Going Down to Grow: Finding Meaning in the Descent

When Success Feels Hollow

We spend much of life striving — building careers, relationships, and stability. From the outside, it may all look “together.” But inwardly, something can feel empty, lonely, or lacking meaning. You may catch yourself wondering: Is this all there is? Often, the answer comes through loss, failure, or seasons that unsettle everything we thought we controlled.

After one such gutting failure in my own life, a wise teacher said to me: “It’s too bad you haven’t failed more.”

It stung, I couldn’t decide if that was cruel or prophetic. Now I know it was mercy. Because failure, loss, and descent are the teachers we most resist and most need.

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The Gift of Descent

Richard Rohr, in Falling Upward, describes life as a two-part journey. The first half is about building —identity, structure, and security. The second half, if we’re attentive, is about unraveling, shedding, and discovering what really matters.

Rohr calls this paradox falling upward— the idea that the way down is often the way up. Descent isn’t punishment; it’s initiation into a deeper, truer life.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in Women Who Run With the Wolves, describes this as the Life–Death–Life cycle: for something new to emerge, part of us must die first. Transformation comes through the cycles of letting go and renewal.

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The Wisdom of Winter

Another mentor once said to me during along, barren stretch,

"In the winter, many trees are bare, and that allows you to see the landscape more clearly."

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That image has stayed with me. In winter, leaves turn, die, and fall away, and everything is stripped back to its honest shape. There’s less ability to hide behind blooms or greenery. Sometimes our lives go winter on us — the clarity of what’s no longer working becomes painfully visible. The noise quiets. And if we’re willing to stay still long enough, we begin to see the contours of what’s actually true.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls this the Life–Death–Life cycle in Women Who Run With the Wolves — the sacred rhythm of transformation. Something in us must die for something wiser to be born. There’s a kind of sacred clarity that only comes when everything extra has fallen or been stripped away. The bare branches of our souls reveal the terrain we often avoid — our grief, our loneliness, our fear, our unmet longings.

We spend so much energy trying to stay in perpetual Spring, chasing growth and comfort. But Winter has its own lesson: it teaches us how to truly see.

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Why the Brain Resists Growth

It’s not easy. The brain is wired to protect us. When it senses pain, uncertainty, or loss, it sounds the alarm: Avoid it. Don’t go there.

These protective patterns can keep us stuck— reliving the same fears, repeating the same relational dynamics. In short-term terms, it keeps us “safe.” But in the long term, it perpetuates suffering.

Research shows that real healing occurs through integration, not avoidance (Siegel, 2020; Porges, 2011). By turning toward what was once intolerable — the grief, the anger, the shadow aspects of ourselves — the brain forms new pathways for safety, connection, and resilience.

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Shadow Work: Meeting the Parts We Hide

The shadow, as Carl Jung described it, contains the parts of us we have hidden or denied. Shadow work isn’t about wallowing in darkness; it’s about bringing light and curiosity to what has been exiled — grief, anger, desire, or disappointment.

Through shadow work, we reclaim energy spent hiding, stop projecting our pain onto others, and begin to embody the fuller self waiting beneath fear and avoidance.

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Falling as Formation

Looking back, the seasons that felt like endings were often the beginnings of something more authentic.

Rohr reminds us:

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‍“The way down is the way up.”

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Estés teaches that life cycles through death and renewal. And my mentor’s winter metaphor holds: only when the trees are bare can the landscape be seen clearly. Sometimes, the fall is exactly what we need to finally see.

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An Invitation

Thresholds Counseling offers a safe, compassionate space to explore the deeper story beneath the surface —especially the parts that feel like endings or barren seasons. Here, descent is honored as sacred work.

If you are in a season that feels empty, disoriented, or painful, perhaps it is not the end — perhaps it is the beginning of falling upward.

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Further Resources

• Richard Rohr — Falling Upward
• Clarissa Pinkola Estés — Women Who Run With the Wolves
• Daniel J. Siegel — The Developing Mind (2020)
• Stephen Porges — The Polyvagal Theory(2011)

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“The way down is the way up.” — Richard Rohr

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