Val and Alis are meeting up for a live, unscripted conversation using our own lives as the instrument—Val’s past re-membered, Alis’ shifting ground, both of us mid-story with no epilogue in sight. Wounds we’re still turning into whatever wisdom is possible from inside them, not after the fact.

Wednesday, September 23 4:00pm PDT / Thursday, September 24 9:00am AEST

Come sit in the chaos with us. We’re not resolving it. We’re just done pretending we’re not in it and that this is not actually “the work” of growing humans.

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In the work right alongside you,
Val + Alis

You know how that happens. A truth lands hard, and then life sands the edges off it until you almost forget you knew it.

It feels like the right moment to sharpen it again. Not because there’s a tidy hook. (No eclipse-spying of my own this time.) But because darkness and shadow are so much with us right now, in the world and in ourselves, that it seems worth asking what they might be offering. What becomes visible, exactly, in the moments the sun isn’t stealing the show?

Here’s the piece I originally published on April 10, 2024…

What a total solar eclipse can reveal to us about the gifts of the darkness and the light of being human

The shadow moved in slowly, steadily, subsuming the brilliant, hot light in nearly imperceptible increments. I watched it in awe, an inverse image of how I know the universe to work. Full moon nibbled away bite-by-bite toward waning crescent. Only it wasn’t the moon that appeared as if it was being consumed. It was the sun. The all-powerful star of the daytime show at the peak of its performance, eclipsed by a smaller player — the moon.

I paused to take note of the beings that are far more sensitive than I to the movement of the earth, the solar system, the cadence of time and the interplay of molecules. They seemed to be pausing, too. Stillness. A moment to notice, to sense, to be in awe.

I grinned my way through the entire day, listening to reports from people who were fortunate to witness the totality — shadow eclipsing light, day turning to night — those who were able to sit in the darkness and appreciate its wonder, to see what it revealed that we are unable to observe when the sun is in its full glory, uninhibited by its lesser co-star. On this day, for a few moments, the star of the show relinquished the spotlight to the moon.

And when the moon and its shadow took center stage, we could see both the moon and the sun more clearly.

Bailey’s Beads revealed the rough topography of the moon’s surface, allowing the sun’s light to pierce through like jewels. And just before the eclipse reached totality, as Bailey’s Beads ducked behind the moon, one could see the “diamond ring” — one brilliant beacon of light fastened around the moon with the ring of the sun. We could see the surface of the moon in all of its imperfections. And because of these imperfections, because of the center-stage position of the moon, even though the full force of its brilliance was obscured, we were able to see the sun itself more clearly.

And we cheered, we wept, we celebrated — because we knew this was a moment (or four) that would pass. We knew the light would come again, and thanks to science, we knew when. We understood what was happening, an understanding that ancient civilizations didn’t have.

As Dan Falk explains in The Smithsonian Magazine, “Around the world, myths and legends grew up around the phenomenon. In ancient China, a solar eclipse signaled that the sun was being devoured by a dragon; people would bang drums and make loud noises to scare off the beast and bring back daylight. In South America, the Inca saw solar eclipses as a sign of the sun god’s displeasure; leaders would try to divine the source of his wrath and appease him with an appropriate sacrifice.”

And so often, this is our reaction, when the moon eclipses the sun in our solar system of self. This is how we often experience our fallback. In our constriction, we feel as if our more complex self is being devoured by a dragon. We bang our figurative drums and make loud noises to scare off the beast, so fearful are we that if it stays, the daylight of our bigger self may never return. Sometimes we succumb to our fallback, trying to appease it with the ritual sacrifices that are aplenty when we find our stage overtaken by the smaller versions of ourselves. We fear the darkness has come for good, forgetting that this, too, is a moment that will pass. We may weep, but we absolutely do not cheer and celebrate, and certainly not in the company of others.

But what if we did?

What if we were to connect to the awe of what it is to be human — brimming with luminosity and shadow, with light and dark, that sometimes we can appreciate and understand only because some aspect of our shining star of self is obscured for a time? How might our acknowledgement of the intimate dance of our own darkness and light reveal the brilliance of both, together? How might our willingness to do this in the company of others also witnessing and experiencing the wonder of what it is to be human, in both its moves forward and its stumbles back, reveal to us even more? And because we understand the phenomenon of fallback and that this, too, shall pass, how might we begin to appreciate its preciousness, its glory?

On April 8, 2024, I glimpsed that this was possible, and I basked in the light and reveled in the shadow.

Now, more than two years later, I’m still practicing the stilling and the steeling with my own shadow…and with the ones I witness moving within the people I love. Yesterday’s eclipse was a reminder that we don’t get to choose when the sky goes dark. We only get to choose whether we run for our glasses or turn away.

Val

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I cleared out a time capsule yesterday.
The deck of cards.
The folder with homework.
The Neosporin that would soothe all the owies
along with a mama’s kiss.
The blankets. The Wet Wipes. The baby powder…
Mama’s hack to get the sand off tiny feet
after a day at the beach
before the kiddos would drift off into the most blissful slumber
post a day in the sun and the tide.

