So yes, I DID wear flats this time. ☺

Mar 5

A Blessing for The Lives We Didn’t Choose(Adapted for a communal setting from The Lives We Actually Have, page 188)Blessed are we in the tender place between curiosity and dread,
We who wonder how to be whole,
when dreams have disappeared and part of us with them,
where mastery, control, determination, bootstrapping, and grit,
are consigned to the realm of before (where most of the world lives),
in the fever dream that promises infinite choices, unlimited progress, best life now.
Blessed are we in the after,
forced into stories we never would have written.
Far outside of answers to questions we even know to ask.
God, show us a glimmer of possibility in this new constraint,
that small truths will be given back to us.
We are held.
We are safe.
We are loved.
We are loved.
We are loved.

Mar 3

I used to think life was something I picked…. until that was no longer true. I love @frankabruni64’s wisdom on what we expect is in our control and what to do when that control goes away. How do we live fully… AFTER we know the truth?

Mar 2

Do you feel delicate? Well there’s a perfect word for that: precarity. It helps me understand the feeling of living in perpetual uncertainty. Suddenly I’m less embarrassing in all my unfixedness. I’m not a mistake. I’m just figuring out my own precarity.
What’s a word you found recently that has stuck?

Mar 1

This is my nurse, Meg. Geez louise, I lucked out when I walked into the infusion center for my first chemotherapy and a Meg came into my life. (Look at that baby Anne Hathaway!) During my hours and hours at the cancer center, she became the best part of every worst day. This is us, year after year.
Here is to Meg and all the Megs, you beautiful creatures you, who care when you don’t have to. Who remember our birthdays when we recite them again and again. Nurses for the win.

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