No Cure for Being Human - by Kate Bowler

About the Book

"We all know, intellectually, that our time on Earth is limited. What would we change if we knew it viscerally? Kate Bowler was thirty-five when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Now that she's responded to immunotherapy Kate has to figure out how to make a new life between CT scans. Before she got sick, she'd accepted the very American idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities. Now she has to figure out what to do within the limits of the time she has left ... Kate ... looks at the ways she has tried to wring meaning from her remaining time through anecdotes that range from the hilariously absurd--as when she attempts to rid the hospital gift shop of its copies of prosperity gospel guru Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now to the seriously painful. Breaking down time into efficient segments ... trying to live in the moment, weighing the meaning of work, and learning to discover what 'enough' feels like, Kate asks one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives as we race against the clock?"--

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - 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?

"Kate Bowler is the only one we can trust to tell us the truth."--Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed

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.

Review Quotes

"With grace, wisdom, and humor, Kate Bowler encourages us to cut back on self-help Kool-Aid and teaches us what it means to be human."--Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again

"Kate Bowler has paid through the nose to become a writer of uncommon spiritual wisdom, coupled with an amazing sense of humor and a heart full of love. She fills me with hope."--Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Dusk, Light, Dawn

"Kate Bowler refuses to jump on the bandwagon of toxic positivity. Instead, she leads us to a truer truth: The work is unfinishable, and so be it."--Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and PBS's Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan

"Kate Bowler is the rare author who can explore difficult subjects with both breathtaking honesty and lightheartedness. She brings profound insight and love to the human experience."--Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project

"In a culture that asks us to constantly strive and improve, Kate Bowler recognizes that our own pain is neither an aberration nor an opportunity but a fact of life. There is nobody on earth who sees our humanity quite like Kate Bowler."--Nora McInerny, creator and host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking

"Those in need of a wake-up call will find it in this breathtaking narrative. . . . Bowler's strong faith is present throughout, though the writing, refreshingly, never feels overtly religious. . . . Her convictions underscore the importance of living life on one's own terms."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"With hilarity and courage, Bowler tells the story of being diagnosed with stage-four cancer at age thirty-five, which forced her to re-examine the way she (and we) live our lives. This is a brilliant examination of what happens when everything you assumed is suddenly in question."--Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

About the Author

Kate Bowler is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. She completed her undergraduate degree at Macalester College, received a master's of religion from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD at Duke University. She is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, the New York Times bestselling memoir Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, and The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities. On her popular podcast, Everything Happens, she talks with people about what they have learned in difficult times and why it is so difficult to speak frankly about suffering. She has appeared on the TED stage, NPR, and Today, and her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, Toban, and son, Zach.