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

by Shauna Niequist

As with any trauma, there’s that super-weird side-by-side processing where you’re a shell, a ghost, where there is a cavern inside you where your heart used to be, where you can’t sleep and sometimes can’t breathe and can’t imagine having to live in this new, terrible world. You are amazed that people even recognize your face, because you know that what’s happening inside you is unrecognizable, that you’re so far off the map you can’t even imagine there are words or symbols to mark it. And then also, weirdly, right at the same time, you’re going to your son’s fifth-grade graduation. You’re talking and laughing and unloading the dishwasher. You’re going to therapy, reading, writing. You’re doing all the things that healthy people do to get through trauma and crisis.