I cleared out the time capsule yesterday.
It held the hair ties
and the hopes
and the harried trips to school
and tutoring sessions
and Scout meetings
and soccer practices.
It carried deep conversations
that somehow only happen in cars
when two people can’t look each other in the eye
to reveal what’s in their hearts.

I cleared out the time capsule yesterday.
And passed my car onto my 16-year-old son
who will fill it anew
with artefacts of his own.

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After that, there’s nothing to decide. No branches, no wrong turns, no getting lost—that’s the trick of a maze, not a labyrinth. A labyrinth has one path in, one path out. All that’s left is to walk it.

But here’s what I love about that walk: it turns. Again and again, in tight little switchbacks, you face a different direction than you did a moment ago. The center you can’t see from one turn becomes visible from the next. You notice things a straight path would never show you, not because you’re looking harder, but because you keep turning.

Two months ago, of and I talked about exactly that kind of unfolding…what it costs to let the unknown move through you instead of clinging to what you already know. That conversation hasn’t finished with us.

So on Thursday, July 16th, we’re entering again.

Back into the Labyrinth is another live, unscripted conversation. No script, no agenda, no idea yet where the path leads. We’ve made the one choice that matters. The rest is the turning.

If you’d like the first conversation as a companion, you can watch it here:

This one stands on its own.

Join us LIVE

With each turn, a new discovery,
Val

This was my first Substack Live video (in case you couldn’t tell from the tech flub at the beginning where we had to restart…sorry to those who tried to join at the original link). If you want more of this kind of content, please let us know in the comments.

And we’d love to hear what is present to you as you tune in to the deep pause of this conversation. Please share your reflections and feedback in the comments.

Leave a comment

Sending you (and me, too) grace,

Val

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There’s a kind of conversation that doesn’t have an agenda.

No curriculum. No pre-packaged takeaways. Just two people willing to go beneath the waterline and see what’s actually there.

That’s what this Thursday’s exploration promises.

Going Deep is a live video conversation with Melissa George of Grounding Leadership — a developmental coach and leadership consultant who has spent serious time thinking about what it means to grow vertically, not just accumulate new skills. We met nearly a year ago at a gathering of people working at the intersection of adult development and leadership. We’ve been meaning to connect beyond the occasional What’s App voice memos and messages ever since.

We’re bringing into this conversation what is actually present in our lives and work right now. Not the highlight reel. Not the polished insight. The live, slightly unruly thing.

I know something of what I’m carrying in though I’m always a bit surprised by what comes out in my conversations. What Melissa is bringing to Thursday? That’s the mystery. And honestly, part of why I can’t wait.

Going Deep with Valerie Livesay & Melissa George

Thursday, May 14 · 1:00pm PT Live on Substack · Free and open to all

Join us live on the Substack App

Not because something new has happened. But because something that was always there has finally come into focus.

I ended there. With the seeing. But seeing raises a question I haven’t been able to put down:

bell hooks asked this question with a fierce tenderness I keep returning to. For hooks, growing in awareness — of ourselves, of the people we love, of the world we participate in — was never simply an intellectual achievement.

It was a threshold. And crossing it meant you were responsible for what came next.

She was honest that this kind of seeing doesn’t feel like clarity at first. It arrives as grief. As anger. As the slow dissolution of a story you thought you understood — about your relationships, your choices, your silence, the systems you’ve been living inside without fully seeing them.

And she was equally honest about what it takes to move through it:

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation.

Healing is an act of communion.”

I keep sitting with that word. Communion. Not “agreement”. Not the comfort of a room full of people who already see what you see.

Communion as in: I bring what I am carrying, and so do you, and something becomes possible between us that was not possible alone.

I've been sitting with that alongside something else I've been working with — an idea I'm calling the developmental braid. The two keep finding each other in my thinking, and I'm not sure I've fully worked out why. But here's what I know so far.

The braid has three strands: meaning-making, identity, and systems awareness — three distinct territories, each requiring its own cultivation. We tend to be more developed in some strands than others. But there’s something that becomes possible when all three are consciously held together — a quality of development, of leadership, of seeing, that none of the strands can produce alone.

What the developmental braid has taught me, especially lately, is where the ground gives way. Systems awareness can begin as cognitive — recognizing patterns, naming structures. But when it becomes personal, when you see not just the system but your place inside it, your collusion in it — that’s when it stops being a thought and becomes something else entirely.

A gut punch.

What Mezirow called a disorienting dilemma. The strands collapse into each other, and suddenly meaning-making and identity are implicated, too.

Because seeing clearly doesn’t just change what you know. It changes who you are. It changes the story you’ve been telling about your past, your choices, your silence.

It can arrive in the middle of an argument with your teenager, or a moment of stillness when you realize you’ve been performing something rather than living it. It can arrive in a moment in world that makes neutrality impossible, or a professional one where you realize that staying quiet has been its own choice all along.

