Maggie Smith (poet and author of books like Keep Moving and You Could Make This Place Beautiful) chronicles the aftermath of a painful divorce she didn’t see coming. How do we raise our kids in the wake of such change? And how do we reconcile who we are and who we are becoming? 

In this conversation, Maggie and Kate discuss:

• How to support someone going through divorce
• The metaphor of nesting dolls as how we contain who we were before (and how our befores and afters might not be as dramatic as we thought)
• Speaking honestly with our children about the beauty and tragedy of the world
• Why tragedies are not worth the “lessons” that we might learn from them

CW: divorce

***

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What happens when the people we built our lives around stop needing us? Or when we have to pick between our meaningful careers or our family? And what do we do with the ambiguous grief that comes with every expected and unexpected change? Today, Kate takes an honest look at juggling the demands on our time and on our heart with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

Kate and Mary Louise discuss: 

• Debunking the women can “have it all” paradigm and what happens when the things we love come into conflict
• The limitations of gratitude
• How our callings pull us into a wider sense of who we belong to
• How to savor (and mourn) all the lasts as your children grow older

This may be a conversation about parenting, but I think there might be something in here for anyone who wonders: Who am I as my relationships change? Can I still find myself there?

***

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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

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How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness. 

In this conversation, we discuss:  

• The mysterious way beauty can be found the closer we inch to death (our own or someone else’s).
• The importance of just showing up. And being you. 
• Honoring someone’s memory at the same time being truthful about how human they were
• The peace that comes from acknowledging that life is full of dualities 
• “If you have to go through hell, don’t come out empty handed” (Steve Leder), but no, the lessons were never, ever worth the pain

CW: suicide, adult language

***

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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

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Historian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews… or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity's enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.

In this conversation, Kate and Michael discuss:

• Why truth and trust are so important when it comes to finding meaning in our pain
• The difference between comfort and consolation 
• The limits of stoicism and hyper-futurism 
• What it means to be hopeful
• The importance of community through pain and suffering

Michael does not denigrate anyone’s attempt for comfort, but asks us to look carefully at the consolation that lasts. He asks: What is consolation? And why do we all crave that practice of meaning-making?

***

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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

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Supermodel Paulina Porizkova has been in the public eye all her life. But it has been a rollercoaster of soaring successes and deep heartache. Grief and pain comes to us all, and in those moments, we need our shared humanity (and not our super-anythingness) to build a bridge back to others.

In this tender conversation, Kate and Paulina discuss:

• How to show up to friends in unsolvable pain
• Why “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger” is just plain wrong
• Why the assumptions we make about one another are untrue 

CW: Spicy language

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

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The Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.

In this warm conversation (trust me! You will laugh!), Kate and Tom discuss: 

• What it means to be called into emotionally-expensive professions (jobs where you decide to really care!) 
• The importance of truth-telling at a funeral
• Seeing people through the prism of God’s love for them (more specifically—through the lens of their baptism)
• Why people die at all and what happens with all the love we have for one another (hint: it’s never, ever, ever lost)
• The importance of the rituals we create to walk people through death and dying

No one likes to talk about funerals, but this one is a must-listen. 

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

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Over thirty years ago, Elaine Pagels’ young son and husband died within the same year. In this tender conversation, Kate and Elaine discuss surviving the aftermath of such devastation, the painful explanations religion often offers, and how we love and keep loving even after so much tragedy. 

Together, they discuss:

• The need for connection to others during grief
• Religion’s often painful and punitive explanations for suffering (and why they aren’t helpful or complete)
• Why parents often feel like they’ve “failed” when a child dies
• How suffering pulls us closer to mystery 

This episode is for someone who has ever had the thought “haven’t I suffered enough?” Elaine and Kate are trusted companions in a life that hasn’t turned out like we thought it should. 

CW: death of a child, death of a spouse

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

A big thank you to Jed Meyers for contributing his beautiful poem to today's episode.

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Every problem New York Times columnist Frank Bruni faced had a simple fix. Doctors offered reasonable solutions for reasonable problems. Preventative care guaranteed future health. That is, until he woke up one morning without vision in his eye. This experience forced him to rethink how much of life is in our control and how to live fully in the face of unfixable problems.

In this conversation, Kate and Frank discuss: 

• Letting go of the idea that life is a series of choices and learning that there are things we can’t fix
• How the lacquered lives we see on social media deny us the fuller picture of each other’s problems
• Importance of finding the things that light up our lives and taking the hard stuff bird by bird, vine by vine. 

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

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Beth Moore has been in the limelight for almost thirty years, but during that time, she revealed very little about her formative family history. Now, this world-famous Bible teacher is ready to tell her story for the first time. 

In this episode, Kate and Beth discuss: 

• How Beth’s faith offered stability during a very unpredictable and unstable childhood 
• The complicated grief that occurs when family members cause deep, unforgivable harm
• What it means to be fully known (and why that feels better than anything else) 
• Beth’s long-faithfulness despite experiencing rejection, pain, and hurt from her faith community

This was Beth’s first interview about her new memoir, and Kate felt so honored to get to ask this wise soul about the role of faith in lives that haven’t worked out like we thought they should. 

CW: sexual abuse, mental illness

***

Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

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Welcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast!

I started this podcast as a way to create language and community around some of life's most painful moments. I was so overwhelmed by the question of how do we live in the after? After a diagnosis, after a death, after a divorce, after something that changes our lives or takes it apart.

I had just been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and I was only 35. I had a two year old at home with this giant lovey Disney eyes, and I had the job that I loved, and then suddenly, I had a picture of a future that was just never going to be. So I wanted to know, like, how do we do this? How do you find joy and hope and love even after life comes undone? And after years of treatment and years of uncertainty, I guess I realized somewhere along the way that this wasn't really a one and done kind of question. This is the sort of work that evolves over time as life continues to contract and expand and break our hearts and then put us back together all over again. And so thank you for being the people that I've had along the way. These are not, of course, the conversations anybody really wants to have, but we do, you and me and this gorgeous community here.

We have so many great episodes coming to you for SEASON TEN. We're going to be talking to tender and wise and funny people about what they've discovered during their before and afters. People like Beth Moore on long faithfulness when life really doesn't work out the way you thought it did. Mary Louise Kelly on empty-nesting and rediscovering yourself after the kids leave. Rabbi Steve Leder on how tragedies teach us and how we can just see beauty somehow. Plus SO MANY MORE.

New episodes coming your way every Tuesday this Spring.

This episode also includes a conversation between Kate and her producer, Jessica Richie about their new book of blessings, The Lives We Actually Have.

***

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (releases TODAY). Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

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