We begin with Family Camp fun! The whole family stays together for Day 1, even siblings! After a morning orienting to the land and creating group agreements for our weekend village life, we break for lunch before spending the afternoon with cooperative games and multigenerational silliness. Family Campfire and Storytime offer a perfect close to our first day.
On Day 2, we separate parents from youth to allow the adults to contemplate developmental nourishments and consider family dynamics and specific preparations for the rite of passage.
Meanwhile, the youth continue to play games and build skills designed to nourish their emerging wellbeing by navigating trust, fairness, exploring ethical quandries of justice, care and interpersonal dynamic while fostering emotional wisdom.
After lunch on Day 2, youth and parents come back together to participate in a family fire ritual of letting go and honoring the old. With this ceremony, our rites of passage begins.
Parents and siblings say goodbye to the youth for the evening components that offer them an adventurous and safe container to explore the edges of their strengths and fears as they complete middle childhood.
ROP activities and council discussions are designed specifically to nourish middle childhood ages as youth deepen and stretch their self-knowledge through challenges, nature connection, and contemplating life/death/rebirth cycles of nature and humans alike.
For Parents, Day 2 evening is self reflective to focus on their shifting role as parent and awareness of past childhood themes that surface in parenthood. Day 3 morning is spacious for Parents to have free time with siblings as well as complete preparations for the reunion and ceremony. Parents and siblings reunite with youth on this last day in the afternoon for the culmination of the ceremony and feast.
Why do we do this ceremony now, BEFORE the well known Coming of Age years for teens?
What’s so important about this age of middle childhood & honoring your 10 & 11 year olds with a traditional rite of passage?
Following the traditional six ingredients to a rites of passage, our youth programs invite parents and youth alike t
Contemplate and name what old parts of the self are ready to be let go of, in order for the new capacities to arise.
Through dialogue, trust building games, campfires, nature solos and new skill building (like archery, hand work, self defense and more), we complete the casting off of the old and arrive at a ripeness to step into the unknown.
The culmination of the ROP journey is the threshold experience, which is also referred to as the GAP. This component is held closely by the guides, with all details kept from both parents and youth’s ears, so that the mystery leads, the challenge is strong and the gains are potent. The purpose of this ingredient of the ceremony is to shift the participants’ awareness away from thought, ordinary identity and reality, into a more expansive, liminal sense of self and place. This state of openness offers a fertile ground for the new qualities of self to flood in, with a sense of connectedness and courage.
After the GAP, participants engage in quiet artistic expression to slowly give form to their experience. Creative expression is reflective and personal. To support the incorporation of their journey and new self understanding, the guides take time in a sacred council, to share reflections of what they have observed, acknowledging and clarifying each participants’ emerging new self.
Parents are invited to join the journey in the final 2 ingredients, as we share gratitude and celebrate what our youth have accomplished and discovered about themselves and their place in the larger web of life. This is a chance for parents to witness and celebrate their youth and express their care for who they are becoming, and share their gratitude for the larger community that made these rituals possible. The weekend ends with a potluck feast, inviting parents (with siblings and grandparents) to celebrate the youth and deepen community.