That kind of integration doesn’t solely happen in your head. And it doesn’t happen alone.

Under threat or pressure — in any of those domains — the braid tightens. Meaning-making narrows. Identity defends. We lose the thread of who we’re trying to become. We fall back.

Which is why I keep returning to hooks. Her answer to the tightening was never to try harder in isolation. It was communion. Staying in relationship through the disorientation rather than retreating from it.

Creativity becomes developmental when we stay in relationship through tension. The same is true of leadership. Of conscience. Of the particular kind of growing this moment is asking of us.

This is what I’m creating in Braided Conversations.

A small, intentional space — four to eight people — for those navigating exactly this. Whether the seeing arrived through your relationships, your parenting, your work, the state of the world, or your own interior: the grief braided with clarity, the responsibility braided with uncertainty, the need to stay present to something you’d rather look away from.

Not a course. Not content delivery. A practice space, where we bring real questions rather than polished conclusions — and where the work is not to arrive anywhere in particular, but to stay awake to the shaping that is happening in real time.

If this sounds like the kind of space you've been looking for — conscious strand-holding, in communion — I'd love to have you.

Registration closes March 26. The group is intentionally small, and space may fill before then.

Development and dignity were never separate projects.

And neither, I think, are development and communion.

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Read the first piece in this thread: The Things You Can’t Unsee

When Alis and I first created this space, it centered on how raising children raises us. That remains true. But what we’ve come to realize over the past year is that the deeper thread has always been about something more encompassing of all of life — how we grow as humans across roles, relationships, and thresholds.

Parenting was one doorway. Development has always been the room.

This piece lives inside that larger frame.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with a question that feels both developmental and deeply personal:

What happens when you see something… and cannot unsee it?

Not because something new has occurred. But because something that was always there has finally come into focus.

Over the past months, I’ve felt something shifting inside me.

Grief. Anger. Clarity. Tenderness. All braided together.

I’ve been grieving not only what is unfolding in the world, but what I failed to recognize before. The harm that existed while I was insulated by busyness, by complexity, by my own partial sight — and yes, by privilege.

Much has changed. And some of what feels newly urgent was always there — embedded in the structures around me, softened by the comfort I rarely had to question.

But, I can see it now. And once you see, you cannot return to innocence.

For years, much of my work has lived in what I think of as the developmental voice. Holding paradox. Inviting complexity. Asking, What might I be missing? Creating space for rough drafts — of ideas, of identity, of relationship.

That voice is still mine.

But recently, another voice has been rising — one that feels less patient and more precise.

I’ve wondered if this is fallback. If I’m becoming rigid. If I’m slipping into righteousness—a character I’ve known well.

But what I’m beginning to understand is that this isn’t a fracture. It’s a braid.

I still believe two things can be true at once.

But they are not always equal in what is at stake.

And when cruelty escalates, taking a stand is not a failure of development — it is its expression.

Patience without agency becomes avoidance. Agency without patience can erode the very humanity we’re trying to defend.

What I’m learning—painfully—is that the practice is not standing without consequence, rupture, or grief. Those are inevitable.

The work is to stand without contempt. To refuse cruelty without becoming cruel. To keep my conscience intact without flattening the world into simple enemies and allies.

I’ve also been grieving something else.

The people who may not understand this shift. The relationships that may strain under clearer boundaries. The losses that come when you choose not to stay quiet.

I feel this most acutely at home. As a parent. As a partner.

Seeing changes how I show up. It changes the conversations at the dinner table. It changes what I model about courage and consequence. It changes how I talk about power…and how I use my own.

Because once you see harm, neutrality is no longer neutral.

The question becomes:

What kind of adult do I want my children to watch me become? One who preserves comfort? Or one who preserves conscience?

What kind of partner do I want to be in this moment? One who retreats into abstraction? Or one who stands, even when standing costs something?

I cannot lose myself to preserve belonging. But I also cannot abandon others — especially those who are watching, learning, calibrating their own sense of agency by how I inhabit mine.

This is the braid. Not abandoning self. Not abandoning others. Not abandoning the possibility that we can grow into something braver together.

Recently, my friend, Craig, wrote on his Book of Forgotten Words substack about the word respair — to reclaim hope as an act of will.

That word feels right in this moment. Because this kind of seeing hurts. It burns off illusion. It strains relationships. It destabilizes identity.

But it also clarifies. And clarity, when paired with conscience, is not cynicism. It is the beginning of respair. Not shallow optimism. But a disciplined refusal to give up on one another…a refusal to give up on one’s self.

If you’ve been feeling something similar — grief braided with anger, clarity braided with fear, agency braided with loss — you are not unraveling.

You may be integrating. And integration rarely feels gentle.

It feels like tension. It feels like choosing. It feels like standing where you once would have shrunk. It feels like becoming someone who cannot unsee, and refuses to abandon either self or hope in the process.

