What do you do when life completely falls apart?

Kate Bowler was 35 years old—married, the mom of a 3-year-old boy, and building a promising career as a professor at Duke Divinity School—when she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. It was sudden and devastating. And it forced her to face something most of us try to avoid: the limits of being human.

In her book No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear), Kate shares what it’s like to live with the weight of an uncertain future. But this isn’t a book about despair—it’s about living honestly, fully, and faithfully in the middle of hard things.

She talks a lot about the pressure we feel to make every moment count. There’s this idea that we should always be chasing something—goals, dreams, productivity. But when everything changed for Kate, she had to learn how to let some of that go.

One of the images that stuck with me was the story that compared her emotional burden to a hiker’s backpack on the Appalachian Trail. You start out thinking you need all this stuff, but eventually you realize it’s too heavy. Something has to be set down. Kate asks the same question many of us do in crisis: What really matters? What can I not live without?

“We heave with the collective exhaustion of excess, and yet we examine our lives item by item and wonder: Is this it? Is this what I can’t live without?” (p. 43)

One of her friends—also a reverend and doctor—shares a quote: “Would you agree that true happiness is the ability to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future?” Kate then says, “I’m really hoping you’re going to tell me Jesus said that.” (Spoiler: it was Seneca.) But the point is still there: it takes courage to live like each day matters.

“The terrible gift of a terrible illness is that it has, in fact, taught me to live in the moment.” (p. 84)

That’s something I’ve wrestled with too—how to stay in the moment, especially when life has grief and loss. Kate doesn’t sugarcoat anything. She wonders if she should keep going with her work. She questions whether her job has cost her too much. She even doubts whether finishing her research project matters anymore.

But a friend speaks up with quiet conviction: “Write the book.”

Sometimes that’s what we need most—someone to remind us that what we’re doing still matters. That we still matter. Even when life doesn’t look how we thought it would.

This book made me think about my own seasons of grief and starting over. It reminded me that it’s okay not to have a neat ending. That we’re allowed to just be human—flawed, tired, hopeful, hurting, healing. Sometimes all at once.

“Our lives are not problems to be solved. We can have meaning and beauty and love, but nothing even close to resolution.” (p. 192)

So no, there’s no cure for being human. But there is grace. There is purpose. There is love. And there are people who help us feel less alone in it all.

Kate’s book is one of those companions. If you’ve experienced loss, illness, disappointment, or just feel worn down by life not turning out like you planned—this book is for you. It’s tender, funny, honest, and deeply human.

“Someday we won’t need to hope… In the meantime, we are stuck with our beautiful, terrible finitude—by God’s unscrupulous love and by communities who give us a place to belong.” (p. 191)

That sounds like enough for today.