I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working

by Shauna Niequist

One of the challenges of this book was defining the edges. Can it be about this too, and also this? How far can it stretch before it’s just a junk drawer? But looking back, I’ve pushed the edges in this way in every book I’ve written—a book about cooking is also about babies and friendship and prayer; a book about celebration is also about losing your job and forgiveness and Paris. Because that’s how life is—interconnected and multifaceted. We carry around our whole selves—our past and our parents, our loves and our limitations, our dreams and our grocery lists and our wounds. That’s how it always is. It may seem chaotic or like a disparate mishmash of topics and themes, as I try to write a book that encompasses faith and curiosity, compassion and self-compassion, learning to let go and learning to be a beginner again, midlife and menopause and moving. But this is how I think the world works, how our minds and spirits and conversations work—or at least how mine do.