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No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn't choose?
It's hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?
Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today's "best life now" advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born.
With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we're going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between--and there's no cure for being human.
It's hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?
Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today's "best life now" advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born.
With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we're going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between--and there's no cure for being human.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 28, 2021
About the author
Kate Bowler
16 books1,643 followersKate Bowler, PhD is a New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and a 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 is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel and The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities.
After being unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and her latest, No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). Kate hosts the Everything Happens podcast where, in warm, insightful, often funny conversations, she talks with people like Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Lamott about what they’ve learned in difficult times. She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.
After being unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and her latest, No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). Kate hosts the Everything Happens podcast where, in warm, insightful, often funny conversations, she talks with people like Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Lamott about what they’ve learned in difficult times. She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,182 reviews
September 22, 2021
I was a little afraid to read this because Kate is my friend and I was worried I wouldn't like it since inspirational memoir isn't always for me but I absolutely adored it and wanted to buy it for everyone I know. Stunning and moving and real. Go preorder it.
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July 23, 2021A beautiful, candid, insightful memoir (not available until September). I love the work of Kate Bowler—both her book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved and her podcast Everything Happens.
January 5, 2022
Q:
Some are written by spiritual guides promising to reveal God’s single plan and purpose for my life. “Trust God and the path will reveal itself.” Other books call for wild action. There are oceans to plumb and mountains to climb and planes to exit midair. (c)
Q:
...my darling, I am a clock, and I am ticking loudly. (c)
Warning: never ever attempt reading this book in a public place if you find yourself emotional / going through difficult shit in your life / are/get easily triggered / etc or you could find yourself sobbing smack the middle of a busy train / office lobby / etc... And such antics are sort of frowned upon in our oh-so-straight-buttoned society. I wish someone gave me the heads up.
This is such a raw and splendid and painful and brilliant read that I wish I found it in myself to savour it more and not swallow that whole thing in a sitting. In the middle of a busy public place. Sobbing. Okay, that was SO embarassing. And probably grossly looking to the onlookers.
Q:
They kiss my wet cheeks and bust out all the instruments that the church packs into its spiritual toolkit: prayers for healing and for peace; hands laid heavily on my shoulders and head as they invite God’s presence; anointing oils that smell like Christmas, which they apply to my forehead in a greasy cross. I am convinced that by the time I am ready to leave the hospital, I will have acne there in the shape of a cross. I close my eyes when they stand around the bed, singing hymns with their naked voices. For a minute there, I am whole. (c)
Q:
according to every reality show I have ever watched, it is the only correct response if you encounter an ex-boyfriend and they coo, “But how are you?” I am living my best life now, Matthew. No explanation required. (c)
Q:
Modernity is a fever dream promising infinite choices and unlimited progress. We can learn how to be young forever, successful forever, agents of our own perfectibility. We can fall in love with Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle, Joyce Meyer and Rachel Hollis. Women can learn that their better selves can be measured in Weight Watchers points, squeeze into Kim Kardashian’s waist trainers, or be enhanced by the right shade of Mary Kay lipstick. Men can save like Dave Ramsey, master the habits of highly effective people, or flip a tire or two at their local CrossFit. The American admiration for bootstrappers and optimists became a capitalist paradise. Everyone is now a televangelist of the gospel of good, better, best. Harness your mind to change your circumstances. The salvation of health and wealth and happiness is only a decision away. Will you finally let it save you? (c)
Q:
Each day was a terrible winnowing, separating wheat from chaff, but I felt a surreal completeness. I remember clearly in the hospital how I felt this strange closeness with God, how I did not feel like dry grass. I was becoming less and less, but I was not reduced to nothing.
God’s love was everywhere, sticking to everything. Love was in my husband’s hand on my back, steadying me, a lightness under my feet, and all over Zach’s velvety ears. I flushed with embarrassment when I described this feeling to my friends, stumbling as I tried to explain its sudden appearance (Wasn’t it there before?), that love itself was suddenly more real to me than my own thoughts. Despair was never far away, but somehow the seams of the universe had come undone, and all the splendid, ragged edges were showing.
And they brought me closer than I’ve ever been to the truth of this experiment—living—and how the horror and the beauty of it feels almost blinding. (c)
Q:
“You have felt the mighty and indescribable love of God. It is wholeness and beauty and holiness…but it is not Disney World.”
I laughed so hard I had to stop to lean against a tree. “Unless Disney World is performing abdominal surgeries that I’m not aware of.” (c)
Q:
“You know, Sarah, dying is a great time to want to be all spirit and no flesh. Sometimes the body is a weight pulling you all the way down. And it’s hard to love the stone that drowns you.” (c)
Q:
Did you make it to heaven, my love? (c)
Q:
Someday we won’t need to hope. Someday we don’t need courage. Time itself will be wrapped up with a bow, and God will draw us all into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering, no disease, no email.
