She was laying in a bed in Norwich, England, certain she was dying. It was May 1373. A priest held a crucifix before her eyes, and as her sight began to fail and her body went numb, the world didn't go dark. Instead, she started seeing things. Sixteen distinct visions, or "showings," flooded her mind over the course of several hours. Most people back then—and honestly, most people today—would call that a hallucination brought on by a deathbed fever. But for Julian of Norwich, it was the start of a theological revolution.
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
You've seen it on coffee mugs. It’s on Pinterest boards and tattooed on wrists. It’s the ultimate spiritual "don't worry, be happy." But here’s the thing: Julian wasn’t a greeting card writer. She was an anchoress, a woman literally walled into a small stone cell attached to St. Julian’s Church, living a life of permanent quarantine. When she wrote Julian of Norwich all shall be well, she wasn't talking about having a good day or finding a parking spot. She was grappling with the existence of hell, the reality of the Black Death, and the agonizing problem of human suffering.
The Gritty Reality Behind the Quote
Norwich in the 14th century was a nightmare. The Bubonic Plague had already ripped through the city multiple times, killing nearly half the population. Imagine walking down your street and seeing every other house marked with a cross. Julian saw death everywhere. When she received her visions, she was thirty years old, which was practically middle-aged for that era.
She lived in a "reclusorium." It was a tiny room with three windows: one looking into the church to hear Mass, one to receive food from servants, and one to speak to the townspeople who came to her for advice. She was technically dead to the world; the bishop had even read her the office for the dead before she entered the cell.
So, when she hears a voice—which she believed was Christ—telling her that everything is going to be okay, she doesn't just take it at face value. She argues back. She basically asks, "How? How can everything be well when sin causes so much pain and people are suffering?" It’s a very human moment. She isn't a plastic saint. She’s a skeptic looking for a reason to hope in a world that smells like rot and despair.
What "All Shall Be Well" Actually Means
We tend to think of "well" as meaning "fine" or "comfortable." For Julian, "well" was something much more metaphysical. She was writing the Revelations of Divine Love, which is actually the first book ever written in the English language by a woman. Let that sink in for a second. While Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales, Julian was inventing English prose to describe the psychology of the soul.
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The quote is a response to her obsession with sin. She couldn't understand why God allowed evil to exist if God was supposed to be all-powerful and all-loving. The answer she receives in her vision is that sin is "behovely"—an Old English word meaning "necessary" or "fitting."
It’s a wild claim.
She argues that sin isn't something God creates, but it’s something we experience that eventually leads us to a deeper understanding of mercy. The "well-ness" she talks about isn't about the present moment being easy. It’s about a future "great deed" that God will perform at the end of time to make sense of everything that currently feels broken. It is a radical, almost scandalous optimism.
The Motherhood of God
One of the reasons Julian of Norwich all shall be well resonates so much today is because she broke every rule of medieval gender roles. She didn't just see God as a stern judge or a distant king. She famously described Jesus as a mother.
"As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother," she wrote.
This wasn't just some proto-feminist slogan. It was her way of explaining the quote. A mother might let a child fall and scrape their knee so they learn to walk, but she is always there to pick them up. To Julian, God’s love was "homely"—another of her favorite words. It means intimate, familiar, and unpretentious. She saw the entire universe as something as small and fragile as a hazelnut sitting in the palm of her hand, kept in existence only because God loves it.
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If the universe is that small and God’s love is that big, then—and only then—can "all manner of thing" truly be well.
Misunderstandings and Modern Fluff
People often use this quote to bypass grief. "Oh, don't worry, all shall be well!" That's not Julian. Julian spent twenty years after her visions reflecting on them before she finished the "Long Text" of her book. She lived through more plagues. She lived through the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. She knew that in the short term, things are often very, very not well.
The nuance is in the "all."
She wasn't saying your specific plan will work out. She was saying that the cosmic conclusion of the human story is a restoration. It’s a macro-perspective. It’s the difference between looking at a single muddy stitch on the back of a tapestry and seeing the whole golden image on the front.
Why the Anchoress Still Matters
There’s something deeply comforting about the fact that these words came from a woman in isolation. We’ve all had a taste of that lately—the walls closing in, the uncertainty of the future. Julian’s life was defined by four stone walls. She couldn't leave. She couldn't go for a walk in the woods. She watched the world through a single slit in a stone wall.
Yet, her mind was arguably freer than anyone else’s in England.
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She didn't have the "hidden knowledge" or "secret keys" that modern self-help gurus try to sell. She just had a profound, stubborn conviction that love is the meaning of life. When she asked her "Lord" what the meaning of the visions was, the answer she got was: "Love was his meaning." That’s it. No complex rituals. No complicated theology. Just love.
Applying Julian’s Logic to a Chaotic World
If you’re looking to take Julian’s philosophy into your own life, you have to start by embracing the "behovely" nature of your own mistakes. We spend so much time beating ourselves up for our failures. Julian would tell you that those failures are the exact places where you are going to encounter grace.
- Shift your timeline. Stop looking at whether things are "well" this Tuesday. Julian looked at "well" from the perspective of eternity. It’s a long game.
- Embrace the "Hazelnut" perspective. When you’re overwhelmed, imagine the thing stressing you out as that tiny nut in your palm. It’s small. It’s held. It’s loved.
- Practice "Homely" spirituality. You don't need a cathedral. Julian found the divine in the numb limbs of her own dying body and the simple words of a vision.
- Accept the mystery. One of the most important parts of the Julian of Norwich all shall be well message is her admission that she doesn't know how God will fix everything. She calls it a "privity" or a secret. It’s okay not to have the answers as long as you trust the Character of the one who does.
Julian eventually died in her cell, probably in her 70s, which was an incredible age for the time. She never became a celebrity. She never saw her book become a bestseller. She just stayed in her room, prayed for the people who walked by, and kept writing until the ink ran out or her hands gave up. She lived her truth before she ever saw it proven. That’s the real power behind the quote. It’s not a platitude; it’s a protest against despair.
Actionable Next Steps for Further Discovery
To truly understand Julian beyond the famous tagline, you should look into the Revelations of Divine Love. Don't start with a heavy academic commentary. Look for the "Short Text" first—it's the immediate account she wrote right after her recovery. It's rawer and more urgent.
If you're ever in the UK, you can still visit the site of her cell in Norwich. It was rebuilt after being destroyed in a 1942 air raid. Standing in that small space gives you a physical sense of the constraint she lived under, which makes the vastness of her "all shall be well" even more shocking.
Finally, read T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. He famously used Julian’s quote in the poem, helping to bring her out of medieval obscurity and into the modern consciousness. It’s a perfect example of how her 14th-century hope managed to survive the world wars of the 20th century. Her voice is a bridge. It tells us that no matter how dark the room gets, the light she saw is still there, waiting for us to notice it.