Failure is such a loaded word, isn’t it? In a world that worships success, failure is often framed as the ultimate shame, something to avoid at all costs. But what if failure isn’t the enemy of success? What if it’s the complement—the shadow that lets the light meaningful? Sitting with failure, really feeling it instead of running from it, is an act of rebellion. It requires the kind of courage that success never demands. It’s uncomfortable, disorienting, sometimes downright painful—but for those who dare to stay, it cracks open an entirely new way of seeing.
Because failure shifts things. Even when it feels like stagnation, even when it invites collapse, it creates movement beneath the surface. When we stop defining failure as “not succeeding” and instead see it as a doorway to deeper knowing, we start to ask better questions. What did this experience make visible that success would have kept hidden? What do I actually want? Where is there more space to breathe? Failure invites us into a bigger, truer relationship with ourselves and the world. And that’s terrifying. And liberating. And so, so worth it.
Curious Mind: Instead of asking, “Why did this go wrong?” try, “What new perspective does this give me?” The shift from blame to curiosity changes everything.
Connected Heart: When you see someone else struggling, resisting the urge to “fix” and instead offering presence can change both of you. Holding space for failure—yours and others’—is an act of love.
Creative Body: Try an experiment: do something you expect to fail at, just to feel the texture of it. Cook without a recipe, doodle with your non-dominant hand, speak a new language badly. Let the stakes be low and the learning be rich.
AuDHD-friendly embodied earth calendar
Failure: A Doorway, Not a Dead End
The link between easing through failure and the natural rhythm of rest and return is about recognizing that failure isn’t a final stop—it’s part of a cycle, like the waning moon before it waxes again or winter before spring.
When we see failure as a phase rather than an endpoint, we give ourselves permission to pause, recalibrate, and return with new insight.
Just as nature moves through contraction and renewal, we, too, can trust that resting in the dark moments allows for eventual growth.
This solar-lunar seasonal calendar helps you see time not as a straight path but as a rhythm of expansion, contraction, rest, and return.
By becoming aware of these natural cycles, you can ease through perceived failures, trust the pauses, and step forward renewed.
[✨ Learn more✨]
Spark up*
- Rest, reflect, rewire retreat Rest and retreat is what enables moving on with intention. Early bird pricing ends 1 April (no joke).
- Calculated risks, bold moves podcast Gloria Esguerra, introvert immigrant women’s coach and mentor, shares about a seeming failure that became an unimagined success.
- When a woman dreams A fable about the fearless fullness of falling short. Free download.
Invitation to wonder: Was there a time when failure didn’t break you but redirected you?
Even if you didn’t recognize it then, something shifted.
You carried on, reconfigured, or rerouted.
That moment is proof: you have already survived failure.
And you learned something in the process.
You are wiser, and probably kinder, for the experience.
Encouragement for Sensitive Souls: You don’t have to agree with any of this.
You don’t have to force yourself into “embracing failure” if it feels like garbage right now.
It’s okay to say no.
Real no’s make space for true yeses.
Just know this: you are not failing at life just because you feel uncertain, exhausted, or like you’ve lost the thread.
You are allowed to pause.
To rest.
To let failure be just another thing that happens—not a verdict on who you are.
And if, in some quiet moment, a little wondering sneaks in—what if failure is an invitation to conversation, not a condemnation?—well, that’s enough.
That’s more than enough.
AuDHD-friendly affirmation for bold women
Many women with AuDHD in their lives love going out on a limb.
They are conditioned to view success as the only acceptable outcome, pushing them to relentlessly strive and avoid failure.
Which undermines our ability to embrace failure as part of the growth process and recognize it as a doorway, not a dead end.
Remember you can pause, reflect, and trust in the cyclical rhythm of rest and return, allowing you to reset and begin again with more insight.
I trust you to honor both your growth and your moments of contraction, knowing they are essential to your unfolding.
Inside the AuDHD-friendly 2025 Embodied Earth Calendar, you’ll find a way to navigate time in cycles, honoring both your expansions and retreats, making space for each phase of your journey.
THE RISK AND REWARD OF MEETING FAILURE (Drunk Bestie Edition 🍷✨)
Babe. Listen. You know how everyone’s out here pretending they never fail? Like, “Oh no, I just pivot fast” or “Everything is a lesson!” Pffft. No. Sometimes failure just sucks. And avoiding it? Ugh. Exhausting. But hear me out—failure is kinda a badass. It messes with expectations, smacks you outta autopilot, and—if you don’t panic—it might even show you something WILD. Like, maybe you weren’t even on the right path to begin with?! Gasp.