In the meantime, we are stuck with our beautiful, terrible finitude. Our gossip and petty fights, self-hatred and refusal to check our voicemail. We get divorced, waste our time, and break our own hearts. We are cobbled together by the softest material, laughter and pets and long talks with old friends. By God’s unscrupulous love and by communities who give us a place to belong. And there is nothing particularly glamorous about us, except that we have moments when we are shockingly magnanimous before forgetting about it the next day. (c)
Q:
Time really is a circle; I can see that now. We are trapped between a past we can’t return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here, in the hard space between anticipation and realization. (c)
Q:
All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before we’ve even started.
It’s better this way. (c)
Q:
I want to believe in the beauty of eternity, the endless future spooled out before us all. Time is a circle, the Christian story goes. It focuses on an image of God as the ultimate reality beyond time and space, the creator of a past, present, and future where all exists simultaneously in the Divine Mind. We are wrapped into a story without clocks. It is quite a mind-bender. Jesus arrives as a newborn with parents and a bedtime and so the Christian understanding of what is forever and what is chronological bends around him. God is eternal, but Jesus never made it to middle age. Jesus was born around the year 4 b.c., but was also hanging around when God created the heavens and the earth. Part of the mystery of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is that we believe the divine is behind us, with us, and before us. We are pulled toward eternity believing that God is already there. (c)
Some are written by spiritual guides promising to reveal God’s single plan and purpose for my life. “Trust God and the path will reveal itself.” Other books call for wild action. There are oceans to plumb and mountains to climb and planes to exit midair. (c)
Q:
...my darling, I am a clock, and I am ticking loudly. (c)
Warning: never ever attempt reading this book in a public place if you find yourself emotional / going through difficult shit in your life / are/get easily triggered / etc or you could find yourself sobbing smack the middle of a busy train / office lobby / etc... And such antics are sort of frowned upon in our oh-so-straight-buttoned society. I wish someone gave me the heads up.
This is such a raw and splendid and painful and brilliant read that I wish I found it in myself to savour it more and not swallow that whole thing in a sitting. In the middle of a busy public place. Sobbing. Okay, that was SO embarassing. And probably grossly looking to the onlookers.
Q:
They kiss my wet cheeks and bust out all the instruments that the church packs into its spiritual toolkit: prayers for healing and for peace; hands laid heavily on my shoulders and head as they invite God’s presence; anointing oils that smell like Christmas, which they apply to my forehead in a greasy cross. I am convinced that by the time I am ready to leave the hospital, I will have acne there in the shape of a cross. I close my eyes when they stand around the bed, singing hymns with their naked voices. For a minute there, I am whole. (c)
Q:
according to every reality show I have ever watched, it is the only correct response if you encounter an ex-boyfriend and they coo, “But how are you?” I am living my best life now, Matthew. No explanation required. (c)
Q:
Modernity is a fever dream promising infinite choices and unlimited progress. We can learn how to be young forever, successful forever, agents of our own perfectibility. We can fall in love with Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle, Joyce Meyer and Rachel Hollis. Women can learn that their better selves can be measured in Weight Watchers points, squeeze into Kim Kardashian’s waist trainers, or be enhanced by the right shade of Mary Kay lipstick. Men can save like Dave Ramsey, master the habits of highly effective people, or flip a tire or two at their local CrossFit. The American admiration for bootstrappers and optimists became a capitalist paradise. Everyone is now a televangelist of the gospel of good, better, best. Harness your mind to change your circumstances. The salvation of health and wealth and happiness is only a decision away. Will you finally let it save you? (c)
Q:
Each day was a terrible winnowing, separating wheat from chaff, but I felt a surreal completeness. I remember clearly in the hospital how I felt this strange closeness with God, how I did not feel like dry grass. I was becoming less and less, but I was not reduced to nothing.
God’s love was everywhere, sticking to everything. Love was in my husband’s hand on my back, steadying me, a lightness under my feet, and all over Zach’s velvety ears. I flushed with embarrassment when I described this feeling to my friends, stumbling as I tried to explain its sudden appearance (Wasn’t it there before?), that love itself was suddenly more real to me than my own thoughts. Despair was never far away, but somehow the seams of the universe had come undone, and all the splendid, ragged edges were showing.
And they brought me closer than I’ve ever been to the truth of this experiment—living—and how the horror and the beauty of it feels almost blinding. (c)
Q:
“You have felt the mighty and indescribable love of God. It is wholeness and beauty and holiness…but it is not Disney World.”
I laughed so hard I had to stop to lean against a tree. “Unless Disney World is performing abdominal surgeries that I’m not aware of.” (c)
Q:
“You know, Sarah, dying is a great time to want to be all spirit and no flesh. Sometimes the body is a weight pulling you all the way down. And it’s hard to love the stone that drowns you.” (c)
Q:
Did you make it to heaven, my love? (c)
Q:
Someday we won’t need to hope. Someday we don’t need courage. Time itself will be wrapped up with a bow, and God will draw us all into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering, no disease, no email.
