On Perfectability and Precarity
wisdom from Kate Bowler + a writing prompt + August Writing Hour
Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, take a look back through the archive for one that does. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.
Vulnerability is hard.
It’s messy and awkward. It’s so countercultural that it makes us sit up and take notice when someone offers it unblinkingly.
This past weekend I took notice as best-selling author Kate Bowler shared her version of vulnerability with a packed auditorium of participants at the Women’s Connection Conference in Montreat, NC. Alone on the stage, in a pink pantsuit (that I hope she’s worn to see Barbie), she talked honestly about being human in a self-help culture.
Kate—(I initially wrote “Bowler” throughout this post but I’ve decided she won’t care if I assume we are friends)—Kate described the multi-billion dollar wellness industry in the US that would have us believe that perfectability is possible if we push through our limits and offer more money and time to the right products and regimens. Beyond the Instagram-ingrained belief that Goop can sell us perfect skin, we’ve also drunk deeply from the wells of “best life now” and the idea that if we just think positively—manifesting the hell out of our lives—we can actually change our whole lives for the better.
The friction of reality reveals this isn’t so.
Kate learned it on a September day in her office at Duke University when, as a young mom, she received a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer at age 35. As a church historian, she had already written Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. In her next book, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, she wrote about craving the certainty that the prosperity gospel offers, and what happens when it runs into the fact of human frailty.
She’s since written several more books—each one honest about being human in a culture that pressures us all to be #blessed.1
She encouraged the audience of almost 1000 listeners to get honest too and push back against the siren song of perfection.
You know those conversations you get into where someone starts sharing their very real problems? You know the way the listeners try to reassure and prop up with silver-lining phrases about thinking positive, turning it around, and some good coming out of it all?
And you know how even when we are the ones sharing the problem, we tend to make that shift into false resilience ourselves, even without our helpful friends pushing us there with their own discomfort? We offer up our own self-made versions of our culture’s just think positive and change your life magical-thinking mantras.
Kate would have us set all that down. Just give that sh#t up, because it’s not real, and we give up something necessary when we cling to it. She’d rather we get honest with each other and say: “I’m no longer living my best life, Linda.” Imagine if we did.
Kate is not afraid to name our human state as one of precarity—of uncertainty. We get sick. Relationships fail. We let one another down. We let ourselves down. The world is on fire and it’s mostly our fault. Life is beautiful, and life is terrible, and there is no cure for being human. We need each other to tell this truth and bear it together.
“Perfection is impossible,” she told us. “Transformation is not.”
The faith community has good language for the kind of transformation that lives on the other side of perfection—the language of sanctification, grace, redemption, and love. We have some worthwhile ways to practice, as well. But we too are prone to lean into perfectability.
After Kate left the stage, I talked with women from my childhood church. Some knew me when I was a child, half a century ago. Some had been in the workshop I led earlier that day where I talked about the death of one of our twins, and how writing taught me (and is still teaching me) how to grieve and go on. Some of them know my mother and they ask about her without mentioning her dementia. Two of them independently tell me my mother is one of the happiest people they know, and I agree, making us all feel better. We do the thing we just heard Kate warn against—turning a real conversation opportunity about sudden and long slides of loss into a chipper we-are-looking-on-the-bright-side-of-things moment before we walk into the night, together and alone.
But I hear it. I recognize it. And I’m writing about it. This is a start, I think.
Here’s the awkward vulnerable truth that Kate Bowler encouraged me to say aloud: I’m not living my best life now. I worry every day—about my own cancer coming back, something happening to my kids, my loved ones’ mental health, the decline of democracy. I’m sad about a lot. I want what’s not good for me. I want what others have. And I don’t have a skincare routine.
In so many ways mine is a privileged and indeed blessed life. It’s both a good and a hard life. Far from perfect. Far from terrible. It is a precarious gift. A hurting hopeful human gift of a life.
How about you?
a writing prompt
Use this photo from Kate Bowler’s Instagram this week as a prompt.
She wrote: This feels about right. #blessed
August Writing Hour - this Saturday, August 19 at 4 pm Eastern
My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is this Saturday at 4 pm Eastern. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join us. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.
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Two of her most recent books are No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) and The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days
Note: I am a Bookshop.org affiliate. If you purchase through my links to support independent bookstores, I may earn a teeny tiny commission—many thanks.
Also, the skincare routine made me laugh. Perfect positioning in that paragraph - I also am lucky if I remember sunscreen
Kate Bowler’s work means courage to me. I listen to her podcast and find her perspective so refreshing, so real. She’s the kind of friend I’d like to be with. I’ve also mentioned her a few times in my newsletter. Im glad you were able to hear her speak in person.