Falling has more than one meaning.

The leaves in Vermont are falling. This winter, someone will be falling on ice. Maybe I’ll be falling in love. I often feel I’m falling from grace. Time and time again, when I remember to breathe, to allow, to come back to peace - I fall back into myself.

I love this season. The sun kissing Autumn colors to life… wrapping up in warm clothes. And yet, the colors are coming alive because the leaves are dying. Warm clothes come out because it’s cold. And dark. These past months, something inside is darkening, too. Maybe something inside is dying. Or changing.

My neighbor jumps backwards from overwhelm at my suggestion to send a flyer out for a neighborhood sing around a campfire. My teacher assumes I’m generally uneducated and inexperienced because I’m learning something new and don’t understand it yet. A colleague wrongly assumes I’ve done unethical marketing and lectures me. There are so many situations - sometimes they arrive daily - that trigger a falling from grace… so many times I feel smaller, less than, like I’m a shade of gray.

My goal is to be enlightened, yet I keep falling into this dark hole. “Where’s the light switch”, I desperately wonder. “Where are the stairs out of here?!”

I know who has the answer. I ask for guidance - from Inner Wisdom - and She speaks…

Fall into the darkness and open your eyes. Wander about and find the part that’s hiding.

The ‘part’, in the language of psychosynthesis, is a subpersonality.

I find it. This sub is a wounded child, who’s been hanging out in the dark for a very long time. She’s six.

Take her hand.

I let her crawl into my lap.

Wrap her in your arms.

I hold her and she begins to cry.

Listen to her story.

“I am not enough”, she whispers. A tear rolls down her cheek. “I try so hard to be more. I think my energy is too big. People don’t like me. I am too much” she wails.

I hear her dilemma. She believes that whatever she does, it’s seen as too much or not enough. I remember her story. I understand where the belief came from. It’s not her fault.

“It’s not your fault” I tell her. “You were just a child. Wounded adults told you these things.” Yet, I see that she believes it is her fault. She believes to her core that she is not ok as she is, that there’s something inherently wrong with her; that she’s not acceptable.

I recall when this belief was strongest... when hormones kicked in at age 11, when they peaked every month at mensus, when they kicked out at age 50... when tired, stressed… when it’s rainy, dreary, dark.

It seems they’re also strong when I rise up to my Calling… starting a new business, learning new material, leading more groups.

“Be careful” she warns. “Don’t speak up. They won’t like you.”

She’s trying to protect me. I see. She doesn’t want me to get hurt, to be dismissed or dissed, to be unaccepted. Ah, I get it. What she doesn’t realize though, is that her protective method is black-and-white thinking. She’s six. Essentially, she’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. She doesn’t realize that by protecting me, she’s holding me back. Being held back from following my Calling is excruciatingly painful. What do I do with this 6-year-old?!

Hold her. Accept her as she is. Let her know she’s lovable. Be the parent she needs.

Be the parent she needs... yes.

Yes! Be the parent she needs! The one she’s needed and wanted, and been waiting for - the benevolent, unconditionally loving, accepting parent. Oh, that’s why she’s still here! She’s been waiting for me to open my psychic arms to her, let her fall in, and tell her: “you are enough, just as you are. Your thoughts, feelings and actions are worthwhile, and I want you to express yourself”.

When I love my inner, wounded child, I’m loving more of myself. Accepting her, I’m accepting more of myself. Letting her fall into my arms, I’m falling into more of myself. And in falling, I can rise.