I used to think being the smartest person in the room meant I had an edge.

Advanced classes, quick memory, high test scores—I wore “knowing” like armor. I could memorize facts in an afternoon and repeat them back word for word. Thank you, hyper-vigilance, lol.

But knowing has never carried me through the fire—understanding has.

Books, systems, ideas—I stacked them high. I carried wisdom like seashells from one season of life to the next, turning them over in my hands.

The trouble was, I often mistook possession for transformation.

I knew boundaries.
I knew forgiveness.
I knew surrender.

But did I understand them? Not really. Not until life pressed them into me, one hard moment at a time.

This is what experience has taught me:

Knowing is reciting a fact. Understanding is letting it change you.

Knowing is reading the map. Understanding is walking the terrain, blisters and all.

Before I arrived in North Carolina, I “knew” Charlie had dementia. I’d read the diagnosis, talked to her friends, researched the stages. But when I arrived in North Carolina and stepped into her living room, where time folds in on itself and memory slips like water through her hands, I understood.

The papers hadn’t prepared me for the way she looked at me—sometimes with recognition, sometimes not. They hadn’t prepared me for the weight of history colliding with the reality that much of it is already gone, evaporated from her mind. They hadn’t prepared me for the grief of realizing that reconciliation—the kind I had always secretly wanted—wasn’t going to happen in the way I thought it could.

The equation of my relationship with Charlie has never balanced—no matter how many times I tried to solve it.

I wrote about it in The F---ed Up Math—how I kept trying to tally love against abandonment, responsibility against resentment, hope against disappointment. I wanted the equation to come out even. It never did.

Knowing this—that she couldn’t give what she didn’t have, that my longing wasn’t going to be satisfied in the way I wanted—helped me survive.

But understanding it? That’s something else entirely.

Understanding meant facing Charlie’s frailty up close. It meant helping with groceries and doctor visits, sitting across the table while her mind wandered, choosing compassion over the urge to re-litigate old arguments she couldn’t even remember.

Understanding meant grieving the mother I longed for but never had.
I couldn’t have walked back into Charlie’s life without laying that version to rest first.
That grief carved out space in me I didn’t know I needed—space to stop chasing what was never coming and to finally meet what is.

And it’s the only reason I can sit across from her now with a steady heart. I’m not showing up to fight for what should have been. I’m showing up for what is.

I came across the Fourth Way a couple of years ago, and it was this spiritual lineage that first made me stop and realize: knowledge and understanding aren’t the same thing. Obvious, right? If they were, we wouldn’t need two different words.

“Knowledge is one thing. Understanding is another.”

Gurdjieff explained that knowledge is like a photograph—you can carry it, memorize it, even copy it. But understanding is alive. It only arrives when your head, heart, and body all come into agreement through experience.

Back then, I thought I got it. I nodded along, underlining the quote with a little star in the margin. But of course, that was just me stacking another shell on the pile—more knowing, still no understanding.

It’s only now, sitting across from Charlie—after grieving the relationship we never had, after learning to hold boundaries without bitterness, after finally surrendering the illusion of a different past—that those words have teeth.

What I knew two years ago, I understand today.

And if telling you this spares you even a little bit of the circling, bargaining, and heartbreak it took me to get here, then I’m glad to share it.

So what bridges the gap between knowing and understanding?

Experience. Embodiment. Willingness to stay.

I used to think understanding came like lightning—sudden, dramatic, undeniable. But lately I’ve learned it’s quieter than that. It seeps in as you keep showing up, as you let life soften you where you’ve been hard.

Boundaries, for example. I knew I needed them with Charlie. I’d said no before. I’d drawn lines in the sand. But it wasn’t until I was living part-time in her orbit again that I understood boundaries are less about defense and more about self-possession. They’re not about keeping her out—they’re about keeping myself intact while I let her in.

Surrender, too. I knew it meant letting go of control. I’d written whole essays about it. But I didn’t understand surrender until I stood in her presence, hands trembling, realizing I could no longer force clarity where her mind had grown cloudy. I could no longer force healing into a relationship that had run out of time. Surrender meant choosing peace anyway.

Forgiveness? I “knew” it wasn’t for her, it was for me. But only when I stopped waiting for Charlie to meet me in that place—and forgave her limits, forgave my own ache—did I understand what forgiveness actually feels like.

This season has become a daily invitation to cross the bridge.

Understanding doesn’t just soften the pain—it neutralizes it. What once felt unbearable becomes something I can meet without breaking.

I think many of us live in the gap between knowing and understanding.

We know we should rest, but we don’t understand it until our body collapses.
We know forgiveness matters, but we don’t understand it until the weight of resentment finally breaks us.
We know love is fragile, but we don’t understand it until we lose someone we thought would always be there.

Understanding is costly. It asks us to pay with presence, with practice, with patience.

But it’s also where freedom lives.

Because once you understand something, it changes you. You can’t unknow it. You move differently.

Understanding doesn’t just shift what we know—it reshapes who we are being.

Knowledge by itself lives on the surface. I could “know” I needed boundaries, “know” I deserved rest, “know” forgiveness mattered—and still be someone tense, exhausted, and bitter.

But when that knowing deepens into understanding, it rewires my state of being.

When I understand rest, I stop being the person who runs herself into the ground and start being someone who moves with presence.
When I understand forgiveness, I stop being chained to the past and start being someone who can love in the present.
When I understand surrender, I stop being clenched in resistance and start being the one who trusts life enough to be led.

Understanding alters the quality of our being. It shifts us from doing life out of habit to living life out of essence.

And that, I think, is the whole point: knowledge fills the mind, but understanding transforms the person.

If you’re reading this, chances are there’s something in your life you already know—but haven’t yet let yourself fully understand. We all have those truths.

Maybe it’s the job you’ve outgrown but won’t leave.
Maybe it’s the love you keep settling for, even though you know it drains you.
Maybe it’s the voice inside you asking for rest, play, change.

The trick isn’t collecting more knowledge. The trick is closing the gap. One small, embodied act at a time.

-Sunny

P.S. For those of you who are brave enough to return—not because you’re stuck, but because you’ve healed enough to stand there—this is for you. May your knowing deepen into understanding, and may that understanding be your freedom.

Think of one truth you’ve been carrying like a seashell in your pocket. Something you can say out loud but haven’t yet let sink into your bones.

Close your eyes and hold it for a moment.

Now ask yourself: What would it look like to move this truth from my head into my body today?

It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be real. Take one step. That’s how knowing becomes understanding.