I don’t know exactly what this season will require. But I know this: I would rather lose comfort than lose coherence. Because development and dignity were never separate projects. They were always the same work.

And perhaps this is what growing as humans looks like in a moment like this — the courage to see clearly and live in alignment with what we now know.

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Every year, as the clocks fall back, I feel the familiar tug of time — the reminder that even endings are invitations to begin again.

When I first wrote Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You, I thought I was exploring how we tighten, falter, and forget the fullness of who we are.

But what I’ve learned since is that fallback isn’t just about collapse and recovery — it’s about slow learning.

It’s the practice of returning, over and over, to what life keeps teaching us.

Many of those lessons came as quiet gifts — from mentors, companions, and the living work of paying attention. They taught me that learning is not a straight line but a spiral: we revisit what matters until it roots more deeply within us.

The work of Growing Humans lives here, too: in the slow tending, the returning, the willingness to keep learning what love and loss keep teaching.

This season, on the third anniversary of what I lovingly call Fallbook, I feel that rhythm again. Not as a haunting, but as a hum — the presence of what endures beneath change. The reminder that falling back isn’t failure; it’s how we remember where we stand.

So this Fallback Day, I’ll keep the ghost light burning — for all who are still in rehearsal, and for all of us learning how to fall back with grace.

Holding the light as the days dim,

Val

An Invitation to Listen into the Dark on Fallback Day

If you’re walking through your own season of returning, you might find a companion in Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You — a book born of these very questions. Or share it with someone who might need to be reminded that every falling back is also an opening toward light.

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Since that gathering, both of us have been sitting in our own layers of letting go — some chosen, some not. The shifting of projects, pace, expectations; the quiet absences that open space for something unnamed. It’s a season that keeps teaching us how loss and life live side by side.

Last week, we met to see what the stillness and space in between had revealed.

“I’m learning that letting go doesn’t always mean release,” Val said. “Sometimes it just means holding differently — not with fists or open palms, but with cupped hands.”

Alis mused,

“It’s seasonal, right? The loss isn’t an end; it’s the compost. Everything that’s breaking down is also feeding the roots.”

Letting go doesn’t mean we stop caring. It means we trust that care can take a different shape — softer, slower, quieter. The roots still hold. The hands are still open.

We keep discovering that Growing Humans is really about this: learning to stay present in the tension between what’s leaving and what’s being born.

And the work isn’t just out there — in projects, communities, or the children we’re raising. It’s in here. What is leaving and what is being born is happening within us, too, as we grow ourselves.

“I once thought I was only the gardener,” Val said. “But I’m also the soil — what’s being turned, broken open, and made ready for what comes next.”

There was a long pause, the kind that softens the air between words. Our eyes found the divination card Alis had pulled at the beginning of our call.

“We’re each other’s reminders,” Alis said.

“When I forget who I am,” Val replied, “you say it back to me.”

That is the shape of letting go — not disappearance, but return.

The way we hold one another like this — with curiosity, truth-telling, and grace — is something we learned from those who showed us how to be.

As we return to this conversation now, we do so in a season touched by loss. One of our beloved friends and mentors, Bill Torbert, whose work and way shaped much of what lives beneath Growing Humans, has just passed. This reflection feels, in its own small way, like a living tribute — to what he taught about inquiry, courage, and becoming together.

So we keep tending: noticing, naming, remembering.

Loss becomes soil.

Friendship becomes practice.

And the practice, always, is becoming human — again and again.

An Invitation

What are you releasing this season?

What still wants your tending?

You might begin simply:

What I’m letting go of is…

What still holds me is…

We’ll be sitting with these, too — listening for what grows in the quiet after.

With care,

Val + Alis

If you missed “Growing Through Loss,” you can revisit the conversation and the questions that continue to guide us.

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It was the sound of stones shifting — grief loosening its grip just enough for something small, green, and alive to root in the cracks.

We spoke of the ways loss reshapes us:

the friendships that drift and return changed,

the work we once tended that now asks for rest,

the children who grow past our reach — and us, still growing too,

the identities now beyond our grasp,

the dreams championed for others but not yet claimed for ourselves.

What we discovered was not how to fix loss, but how to live beside it.

How to let what’s fallen teach us about what still stands.

If you missed the session, we walked through a simple, human(e) rhythm — four questions that helped us listen differently to what was gone, and to what might yet become:

1️⃣ What is true about this loss?

2️⃣ What did it bring or teach you when it was alive?

3️⃣ What in you still feels alive—still wants your care, even after this loss?

4️⃣ How does the you reshaped by this loss wish to meet what remains?

But what felt important, in our discernment about Growing Humans last month, in this webinar this week, was that we begin by honoring ourselves and honoring the loss by naming what is true. We invite you to start there, too.

🌱 What truth is ready to be spoken—perhaps first to yourself, perhaps here among others—about what’s been lost?

