December 26, 2022 • 24 mins
The end of the year is always a flurry of resolutions and “next year will be even better!” sentiments. If your life has been anything but awesome lately, a “new year, new start” can feel impossible. In this special two part episode, we face the new year together - with a re-release of my conversation with historian, author, and queen of awkward conversations, Kate Bowler.
In this part one of this episode:
- How do you have hope for the year to come when right now maybe isn’t so great?
- Why New Year’s resolutions tend to make life feel like an endless self-improvement project
- Finding motivation to set goals for yourself
- The difference between transactional hope and functional hope
About Kate:
Kate Bowler, PhD, is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. Author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, Dr. Bowler stages a national conversation around why it’s so difficult to speak frankly about suffering through her popular podcast, Everything Happens. She has appeared on NPR, The TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TIME Magazine. Her latest book, No Cure For Being Human), grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. Follow her @Katecbowler on all social Platforms.
Get in touch:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your comments or thoughts, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on IG, FB, TW, and @hereafterpod on TT
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s Okay That You're Not Okay and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine,
author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. This week on the show, a rerelease of
one of your all time favorites from season one. Dr
Kate Boehler on the madness that is New Year's resolutions,
finding hope when life feels impossibly hard, and the math
of suffering, which will make sense when you listen to
(00:22):
the episode. This conversation is in two parts, so part
one comes out this week and part two comes out
next week. It's a wonderful way to close one year
and enter the next, especially if you are not that
psyched about it. One more thing, friends, You'll notice that
Kate and I answer listener questions in this episode, which
is something we did in each episode of season one.
(00:44):
So if you want more of those Q and A episodes,
if you need some actual advice, or you want to hear,
listen in and see if your questions get answered. The
whole collection of episodes from season one. We'll show up
wherever you get your podcasts if you search for Hereafter
with Megan Divine. All right onward, everybody, Part one of
my conversation with special guest historian, author and Queen of
(01:08):
Awkward Conversations, Cape Bowler. Right after this break, before we
get started, one quick note, Well, I hope you find
a lot of useful information in our time together. This
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
(01:30):
your work. Hey friends, So a lot of the questions
that we got for this week's show can be boiled
down to one thing. How do I find hope in
the year to come? Knowing what I know about life
right now, these last few years of hardship upon hardship
in our personal lives and the wider world don't exactly
make hope or even optimism that easy to access. The
(01:53):
closing of one year and the entrance of a new
year is just not that easy to navigate with any
kind of excitement about what's ahead. I always aim to
open these shows without being a downer, but so far
I have not succeeded. There are hundreds of beginnings and
endings in any given twelve month span, both culturally and personally.
(02:14):
Beginnings and endings happen all the time. This whole idea
that the year ends in December and begins a new
in January of the Gregorian calendar is just one of
many transition points. One of my favorite things about today's
guest is the ground she covers with her brain. She's
like this amazing ven diagram of religion, self help, health, kindness,
the minutia of being human, all stitched together with this
(02:36):
deep view of culture and religion. She definitely gets what
I just rambled about, that the New Year's don't always
match the calendar, and even when they do, the new
year isn't always that fresh start you long for. Dr
Kate Boehler is an author, historian, and one of my
favorite people in the world these days. She received a
(02:56):
master's of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD
from Duke University. She's an associate professor at Duke Divinity School.
Her latest book, No Cure for Being Human, grapples with
her diagnosis of stage four cancer at the age of
thirty five and the intersection of blind optimism and the
lack of control inherent in being a real, live human
with limitations. Dr Bowler made the whole country you get
(03:19):
used to speaking frankly about suffering through her popular podcast
Everything Happens which is truly awesome and you should listen
to that too. In today's episode, Kate and I talk
about all manner of math. Before you stress out about that,
it's the math of human suffering. Don't stress out about
that either. It's going to be great, all right, everybody.
(03:41):
I am so glad to have my friend Kate in
the studio well studio zoom with me today. So Kate,
thank you so much for being here. Hello, my dear,
thanks for having absolutely so. You are the one person
that I wanted to talk to you for this end
of the year. New Year's not really a special but
in the New Year episode because there's there's so much
(04:04):
in all of your work, your whole body of work,
all of your books about trying to live into the
future when the present is so crappy, when you know
what you know about things so right, like how how
do you have any sort of optimism or hope in
the future. Now we're going to get to that. I
(04:25):
want to jump right into some listener questions because I
think that's going to be the best, the best way
to access the brilliance of your mind and your expertise here.
So you okay with that? If I jump right in
with the question. All right, let's go so listener, question
number one, how do you accept that you're leaving the
last year that you shared with your person? Yeah, that's right.