In the meantime, we are stuck with our beautiful, terrible finitude. Our gossip and petty fights, self-hatred and refusal to check our voicemail. We get divorced, waste our time, and break our own hearts. We are cobbled together by the softest material, laughter and pets and long talks with old friends. By God’s unscrupulous love and by communities who give us a place to belong. And there is nothing particularly glamorous about us, except that we have moments when we are shockingly magnanimous before forgetting about it the next day. (c)
Q:
Time really is a circle; I can see that now. We are trapped between a past we can’t return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here, in the hard space between anticipation and realization. (c)
Q:
All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before we’ve even started.
It’s better this way. (c)
Q:
I want to believe in the beauty of eternity, the endless future spooled out before us all. Time is a circle, the Christian story goes. It focuses on an image of God as the ultimate reality beyond time and space, the creator of a past, present, and future where all exists simultaneously in the Divine Mind. We are wrapped into a story without clocks. It is quite a mind-bender. Jesus arrives as a newborn with parents and a bedtime and so the Christian understanding of what is forever and what is chronological bends around him. God is eternal, but Jesus never made it to middle age. Jesus was born around the year 4 b.c., but was also hanging around when God created the heavens and the earth. Part of the mystery of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is that we believe the divine is behind us, with us, and before us. We are pulled toward eternity believing that God is already there. (c)
May 29, 2021
At 35, Kate Bowler was happily married, mother of a toddler, Duke Divinity School associate professor, and a highly respected author. She felt blessed and that life would continue to bring good things. Until she was diagnosed with incurable colon cancer and life as she knew it screeched to a halt.
In her latest, No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear), Kate considers life six years on. Yes, she is still alive but how long will experimental treatment keep her that way? No one knows.
So she’s left with living with uncertainty while still trying to maintain purpose and hope and connection. And that she does triumphantly, with wit and bracing truth.
I read this story greedily, wondering how she makes peace with finitude. There are no pat answers. Sharing the questions is what makes Kate’s new book so apt for all of us. Sometimes, she says, life can only be lived in segments, like the three months between scans that tell if treatment is shrinking her tumors. Or a stolen afternoon swim with her son.
I wept and cheered and wept again as I read, so taken with Kate’s humor, candor and personhood. She’s a wonder and so is her wise, heartbreaking, and ever inspirational book.
5 of 5 Stars
Pub Date 28 Sep 2021
#NoCureForBeingHuman #NetGalley
Thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group - Random House, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.
In her latest, No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear), Kate considers life six years on. Yes, she is still alive but how long will experimental treatment keep her that way? No one knows.
So she’s left with living with uncertainty while still trying to maintain purpose and hope and connection. And that she does triumphantly, with wit and bracing truth.
I read this story greedily, wondering how she makes peace with finitude. There are no pat answers. Sharing the questions is what makes Kate’s new book so apt for all of us. Sometimes, she says, life can only be lived in segments, like the three months between scans that tell if treatment is shrinking her tumors. Or a stolen afternoon swim with her son.
I wept and cheered and wept again as I read, so taken with Kate’s humor, candor and personhood. She’s a wonder and so is her wise, heartbreaking, and ever inspirational book.
5 of 5 Stars
Pub Date 28 Sep 2021
#NoCureForBeingHuman #NetGalley
Thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group - Random House, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.
February 3, 2022
Unpopular opinion: I thoroughly did not enjoy this book.
20% of this book is Kate’s story with cancer and other cute anecdotes. I enjoyed this part.
80% is a rambling mess where Kate tries too hard to be artsy with her words and doesn’t make a solid point. I found it extremely difficult to follow. If this book wasn’t so short I would have left it half-read. I’ll chalk it up to a difference in writing style preferences.
20% of this book is Kate’s story with cancer and other cute anecdotes. I enjoyed this part.
80% is a rambling mess where Kate tries too hard to be artsy with her words and doesn’t make a solid point. I found it extremely difficult to follow. If this book wasn’t so short I would have left it half-read. I’ll chalk it up to a difference in writing style preferences.
December 12, 2021
The focus of this memoir is on the author’s life subsequent to her being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at age 35. Her naivety at the beginning of this journey is indicated by her first question after being informed of the diagnosis, “How many stages are there?”
She brings the readers along with her as she researches the medical reports with the persistence of an experienced researcher. Unfortunately, her experience is researching church history which isn’t so much help when it comes to medical technology. As she enrolls in an experimental form of immunotherapy treatment she ponders such personal questions as, “How old does my son need to be to have a memory of me?” Perhaps if she can make it to her fortieth birthday he’ll be able to remember her.
The book’s narrative veers back and forth between medical and personal matters. She discusses the whole world of so-called “bucket lists.” Just how does a person live as if each day may be the last? She expresses satisfaction of being able to hold her toddler son close, but then needs to explain the concept of death after his great grandmother dies. After the burial service he asks, “But moms do not get buried?”
