Whispers from the Ghost Light: On Slow Learning and Falling Back
A reflection for Fallback Day — and for the slow learning that shapes us all.
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
What slow learning is whispering to you right now?
What keeps calling you back to tend what still matters?
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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