Duke’s Kate Bowler doesn’t have a feel-good story. You should hear it anyway.

Kate Bowler’s proudest achievement isn’t her New York Times best-selling book (or her second, or her third). It’s not her star-studded podcast, her highly viewed TED Talk, nor her professorship at Duke Divinity School.

She’s most proud of her honesty — her commitment to asking tough questions, knowing they might sound silly, knowing the answer will be hard to swallow. She’s proud of writing about it, then hitting “publish” for hundreds of thousands of people to read.

“I let myself have questions that I used to find embarrassing. The big questions, like, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? Do we really even get to choose our lives, or do things just happen to us?’” Bowler told The News & Observer. “I let myself write about it, then not just show a friend.

“That’s the thing I’m most proud of — being, well, humble enough to sound dumb.”

Bowler, 42, is the founder of the Everything Happens Project at Duke University, where she’s an associate professor of American religious history.

A teal blue floral mural was painted this summer in downtown Durham as a part of this initiative. It reads “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.” It’s a quote from her popular 2016 New York Times op-ed, written in Durham after a life-changing Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis at 35 years old.

“The harder my life got, the more I felt the power of joy. Of other people loving you, feeling beautiful, parties and presents,” she said. “That’s why it’s fun to do a mural. No one needs one, and yet we all need it. Lovely things for no reason feel like the best argument against pain.”

Her op-ed turned into the 2018 best-selling memoir, “Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved,” published the same year she started hosting the “Everything Happens” podcast. On the podcast, she interviews guests such as Katie Couric, Matthew McConaughey and Ibram X. Kendi about lessons learned from living through sorrow and struggle.

“We have a really lovely audience of people who have gone through something big, or are in an emotionally expensive situation, like caregiving, or a profession that requires that they actually care,” Bowler said. “So I always have to think about my podcast guests through that lens.”

(The ninth season of this podcast kicked off Sept. 6, and audiences can attend a live podcasting taping with “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert on Oct. 9 at Duke’s Page Auditorium.)

An exploration of faith

Bowler is an expert on the “prosperity gospel,” the belief that people with the right kind of faith will be blessed by God with health and money. Her first book (aptly titled “Blessed”) looks at megachurches and celebrity pastors, piecing together the history of this phenomenon.

Her chronic cancer diagnosis in 2015, shortly after the book’s publication, deepened the questions she sought to answer. Her prognosis was grim: Doctors told her she might not survive past a few years.

Her work now — sometimes her own story, sometimes others’ — tells the truth, which may not be so kind, with kindness. No sugarcoating, and definitely missing those flowery default statements like, “Well, you know what they say about one door closing!”

She received her Ph.D. in history at Duke in 2010, after stints in Connecticut for her master’s degree and Minnesota for her bachelor’s degree. She calls herself “embarrassingly Canadian,” talking about her Winnipeg upbringing and how she returns for visits every chance she gets.

For her commitment to share and learn from stories of struggle and hope, attracting thousands who learn how to exemplify optimistic realism in the face of adversity, she is The News & Observer’s Tar Heel of the Month, which honors people who have made significant contributions to North Carolina and the region.

Bowler spoke with The N&O about vulnerability, who inspires her and how Durham gave her the home she needed. Here are excerpts from our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

“Oh, a historian. I only ever wanted to be this, which is hilarious. My dad’s a historian, and my mom is also a professor, and so I grew up just running around universities on sugar highs from this Canadian drink called CPlus. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is the place to have ideas and run around to make friends.’

“My dad had started out as a Tudor historian, but by the time it felt like he was doing anything interesting, he was the world’s foremost expert on Christmas, and that seemed like a lot of fun. My house was hoarder-style filled with Christmas ornaments bought for quote ‘research purposes,’ so being a historian mostly felt like being a collector and a really great excuse to be unbelievably nosy when you meet people. All that seemed very attractive to me, but I didn’t really know about what, so I was on the hunt for something that could grab my attention, because you have to have an idea so interesting that you don’t mind spending 10 years on it, so I knew it would take a bit to find my own.”

Do you feel like a historian day to day?

“I think being a historian is about long-form story and whether you have the patience to pull one apart and then look at it from all sides. I never entirely feel like a historian when I’m doing my day-to-day work, like the podcast. I’ll write really sad blessings that go on Instagram, that kind of thing. But the truth is I’m mostly looking at cultural scripts of whether we think our lives are going to work out and that big long story is what makes me feel like I’m doing the slow work of history.”

How do you see your role in your community?

“I’m so very grateful to have found this one. I was on the ‘never-ending school plan,’ so I was just hopping from school to school. A transient life is fine unless something really happens, so once I got a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, I realized how much I needed community, and how lucky I was that my community here was strong enough to carry the weight of my life.

“It was church and school and friends from the neighborhood. They brought me food, and — I mean, it was just crazy — donated their airline points to help me fly to the hospital I needed to go to. So I’m kind of obsessed with Durham and just being a part of the North Carolina community, because they’re the ones that stepped up to give me the home that I needed.

“I am so Canadian. I moved to North Carolina for school but didn’t really feel like I fully belonged until I needed everyone.”

What’s the achievement you’re most proud of?

“It’s not an achievement per se, but I made a human being with my body, and his name is Zach. I’m really into him. He’s so funny, and I’m obsessed. I didn’t think I’d get to be a mom, so that is the miracle of my every day.