Of course she needs to focus on more than her own physical health. There’s the whole world of medical insurance bureaucracies. Then there are the occasional callous remarks by doctors. But the author manages to bring the readers along with her with subtle humor. She appreciates friends and neighbors who chip in to help pay for frequent flights to a distant city for medical treatment, and then expresses frustration over why treatment couldn’t have been transferred to a local hospital sooner.
And she still needs to deal with her academic profession while all these things are going on. She needs to achieve certain publishing goals in order to secure her tenured position. As she discusses this world we as readers learn about her father’s experience of never quite meeting his academic goals. Somehow the author perseveres through all of this.
I’ll let you read the book if you want to know if the treatment of the cancer was successful.
She brings the readers along with her as she researches the medical reports with the persistence of an experienced researcher. Unfortunately, her experience is researching church history which isn’t so much help when it comes to medical technology. As she enrolls in an experimental form of immunotherapy treatment she ponders such personal questions as, “How old does my son need to be to have a memory of me?” Perhaps if she can make it to her fortieth birthday he’ll be able to remember her.
The book’s narrative veers back and forth between medical and personal matters. She discusses the whole world of so-called “bucket lists.” Just how does a person live as if each day may be the last? She expresses satisfaction of being able to hold her toddler son close, but then needs to explain the concept of death after his great grandmother dies. After the burial service he asks, “But moms do not get buried?”
Of course she needs to focus on more than her own physical health. There’s the whole world of medical insurance bureaucracies. Then there are the occasional callous remarks by doctors. But the author manages to bring the readers along with her with subtle humor. She appreciates friends and neighbors who chip in to help pay for frequent flights to a distant city for medical treatment, and then expresses frustration over why treatment couldn’t have been transferred to a local hospital sooner.
And she still needs to deal with her academic profession while all these things are going on. She needs to achieve certain publishing goals in order to secure her tenured position. As she discusses this world we as readers learn about her father’s experience of never quite meeting his academic goals. Somehow the author perseveres through all of this.
I’ll let you read the book if you want to know if the treatment of the cancer was successful.
October 7, 2021
Kate Bowler’s writing is engaging and beautiful. This second memoir was an enjoyable read. I did struggle to follow the narrative and the theme and would have enjoyed a more focused critique of the self-help literature from the perspective of her experiences if that is indeed a focus of the book. I also struggled with some of her perspectives on the problems with self-help because her experiences don’t match my own: I think that one perspective on self-help is missing from this book, namely that some people use self-help/bibliotherapy to survive not better themselves. For example, she references the concept of radical acceptance that is written about by Tara Brach (though she does not mention Tara by name): these strategies are survival strategies for me and many others who do not have the social supports that Kate has. For myself and many others, if we break apart emotionally, there is no one to catch us, and self-help strategies can be necessary because there is no one else to help us. Of course a book does not need to do all things and I did appreciate this book. And I appreciate Kate for sharing her journey with us.
February 27, 2022
I am not familiar with the author and only came across this book as one of my fellow Goodreads friends had reviewed it.
What a perfect book at the perfect time. Kate Bowler is the first author to touch upon this ever touchy subject with honesty, integrity, and faith.
No Cure for Being Human is a book that shares the very intimate journey of Kate Bowler and her diagnosis with Stage 4 Colon Cancer. With only two years to live, she decides to tell her story.
I lost my father to cancer and am currently struggling with the diagnosis of my husband's brother. I always try to put myself in their shoes, but no matter what, no shoe will ever fit the truth of their anxiety and suffering. However, Bowler's book is raw, human, and touches upon the inner struggles with authenticity.
As a mother herself, she shares the fears and joys of raising a son. She knows she may not be alive to see his next birthday, yet she searches for normalcy as a way of coping and living.
Bowler’s journey with cancer takes a positive turn. Her story finishes up with a brief dive into the struggles of the COVID pandemic. Even in this moment, Bowler doesn't shy away from sharing the truth. While the initial moments of the pandemic may have felt like a resurrection of precious family time, it also brought on raw struggles for people all around the world.
I can't say enough good things about Bowler's memoir and would recommend it over and over. I would like to add that Bowler's attempt at this very uncomfortable yet important subject matter seemed to be even more authentic in it's details than Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air.
5/5 stars
What a perfect book at the perfect time. Kate Bowler is the first author to touch upon this ever touchy subject with honesty, integrity, and faith.
No Cure for Being Human is a book that shares the very intimate journey of Kate Bowler and her diagnosis with Stage 4 Colon Cancer. With only two years to live, she decides to tell her story.
I lost my father to cancer and am currently struggling with the diagnosis of my husband's brother. I always try to put myself in their shoes, but no matter what, no shoe will ever fit the truth of their anxiety and suffering. However, Bowler's book is raw, human, and touches upon the inner struggles with authenticity.
As a mother herself, she shares the fears and joys of raising a son. She knows she may not be alive to see his next birthday, yet she searches for normalcy as a way of coping and living.
