Bestselling author and Duke University professor Kate Bowler reveals the surprising magic of joy—and how we can access it even when happiness feels out of reach.
Joy won’t cure you, but it will carry you.
After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. She was alive. Blessed, even. But still she ached—for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day.
So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler.
Witty and honest, in Joyful, Anyway, Bowler shows how joy can surprise us—even in the middle of pain, boredom, and longing.
This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more—feel more—by making room for small, extraordinary moments.
For anyone who has ever felt stuck or achy for meaning, who has been undone by loss, or who believes that joy is just out of reach and wants, simply, to have more fun, Joyful, Anyway is a delicious, insightful tour through the questions that sit in the deepest part of our souls. It proves that for every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.
“With luminous clarity and unsentimental grace, Kate Bowler delivers a meditation on the sacred, vivid, heartbreaking absurdity of being alive. Her prose is both razor sharp and tender, avoiding easy answers (which never help us anyway) while extending a spirit of friendship to all who have suffered and who long to carry on. A deeply moving everyday masterpiece. I loved it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“If it feels like joy is missing from your life, drop what you’re doing and read this book. Kate Bowler is a beacon—she radiates light even when the world seems dark. Her wisdom is perfectly timed for our tumultuous times.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking
“Bowler’s richest and wisest book yet, and if possible, the most charming. Absolutely lovely. It changed me.”—Anne Lamott
“A delight from start to finish, Joyful, Anyway embodies the mix of pleasure and aching that makes us human. A book to take you through life's aftermaths.”—Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering
“A profoundly wise, hilarious, large-hearted and down-to-earth meditation on the fundamental unsolvability of being human—and how it’s in the very middle of the mess that joy is waiting to be found. I know I'll be returning to this book again and again.”—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks
Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher’s Wife and hosts the popular podcast Everything Happens. A Duke University professor, she earned a master’s of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD at Duke University.
View titles by Kate Bowler
Bestselling author and Duke University professor Kate Bowler reveals the surprising magic of joy—and how we can access it even when happiness feels out of reach.
Joy won’t cure you, but it will carry you.
After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. She was alive. Blessed, even. But still she ached—for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day.
So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler.
Witty and honest, in Joyful, Anyway, Bowler shows how joy can surprise us—even in the middle of pain, boredom, and longing.
This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more—feel more—by making room for small, extraordinary moments.
For anyone who has ever felt stuck or achy for meaning, who has been undone by loss, or who believes that joy is just out of reach and wants, simply, to have more fun, Joyful, Anyway is a delicious, insightful tour through the questions that sit in the deepest part of our souls. It proves that for every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.
Praise
“With luminous clarity and unsentimental grace, Kate Bowler delivers a meditation on the sacred, vivid, heartbreaking absurdity of being alive. Her prose is both razor sharp and tender, avoiding easy answers (which never help us anyway) while extending a spirit of friendship to all who have suffered and who long to carry on. A deeply moving everyday masterpiece. I loved it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“If it feels like joy is missing from your life, drop what you’re doing and read this book. Kate Bowler is a beacon—she radiates light even when the world seems dark. Her wisdom is perfectly timed for our tumultuous times.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking
“Bowler’s richest and wisest book yet, and if possible, the most charming. Absolutely lovely. It changed me.”—Anne Lamott
“A delight from start to finish, Joyful, Anyway embodies the mix of pleasure and aching that makes us human. A book to take you through life's aftermaths.”—Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering
“A profoundly wise, hilarious, large-hearted and down-to-earth meditation on the fundamental unsolvability of being human—and how it’s in the very middle of the mess that joy is waiting to be found. I know I'll be returning to this book again and again.”—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks
Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher’s Wife and hosts the popular podcast Everything Happens. A Duke University professor, she earned a master’s of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD at Duke University.
View titles by Kate Bowler