Failure isn’t just flopping—it’s MOVEMENT. It shakes up all the stuck energy, brings in unexpected help, and forces you to actually look at what you care about. I know, I know, the discomfort is so real. But also?? So is the GROWTH, baby. So maybe the question isn’t “How do I avoid failure?” but “What kinda magic trick is it pulling for me right now?”
🤔 Brain on Wine
Where did you even get your definition of failure? Like… is it actually yours? Or did society just hand you a crappy script? Try swapping “failure” for “learning experiment.” Feel any different? If yes, sip your drink. If no, sip your drink again.
💖 Tender Lil Heart
If your bestie came to you like “I failed at everything, I’m trash”—you would NOT let them spiral like that. So why are you being mean to yourself? Babe, please. Be nice.
👐 Chaos Goblin Body
Ok, let’s play. Fail on purpose. Wear two different shoes. Draw the ugliest doodle. Try to juggle, fail spectacularly, cackle. Just… see what happens when you drop the pressure to be good at everything.
🌱 Flashback Reel
Think back—when did you think you totally bombed something, only to realize later it was actually a plot twist that helped? What changed between “OMG, I’m doomed” and “Oh, wait, this kinda worked out”?
(Bonus round: If failure is moving you somewhere, where’s it shoving you now?)
✨ Soft Place to Land
Look. You don’t have to make failure a thing. You don’t have to turn it into a “Rise and Grind” moment. You can just… exist with it. Rest. Hide under a blanket. Take a dramatic sigh. Or, IDK, ignore all of this advice because your no is just as valid as your yes. Whatever happens, you’re still here. And that? That’s enough.
Now drink some water, I love you. 💖
Notes on failure, including HBR failure spectrum
The bad news is that failure and learning feel the same at the beginning
Very uncomfortable at best to extremely painful and terrifying at worst.
And it can take a while to move through that, in my experience.
Or brush it off and go again.
Or move along on to the next thing.
There are no right answers.
Resilience is another learnable skill.
Bouncing uphill.
Failure
Confusing
Shoot from the hip
Easy to write something/someone off as failure
Not care
Save energy
Save money
Move on
Not throw good money after bad
But there is something beyond those rationalisations and judgements
There is movement
Failure creates movement
Shift
Acknowledged failure creates shift
In previously untried directions.
Sometimes unseen directions
Unvalues
Unappreciated
Including calling in support
Failure is a trigger
A catalyst
It can take a long time to acknowledge failure
Want to see what’s on the other side
Weighing up discomfort of identifying with failure vs the alternatives
What are the alternatives
Take advice/judgement
Go back to before
Accept support
Stay there and clean up
Discover what you really want
What does failure allow?
Stop
Rest
Collapse
Not change
Feel sorry for self
What even is failure?
noun
- 1.
- lack of success.
“an economic policy that is doomed to failure” - Similar:
- lack of success
- non-success
- non-fulfilment
- defeat
- frustration
- collapse
- foundering
- misfiring
- coming to nothing
- falling through
- fizzling out
- fiasco
- debacle
- catastrophe
- disaster
- blunder
- damp squib
- flop
- botch
- hash
- foul-up
- screw-up
- washout
- let-down
- dead loss
- dead duck
- lead balloon
- lemon
- fail
- cock-up
- pig’s ear
- snafu
- clinker
- View 2 vulgar slang words
- Opposite:
- success
- 2.
- the neglect or omission of expected or required action.
“their failure to comply with the basic rules” - Similar:
- negligence
- remissness
- non-observance
- non-performance
- dereliction
- omission
- neglect
- oversight
1640s, failer, “a failing, deficiency,” also “act of failing,” from Anglo-French failer, Old French falir “be lacking; not succeed” (see fail (v.)). The verb in Anglo-French used as a noun; ending altered 17c. in English to conform with words in -ure. Meaning “thing or person considered as a failure” is from 1837.
fail (v)
1200, “be unsuccessful in accomplishing a purpose;” also “cease to exist or to function, come to an end;” early 13c. as “fail in expectation or performance,” from Old French falir “be lacking, miss, not succeed; run out, come to an end; err, make a mistake; be dying; let down, disappoint” (11c., Modern French faillir), from Vulgar Latin *fallire, from Latin fallere “to trip, cause to fall;” figuratively “to deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, elude; fail, be lacking or defective.” De Vaan traces this to a PIE root meaning “to stumble” (source also of Sanskrit skhalate “to stumble, fail;” Middle Persian škarwidan “to stumble, stagger;” Greek sphallein “to bring or throw down,” sphallomai “to fall;” Armenian sxalem “to stumble, fail”). If so, the Latin sense is a metaphorical shift from “stumble” to “deceive.” Related: Failed; failing.