Bowler’s journey with cancer takes a positive turn. Her story finishes up with a brief dive into the struggles of the COVID pandemic. Even in this moment, Bowler doesn't shy away from sharing the truth. While the initial moments of the pandemic may have felt like a resurrection of precious family time, it also brought on raw struggles for people all around the world.
I can't say enough good things about Bowler's memoir and would recommend it over and over. I would like to add that Bowler's attempt at this very uncomfortable yet important subject matter seemed to be even more authentic in it's details than Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air.
5/5 stars
March 9, 2022
It's very hard to review memoirs since it feels like evaluating someone's life somehow. Evaluation isn't my intention. I simply want to write down how the book affected me at this point in my life. This story explores what it means to be human in the terms of a devastating diagnosis. I'm guessing that it might resonate most with those who have gone through similar circumstances. It's sad, scary, and rings very true. I liked it, but found some parts confusing.
On the one hand, the author writes skillfully about her experience with cancer, from diagnosis to treatment and beyond. She relates her emotions very well and tells of the terrifying journey that any of us could go on given the fragility of our existence. She explains, questions and offers gut-wrenching insights into what cancer does to one's life and outlook. I especially related to her feelings about the business of 'good vibes' and the platitudes that dominate the self-help genre.
On the other hand, I struggled to understand some of her thought processes as well as her conversations, and ended up puzzled by some of the philosophical passages. Perhaps one who hasn't experienced the journey can't really grasp the complexity of it? Even though I didn't understand it all, I certainly respect the effort the author made to show us what her truth was and is after experiencing this life-changing event.
Quotes:
"Good vibes are big business."
"It became clearer than ever that life is not a series of choices. So often the experiences that define us are the ones we didn't pick".
"Someday...time itself will be wrapped up with a bow and God will draw us all into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering, no disease, no email."
"We are trapped between a past we can't return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here..."
On the one hand, the author writes skillfully about her experience with cancer, from diagnosis to treatment and beyond. She relates her emotions very well and tells of the terrifying journey that any of us could go on given the fragility of our existence. She explains, questions and offers gut-wrenching insights into what cancer does to one's life and outlook. I especially related to her feelings about the business of 'good vibes' and the platitudes that dominate the self-help genre.
On the other hand, I struggled to understand some of her thought processes as well as her conversations, and ended up puzzled by some of the philosophical passages. Perhaps one who hasn't experienced the journey can't really grasp the complexity of it? Even though I didn't understand it all, I certainly respect the effort the author made to show us what her truth was and is after experiencing this life-changing event.
Quotes:
"Good vibes are big business."
"It became clearer than ever that life is not a series of choices. So often the experiences that define us are the ones we didn't pick".
"Someday...time itself will be wrapped up with a bow and God will draw us all into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering, no disease, no email."
"We are trapped between a past we can't return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here..."
September 23, 2021
Kate, can we be friends?
So honest and raw and so meaningful to me. I have tears in my eyes and can’t help but feel lifted up in hope and peace.
So honest and raw and so meaningful to me. I have tears in my eyes and can’t help but feel lifted up in hope and peace.
October 23, 2021
Memoir of a young cancer patient and how the aftermath of so many procedures and treatments has taken her to a whole new territory. The fear of knowing she's on uncertain ground (she's in 'indefinite' remission) has made her face a lot of existential questions.
It's a fascinating account of facing death/life with no glib answers.
It's a fascinating account of facing death/life with no glib answers.
December 12, 2021
I'm not even sure what to say about this book. While I loved the author's writing style ... I was often put off by a cynical energy of resentment that seemed to infuse the wise, candid and transparent content. I can't quite put my finger on it ... but ... I feel like I must be missing the less obvious points somehow. I'm not sure. It left me feeling heavy and powerless and somewhat discouraged. While life is trying and exhausting and full of suffering in myriad ways for all of us ... I heard her scoffing and poking holes in the life rafts other people put their faith into. Maybe that was not was she intended but it is what I heard ... and ... it didn't land comfortably for me.
July 24, 2021
It’s everything you imagine a Kate Bowler book will be. Life lets us down sometimes, but Kate hasn’t yet. My god, she’s good.
June 29, 2021
This was a tough one to review, because in other circumstances I would say that this memoir reads as if the author did not have enough distance - emotionally or chronologically - to sort through her experiences and craft them into a book. I kept thinking that she might feel differently about certain things if given a bit more time. But of course, the lack of time is the entire point in this book, the second memoir by the author about her cancer diagnosis and all the questions it raised about life and time, relationships and perspective.
The strength of this book is how relatable she is. Any type-A, goal-oriented person will understand the abject terror of being told that the life you’ve always controlled and directed is now running fast down a track you didn’t choose. But this is also my greatest disappointment, in that the author is a professor of religion, but seems at all times to be acting as her own god, turning again and again to her own powers in order to regain some sense of control.
Her account of what she learned about clinical drug trials makes this book important for anyone considering this path - the distinctions she draws are surprising, raw, and not at all what one hopes. And yet reality rather than fantasy is an important theme throughout these pages.