You might find it easiest to let it flow from these phrases:
What I’ve lost is… or What’s changing is… or What I’m feeling is…

We would love for you to name your truth in the comments below, or simply let it find its voice in its own time. 🌱

We suspect questions will keep working on us, quietly, like time on stone.

Because even ruins reach for the light in their own way.

With care,

Val + Alis

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Dear companions,

As many of you know, the past couple of weeks we’ve been sitting with our own wandering, our grief, and our longing around Growing Humans. Out of that discernment, one thing became clear: it feels right to gather with you—live, in real time. Not polished. Not perfect. Just human-sized.

So, we’re offering our first live webinar in October. The theme: Loss as part of the process of growing humans—others and ourselves.

Why loss? Because in tending children, communities, and our own unfolding, we inevitably encounter grief: dreams that don’t unfold, relationships that shift, parts of ourselves we must release. Rather than avoid this, we want to honor loss as part of the curriculum of being human…as a necessary aspect of growth.

What to expect

• A short framing story from us (Val + Alis)

• A moment for quiet individual reflection

• Paired or trio conversations in breakout rooms

• A harvest of collective themes back in plenary

• A simple closing gesture

This is not a lecture. It’s a practice of listening together—using our own discernment journey with Growing Humans as an entry point for yours.

Date + Time: October 8, 4-5pm PT

Duration: 60 minutes (not 90—we’re keeping it livable)

Cost: Free

Where: Online (Zoom)

We’d love to have you join us. Please register here: https://courses.verticaldevelopmentinstitute.com/course/webinar-loss-as-part-of-growing-humans

And if you can’t make it live, the free webinar will be recorded and the recording made available the following day to all those enrolled.

We’re treating this as an experiment, not a forever. A small step to see what wants to grow when we gather live.

This is not an answer—it’s a seeding. 🌱

With care,

Val + Alis

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But this week we’ve been inquiring into those assumptions. What if the most human thing we can do is to offer smaller, truer increments? What if the livable, imperfect gestures are the ones that create the most spaciousness for growth?

[My real garden this morning—messy, uneven, alive. Some things thriving, some things fading, all of it growing in its own rhythm. A reminder that tending doesn’t mean perfection; it means staying with what is.]

Those questions became very concrete as we began planning our first, live Growing Humans webinar, happening in October. At first, we imagined 90 minutes (because that’s how long webinars are in the spaces we move in). But when we looked closer, that choice didn’t align with our real lives. One of us would have had to reshuffle kids’ schedules, add stress, narrow margins. And both of us felt that 90 minutes can be a stretch for anyone trying to fit one more thing into a crowded week.

So we decided: 60 minutes.

On the surface, this might seem like a technical adjustment. But underneath, it’s about how we want to grow together. We don’t want to model endurance, or make our offerings one more burden, for you or for us. We want to model livable increments. Because sometimes, honoring the constraint of chronos—the clock, the schedule—is the very thing that lets kairos—the timeless, the sacred—breathe.

We wonder with you:

• Where are you pressing yourself into heroic sprints that no longer serve?

• What happens if you size things for ease, and let life expand within that frame?

This is not an answer—it’s a seedling. 🌱

With care,

Val + Alis

P.S. We’ll share the date and registration details for the October webinar soon. For now, we’re glad to say: it will be one hour, human-sized.

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The question isn’t, “How do we commit to a big new offering?” but rather, “What would it be like to take a few small steps and see if life gathers around them?” We are sensing into micro-experiments: short, time-bound circles or gatherings that let us feel whether live accompaniment nourishes us and you, or whether the soil simply wants more rest.

This is less about building and more about listening. Less about proving and more about noticing.

There is grief in the background—grief for what we once imagined, and uncertainty about what will become. But today, experiment felt like the truest way to honor both what has been and what might still sprout.

We’d love for you to walk alongside us in this discernment—not as decision-makers, but as witnesses. If you feel moved, share a single word of aliveness in the comments: something you notice stirring in you as you read what has been moving through us.

And also, we wonder with you in your own contexts:

When you’re at a crossroads, what helps you discern whether to pause or to take a small step forward?

How do you know when it’s time to test the waters, even without guarantees?

This is not an answer—it’s a seedling. 🌱

With care,

Val + Alis

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Yesterday we named the wandering we’ve been in with Growing Humans—the ways our passion waned, our capacity shrank, and how that too is part of growing.

Today’s truth feels murkier.

From Val:

I don’t actually know what I want from Growing Humans right now. Part of me longs to tend it more closely, imagining what it could become. Another part fears that stepping in more deeply would become another something that I don’t have the capacity to give myself to fully. Both possibilities live in me at once, and I don’t yet know which will grow stronger.

It’s unsettling to admit this, but maybe that’s the work. Growing humans means growing through uncertainty, not around it. It means noticing when desire and doubt live side by side, and not rushing to choose one over the other.

What I do know is that if I take on more of the tending, I don’t want to hide the mess. I want to invite you into it—the uncertainty, the ambivalence, the awkward middle. Because this is what it is to be human: to not always know, to feel pulled in two directions, to carry both hunger and hesitation.

