Kwame Alexander: To Be Loved Like That

When she was a child, Alexi Pappas lost her mother to suicide. So when Alexi faced a season of deep depression she knew had to find a different way forward. That’s when her training as an Olympic runner became invaluable. In this conversation, Kate and Alexi discuss, The difference between stress and trauma The discipline—and joy—of sheer effort Good pain vs. bad pain and how to stay inside the uncomfortable for a bit longer  The highs and lows of realizing your dreams How viewing mental illness as an injury not only destigmatizes depression, but offers tangible next steps toward healing Too often professional athletes fall into the pure motivational speaker category. But this conversation with Alexi gently threads the needle about what is possible if you stay a little longer in uncomfortable situations when even getting out of bed feels like a win. There is so much wisdom we can glean from Alexi’s discipline and willpower.CW: suicide, depression, mental illness***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2 Nov 202140min

How do you move forward after an incalculable loss? Jerry Sittser lost his wife, young daughter, and his mom in one horrific accident. But even as his world stopped, the world kept spinning. He had to learn how to parent his three surviving children in the wake of such grief. Now, thirty years after the accident that upended his life, Kate and Jerry discuss: Finding honesty about the pain you can never unknow  Why it isn’t possible to protect our kids from the tragedies of life How to stop counting or comparing people’s grief Why we cannot explain our suffering with simple formulas and shallow theology Whether miracles can solve our pain This conversation is an Everything Happens Masterclass on learning to live alongside the reality of lives that come apart for no reason we can explain. CW: deaths of family members***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

26 Okt 202136min

Do you ever feel a pressure to be positive? Harvard psychologist and bestselling author of Emotional Agility, Dr. Susan David studies the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Spoiler alert: we don’t need to force ourselves to think happy thoughts. Perhaps there is a better way.In this conversation, Kate and Susan discuss:  The relationship between prescriptive happiness and religion What it means to bottle or brood your feelings Better strategies to handle difficult emotions How to get unstuck from our feelings This is the permission you were looking for to feel the full range of your human experience—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the terrible. ***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

19 Okt 202134min

Stanley Tucci is a total foodie—of course, he starred in Julie and Julia and brought us the mouth-watering CNN special, Searching for Italy. But when he was diagnosed with oral cancer, his ability to enjoy food might be ruined permanently. In this conversation, Kate and Stanley discuss, How familiar recipes remind us of home—even if we’re far away Why it’s okay to be picky about what we eat (Especially bread. He has a lot of homicidal opinions about how bread should be eaten.)  The practical difficulties with eating that often accompanies an illness and treatment The anger that comes with great loss And the joy of bringing people together around the table When life gets small, so often our pleasures dry up. But perhaps it is in that smallness that we might compress our attention, to discover the small joys and simple pleasures that make a life well-lived. CW: cancer, death of a spouse ***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12 Okt 202138min

Philip Yancey is well-known for his bestselling books like What's So Amazing About Grace and Disappointment with God. But behind all of that spiritual wisdom was a family secret: his sick father left the hospital against the doctor's advice, trusting in God to heal him. He wasn’t healed. Out of this experience, Philip has wrestled with deep questions of faith, doubt, and suffering. In today's conversation, Philip and I discuss:  What it was like growing up in Christian fundamentalism  Being wounded by the church The cost of unforgiveness The mystery and hunger of grace This conversation forced me to wonder about how grace works. Perhaps grace, as Philip would say, is a scandal. Because it forces us to think about a love that is unearned, undeserved, and unmerited. All we know sometimes, is that WE need it. So, blessed are we who live here. In this mystery—this scandal—of grace.CW: polio, abuse***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

5 Okt 202135min

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?In this episode, Kate reads an excerpt of No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) — her new memoir that releases TODAY!We all wish we could boil our life down to simple formulas. Easy-to-grab mantras that tell us how to live. Things like: You only live once! or What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! or just Think Positively! I guess I'll just have to make lemonade out of all those lemons I've been given. But what about when you realize life isn't a series of choices?More often than we'd like to imagine, things come apart, and what we thought was in our control just isn't anymore. We have to learn to live here. Outside of formulas, outside of cliches, outside of easy steps. We all have to learn to be human, again today.No Cure for Being Human mines these formulas to find something that is truer, gentler, and maybe a little bit more honest.Like how all the modern-day-stoics tell you to BE PRESENT! It seems so simple, right? In response to all that is out of control, we should zero in on what is in our control. But the consequences of only living in the present is that we might ignore the past or put a wall around the future. And there is so much wisdom there. Until, of course, it forces us to put too much of our lives on hold in the suspended animation of now, so that's what I thought I might talk to you about today. ***No Cure for Being Human is now available anywhere books are sold. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

28 Sep 202118min

What if we never fit in? Or always miss the script that everyone else seems to so easily understand? From Arrested Development’s Buster Bluth to Veep’s Gary Walsh or Toy Story 4’s Forky, Emmy Award Winning actor Tony Hale is an expert in awkward. In this episode, Kate and Tony talk about: How acting is an act of empathy What it feels like to feel outside of the Acceptable People Having grace for our most awkward moments This conversation will offer you a little gentleness for our awkward selves, our in-pain selves, our out-of-step selves, our misunderstood selves. Bonus: it will also make you laugh.***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

21 Sep 202141min

What kind of food tastes like love to you? Food has a beautiful way of making us feel less lonely in our pain or in our isolation or in our grief. Star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, Antoni Porowski understands the power of a delicious meal to bring us together and remake us with love. In this episode, Kate and Antoni discuss: How food transcends time and distance and can remind you of who you are Antoni’s biggest cooking mistake (and how it might give us all a little permission to fail and try again) How food can help us to grieve What NOT to do when you deliver food to people who are going through a tough time ***Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

14 Sep 202140min