I’m of mixed opinion, but will say that for anyone who things this might be for you, it’s worth a try. I suspect many will find it helpful and informative.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.
The strength of this book is how relatable she is. Any type-A, goal-oriented person will understand the abject terror of being told that the life you’ve always controlled and directed is now running fast down a track you didn’t choose. But this is also my greatest disappointment, in that the author is a professor of religion, but seems at all times to be acting as her own god, turning again and again to her own powers in order to regain some sense of control.
Her account of what she learned about clinical drug trials makes this book important for anyone considering this path - the distinctions she draws are surprising, raw, and not at all what one hopes. And yet reality rather than fantasy is an important theme throughout these pages.
I’m of mixed opinion, but will say that for anyone who things this might be for you, it’s worth a try. I suspect many will find it helpful and informative.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.
June 9, 2022
I'm a big fan of Kate Bowler's podcast, Everything Happens, and knew this was a book I needed to read. While there are a few religious overtones here and there (I'm not one to read religiously based books), I don't think that should keep anyone from reading it. Overall this book is about being a human in a world that can make you go through some incredibly hard things, something we've all been dealing with for the past almost two years. It was a balm for my weary soul that I desperately needed right when I read it. For fans of Glennon Doyle and Brene Brown.
Thank you to Randomhouse and Netgalley for providing me with a free review copy. All opinions are my own.
Thank you to Randomhouse and Netgalley for providing me with a free review copy. All opinions are my own.
January 28, 2022
Ugh. I really do not want to be unkind, but I found this author to be self-centered and trivial. The cancer she endured was a terrible trial, but her milking every cell of it while bragging about her accomplishments and wonderful family and social life all the while trying to be cute or funny—it was too much to bear… Her observations lacked profound philosophical or even spiritual insight, and her reflections just came off as shallow. She is too religious for those who eschew religion, while not Biblically sound enough for someone who is well-read in the scriptures and is acquainted with the God of Israel and with the Christ who promises his followers that “in this life you will have tribulation.” Her constant surprise at not getting a perfect life and at having to suffer is annoying and actually appalling coming from someone who is supposedly a Christian scholar. The prescription for this book: Revelations 3:16.
November 29, 2021
Wanted to love it but didn’t. Loved her other book. This one felt scattered.
December 31, 2021
Well, my words will be inadequate for the beauty that this book is. Sharing her journey through stage 4 cancer, Kate is the friend who lays it all bare with honesty, humor and so much humanity.
Did it make me ugly cry? Yes!
Did I feel hopeful while reading it? Yes!
Do I need everyone else to read this one now? Yes!
If toxic positivity, prosperity gospel and culture of striving are on your list of pet peeves/I’ll take a pass, then this will be a breath of fresh air to you as well.
Did it make me ugly cry? Yes!
Did I feel hopeful while reading it? Yes!
Do I need everyone else to read this one now? Yes!
If toxic positivity, prosperity gospel and culture of striving are on your list of pet peeves/I’ll take a pass, then this will be a breath of fresh air to you as well.
June 4, 2021
Kate Bowler doesn't mince words about life and death. I loved how starkly honest and true her words rang as she recounts her struggles with "being human" and having a body that tried to kill her via cancer in her 30s. It's raw, funny, and inspiring in the best way. No platitudes here, but some real truth and love. Highly recommended.
November 5, 2021
Gosh, this was a tough, but ultimately, uplifting read. Bowler is open and honest about her experiences with stage 4 colon cancer. Very reflective, and at times terrifying, yet her dark humor and quick wit reiterate what an effective defense/coping mechanism maintaining a sense of humor can be. Bowler thoughtfully touches on faith, ambitions and limitations, and generally being freaking human.
April 16, 2023
This is a pretty short memoir about the author’s battle with cancer at age 35. It’s honest and touching, shattering trite platitudes and getting to the heart of facing death and deciding how to live a best life. The writing is beautiful and to the point. There was never a dull moment because the pacing was perfect and it was tightly edited.
Language: Rare strong language
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Some medical procedures might make some readers woozy.
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
Language: Rare strong language
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Some medical procedures might make some readers woozy.
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
January 12, 2022
Kate Bowler truly is a remarkable writer. This book, which follows her diagnosis, recovery, and prognosis with a rare form of colon cancer (14 percent survival rate, two years to live) isn't one where she makes the reader feel sorry for her, but more you feel scared for her and makes you question things. A professor at Duke's Divinity School, Bowler touches upon religion and the spiritual, but not enough to make me shirk and certainly makes you wonder and ask "why?" She's a mother of a toddler and is told she can't have any more children because of her treatment. Her family and friends help to financially support her once-a-week flight to Atlanta to participate in a clinical trial to keep her alive. This book brought up a lot of memories for me; twice I wasn't sure what was going on in my body, fortunately all was well, but there were points when I was reading that I wondered, "what would I do, what do I think?"