From Alis:

For me, the mess shows up differently. I feel pulled by other projects and other loves, and yet I don’t want to abandon Growing Humans, either. My relationship to it feels less about “doing” right now and more about “listening”—as if Growing Humans is resting, and I need to rest with it.

Together, we’re realizing that Growing Humans isn’t asking us for neat answers. It’s asking us to sit in the not-knowing, to be transparent about our ambivalence, and to invite you into the awkward middle with us.

So today’s seeding is this:

We don’t yet know what we want or what’s next. But we’re willing to stay in the discomfort of that uncertainty together.

And we wonder for you:

• How do you sit with not knowing what you want?

• Where in your own life are you pulled between desire and hesitation?

If this lands with you, would you consider leaving one-word or a comment as a witness and companion? We’ll read them together tomorrow. We may share a few anonymously in the next post.

Thank you for walking with us in the messy middle.

With care in the not knowing,

Val + Alis

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When we began Growing Humans last year, our hearts were full and our plans abundant. We dreamed of podcasts, articles, and a course that could accompany you (and us) in the messy, beautiful work of growing humans.

And then—life. Illness, grief, burnout, politics, other projects. Our passion waned. Our capacity shrank. We wandered.

We didn’t follow through in the ways we imagined. We’ve carried guilt about that—especially toward those who entrusted us with your attention and support.

But here’s the deeper truth: Growing Humans was never meant to be about polished answers. It was always about the journey—the detours as much as the trail. About wandering, fallback, and re-choosing the path. About the ways we grow ourselves while tending to the growth of others.

So here we are, naming it:

We wandered. We waned. And this, too, is part of growing.

This week, we are devoting ourselves to listening. We are meeting every day, asking together: What does Growing Humans want to be now? What do we want to give it, and what do we need from it? We don’t know yet where this will go. But we trust that naming the wandering is itself a form of growth.

If you, too, have wandered this year, we’d love to hear what that wandering has taught you. What have you seen or carried back from the detour?

We’ll be sharing daily reflections—breadcrumbs from our own discernment. Not conclusions, but glimpses of the trail, as we walk it.

Thank you for being with us in the uncertainty. Your presence is part of what makes this field alive.

With care,

Val + Alis

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I know what mine looks like now. I circle the wagons. Hunker down. Pull me and mine close. And wait. In silence. This is me in response to collective fallback. The kind where—for reals—the sky is falling in. Global pandemics. Lawless dictators and their oligarch lackeys. (Or maybe it’s oligarchs and their lawless dictator lackeys…it’s hard to tell which from day to day.)

And there I find myself, in the basement of my being. All of my capacities trapped behind the locked doors of my shrinking developmental house, which has come these past several months to feel more like a bunker.

I am scared. So many of us are.

Actually, it’s not just fear. It’s terror. And as I write this, I realize that this is, indeed, who has been on the scenes of my being. Terror.

She’s a character I identified and named maybe seven years ago…though she was born when I was young. She grips me forcefully, causing every fiber of my being to tense. My hands form reflexively into fists, my nails cutting into my palms. My jaw clenches. My senses are on high alert. I want to scream but what seeps out is a nearly imperceptible whimper.

Terror is solid, immovable, determined, enraged…and silent. As her body steels itself against danger, her eyes scan for threats and search for the exits, the hidden tunnels that will deliver those she loves—those she is determined to protect—to safety.

If it were just me, I would not hesitate. I would not look for the escape routes. I would make my voice heard. I would resist, loudly. I would use every modality available to me to fight. But it is not just me. I am responsible to other humans. So many of us are—be they in our families, in our classrooms, in our workplaces, in our communities.

What I do has repercussions for others, now more than ever before, as government infiltrates my data, my personal life, my institutions, my sidewalks, my privacy, my freedoms, my tax dollars, my financial future, my safety. All the while taking a chainsaw to so much that I hold sacred and dear.

Terror commandeers the stage in protection of others.

A clear, rational thought prevails: I’ll protect us by not drawing attention to us.

And in so doing, I have been unrecognizable to myself, at least the self that I want to be. But the truth is, Terror is a part of me. She is here. And she’s here for a reason. She is protecting so much that I value. My children, my husband, this life that we have built in a country that promised us we could.

So, I have stayed outwardly silent while inwardly, I wail.

But what Terror can’t see on her own, when she is the only actress on my internal stage, is that protection by way of silence is a false truth.

Yes, we could go unnoticed, disguised, wearing the face we keep in a jar by the door. (I’m coming to see now who it is for.) But I decided many years ago that I would not mask myself. And I refuse to be cloaked in fear now.

When I am in fallback, I lose access to the parts of myself that are more spacious, more generative—those that can hold paradox, consider long-range implications, or seek the good of the whole. In the bomb shelter of my fallback, nuance dies. And with it, my leadership potential.

