The Lonely Place--Revisioning Adolescence and the Rite of Passage
SKU:
$14.95
$14.95
per item
This is not just a book but the story of a book which took me over ten years to write. The journey has not been an easy one. It seems we are training our young people to be violent, alone and dead to the world.
Growing children into conscious, healthy adults is web which connects to all aspects of our current culture. There are no easy answers. This effort, I hope, will be part of a long, honest cultural conversation about what we need to do to ensure a healthy future for our young people.
Price includes USPO book rate shipping. If you would like to get your copy faster, it is also available on Amazon.
Paperback, 143 pages
Many Kites Press / ISBN# 978-0-9729002-0-1
|
Introduction
For the past several years I’ve been haunted by a young fourteen-year-old girl I never met. Gina Score died in a boot camp training school in Plankinton, SD. Her family, from a small eastern South Dakota town, was like many families from the Midwest. Generally, we live simple lives here, but Gina somehow got off on the wrong foot, like others of us did at her age. She did some shoplifting, skipped school, and got herself into trouble with the police. In July of 1999, she was put in the boot camp in an attempt to ‘shape her up’ and get her back on the right trail. Fashioned after the model of military training, boot camp for teens is not summer camp. Five days after Gina arrived in Plankinton the girls from Cottage B, fifteen of them in all, went on an early morning run down a road outside the complex. Both the temperature and the humidity were about seventy. Gina, weighing over two hundred pounds, couldn’t complete the run. When she collapsed, the staff counselors thought she was faking it and her lie there in the sun—for three hours. Eyewitnesses reported that Gina roused her self once, tried to make it the last 100 feet to her cottage, but collapsed again. Her skin was pale, her lips blue, and she had urinated on herself. Still, the staff did nothing. When the paramedics were called at last, Gina was taken by ambulance to the hospital but, on the way, her heart gave out. Paramedics tried to revive her but the damage was too severe—her internal body temperature had topped the thermometer reading 108 degrees. This will be the most depressing and devastating story I’ll tell here because Gina’s story is the reason I finally finished this book. I can’t get her off my mind. After researching kids and culture for over ten years, it was Gina who finally pushed me out of analysis and into action. Our children suffer. A shocking five million plus have been diagnosed as ADD or ADHD and placed on Ritalin2. Suicide is now the third most common cause of death for young people3. Two hundred thousand young people are incarcerated each year, with 84,000 of them placed in solitary confinement for twenty-four hours or more4. There is, of course, no easy answer to the challenges our current culture presents to its young. We can’t simply pack a bag and send them off to seek their fortune. Something much more complex is required. As I began writing this book I found myself grappling with fundamental questions sweetly reminiscent of my own youth. Why am I here? What have I come to do? Do I have the right or the duty to decide for anyone what is best for them—even my own children? Is it possible to be guide, mentor and eventually Elder to those who now travel the paths I passed on earlier? What are the golden links between mind, body, spirit, family, and culture? It’s as if in searching for the right initiation for my growing children I was, myself, initiated. This is not just a book but the story of a book which took me over ten years to write. The journey has not been an easy one. It seems we are training our young people to be violent, alone and dead to the world. From early childhood on our children face a barrage of violent images on television, video games and the internet. They watch ridiculous programs where the children act big, the parents act stupid and the whole family is clueless. They attend schools where earnest educators attempt to stuff information into their brains without thought of the natural human learning process. Growing children into conscious, healthy adults is web which connects to all aspects of our current culture. There are no easy answers. This effort, I hope, will be part of a long, honest cultural conversation about what we need to do to ensure a healthy future for our young people. The messages of this book will seem confusing or contradictory at times. They will push against the tidal wave of negative energy flowing out toward our young. They will examine the tendency toward pathological diagnoses and the criminalization of the adolescent—as if being a teen were a sickness or a crime. They will challenge us to search our own development for signs of the uninitiated adult within. I will also contradict myself by suggesting first that we do as the Lakota mothers do for their littlest ones—call them dear, sweet and precious one to pull their little spirits tightly to us. Then I’ll tell suggest that with our teens we must push them hard with strong tests and challenges. And finally, for those on the edge of adulthood, I suggest we bless them—and then get out of their way and stop doing for them what they should be doing for themselves. Throughout these chapters I will wander through the many fields of science, medicine, psychology, and spiritual thought. At one point I will dip into the “hidden orders of love” as the German therapist, Bert Hellinger5 describes them. At another point, I will build a map that orients us to the higher levels of development. The desired end result of all of these seemingly varied topics is to build and strengthen the cultural cradle that contains the child and his family and culture. In the chapters to follow there are many references to the public radio series my husband, Milt, and I produced called Oyate Ta Olowan—The Songs of the People6. This series consists of fifty-two public radio documentary programs on Native American music and stories. Over five years we traveled deeply into Indian country to meet and interview The Oyate, which means “The People” in Lakota. This incredible journey taught me much, and I gratefully acknowledge all the Elders and teachers who have contributed to the information presented here. I would like to dedicate this book to my three children, Nichol, Lisa and Thomas who have taught me so much about being a human being. Without you guys, my life would have been a desert. |