“Work-wise, after I got sick, I started writing more honestly, and now, I let myself have questions that I used to find embarrassing.

“That was my very best turning point. Saying well, I have no idea how this is going to go, but I remember telling myself, ‘Don’t be above it.’ Don’t be above showing people your big, absurd, painful, beautiful, horrible hopes.”

What does leadership mean to you?

“I think leadership is being brave enough, and vulnerable enough, just to try. To have an experiment, have a dream, then give it a go, then probably fail and redo it and try again.

“Leadership is like a horrible personality inventory, where it takes everything that’s wrong with you and then explains it to people who work with you. If you can manage that and still build something, then you’ve done something kind of wonderful.”

Who’s a leader in your life?

“I interview so many leaders for the podcast, and these people genuinely inspire me. I’m thinking of Gary Haugen, who runs International Justice Mission. It’s an organization that works to end modern slavery and he has these incredibly bleak, hard, long cases (they’re a team of lawyers). But he’s also unbelievably fun and ridiculous, and the kind of person you could be like, ‘Do we just need to dance this out?’

“I love the fact that he’s able to bring the full scope of his humanity to his work. Our vocations can often crush us, like squeeze us into the hardest place, and so just leaving enough room to be a full person, even while doing something so hard and so important — I admire that so much.”

Do you have a role model?

“There was a carpenter from Galilee… just joking. I mean, I’m a big fan of Jesus as a role model.

“I’m having a hard time picking because with all of these podcast episodes, I get to read a book and then chase down the person who lived it out, so I feel like I asked myself that question every season. Just, who are you obsessed with? I tend to become obsessed with the last person I met.

“Randy Balmer is a big one, he’s this historian of American evangelicalism. He writes so personally and so authoritatively about what it means to live inside of a faith tradition and also be an expert in it. I was so wowed by that kind of scholarship and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’d really like to give that a try.’ My dissertation-slash-first book ended up being really inspired by his model for how to do history.”

What was a turning point in your life?

“Well the biggest turning point was when I was diagnosed with cancer at 35. That was the end of a life I had imagined for myself, a life that was defined by my effort, and oh, what a good person I am!

“Since then, I think very differently about whether our lives add up, and how in a way you have to act as if things will be taken apart. Not might, but will be. And what good, lovely, true things remain.”

What would you say to your younger self?

“Oh, things will get really hard. Maybe don’t worry too much about math.”

Get to know Kate Bowler

What was the last book you read? “Every Family Has a Story” by Julia Samuel.

What’s your favorite movie? “Room with a View” is still my favorite. I think I could watch it a million times.

Do you have a favorite song or artist? I really like Maggie Rogers. Never come to me for music selection, because you’ll be like, ‘So you just like what everyone else likes?’

Right now, I also love this cover of “Simply the Best” by Billianne. It just reminds me of the feeling of achiness. Grief only happens because you’re so in love. With people, with the world… That’s how the song makes me feel.

Who would you want as a dinner guest? If it’s dinner, then Stanley Tucci. After reading his book, he is so angry about pasta and the order you’re allowed to eat bread. I would love to have someone so wise about the ways of Italian food yelling at me while I eat. I find anger very relaxing.

Or my grandpa, if he were still alive. He had the funniest, grouchiest love. He’d always drink beer with tomato juice — which is disgusting — at 4 p.m. every single day. (Yes, I’ve tried it.)

What were you like in high school? Unpopular, but very enthusiastic. I founded all the clubs. I founded the Amnesty International Chapter, I was vice president of our debate club. I was in eight clubs, I believe.

What do you remember most about your childhood? My sister. She was 18 months older, so we grew up like twins. We grew up in the winter capital of Canada. It’s minus 40 all the time, and it took us two hours to put our snow suits on. We would go out and build ridiculous snow forts in the fields nearby and leave a special door for bunnies.

It’s like being on Mars. It’s so cold but so beautiful, and you could really only ever see someone else’s eyeballs. But it’s such a wonderful place to grow up.

Do you have a favorite quote? Right now, I’m obsessed with — (cue a five-second pause to shuffle papers) — (late poet) Jack Gilbert: “We must risk delight. … We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

When I was a little girl, I had a dream where someone reminded me of a Bible verse that I now carry with me. It’s from Psalm 4: “I will lie down and sleep in peace. For you alone, oh Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

I think about it every time I’m heading into a surgery, or I’m in an MRI machine taking forever. … It’s the feeling Jesus had when he was sleeping through the storm. It’s not that there isn’t a storm, but that we can feel that sense of peace and rest, even while a storm’s happening.

Describe your perfect day. There’s bread and cheese involved, and we use teacups at breakfast. There’s just something about teacups, you know?

I would drive out to the middle of nowhere with a friend and see the world’s largest something. Like, North Carolina has the world’s largest chest of drawers. It also has the world’s largest outdoor fryer — and they actually use it! We’d talk the whole drive there and the whole drive back, and then we’d go someplace completely lovely for dinner. I’d order something that I’ve never eaten before, that might even be disgusting, just because it’s so fun to try something new.

Then I’d go back home and snuggle my kid. That needs to be the end to my trifecta day.

Find Kate Bowler’s books, podcast, social media accounts and more at katebowler.com.