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

by Shauna Niequist

guess I haven’t learned that yet. I wrote that sentence because I wanted us to have a common language for what it means to be a learner, a beginner, to be curious and make mistakes and get back up. To ask questions and figure it out as we go.

Self-compassion is letting yourself off the hook, letting yourself be human and flawed and also amazing. It’s giving yourself credit for showing up instead of beating yourself up for taking so long to get there.

What is it that you don’t want to hear? What is it that you don’t want to feel inside your heart?

File under “Making it harder than it needed to be,” which could be the title of everything I ever write, or everything I ever live.

What does it mean to notice and bear witness to the ordinary moments of our lives—not the lofty ideas or peak experiences, but making sandwiches and making meaning and making a life, stitched together over time by all those moments of here? What does it mean to be a noticer when what there is to notice is awful and you’d rather look away?

“You told me not to let go. So I didn’t.” And that’s basically a snapshot of how I’ve lived for the intervening fortyish years: not letting go—also, occasionally being dragged. Last summer, I heard the phrase “let go or be dragged,” and I felt it in every fiber of my being.

It wasn’t like because he was tired he felt things a little more deeply than he usually might; it was like tiredness truly made him think and feel and experience these very dark and sad emotions that were not connected to reality.

Grief involves the terrifying sense of being out of control, and anger gives us back the feeling of control—it’s

I get a call when someone has stopped believing something about God and essentially wants to know if that thing they’re leaving behind means they should just leave it all behind.

Almost daily, I walk through the practices I’ve learned along the way—walk, pour it all out, look under the anger, sit with sadness, let go or be dragged, hello to here. Repeat as necessary.

reminded me again that my body and my spirit have a knowing that my mind doesn’t have. My

I know for many people, cooking is the last thing they want to do when they’re exhausted, but it’s one of those things that always heals me—repetitive motion, connection to senses, making something from nothing.