Kate Bowler

The Duke professor talks about her new memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, and parenting with an incurable cancer diagnosis

- Elizabeth Dias

How do you live with so much uncertainty?

 I don’t know what I would have done if I weren’t a mom. When you have a 2-year-old, he is not interested in your feelings or problems. The hilarious narcissism of toddlers was really freeing for me. Then I had all kinds of other problems. I am supposed to get tenure. But what if I don’t live through the year? Is it a colossal waste of time for me to be ambitious when I don’t know what anything is ever going to mean? That was part of writing the memoir. Creating a record for my son to know who I really am, all of my absurdity. Otherwise people will, when you die, lie about who you were. They will say you were perfect and constantly delightful, and not at all super-irritable after 10:30 p.m.

Why did you decide to keep working as a professor?