And while she doesn't overtly state this, good God (no pun intended) do our doctors (and people in general) need to get some bedside manners and take some classes in empathy and compassion. Telling someone who is trying to live and survive, "the sooner you get used to the idea of about dying, the better" is unconscionable. When she was given a doctor's note to be able to park in handicapped parking at Duke because with her treatment made it hard to walk in the cold, it was denied because they told her she couldn't walk. Dealing with the ins and outs of health insurance? Only one kind person at the university helped her walk through things to get things straight. But Bowler writes through these things not with a critical or cynical eye, no that's for the reader, but instead writes about this chapter of her life with compassion and grace.
And while she doesn't overtly state this, good God (no pun intended) do our doctors (and people in general) need to get some bedside manners and take some classes in empathy and compassion. Telling someone who is trying to live and survive, "the sooner you get used to the idea of about dying, the better" is unconscionable. When she was given a doctor's note to be able to park in handicapped parking at Duke because with her treatment made it hard to walk in the cold, it was denied because they told her she couldn't walk. Dealing with the ins and outs of health insurance? Only one kind person at the university helped her walk through things to get things straight. But Bowler writes through these things not with a critical or cynical eye, no that's for the reader, but instead writes about this chapter of her life with compassion and grace.
August 7, 2022
Kate Bowler, a Duke University professor and a wife and mother writes a beautifully witty and theologically conscious memoir of a journey with stage 4 cancer.
Quote I thoroughly enjoyed. "My house is a hive of people trying to save my life by doing errands. There are a number of Mennonites in my extended family, so I hail from a long line of over-workers, famous for pacifism, simplicity, and the foreboding sense that God is very disappointed by naps."
Quote I thoroughly enjoyed. "My house is a hive of people trying to save my life by doing errands. There are a number of Mennonites in my extended family, so I hail from a long line of over-workers, famous for pacifism, simplicity, and the foreboding sense that God is very disappointed by naps."
January 5, 2022
Summary: A follow-up memoir-ish book about what it is like to shift from dealing with the active grief of a cancer diagnosis to an ongoing chronic illness that may at any time be fatal.
Kate Bowler's earlier book, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I Loved, deserves all the praise it has recieved. I had followed her podcast and story and was aware of her earlier academic book on the history of the American prosperity gospel (I bought it nearly four years ago, but I still haven't read it yet). I read Everything Happens for a Reason in December 2018. It is such a helpful book for those of us that are around grief and death and illness but are not the one who is the immediate subject of the illness or grief. It details the cliché unhelpful advice that we are so often tempted to give. Or as Adam McHugh says in The Listening Life,
“When we try to help someone in pain, we often end up saying or doing things, subconsciously, to assuage our own anxiety. Let’s be honest: we often want others to be okay so we can feel okay. We want them to feel better and move on so our lives can return to normal. We try to control the conversation as a way of compensating for our anxiety. Our approach to people in pain can amount to self-therapy.”
In the midst of a global pandemic where many people have died, and many others have ongoing illness or harm from the economic or other ramifications of the pandemic, it is important to remember the main message of trying to put a neat Christian bow on suffering and pain. No Cure for Being Human is a follow-up to that. At some point, if you do not die, you have to go back to living life again, albeit often differently. Life feels differently because of the trauma or illness or whatever it is, but others have not had the same experience, and their world has not shifted.
I know I have had experiences when I wanted the whole world to stop because my world changed, 9/11, my father-in-law passing away, the start of covid, even minor things like being on vacation. But we are not the center of the world, and other people's worlds continue, even if ours has shifted.
Our world is not really designed for human weakness and imperfection. Just-in-time scheduling ensures that if you stop, your work keeps going. If you get sick, bills still have to be paid, kids still have to get fed, and trash still has to be taken out. Kate Bowler may have had stage four cancer that almost no one survives from with debilitating treatments and huge bills and impacts to her life and the lives of those around her, but how does she keep going? Does she keep writing, not just these books, but her academic work as well (spoiler, she did keep writing and published this academic history of Christian Women celebrities in the midst of her cancer.)
This is a quick book; I read it in two days on Christmas break. It was engaging. And I think it is particularly timely because while we don't all have stage four cancer, we are in a global pandemic that has entered its third year and has a cost. This quote, I think, is particularly relevant to our place in covid right now.
"Pain is simultaneously intimate and distant, intense and boring. And, according to my rough calculations, any news, no matter how terrible, seems like old hat after about three months. Your leg spontaneously exploded? The polar bears are unionizing now? Oh, I heard that already. We find it especially difficult to talk about anything chronic—meaning any kind of pain, emotional or physical, that abides and lives with us constantly. The sustaining myth of the American Dream rests on a hearty can-do spirit surmounting all obstacles, but not all problems can be overcome. So often we are defined by the troubles we live with, rather than the things we conquer. Any persistent suffering requires being afraid, but who can stay awake to fear for so long?"