(04:46):
Second anyone uses the word new, there's immediately the knowledge
that we have to then move on without maybe the
life we thought we'd be here, the person we thought
we would have. I think that's such a such a gorgeous,
honest thing to say, because with all the focus on
um New Year's resolutions and like twenty you know, it's
(05:06):
always like it's gonna next year's gonna be the best
year yet. And and for many of us, especially when
it comes to love, is like for for that love
there needs to be a moment to acknowledge it's sometimes
the best days of that love are behind us. It
reminds me of some of the people I've met who
create almost like a like a funeral for the year,
(05:27):
for the for the thing that came before some because
it was the person that they were, the love that
they had, but just something that honors the immensity of
being feeling like you're like filled to the brim of
details of something you're scared about forgetting, just being honest
about those fears, like maybe I'm scared of starting something
new because I don't want to let go. I love
that idea of of having a funeral or having some
(05:48):
sort of ceremony to mark the end of the form
of relatedness that came before. Yeah, maybe it's not just
like the countdown to the new year, but is having
a moment to count down the cut the one that's
just coming to a close. You're right, I think we
have this aggressive futurism that prevents us from being on.
Aggressive futurism is a fantastic way of looking at it. Yeah,
(06:12):
there's a there's a word I want to pick up on.
In this listener question, they write, how do you accept
that you're leaving the last year you shared with your person?
And I think this is a really good one because
in your books and on your Instagram you touch on
acceptance a lot. So can you talk to me about
your relationship with acceptance. Oh, it's horrible, Honestly, I am accepted.
(06:33):
It's truly a nightmare. I I've been living with incurable
cancer for for a long time, um longer than I
wanted to, and I kept thinking that life was going
to be a series of challenges that I would overcome
and then I could put things behind me. But part
of trying to figure out how to live, it seems,
is figuring out what maybe just to have a thicker
(06:56):
category for acceptance, to have almost like a higher tolerance
for the the uncertainty of of having things that I
love that I can't get back to and not ever
going back to that like durable and destructible vision of
myself I thought I would have. So I was diagnosed
on US thirty five and I'm forty one, and I
(07:16):
feel so grateful every time I hit a new year.
But at the same time, I need a minute to think, um,
what what are the things I cannot change? It's like
gorgeous serenity prayer. But then how can I find like
a little bit attraction, a little bit of like change,
wiggle ability to move because gosh, I'm not fully built
for acceptance. I need a little bit of something that
(07:38):
I can like totally kick the dust off of and
move around. And I think in a lot of ways
we weaponize acceptance, right it's just applied from the outside
as this end the goal that you need to get
to in order to be palatable to the others. Around you,
like you just need to accept that there are some
things that your body can't do anymore. Yeah, it's greatly
(08:01):
I I spent You're right, I spent most of manager
trying to not accept most things, because I mean, I
think that living at least for me, when I think
about the context of like I'm I'm a professor, so
I figure out how to keep changing and moving forward.
I've got complicated medical care in which I very frequently
have to yell at people when I'd rather use my
(08:22):
nice nctwor voice than like, if I don't constantly push
against acceptance, it goes into stignation and despair, and so
sometimes not accepting things it's been a really important part
of me staying alive and also just learning how to
evolve and change because I'll never get to be the
person I was before. Yeah, some things are unacceptable, right, Yes,
(08:44):
I love how you cared that though, Kate, that like
acceptance in some ways is giving up and being passive,
like sort of pitting it against self advocacy. Right, just
as you said right there, like with my medical needs,
I can't just accept that this is my can and
and this is what needs to happen. That I need
to ferociously advocate for myself, and sometimes that feels the
(09:06):
opposite of acceptance. I'm a bigger fan of allowing rather
than acceptance, because I think acceptance comes with this connotation
that you're cool with it. Right, we go back to
if we go back to our question, our listener question here,
how do I accept that I'm leaving the last year
I shared with my person? So the understory there is
that their person died in and we're facing a new
(09:27):
year without this person. How do I accept that I'm
leaving that year? Well, some things are unacceptable. It's not okay.
You don't have to be quote don't quote good with
that in order to be healthy and human. And that's right.
It's like so much of the experiment, right, is just
living with unacceptable truths. Yeah, what a strange thing. I
(09:49):
always love it when people say that. There's that lovely
quote from the mayor of Eastown. It's the Kate Winslet character,
and she says, you know, at some point, like you don't.
I don't know if she's that you don't accept it,
but it's like, but at some point, you just have
to put groceries in the fridge. It didn't have that
sort of like shiny neo Buddhist Everything's fine with me.
