Front Book Cover of "Leaving the Ghost Light Burning"

Cover illustration: “Backstage” from the series Ghost Light Theaters by Rachel Phillips

First came the theoretical situation of fallback within adult development theory. Now you are invited to step into the ghost light yourself in exploration of the fullness of you.

Step into the light.

“In my own life, and in my work with senior leaders in organizations all over the world, I have found that it can change our lives to get curious about our fallback and about the characters that storm the stage when we are losing ourselves. Not only to understand that there are ways we fall out of our highest capacities, not only to attempt to be gracious with that occasional fall—but to see why we are falling and how that fall is not just a misery but a gift.”

— Jennifer Garvey Berger, EdD, from the foreword of “Leaving the Ghost Light Burning”

Founder and CEO of Cultivating Leadership, Co-author of Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing your Inner Capacity to Lead and Simple Habits for Complex Times, and Author of Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps and Changing on the Job

We face many circumstances that bring us to our knees at the precipice of our sense-making: in our relationships, our parenting, our roles as heads of organizations or as those trying to navigate the cultures and contexts of them. These scenes of our lives often trigger our smaller, more shadowy selves to steal the show – we call this “Fallback.”   

When we are in fallback, we want to reject these shady characters within us who storm the stage in our most fraught moments, in our most valued relationships.  The problem is that when we deny the full cast that compromises us, fallback in its neglect begets a vicious cycle of repeated fallback.  Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You invites us to leave the ghost light on for all our characters, offering a set of practices to notice, arrest, reflect on, and recover from fallback more quickly, and even to transform ourselves in the process.

Fallback, when we recognize and come into relationship with it, can be about understanding when and why we are not able to bring our better self; reframing our expectations of who we are in this world; accepting the full messiness that is an inevitable component of being human; coming to know and love a more authentic version of self; and cultivating the environments for others to do the same.

Praise for

Leaving the Ghost Light Burning

  • Valerie Livesay’s book is a difficult read… NOT because it is theoretically dense, or unusually long… NOR because it is boring or trivial or for some specialized audience. "Leaving the Ghost Light Burning" is difficult to read because it is all about you and me and about how we, along with the characters in its stories, can face into the (many) times when we are less than at our best. Livesay invites her interlocutors in the book, and us, to name the various sub-personalities we discover and to gradually become more friendly with them, illuminating their potentially positive role in our lives. This is the lifelong spiritual work of adult development. Two special features of Livesay’s book are that it traces people’s struggles over the prolonged period of a decade, and that it includes exploratory conversation with a half dozen adult developmentalists both prior to and near the end of her research. In this way, she creates a fascinating dialectic between theory and practice.

    Bill Torbert, PhD

    Leadership Professor Emeritus, Boston College, and Author of Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science

  • There is deep and practical wisdom running all through this book, speaking directly to the challenges of our era. Simply put, it is difficult to be our best selves, and it is transformational to embrace the diverse and often vexatious characters within us. This is a remarkable path to a life well-lived.

    Charles J. Palus, PhD,

    Honorary Senior Fellow, The Center for Creative Leadership

  • What a gift Valerie Livesay offers us in this courageous and beautiful exploration of one of the most messy, yet fertile fields in our human experience, the phenomenon of “fall-back.” Fall-back describes those moments, (or sometimes months or seasons) when life instigates behaviors or choices that seem as though performed by a strange someone other than ourselves. As Livesay explains, it may indeed not be our preferred or “best self,” the self of our greatest capacity and competence, but one of a repertoire of characters, or a whole guest ensemble of selves who are triggered to take up roles and bit parts on our behalf. Even if we sometimes find ourselves chagrined by what can feel and look like our temporary regression, Livesay provides ways of positively framing our experiences as grounds for learning, and offers reflective practices that foster awareness, self-compassion, and greater wholeness. Anyone involved in the work of coaching human development, let alone on this human journey itself will find this book a blessing.

    David C. McCallum, S.J., EdD

    Executive Director, The Discerning Leadership Program

  • The sexiness of “transcend“ often dominates conversations about adult development—usually to the detriment of “include.” Valerie challenges that in this gritty, brave, and practical book that lays out a path for us to welcome and include all of who we are to unlock the beauty of what it truly means to transcend.

    Brian Emerson, PhD

    Co-author of Navigating Polarities: Using Both/And Thinking to Lead Transformation

  • Fallback is Val's term for those times when, despite knowing better, we act/think in ways more primitive, more contracted, more horrible than is good for us or anyone. Truth is, we all have those moments (or years!). And because ego is designed to protect us, it’s natural to cover up such fallback; it’s natural to simply export all the blame and never engage in inquiry. “Leaving the Ghost Light Burning” is important for inviting us precisely to resist that natural impulse. Instead, Livesay invites us to become vastly more curious about our fallback. The book is therefore a gentle guide to disciplining our mind’s madness. As we come into relationship with our falling back, we are able to spring forward, each time a bit more quickly. And, with a little luck, self-reflection, and lots of practice we may become adept at creating contexts where others can also step into their own better natures.

    Hilary Bradbury, PhD

    Editor in Chief of the Action Research Journal and Founder of AR+ Foundation, Author of How to do Action Research for Transformations: At a Time of Eco-Social Crisis, and Co-author of Eros/Power: Love in the Spirit of Inquiry

  • The Ghost Light offers a practical approach to illuminate, befriend, and honor the whole self, especially the messy parts we most often want to rebuff. This new way of coming to know ourselves is a key skill necessary to help us make sense of the times we can’t manage to muster any semblance of our best selves. With this deeper understanding, we gain perspective that supports us in times of difficulty, helps spur our growth, and leverage our full cast of characters to navigate the complex world a bit more flexibly.

    Elise Foster

    Master Critic, Sassy Pants, Perfectionist, and more characters TBD, Executive Coach, Co-Author of The Multiplier Effect and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom, and all around bad-ass

  • "Leaving the Ghost Light Burning" has become such a useful companion to me. [I now have four books in my possession.] During coaching sessions when I find clients are creating a split in themselves, I often pick up the book and share with them about the concept of Fallback. Almost always, just this understanding creates a sense of relaxation. This week, a client of mine who is experiencing some serious anxiety started reading FallBook, and he shared with me how much this is balm for his soul.

    Dana Carman

    Developmental Coach and Leadership Consultant