The New You

You get it right when you realize that you cannot go back to who you once were. And this is a good thing. You already did that person. Now it is time to be the new you. Now it is time to embrace that person you were who got you here. That person is brave. That person is resilient. That person is complex. That person is deserving. You are deserving.

This is why so many people say in hindsight, Now it all makes sense. It is not because they made one decision that turned out perfectly – that landed them in the room they wanted to stay in for the rest of their lives. It is because they made a series of decisions, and each one led them into a new room. And even when they were sure a room was not where they were supposed to be, or it felt really hard, or they could not imagine it getting better, they did not give up. They realized that they had to keep going forward into the next room and then the next, until they found the one that felt right.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 183

A Great Unfolding

There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 15

Many Incredible Outcomes

You get it right when you start to see that there are many ways for things to turn out and that if you are only focused on one, you will miss out. When you begin to see that there are as many incredible outcomes as there are paths. When you stop expecting it to be smooth and easy all the time. When you stop perceiving that other people have it easier than you and stop comparing yourself to others. Once you stop envisioning some destination where you think you “ought” to be going, you will finally see all the amazing possibilities and opportunities actually in front of you.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 182-183

Perfection Is Not a Destination.

You get it right when you realize that perfect does not exist. This place that we dream about and see in all those neatly packaged movies is fictional. Life is a process of making imperfect decisions based on imperfect options and finding out where they lead you. Sometimes they lead you places that you intended, but other times they don’t. Sometimes they work out in the moment, but oftentimes they don’t until many years later. But once you really understand that perfection is not a destination, it takes the pressure off. You don’t have to reach some arbitrary benchmark that you set for yourself – or that someone else set for you. You can start participating in the present moment rather than wishing you were somewhere else. And this will release you from those outside demands that have been weighing you down and preventing you from being you.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 182

We Have Changed.

When we experience some traumatic change in our life – whether it’s the passing of a parent, a painful divorce, or, God forbid, the death of a child – as much as we might yearn to go back to the way things once were, it is impossible. What was behind us no longer exists as we knew it, not because it changed but rather because we changed. It’s kind of like how the house you grew up in did not get smaller; you got bigger. What happened in the past changed who you are, and now you cannot return to that old you because that you no longer exists.

This is a painful truth to accept, especially when we are in a dark hallway, scared and unsure of what lies ahead. When we are stricken with doubts and fears about the future, our brains reflexively tell us that the past was better; and whether this is true or not, our tendency is to believe it. So it is understandable that instead of running forward to the unknown our instinct is to run backward, toward what is known: the past.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 160-161

You Are Loveable.

Even if your parents weren’t perfect, and even if you weren’t raised with unconditional love, and even if your history is full of heartache, the truth remains that whether someone loves you or not has no bearing on how loveable you really are. Your childhood is not the last chapter in your story. Your first love is not your only love. Your greatest heartache is not the whole story of your life. Your parents are not God. An unhappy past, no matter how terrible, is not a reason to say “I am not loveable,” nor is it a reason to stop loving yourself. Actually, it is a reason to love yourself more.

You can only be held back by your past if you use it to reject yourself in the present.

— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 76

Telling our Stories Truthfully

When we tell our stories to others, we want them to sound effortless. We want to appear as if it all came easily to us — as if we simply picked the destination we wanted to reach or the goal we wanted to achieve, pursued it doggedly and unwaveringly, and eventually succeeded. But in real life it never happens like this. There are always false starts, detours, and course corrections, and more often than not the room we end up in is not the one we first envisioned. Maybe if we begin to tell our stories differently, if we start to talk about all the times our journey didn’t go as smoothly as expected, we can help others look past their preconceived notion that the road to the “perfect” room is without speed bumps and glitches.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 154-155

Seeing Alternatives

Most of our decisions do not lead us exactly where we want to go. Yet the more narrowly focused we are on a particular destination — the more focused we are on getting to a particular room — the harder it can be to see the alternatives. After all, if you’ve spent half your life chasing a dream — whether a dream job, a dream marriage, or a dream family — it’s terrifying to suddenly switch course and take a chance on something different. Yet only once we broaden our scope of vision can we see all the many other possibilities for happiness.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 148

True Belief

Like so many seeming Christians, she could not divorce her mind from thinking of belief as a framework of viewpoints — social, political, philosophical, and theoretical; none of which the Lord had anywhere in his mind when he said, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” True belief consists in no cognitive convictions, no matter how pious, no matter how biblically correct, but rather in life as it is lived!

— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 75, quoting from The Landlady’s Master