(10:10):
I am the ocean, and it's a stuffordness to that
that I really, I really respect. Stay tuned for more
coming up right after this break. So there's a related
(10:30):
question that kind of goes back to what you were
talking about with marking the end of one period before
you enter the next period. And so the next question ready, Okay,
it's going to sound almost like the first question, but
there's a slight angle change here. So question too, how
do you go into a new year knowing that your
person won't be there for it. If my person died
(10:51):
this year, now I have to start saying they died
last year, and it makes them feel so far away
from me. So something of inherent in that question is
the passage of time that gets um sort of crystallized
once we switch from December thirty one to January one, Like,
now I have to say my person died last year,
or if your person died in you can't say they
(11:15):
died last year anymore. Mm hmmm. Yeah. It kind of
gets to the math of suffering that gets applied to
all those of us who suffer, which is that there's
the kind of a rough calculation in the listener. It's
like when someone says, how when when you know someone died,
You're like, well, how old were they? Like immediately there's
a sense that our our grief is rendered invalid with
the passage of time, or our love doesn't sometimes even
(11:38):
increase and our grief increase over the course of so
that I do feel like there's with with the passage
of time comes the feeling of leading to justify either
moving on or whatever that means, or not moving on
and whatever that means to to an audience. And there's
like a there's a jury out there who gets to decide.
And I have not found that there is a really
easy way to describe what suffering has meant over time.
(12:02):
Like you know, for instance, even if I just said, oh,
I was diagnosed six years ago, truth is, it was
three years after that that was probably the worst moment
of my life. You know. It wasn't the diagnosis. It
was the facing a different life for death surgery and
trying to still have problems that made sense to anyone
after they thought that it was all over by them.
And so I'm like a big fan of bad, bad math,
(12:26):
like where we just assume we can't add up other
people's lives because I I know I can't. I love that.
I remember that was actually a line in your new
book that stood out to me when I was reading
it rereading it again yesterday, the math of suffering. Right,
It's such a beautiful way of looking at it, because
you're right, like the inherent in this question that this
listener sent in was I'm going to have to start
(12:47):
defending the fact that I missed them or that I
am quote unquote still grieving, because I'm not going to
be able to say, oh, it was just earlier this
year that they died, or it was just last year
that they were here. There is this um judgment that
enters the chat at the change of the year, Right,
And I really love what you just said. They're about
(13:08):
I'm going to commit myself to bad math. I just
paraphrase what you said, but as a person who has
a hard time with math in general, I loved I
kept thinking like, oh, we need a new applied mathematics,
the mathematics of suffering. That only the person at the
center of that equation is the one that gets to
say what time means or or what suffering means and
(13:31):
how we judge that, because there there is so much
judgment about how you're suffering, how much you should be suffering,
what the worst times were for you. It's really interesting
that you brought that part up, that you know, when
you tell your story diagnosed six years ago with cancer
and people are like, oh, that must have been such
a terrible time for you, And what you just shared
was that actually that sucked, and my equation of suffering
(13:54):
actually had a different high point, I think, to the
part of the fear, at least for me, of having
someone who has had a chronically terrible, terrible, wonderful but
pretty terrible, chronically terrible life. Not just sorry, it's just
that the more things happen, you know more that there's
(14:18):
this kind of creeping fear that if people don't understand,
then I'll be left alone. If people don't understand, I
won't have the community and the support and the friendship.
Like if I can't make other people understand my suffering math,
then I'm no longer translatable as lovable, carriable, intelligible. Then
you get untranslated in a way, and it's been hard
(14:40):
to manage the fear that persistent suffering creates, and that
that's something I recognize in other people, is the feeling
untranslatable anymore. It makes me think of survivalist mammals. I
know that you can hang with my tangents here. I'm
really into it already, right, Yeah, So while you're describing
(15:03):
like this, this fear of being untranslatable, that I'm going
to have to explain what it's like to be me
clearly enough so that people stay with me. That drive
for connection and being seen, it is so fundamental to
our our existence as human animals. This is why excommunication
(15:27):
is such a powerful tool. If you look at you're
going to know this one better than than I do.
With your history and your background, which ones, Kate, are
the tradition on the East Coast where you where the
whole community gathers around you, and if you've done something
about sun Yeah, can you describe shunning for folks who
don't know what what I'm rambling about here? Describe shunning
(15:48):
for me, Kate. Well, it is a powerful tool of
social cohesion and lack thereof, where if someone violates like
a sacred or special tenant of the community, that they
will be kind of exiled by no one acknowledging or
speaking to them, and so like I have a family
member was shunned for having an organ at our wedding
(16:11):
in a service that prohibited these construments, which is very
funny now but was very sad at a time. But
it's it's the it's the ability to render somebody invalid
by not socially seeing them. And it's really really powerful
because we need each other so and that that shunning
that we're talking about it belongs to specific spiritual and
(16:32):
religious traditions, but you can also find it showing up
in pop culture. Totally outing my nerd here, but I
believe on one of them, one of those Star Trek shows. Gosh,
I'm going to get so many messages about this for
not knowing which part of the start right, which Star
Trek trivia I'm quoting here. Apologies, my brain is full
(16:53):
of everybody. But there is an episode where I believe
it's a it's a klingon shunning excommunication thing, where like
the person who did the socially unacceptable things stands in
the middle and everybody makes a circle, looks the person
in there in the eye and then crosses their arms
in front of their chest and turns their back. Right,
That's what I think of when I think about shunning
(17:14):
used as communal operational force, right, Like this is how
we keep people performing the way that we want them
to perform. And what you described in talking about like
I want my suffering to be translatable. I need people
to hear me and understand me and see me, because
if you can't understand me, then I lose connection and community.
