There are no training manuals for this. Just a child staring up at you with cartoon eyes and an inner monologue that asks: Am I doing this right? Am I ruining them?

Kate sits down with Dr. Becky Kennedy—a clinical psychologist and creator of Good Inside—to talk about the heartbreak and hope of parenting. What does it mean to raise (or re-raise) someone with compassion and boundaries, especially when you never learned how?

Whether you're parenting toddlers, teens, or the little one inside yourself, this conversation offers grace for anyone trying again.

Show Notes:

• Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy — parenting platform, book, and podcast

• A Blessing for When You're Not the Parent You Meant to Be 

• katebowler.substack.com — essays, blessings, and community reflections

• Support Guide: When Your Child is in Pain — for parents supporting kids through emotional struggle

• Support Guide: Those Who Care for Teens — compassionate care for older children

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When someone you love is in pain—whether they’re sick, addicted, or falling apart—you show up. Again and again and again. You make the calls. You hold the line. You carry what you can. But what happens when love, loyalty, and devotion blur into something harder to name? When care turns into codependency, and compassion starts to erase your sense of self?

Kate sits down with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love; Big Magic) to talk about the toll and the tenderness of caregiving. Liz’s new memoir, All the Way to the River, chronicles her years caring for someone she loved deeply through addiction and illness—and what it meant to finally let go.

Together, they explore:

1. What it means to walk someone you love to the edge of life

2. How codependence disguises itself as devotion

3. The permission we need to be more than someone’s lifeline

This conversation is for anyone who has ever loved to the point of exhaustion. Who wonders if love is meant to cost this much. Who needs a blessing for the moment when helping means losing yourself.

🧡 Listen with care. Leave with permission.

Find Kate on Substack.
Grab your Everything Happens Merch.

Books by Elizabeth Gilbert

• All the Way to the River – A raw memoir of caregiving, addiction, and release

• Big Magic – On creativity, inspiration, and the discipline of making

• Eat, Pray, Love – A bestselling memoir on desire, spirituality, and selfhood

• The Signature of All Things – A novel of science, wonder, and the search for understanding

Resources + Mentions

• TED Talk: Your Elusive Creative Genius – Liz’s viral TED talk on creative brilliance

• Alcoholics Anonymous – A spiritual practice of surrender discussed in the episode

• Sky Cave Retreats – Where Liz spent five days in total darkness

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Kate speaks with surgeon, writer, and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande about the deeply human questions that surface when medicine meets its limits. What does it mean to be a good doctor when a cure isn’t possible? What do people really mean when they say they want “quality of life”?

Together, they talk about caregiving, end-of-life decisions, and how the most honest conversations in healthcare begin—not with answers—but with better questions.

For anyone living with chronic illness, caring for someone they love, or wondering what it means to live a good life with limits, this conversation won’t offer easy fixes. But it might offer something just as rare: clarity, compassion, and the courage to ask what really matters.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: Kate C. Bowler on YouTube

Subscribe to Kate’s Substack: katebowler.substack.com

Show notes: 

• The Aspen Ideas Festival

• Being Mortal by Dr. Atul Gawande

• The Green House Project

• Ari Johnson & Muso Health

• Organizations for further action: World Food Programme, UNICEF, American Red Cross

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You were supposed to be a whole new person by now. Sun-kissed and emotionally regulated. Inbox at zero.

But here we are—still tired, still trying, still wondering if change is even possible. In this episode, I reflect on the seasons when we ache to become someone else. Someone better and explore the ancient idea of virtue—especially the least sexy one, prudence—as a compass for who we’re becoming and how.

Rooted in Christian theology, this episode is for the slow changers. The late bloomers. The people choosing one small, faithful step instead of a total overhaul.

Plus, it includes a blessing for anyone who’s trying to change... but not overnight.

📘 Want more blessings like this? Pick up Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day 
💌 Join the conversation on Substack: katebowler.substack.com.
🎧 Listen to more episodes at katebowler.com/podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are re-airing some of our favorite episodes during our summer break like this one with expert facilitator, Priya Parker. After the pandemic took apart so many of our favorite ways of hanging out, we might be out of practice. Or too tired or overwhelmed. Priya encourages us all to practice being together for different reasons. And they don’t have to be nearly as fancy or predictable as we might think…

In this episode, Kate and Priya discuss: 

• How do we show up for other people and ourselves in creative ways 
• How to know when a change might be needed in a regular gathering 
• Risk and the awkwardness of needing people

 

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Subscribe to receive blessings in your inbox every week.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available in PAPERBACK. Order your copy, today.

Looking for some short spiritual reflections and blessings? Check out GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Available wherever books are sold.

We are going to practice the season of Advent together. Download a free Advent guide, here.

 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes! Margaret Renkl calls herself a backyard naturalist—but not because she has any particular expertise. From the birds in her yard to the bugs in her flower beds, she has learned the art of attention. Nature has taught her a speed at which to live, to hope, to stave off despair. 

In this conversation, Kate and Margaret discuss:

• What we miss when we imagine we have to drive somewhere else to experience nature, instead of noticing it around us
• What birds teach us about what it means to be a good mother
• How to learn to love even the mosquitoes and wasps
• Where Margaret experiences moments of holiness
• How we might all start to be besotted by beauty

Perhaps, we can borrow some of Margaret’s innate curiosity together and see how it might open us up to wonder and love and connectedness once again.

 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are re-airing some of our favorite episodes during our summer break, and this one with Shauna Niequist is a gem. Our obligations never stop, do they? How do we get off the achievement train and build a beautiful life within the constraints of our own limitations? Writer Shauna Niequist was on the fast track to burnout when she received advice that changed the pace of her life entirely. Kate and Shauna talk about the productivity myths we believe and how to embrace a slower, smaller life marked by delight.

 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes. What do you do when hope feels lost? Abstract artist Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is no stranger to the hopelessness that comes with grief. In extended isolation because of the pandemic, a nationwide reckoning with race, and our own personal losses, we could all use a bit of what Lanecia calls holy seeing. In this episode, Kate and Lanecia discuss how creativity can be an act of resistance and the hope she discovered on a blank canvas.

CW: Miscarriage, death of a child, racism

 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ah, summer. The season of sticky popsicles and even stickier expectations. It’s supposed to be the time of rest and freedom, but more-often-than-not, it’s anything but. In this solo episode, Kate shares from her very real, very mosquito-bitten summer, exploring the myth of summer as effortless bliss and what it means to resist our culture’s obsession with doing more, achieving more, and smiling through it all.

Instead, what if we embraced a gentler kind of ambition? Kate reflects on the sacred permission of Sabbath, the theology of rest, and how even our underachieving might be a form of holy resistance.

If you’re feeling overcooked, overwhelmed, or just plain over it—this one’s for you.

Relevant Links:
Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann
Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day by Kate Bowler
A Blessing for the Burnt Out, Soul-Drenched, and Sun-Weary

Kate's now on Substack! Read her writing here.

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes.

In this live conversation recorded at Duke University, the indomitable Liz Gilbert (of EAT, PRAY, LOVE fame) joins Kate for a discussion about the courage to create. Listen as Liz helps us expose our exhausting American need to make everything useful and lets us embrace beauty as a way of really living.

In this episode, Kate and Liz discuss: 

• Why we stop ourselves from being creative 
• How we are all capable of making anything (badly! medium-well!) 
• But how our creativity is best if it is for no reason whatsoever (not for impact or legacy or money or acknowledgement) 
• How curiosity quiets fear and control

CW: some spicy adult language

 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.