It’s a false promise that I can protect those I love by keeping my head down and my mouth shut. In the light of day, as I peek tentatively out of the bunker that has been holding me, I can see another truth. If I collude with my silence, I will protect no one.

I can see it in the rapidly falling away distance of time, and protocol, and civility, and law, and humanity—glimpses of a future scene. My children turn to me, when all vestiges of safety have been stripped, and ask, “Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you stand up for what was right? Why didn’t you protect me, not with your silence but with your voice?”

As we struggle to make sense of ourselves and the way we are showing up (or not) in a world in existential crisis, there has been little that I’ve encountered about how it is affecting us humans in here…how we are showing up to ourselves, now also in existential crisis, and to the humans we grow. I have read and listened to what is happening out there. Yet, I’ve believed for some time that we, individual humans, are the primary units of analysis. The wisdom lies within us.

It is times like these when all the theories we study about leadership, and vertical development, and fallback are put to the test. What will we do with them when the rubber meets the road?

“Fear is a necessary precondition to courage,” proclaimed Senator Cory Booker in his 25-hour marathon speech on the floor of the Senate in protest of the devastation that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their sycophants are wreaking on the United States and the rest of the world.

Yes. Yes sir, it is.

How do we humans live into the place in our development where our fullness, both our bigness and our smallness in all of their wisdom, power, and gifts, can take the stage in protection of the values we hold? And how can we do this as we also tend to the growth of other humans?

Perhaps the first step is to face into the reality that this human journey is painful.

It’s a truth that so many of us have attempted to turn away from. We don’t get through life without fear and loss. The times we are living in right now put this truth on loudspeaker.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Do not squander the hour of your pain.” Indeed, our pain is so often the source of our transformation, and also the source of our ability to accompany others in theirs.

We must pay attention.

I have long believed that the lynchpin of coming into relationship with the fullness of you, including your fallback, is to notice. But noticing, these past few months, hasn’t felt like enough. We must pay attention.

Pay attention to what is happening in you. I’m not talking about a passing glance. I’m advocating for a full-on sit-in. If you find it too dark to see, be still and let your eyes adjust. If you hear nothing, listen into the silence. Feel the tension in your face, the constriction of your muscles. Pay attention to where your attention is drawn and where you don’t dare look. Bring curiosity to your fear. Listen for the truth that is revealed. Sit tight and wait for the other truths to emerge…there is always more than one.

Yet sometimes we are unable to see ourselves, to hear the truths until we utter them to or hear them from another.

Go to the spaces where you can be seen and held without fear of judgment.

We make meaning in community. We see ourselves through others’ eyes. We become better witnesses of ourselves through our witnessing of other humans.

Not being alone–in my own thoughts, anguish, in my Terror–has served as a balm when all around me feels like barbed wire. To be seen and heard in my pain and fear; to witness another in theirs; to be reminded that this is not humanity’s first rodeo with those who seek to destroy democracy; to have demonstrated to me that joy and hope have for centuries prevailed in the face of cruelty; to be reminded of the human spirit and to witness others’ Courage standing alongside their Terror—has given me strength, compassion, perspective, and a map.

Think about the long game…

…beyond you in this moment, in this year, in the next four, in the next 40. What will your children’s lives be like? And theirs? What legacy will you leave them? What kind of human do you wish to be in this world? What is your intention for meeting this moment?

Do not squander the hour of your pain. Notice who is on your stage. Face into your fallback, not with shame, but with curiosity. And then ask yourself: Who else needs to be here? What character will help you lead—not just others, but yourself—into the world you hope to shape?

Dive deeper

Join our in-depth, self-led developmental course for adults who raise and educate children - Growing Humans: How Raising Children Raises Us. Bonus, as a paid subscriber to this substack, you will receive a 50% discount on the full price of the program (you will receive the code when you activate your paid subscription).

Head over to the program page to learn more.

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You will also receive a 50% discount on our self-led program for parents and educators: Growing Humans: How Raising Children Raises Us.

It’s a regularly spoken refrain in our house as my children obsess, seemingly endlessly, about what their sibling is doing.

“But she already used all of her tech tickets and she’s sneaking another one!”

“But I was telling a joke and he ruined the punchline.” 

“But he has his elbows on the table at dinner.”

“But he called me a jerk…interrupted me when I was telling a story…gave herself the larger scoop of ice cream…never stops talking, so I don’t have a chance to speak….”

Occasionally, I offer it as a reminder when my kids are complaining about how others outside of our household are behaving. 

“But the coach was yelling at us and telling us how awful we were.  He made us run laps because we were having fun.  Aren’t we supposed to be having fun?  Can’t he see that negative reinforcement isn’t motivating us?”

And how they feel justified in behaving in response… 

“So, I started coaching the team, using positive language to show him how it’s done.” 

“So, I just continued doing my own thing, but this time with emphasis so he could see how right I am and that he was doing it wrong.”

“So, I’m not going to go to practice next week, because he told us not to come if we weren’t willing to work hard. I already was working hard!”