(17:38):
And if I can't be translated, I can't be seen. Yeah,
And that is its own form of sort of communal shunning.
I think that's why as a historian, I I'm so
excited about sort of studying religious and cultural cliches because
I think that's exactly the reason why I found them
so interesting. Was it felt like if I can study
the cultural scripts, like the stories will tell about suffering,
(18:01):
like you know, everything happens for a reason, or you
know God never gives you more than you can handle,
that kind of thing. If I understand the script, then
at least I understand what I'm off script. Because I
have felt I've just you know, having a chronic problem.
I have found that so little of it actually creates
the kind of social understanding that I'm looking for. If
(18:21):
I say something like, oh, yeah, it's pretty terrible and
it stayed, really it's pretty much stayed pretty awful. There's
really no it doesn't suit the American culture of optimism.
It doesn't give anyone the exit, the cultural exit ramp
that they're looking for. I think um, social cohesion and
cultural scripts tell us a lot about when we're in
and when we're out, because we certainly feel it when
we're out. Yeah, And I think the temptation is to
(18:43):
bend yourself to fit the social construct so that you
don't get so that you don't feel alone. If you've
lost your person or you have a really impossible diagnosis
or chronic illness or injury, you know, you need your community.
And the temptation, I think is like maybe I'm the
wrong one. Well, part of the way that I see
a lot of my work, Kate, is that like, you're
(19:05):
not the one that's wrong. The culture is wrong. And
you and I, you know, work at different angles or
different starting points for this same challenge. Which is it
it's the culture that misunderstands suffering. It is our entertainment
and the stories that we tell ourselves and what we
believe is the most helpful thing to do for somebody
when they're suffering. That's where the problem is. It's not
(19:26):
in this person who asked this question about you know,
how do I go into a note a new year
knowing that my this is a year my person will
never see the implications or the connotations inside that is like,
I'm going to have to justify this, And I think
this also what we're just discussing also points to why
it feels so important for people to justify their right
(19:46):
to suffer, or their right to be in pain, or
their right to be having a hard time that doesn't
match the Disney stereotype or the you know you got
through the like that transformation narrative, right, you and I
have act about this before transformation narrative, for like, if
you do your suffering correctly, then you come back a bigger, stronger,
wiser person, and the bluebirds fly from your brain and
(20:08):
and everything works out exactly as it should. And I
think we know that that's not true and that need
to explain our suffering, translate our suffering. I love that
phrase that you used to talk about that we feel
like we're failing a cultural script and we're going to
be left even more alone. But we also know that
we need to tell the truth about our own experience. Right,
(20:30):
So that's that's an interesting point of discomfort culturally and
personally and professionally, right, trying to rewrite those scripts. And
it really does take more people willing to tell the
truth about their math, suffering, their suffering of I mean,
you said it so much better and I can't remember
what it was, but it was awesome. It really does
take people talking about the reality of suffering to start
(20:54):
changing those bigger conversations so that we don't feel like
our math is getting questioned free time we turn around
and every time there's a year change. That's right. This
is just the first half of my conversation with Kate Bowler.
We had so much fun talking together, and yes, we
had fun talking about this really serious stuff. That's what
(21:14):
we do together. This conversation was so much fun and
so interesting and had so much useful stuff in it,
we decided to split it into two parts. This is
part one. Part two is coming your way next week.
Don't miss it, friends. Check out Refuge in Grief on
(21:35):
Instagram or here after pod on TikTok to see video
clips from the show and leave your thoughts in the
comments on those posts. That's a great way to get
in touch, and be sure to tag us in your
conversation starting posts on your own social accounts. Use the
hashtag here after pod on all the platforms. We love
to see where this show takes you. Using that hashtag,
(21:57):
let's just find we're talking about m hmm. If you
want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
or you have a request or a question for upcoming
explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three
two three six four three three seven six eight and
leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find
the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine
(22:18):
dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you
can do that too, right from the website Megan divind
dot c O. We want to hear from you. I
want to hear from you. This show, this world needs
your voice. Together, we can make things better even when
they can't be made right. You know how most people
(22:43):
are going to scan through their podcast app looking for
a new thing to listen to. They're going to see
the show description for Hereafter and think I don't want
to listen to difficult things, even if cool people are
talking about them. Well, here's where you come in your reviews.
Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here.
We talk about heavy stuff, yes, but it's in the
service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs
(23:04):
to listen. In order to get everyone to listen, everybody
needs to know about the show, So share about the
show in your social networks and leave a review right there.
For the show, subscribe to the show, download episodes, and
keep on listening. Want more hereafter. Grief education doesn't just
(23:25):
belong to end of life issues. As my dad says,
daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important
skill for everyone, especially if you're in any of the
helping professions. There's an awesome six month intensive training starting
(23:47):
in December two two and registration is open right now.