I saw on Twitter yesterday someone saying that (my paraphrase to obscure the actual person saying it) that everyone that takes medicine on an ongoing basis should just exercise and cut the dosage in half. The response was predictable; people with organ transplants asking if half of the drugs they take to repress the body's rejection of the organ was really a good idea. Or people with diabetes asking if they should take half of their needed insulin, or people on serious drugs that need to be weaned off carefully should just cut their dosages in half and disregard the problems of that. The tweet was dumb and universal in very unhelpful ways. But it was a good example of Bowler's contention that we are bad as a society at dealing with chronic problems. We want to solve problems and move on. But life is a chronic condition that we just can't move on from. We have bodies that fail or change in ways we do not always like.
Bowler is a good writer. Having listened to her podcast regularly, I appreciate her humor and seriousness. She has told a very open story, but no vulnerability can be complete. We are all still revealing ourselves in part, which is part of what it means to be human and communicate (as James KA Smith says). No Cure For Being Human is just as helpful as Everything Happens for a Reason. Bowler is a gift, and I hope she is around for a long time so that I can keep learning from her.
January 1, 2022
Shame on me for trying another book by this author.
Her venom is very evident through her essays, and she has a lot of contempt when well intentioned people offer an opinion or advice that doesn’t align with what she perceives should be relayed to her. I wonder if she would want her own words and actions regurgitated and spewed onto a page by someone else and the innocence of it stripped away and all that is left is accusations of the person not saying what should be said.
She has a lot to say, but there seems to be no purpose other than to say all medical people suck at telling her what she wants them to say and people without cancer are lucky and don’t have to deal with her burden of knowing that life is fragile. Sorry, but you don’t need a cancer diagnosis to know life is hard and it can’t be measured by money or lists.
Her venom is very evident through her essays, and she has a lot of contempt when well intentioned people offer an opinion or advice that doesn’t align with what she perceives should be relayed to her. I wonder if she would want her own words and actions regurgitated and spewed onto a page by someone else and the innocence of it stripped away and all that is left is accusations of the person not saying what should be said.
She has a lot to say, but there seems to be no purpose other than to say all medical people suck at telling her what she wants them to say and people without cancer are lucky and don’t have to deal with her burden of knowing that life is fragile. Sorry, but you don’t need a cancer diagnosis to know life is hard and it can’t be measured by money or lists.
June 29, 2024
If I had a fraction of the energy that Kate Bowler had, *while she was fighting cancer*, I would write a thoroughly engaging review of her book. But it's the end of June, summer has almost won the first round (we have two yet to go) and all I have to say is that this was a thoroughly engaging book.
Also I laughed out loud at her comment about one of the defining features of Mennonites being that they live with this life-long suspicion that God disdains naps.
So glad to have outgrown that. As well as my early suspicion of His disdain for reading books. (Once I told my bishop's wife that I read somewhere that people who read books are more empathetic, and she frowned. "Does that mean," she asked, "that old people are more empathetic since they read more books?" And I had nothing to say to that, set back into silence by her re-affirmation that Mennonites shouldn't really be reading a lot of books till they retire and are not physically able to weed their gardens.)
This afternoon, because I'd already fed eleven people twice, and kissed my three-year-old and hauled out the trash and put 18 pieces of mail in the mailbox, and shared my coffee with my 11-year-old, and swept the floor, and because I don't have a fraction of Bowler's energy even when she is fighting cancer, I finished Bowler's book and took a nice long nap.
Also I laughed out loud at her comment about one of the defining features of Mennonites being that they live with this life-long suspicion that God disdains naps.
So glad to have outgrown that. As well as my early suspicion of His disdain for reading books. (Once I told my bishop's wife that I read somewhere that people who read books are more empathetic, and she frowned. "Does that mean," she asked, "that old people are more empathetic since they read more books?" And I had nothing to say to that, set back into silence by her re-affirmation that Mennonites shouldn't really be reading a lot of books till they retire and are not physically able to weed their gardens.)
This afternoon, because I'd already fed eleven people twice, and kissed my three-year-old and hauled out the trash and put 18 pieces of mail in the mailbox, and shared my coffee with my 11-year-old, and swept the floor, and because I don't have a fraction of Bowler's energy even when she is fighting cancer, I finished Bowler's book and took a nice long nap.
January 20, 2022
Kate Bowler is such a great and REAL writer. (I need to start listening to her podcast!) In remission from cancer, she asks looks at life from the perspective of wife and mother of a young son. Near the end of the book, she asks. “Why do we fight aging? Don’t we want to grow old?”. A beautiful book!
December 31, 2021
I was determined to read all light, fluffy, festive books in December, but this book was due at the library and has a decent wait list, so I decide to get it read. Wow! What an amazing book to read while I am thinking about my goals for the next year.
December 23, 2021
smash this into the “books i cried while reading in 2021” round up
November 1, 2021
I hope you all read this. I really hope you all do. I started it this afternoon and only got out of my chair to get Hallowe'en candy and a glass of water. Please read this, it's about everything that matters.
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