Me: “I’m not saying that Coach is right.  What I am saying is that you aren’t in charge of him. You are only in charge of you.”

This worrying about and attempting to control others’ behavior is not solely the domain of children, though. Recently, I was accompanying a client as she rehearsed for an upcoming scene in which she thought there was high likelihood that she wouldn’t show up her biggest self.  A scene in which she was prone to fall back into a less conscious and mature way of seeing the situation and the others in it, a less conscious and mature way of behaving. 

I asked, “What is your intention for how you show up to this conversation?” 

She replied, “My intention is for my boss to listen to my opinion and to decide that mine is the best course of action.”

I gently pushed, “But what is your intention for you in this conversation?”

“Right,” she quickly replied, not sure why I hadn’t heard her the first time. “I want him to understand my perspective and to go with what I am proposing.”

“I understand that this is your goal for the outcome of the meeting.  But you are only in charge of you, not him,” I offered. “So, how do you want to show up for you? What is your intention for your relationship with your boss? What is your intention for who you wish to be in this particular scene, in the broader organization?”

“Oh…,” she said slowly.  After a few seconds, she softly said, “I see. What is my intention for me?”

We are not accustomed to thinking this way.  Our orientation is so often about others and what they are or aren’t doing; how they are wrong; what they can’t see that, if only they could, all would be right in the world.  But the truth is, whether we are 10 or 50, we are only in charge of ourselves.  We can’t make anyone else see, think, believe, behave the way we want. 

This is a truth that I, too, am frequently confronted with particularly in the context of raising my 10- and 14-year-old children. (In truth, in the context of my relationship with my spouse, too.) Sometimes as parents, we can and do coerce, exert power over, demean, shame, guilt, and punish our children into doing what we want.  But while the children we are raising may acquiesce, at least in action though frequently not in spirit, we often end up diminishing who we are and who we wish to be—in relationship to them, and as humans in the world—in the process.  The external gain we garner from attempting to be in charge of others comes at an internal price as we disregard our values in service to getting our way, or being right, or having and showing that we have the upper hand.

“You are only in charge of you,” is a refrain I repeat often to myself.

Through my research, practice accompanying others, and in my own life, I’ve found that intentions can be an incredibly helpful scaffold.  Connecting to my intentions and having them as a touchstone to return to when I lose my way and go into what I refer to as “default mode” helps me more frequently bring my most mature self, my most important values, and my highest purpose to my interactions in the world and importantly, with the children I grow.  And when I get swept up in the moment, take the bait, and fall back, reacting with a capacity (or lack thereof) that is more aligned with my adolescent children’s developmental stages than it should be with my own as a (supposed) grown-up, connecting to my intentions offers me a toe-hold to pull myself out of the pit.

Wisdom for humans young and old who are always and forevermore in the practice of growing.

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Join our in-depth, self-led developmental course for adults who raise and educate children - Growing Humans: How Raising Children Raises Us. Through December 2nd, get 40% off with code VDLEARNING (case sensitive). Bonus, as a paid subscriber to this substack, you will receive a 50% discount on the full price of the program (you will receive the code when you activate your paid subscription).

Head over to the program page to learn more.

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If you’d like to see this community grow, we hope you share this article with other parents, caregivers or educators who could benefit from the reflection.

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As a paid subscriber, we’ll welcome you into a smaller, closer-knit community where we regularly meet, share, and learn together. You will have access to the chat and comments on every article, as well as dedicated, facilitated fireside chats for the community (two coming up in December!).

You will also receive a 50% discount on our self-led program for parents and educators: Growing Humans: How Raising Children Raises Us.

Tomorrow, and I will join Robert Franken (fellow grower of humans) and our friends in the Conscious Tribes Community for an interview and Q&A session! This will be our first time talking live, publicly, about our Growing Humans baby and we would love for you to be there!

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024 — 6 - 7:30am PST; 9-10:30am EST; 3 - 4:30 pm CET

Alis and I will be sharing more about the Growing Humans project and our purpose in fostering vertical development for parents and educators. We’ll talk about why parenting techniques are only part of the story and why our own development matters so much in the way we—parents or teachers—show up for our kids, at home or in the classroom. This is an open conversation, with live questions from the audience.

Community is such a big part of how we grow throughout our lives. Community is what we are building through Growing Humans. And we are honored to be recognized as a Conscious Tribe and invited into community by our friends at Conscious U.

We hope you, the folks who have been cheering us on in the Growing Humans community, will join us. And please feel free to invite others! Let us know if you can make it here.

Dive deeper

Join our in-depth, self-led developmental course for adults who raise and educate children - Growing Humans: How Raising Children Raises Us. As a paid subscriber to this substack, you will receive a 50% discount on the price of the program (you will receive the code when you activate your paid subscription).

Head over to the program page to learn more.

Learn More

Spread the word…

If you’d like to see this community grow, we hope you share this article with other parents, grandparents or educators who could benefit from the reflection.

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