If you are in the helping professions and you want
to get better at serving your grieving clients no matter
what caused that grief, learn more about that training, plus
find professional resources and my best selling book, It's Okay
that You're Not Okay at Megan Divine dot c O.
(24:08):
Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me
Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown. Co produced by
Elizabeth Fossio, with logistical and social media support from Micah,
Edited by Houston Tilly, Music provided by Wave Crush, and
today's background noises are provided by Luna barking at a
(24:28):
dog walking by and me fidgeting in my chair because
I can't keep still
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine,
author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. This week on the show, a rerelease of
one of your all time favorites from season one. Dr
Kate Boehler on the madness that is New Year's resolutions,
finding hope when life feels impossibly hard, and the math
of suffering, which will make sense when you listen to
(00:22):
the episode. This conversation is in two parts, so part
one comes out this week and part two comes out
next week. It's a wonderful way to close one year
and enter the next, especially if you are not that
psyched about it. One more thing, friends, You'll notice that
Kate and I answer listener questions in this episode, which
is something we did in each episode of season one.
(00:44):
So if you want more of those Q and A episodes,
if you need some actual advice, or you want to hear,
listen in and see if your questions get answered. The
whole collection of episodes from season one. We'll show up
wherever you get your podcasts if you search for Hereafter
with Megan Divine. All right onward, everybody, Part one of
my conversation with special guest historian, author and Queen of
(01:08):
Awkward Conversations, Cape Bowler. Right after this break, before we
get started, one quick note, Well, I hope you find
a lot of useful information in our time together. This
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
(01:30):
your work. Hey friends, So a lot of the questions
that we got for this week's show can be boiled
down to one thing. How do I find hope in
the year to come? Knowing what I know about life
right now, these last few years of hardship upon hardship
in our personal lives and the wider world don't exactly
make hope or even optimism that easy to access. The
(01:53):
closing of one year and the entrance of a new
year is just not that easy to navigate with any
kind of excitement about what's ahead. I always aim to
open these shows without being a downer, but so far
I have not succeeded. There are hundreds of beginnings and
endings in any given twelve month span, both culturally and personally.
(02:14):
Beginnings and endings happen all the time. This whole idea
that the year ends in December and begins a new
in January of the Gregorian calendar is just one of
many transition points. One of my favorite things about today's
guest is the ground she covers with her brain. She's
like this amazing ven diagram of religion, self help, health, kindness,
the minutia of being human, all stitched together with this
(02:36):
deep view of culture and religion. She definitely gets what
I just rambled about, that the New Year's don't always
match the calendar, and even when they do, the new
year isn't always that fresh start you long for. Dr
Kate Boehler is an author, historian, and one of my
favorite people in the world these days. She received a
(02:56):
master's of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD
from Duke University. She's an associate professor at Duke Divinity School.
Her latest book, No Cure for Being Human, grapples with
her diagnosis of stage four cancer at the age of
thirty five and the intersection of blind optimism and the
lack of control inherent in being a real, live human
with limitations. Dr Bowler made the whole country you get
(03:19):
used to speaking frankly about suffering through her popular podcast
Everything Happens which is truly awesome and you should listen
to that too. In today's episode, Kate and I talk
about all manner of math. Before you stress out about that,
it's the math of human suffering. Don't stress out about
that either. It's going to be great, all right, everybody.
(03:41):
I am so glad to have my friend Kate in
the studio well studio zoom with me today. So Kate,
thank you so much for being here. Hello, my dear,
thanks for having absolutely so. You are the one person
that I wanted to talk to you for this end
of the year. New Year's not really a special but
in the New Year episode because there's there's so much
(04:04):
in all of your work, your whole body of work,
all of your books about trying to live into the
future when the present is so crappy, when you know
what you know about things so right, like how how
do you have any sort of optimism or hope in
the future. Now we're going to get to that. I
(04:25):
want to jump right into some listener questions because I
think that's going to be the best, the best way
to access the brilliance of your mind and your expertise here.
So you okay with that? If I jump right in
with the question. All right, let's go so listener, question
number one, how do you accept that you're leaving the
last year that you shared with your person? Yeah, that's right.
(04:46):
Second anyone uses the word new, there's immediately the knowledge
that we have to then move on without maybe the
life we thought we'd be here, the person we thought
we would have. I think that's such a such a gorgeous,
honest thing to say, because with all the focus on
um New Year's resolutions and like twenty you know, it's
(05:06):
always like it's gonna next year's gonna be the best
year yet. And and for many of us, especially when
it comes to love, is like for for that love
there needs to be a moment to acknowledge it's sometimes
the best days of that love are behind us. It
reminds me of some of the people I've met who
create almost like a like a funeral for the year,
(05:27):
for the for the thing that came before some because
it was the person that they were, the love that
they had, but just something that honors the immensity of
being feeling like you're like filled to the brim of
details of something you're scared about forgetting, just being honest
about those fears, like maybe I'm scared of starting something
new because I don't want to let go. I love
that idea of of having a funeral or having some
(05:48):
sort of ceremony to mark the end of the form
of relatedness that came before. Yeah, maybe it's not just
like the countdown to the new year, but is having
a moment to count down the cut the one that's
just coming to a close. You're right, I think we
have this aggressive futurism that prevents us from being on.