Replaced Old English abreoðan. From c. 1200 as “be unsuccessful in accomplishing a purpose;” also “cease to exist or to function, come to an end;” early 13c. as “fail in expectation or performance.”
From mid-13c. of food, goods, etc., “to run short in supply, be used up;” from c. 1300 of crops, seeds, land. From c. 1300 of strength, spirits, courage, etc., “suffer loss of vigor; grow feeble;” from mid-14c. of persons. From late 14c. of material objects, “break down, go to pieces.”
Comme il faut
“according to etiquette,” 1756, French, literally “as it should be.” From comme “as, like, how,” from Old French com, from Vulgar Latin *quomo, from Latin quomodo “how? in what way?,” pronominal adverb of manner, related to quam “how much?,” qui “who” (from PIE root *kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns). With il, from Latin ille “this” (see le) + faut, third person singular present indicative active of falloir “be necessary,” literally “be wanting or lacking” (see fail (v.)).
So failure gives access to a range of emotions and experiences that are the complement of success and reasonable active compliance.
These emotions and experiences give a fuller perspective of success and action.
Also, reframing failure – and i think this might be incredibly important going forward
From HBR spectrum below.
Must check the source of that.
Discipline, complexity, exploration
Routine production (preventable), complex operations (unavoidable), innovation (intelligent) > failures
Small failures combine to create significant failures.
Strategies for learning from failure Amy C Edmondson
HBR Design thinking failure
A Spectrum of 9 Reasons for Failure
BLAMEWORTHY
Innovation/intelligent????? : Deviance. An individual chooses to violate a prescribed process or practice.
Routine/preventable: Inattention. An individual inadvertently deviates from specifications.
Routine/preventable: Lack of ability. An individual doesn’t have the skills, conditions, or training to execute a job.
Routine/preventable: Process inadequacy. A competent individual adheres to a prescribed but faulty or incomplete process.
Complex/unavoidable: Task challenge. An individual faces a task too difficult to be exe-cuted reliably every time.
Complex/unavoidable: Process complexity. A process composed of many elements breaks down when it encounters novel interactions.
Complex/unavoidable: Uncertainty. A lack of clarity about future events causes people to take seemingly reasonable actions that produce undesired results.
Innovation/intelligent: Hypothesis testing. An experiment conducted to prove that an idea or a design will succeed fails.
Innovation/intelligent: Exploratory testing. An experiment conducted to expand knowl-edge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesired result.
PRAISEWORTHY
Reporting not punished
Specific behaviours would be – reckless conduct, conscious violation of standards, failing to ask for help
Same mistake three times – laid off
Co workers relief as as well as sadness and concern
Extra vigilance required from others to counterbalance shortcomings
That deviance thing – something there about wanting to take more responsibiiltiy than can humanly hold
Godlike
Dissatisfaction with the small power alotted.
Something
This is a critical failure of thinking.
Too much responsibility
Also a call for help of course.
In a child at least.
Urgh.
Neglect and non compliance.
Intelligent failure.
I’m glad i had that antidote ready to go because i easily fall into harsh self criticism around any neglect or lack of success.
Ie, any rest or stillness.
Moving on.
Winners laugh, losers please themselves.
Resting on laurels = failure.
Urgh.
Something about success feels exhausting to even think about.
The constant growth and moving on
Input to maintain growing output and expectations.
Failure seems like a relief.
Glory lasts forever.
Pain is temporary.
Keep going.
While alive, abreathing, time is passing
Everything changes.
Revisit neglected parts, discover what else is now possible
Return with wisdom and kindness.
Rhythm of return.
Keep going back
To see what has changed in me.
I can see this is a deep theme.
This is the root of the mission of course.
Remedy neglect with care and attention.
Kindness. Meeting where at
Patience and persistence < cyclical time
Collaboration begins with empathy
other posts in this seasonal series.
Envy, merit & the myth of earning worth – competition can create artificial isolation
Feeling with, not fixing – sitting in companionable uncertainty creates space for connection
I don wanna (and other hidden invitations) – welcoming resistance allows energy shift and equitable redistribution
Shame is the lie. Let’s act like it.
– refusing the lie of shame and failure makes something challenging possible.
What failure reveals (that success hides)
– failure is deeply uncomfortable to be with, but rewards the brave.
Also, my about page
Where i try to explain where I’m coming from with this collective, collaborative idea.