Aggressive futurism is a fantastic way of looking at it. Yeah,
(06:12):
there's a there's a word I want to pick up on.
In this listener question, they write, how do you accept
that you're leaving the last year you shared with your person?
And I think this is a really good one because
in your books and on your Instagram you touch on
acceptance a lot. So can you talk to me about
your relationship with acceptance. Oh, it's horrible, Honestly, I am accepted.
(06:33):
It's truly a nightmare. I I've been living with incurable
cancer for for a long time, um longer than I
wanted to, and I kept thinking that life was going
to be a series of challenges that I would overcome
and then I could put things behind me. But part
of trying to figure out how to live, it seems,
is figuring out what maybe just to have a thicker
(06:56):
category for acceptance, to have almost like a higher tolerance
for the the uncertainty of of having things that I
love that I can't get back to and not ever
going back to that like durable and destructible vision of
myself I thought I would have. So I was diagnosed
on US thirty five and I'm forty one, and I
(07:16):
feel so grateful every time I hit a new year.
But at the same time, I need a minute to think, um,
what what are the things I cannot change? It's like
gorgeous serenity prayer. But then how can I find like
a little bit attraction, a little bit of like change,
wiggle ability to move because gosh, I'm not fully built
for acceptance. I need a little bit of something that
(07:38):
I can like totally kick the dust off of and
move around. And I think in a lot of ways
we weaponize acceptance, right it's just applied from the outside
as this end the goal that you need to get
to in order to be palatable to the others. Around you,
like you just need to accept that there are some
things that your body can't do anymore. Yeah, it's greatly
(08:01):
I I spent You're right, I spent most of manager
trying to not accept most things, because I mean, I
think that living at least for me, when I think
about the context of like I'm I'm a professor, so
I figure out how to keep changing and moving forward.
I've got complicated medical care in which I very frequently
have to yell at people when I'd rather use my
(08:22):
nice nctwor voice than like, if I don't constantly push
against acceptance, it goes into stignation and despair, and so
sometimes not accepting things it's been a really important part
of me staying alive and also just learning how to
evolve and change because I'll never get to be the
person I was before. Yeah, some things are unacceptable, right, Yes,
(08:44):
I love how you cared that though, Kate, that like
acceptance in some ways is giving up and being passive,
like sort of pitting it against self advocacy. Right, just
as you said right there, like with my medical needs,
I can't just accept that this is my can and
and this is what needs to happen. That I need
to ferociously advocate for myself, and sometimes that feels the
(09:06):
opposite of acceptance. I'm a bigger fan of allowing rather
than acceptance, because I think acceptance comes with this connotation
that you're cool with it. Right, we go back to
if we go back to our question, our listener question here,
how do I accept that I'm leaving the last year
I shared with my person? So the understory there is
that their person died in and we're facing a new
(09:27):
year without this person. How do I accept that I'm
leaving that year? Well, some things are unacceptable. It's not okay.
You don't have to be quote don't quote good with
that in order to be healthy and human. And that's right.
It's like so much of the experiment, right, is just
living with unacceptable truths. Yeah, what a strange thing. I
(09:49):
always love it when people say that. There's that lovely
quote from the mayor of Eastown. It's the Kate Winslet character,
and she says, you know, at some point, like you don't.
I don't know if she's that you don't accept it,
but it's like, but at some point, you just have
to put groceries in the fridge. It didn't have that
sort of like shiny neo Buddhist Everything's fine with me.
(10:10):
I am the ocean, and it's a stuffordness to that
that I really, I really respect. Stay tuned for more
coming up right after this break. So there's a related
(10:30):
question that kind of goes back to what you were
talking about with marking the end of one period before
you enter the next period. And so the next question ready, Okay,
it's going to sound almost like the first question, but
there's a slight angle change here. So question too, how
do you go into a new year knowing that your
person won't be there for it. If my person died
(10:51):
this year, now I have to start saying they died
last year, and it makes them feel so far away
from me. So something of inherent in that question is
the passage of time that gets um sort of crystallized
once we switch from December thirty one to January one, Like,
now I have to say my person died last year,
or if your person died in you can't say they
(11:15):
died last year anymore. Mm hmmm. Yeah. It kind of
gets to the math of suffering that gets applied to
all those of us who suffer, which is that there's
the kind of a rough calculation in the listener. It's
like when someone says, how when when you know someone died,
You're like, well, how old were they? Like immediately there's
a sense that our our grief is rendered invalid with
the passage of time, or our love doesn't sometimes even
(11:38):
increase and our grief increase over the course of so
that I do feel like there's with with the passage
of time comes the feeling of leading to justify either
moving on or whatever that means, or not moving on
and whatever that means to to an audience. And there's
like a there's a jury out there who gets to decide.
And I have not found that there is a really
easy way to describe what suffering has meant over time.
(12:02):
Like you know, for instance, even if I just said, oh,
I was diagnosed six years ago, truth is, it was
three years after that that was probably the worst moment
of my life. You know. It wasn't the diagnosis. It
was the facing a different life for death surgery and
trying to still have problems that made sense to anyone
after they thought that it was all over by them.
And so I'm like a big fan of bad, bad math,
(12:26):
like where we just assume we can't add up other
people's lives because I I know I can't. I love that.
I remember that was actually a line in your new
book that stood out to me when I was reading
it rereading it again yesterday, the math of suffering. Right,
It's such a beautiful way of looking at it, because
you're right, like the inherent in this question that this
listener sent in was I'm going to have to start
(12:47):
defending the fact that I missed them or that I
am quote unquote still grieving, because I'm not going to
be able to say, oh, it was just earlier this
year that they died, or it was just last year
that they were here. There is this um judgment that
enters the chat at the change of the year, Right,
And I really love what you just said. They're about
(13:08):
I'm going to commit myself to bad math. I just
paraphrase what you said, but as a person who has
a hard time with math in general, I loved I
kept thinking like, oh, we need a new applied mathematics,
the mathematics of suffering. That only the person at the
center of that equation is the one that gets to
say what time means or or what suffering means and
(13:31):
how we judge that, because there there is so much
judgment about how you're suffering, how much you should be suffering,
what the worst times were for you. It's really interesting
that you brought that part up, that you know, when
you tell your story diagnosed six years ago with cancer
and people are like, oh, that must have been such
a terrible time for you, And what you just shared
was that actually that sucked, and my equation of suffering
(13:54):
actually had a different high point, I think, to the
part of the fear, at least for me, of having
someone who has had a chronically terrible, terrible, wonderful but
pretty terrible, chronically terrible life. Not just sorry, it's just
that the more things happen, you know more that there's
(14:18):
this kind of creeping fear that if people don't understand,
then I'll be left alone. If people don't understand, I
won't have the community and the support and the friendship.
Like if I can't make other people understand my suffering math,
then I'm no longer translatable as lovable, carriable, intelligible. Then
you get untranslated in a way, and it's been hard
(14:40):
to manage the fear that persistent suffering creates, and that
that's something I recognize in other people, is the feeling
untranslatable anymore. It makes me think of survivalist mammals. I
know that you can hang with my tangents here. I'm
really into it already, right, Yeah, So while you're describing
(15:03):
like this, this fear of being untranslatable, that I'm going
to have to explain what it's like to be me
clearly enough so that people stay with me. That drive
for connection and being seen, it is so fundamental to
our our existence as human animals. This is why excommunication
(15:27):
is such a powerful tool. If you look at you're
going to know this one better than than I do.
With your history and your background, which ones, Kate, are
the tradition on the East Coast where you where the
whole community gathers around you, and if you've done something
about sun Yeah, can you describe shunning for folks who
don't know what what I'm rambling about here? Describe shunning
(15:48):
for me, Kate. Well, it is a powerful tool of
social cohesion and lack thereof, where if someone violates like
a sacred or special tenant of the community, that they
will be kind of exiled by no one acknowledging or
speaking to them, and so like I have a family
member was shunned for having an organ at our wedding
(16:11):
in a service that prohibited these construments, which is very
funny now but was very sad at a time. But
it's it's the it's the ability to render somebody invalid
by not socially seeing them. And it's really really powerful
because we need each other so and that that shunning
that we're talking about it belongs to specific spiritual and
(16:32):
religious traditions, but you can also find it showing up
in pop culture. Totally outing my nerd here, but I
believe on one of them, one of those Star Trek shows. Gosh,
I'm going to get so many messages about this for
not knowing which part of the start right, which Star
Trek trivia I'm quoting here. Apologies, my brain is full
(16:53):
of everybody. But there is an episode where I believe
it's a it's a klingon shunning excommunication thing, where like
the person who did the socially unacceptable things stands in
the middle and everybody makes a circle, looks the person
in there in the eye and then crosses their arms
in front of their chest and turns their back. Right,
That's what I think of when I think about shunning
(17:14):
used as communal operational force, right, Like this is how
we keep people performing the way that we want them
to perform. And what you described in talking about like
I want my suffering to be translatable. I need people
to hear me and understand me and see me, because
if you can't understand me, then I lose connection and community.
(17:38):
And if I can't be translated, I can't be seen. Yeah,
And that is its own form of sort of communal shunning.
I think that's why as a historian, I I'm so
excited about sort of studying religious and cultural cliches because
I think that's exactly the reason why I found them
so interesting. Was it felt like if I can study
the cultural scripts, like the stories will tell about suffering,
(18:01):
like you know, everything happens for a reason, or you
know God never gives you more than you can handle,
that kind of thing. If I understand the script, then
at least I understand what I'm off script. Because I
have felt I've just you know, having a chronic problem.
I have found that so little of it actually creates
the kind of social understanding that I'm looking for. If
(18:21):
I say something like, oh, yeah, it's pretty terrible and
it stayed, really it's pretty much stayed pretty awful. There's
really no it doesn't suit the American culture of optimism.
It doesn't give anyone the exit, the cultural exit ramp
that they're looking for. I think um, social cohesion and
cultural scripts tell us a lot about when we're in
and when we're out, because we certainly feel it when
we're out. Yeah, And I think the temptation is to
(18:43):
bend yourself to fit the social construct so that you
don't get so that you don't feel alone. If you've
lost your person or you have a really impossible diagnosis
or chronic illness or injury, you know, you need your community.
And the temptation, I think is like maybe I'm the
wrong one. Well, part of the way that I see
a lot of my work, Kate, is that like, you're
(19:05):
not the one that's wrong. The culture is wrong. And
you and I, you know, work at different angles or
different starting points for this same challenge. Which is it
it's the culture that misunderstands suffering. It is our entertainment
and the stories that we tell ourselves and what we
believe is the most helpful thing to do for somebody
when they're suffering. That's where the problem is. It's not
(19:26):
in this person who asked this question about you know,
how do I go into a note a new year
knowing that my this is a year my person will
never see the implications or the connotations inside that is like,
I'm going to have to justify this, And I think
this also what we're just discussing also points to why
it feels so important for people to justify their right
(19:46):
to suffer, or their right to be in pain, or
their right to be having a hard time that doesn't
match the Disney stereotype or the you know you got
through the like that transformation narrative, right, you and I
have act about this before transformation narrative, for like, if
you do your suffering correctly, then you come back a bigger, stronger,
wiser person, and the bluebirds fly from your brain and
(20:08):
and everything works out exactly as it should. And I
think we know that that's not true and that need
to explain our suffering, translate our suffering. I love that
phrase that you used to talk about that we feel
like we're failing a cultural script and we're going to
be left even more alone. But we also know that
we need to tell the truth about our own experience. Right,
(20:30):
So that's that's an interesting point of discomfort culturally and
personally and professionally, right, trying to rewrite those scripts. And
it really does take more people willing to tell the
truth about their math, suffering, their suffering of I mean,
you said it so much better and I can't remember
what it was, but it was awesome. It really does
take people talking about the reality of suffering to start
(20:54):
changing those bigger conversations so that we don't feel like
our math is getting questioned free time we turn around
and every time there's a year change. That's right. This
is just the first half of my conversation with Kate Bowler.
We had so much fun talking together, and yes, we
had fun talking about this really serious stuff. That's what
(21:14):
we do together. This conversation was so much fun and
so interesting and had so much useful stuff in it,
we decided to split it into two parts. This is
part one. Part two is coming your way next week.
Don't miss it, friends. Check out Refuge in Grief on
(21:35):
Instagram or here after pod on TikTok to see video
clips from the show and leave your thoughts in the
comments on those posts. That's a great way to get
in touch, and be sure to tag us in your
conversation starting posts on your own social accounts. Use the
hashtag here after pod on all the platforms. We love
to see where this show takes you. Using that hashtag,
(21:57):
let's just find we're talking about m hmm. If you
want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
or you have a request or a question for upcoming
explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three
two three six four three three seven six eight and
leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find
the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine
(22:18):
dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you
can do that too, right from the website Megan divind
dot c O. We want to hear from you. I
want to hear from you. This show, this world needs
your voice. Together, we can make things better even when
they can't be made right. You know how most people
(22:43):
are going to scan through their podcast app looking for
a new thing to listen to. They're going to see
the show description for Hereafter and think I don't want
to listen to difficult things, even if cool people are
talking about them. Well, here's where you come in your reviews.
Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here.
We talk about heavy stuff, yes, but it's in the
service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs
(23:04):
to listen. In order to get everyone to listen, everybody
needs to know about the show, So share about the
show in your social networks and leave a review right there.
For the show, subscribe to the show, download episodes, and
keep on listening. Want more hereafter. Grief education doesn't just
(23:25):
belong to end of life issues. As my dad says,
daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important
skill for everyone, especially if you're in any of the
helping professions. There's an awesome six month intensive training starting
(23:47):
in December two two and registration is open right now.
If you are in the helping professions and you want
to get better at serving your grieving clients no matter
what caused that grief, learn more about that training, plus
find professional resources and my best selling book, It's Okay
that You're Not Okay at Megan Divine dot c O.
(24:08):
Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me
Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown. Co produced by
Elizabeth Fossio, with logistical and social media support from Micah,
Edited by Houston Tilly, Music provided by Wave Crush, and
today's background noises are provided by Luna barking at a
(24:28):
dog walking by and me fidgeting in my chair because
I can't keep still
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.