“The loss of initiation in Western culture, and increasingly in older, traditional societies, is having a devastating impact on our youth. In turn, as these uninitiated youth, particularly adolescent boys, grow into adults, the cost of not being properly initiated into men is expensive indeed. Though we modern Westerners may not think that any of these old practices have any value in our current society, I believe the declining emotional health of our boys, as well as of our men, is directly related to the decline of effective initiation practices.” -Bret Stephenson, From Boys to Men
Working together with Golden Eagle, the SouLodge Community breaking ground in Raising Kings: Boot Camp with Golden Eagle. We’re preparing to engage in a long-awaited conversation with (and about) men and boys: their lacking of cultural rites of passage, the emasculation of them, the implications of fatherlessness, and what it really feels like to be a boy or a man today. It is a conversation we’ve been wanting to have for many years, and it’s finally here! We are gathering to stand together, learn new ways of relating and interacting, and to protect the sacredness of boys and men, who often do not know how to ask to be treated as sacred beings, because they are not cultured to.
I’m over the MOON to podcast with Jayson Gaddis, founder of BoyStrong and celebrated Boulder, CO relationship expert, who I’m going to ask with great pointedness, “What are men up against?” I know he’ll shed some bright light on how men are cultured today and why he thinks they’re still having to “fight to do their soulwork.”
To win one of five spots for this two-week intensive online boot camp, leave a share about how you think rites of passage would benefit boys who are transitioning into manhood and any questions you have for the amazing Jayson Gaddis.
Share at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (#raisingkings), and all of your favorite social media places-each share gets an extra entry, meaning more chances to win a free seat in this epic intensive to help free ourselves from being at odds with men and boys.
Winners will be announced Wednesday morning before I head to Spirit Weavers Gathering!!
****CONGRATULATIONS TO LISA, SHELLY, MICHELE, OCEANNA & RACHEL!****
To the beautiful rest of you, use SOULODGE10 when you purchase the course and save $10!
Thank you for taking this very important journey together!!!
Shared and pinned. Feeling this one strongly. Looking forward to it.
As a mother of two boys, this would be a wonderful gift. They don’t have any positive male influences in their lives, so we would all three greatly benefit from this.
This is a much deep-needed movement, and being the mother of 2 boys (11 and 7.5), I can really appreciate the power of this, and applaud your efforts in bringing this intention forward!
I’ve anticipated this ever since you first mentioned the course. I’m sure my son and husband do too:)
I wonder if the necessity of rites of passage has as much to do with the gathering of community as it does with the ceremony itself. Boys need men to be candid with them and surround them with support. Boys are expected to figure out how to be a man without a real support system. How do we raise them to be tough and strong leaders who also are able to be vulnerable? To be vulnerable means to be wounded; maybe rites of passage need to involve open acknowledgement and then healing for all the ways our boys get wounded. I think men carry deep seated shame that never gets addressed. They are cultured into numbness. How do we open the doors for them to FEEL and communicate honestly about what matters? How do we help boys give themselves permission to actively seek healing as an expression of their strength?
Congratulations Lisa!! Can’t wait to have you in class!
I would love to share this learning with my oldest who is 11.5 and beginning that transition from boy to man.
thank you for this generous and exquisite offering. my soul feeling is that rite of passage for young men would honor their transformation into manhood by connecting them to ancient wisdom, lineages of elders, the beauty and bounty of nature, and their inner landscape, all weaving a tapestry of embodied knowing, emotional awakening, and profound connections.
Shared all over the place! Looks fantastic.
Jess
So many of our young men are being raised today like my own. In homes raised by single mothers, and in my son’s case, surrounded by sisters and his grandmother, these boys are not being raised to be men. The implications of fatherlessness are many and I agree that restoring the practice of rites of passage and communal initiation is both necessary and answered prayer.
Thank you for leading this timely discussion Pixie and Jason. It would be an honor and gift to be a part of it.
I’m raising two beautiful boys and have grown up with their father. I remember reading in The Minds of Boys that boys in our culture have no rites of passage into manhood & so they don’t know how to “be” men. They don’t know what that means. My husband and I have tried to create that in our raising of these boys. I would just love to deep this knowledge as a woman raising strong, compassionate, loving men so they can do good work in this world.
Congratulations Oceanna!! Can’t wait to have you in class!
We as humans crave tradition and ritual. Our past is rife with them. Momentous memorable things and events to mark passage and growth. As the mother of six boys I see how important it is to create meaning and value in our daily lives as well as moments of growth. They end the guideposts, we as women need to remember the value of them.
Shared to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! This workshop is going to be so valuable to Men and Boys. There are little to no significant rites of massage recognised for them in the modern world. I think the loss of these essential times have sorely wounded the make psyche. If I was lucky enough to win a place it will be gifted to my man who is keen to work through this. He has just started reading “Iron John” and his eyes and heart are wide open at the possibilities!
What a great idea! I think our lack of male community and rituals is dangerous for men & women alike. I have a 3 year old son.
Thank you!
I shared on FB!
I think of rites that honor who they are right now as they transition to this moment. To help them discover who they are.
I am so happy with this bootcamp as I am at this moment with a huge struggle to relate to my 13yo!
As a mom of three sons I feel and think our collective sons would benefit from initiation rites of passage by cultivating and strengthening their relationship to themselves in realtionship with the Divine… this individuation process from the biological parents, or whatever original family one receives, is a key core value sort of hurdle lost in our culture with all the hyper-homogenization we are coming through. The resulting insecurities are playing out in epic scenerios these days as our men’s souls cry to be fed well. Feeding the holy is really the only way and must be done in an intimate way for each man in his time too. Thank you Pixie and tribe for soaring AND taking the deep dive with this topic and bringing it front and center with SouLodge flavor!
(Shared on FB, Instagram, Twitter)
I’ve always wanted to take a course with Jayson! The lack of rites for young people has been something I’ve been interested in since I was a youth myself and felt the absense of these rituals.
I want to know how we can raise men to be strong, emotionally capable individuals in a patriarchal society, while also attempting to dismantle (rather than reinforce) the stereotypes about binary gender.
(Shared on Facebook + LinkedIn + Twitter + Google+)
my son needs this! This came at the right time
My boys and I need this right now! I’m a newly single mama and their father has had no contact with them in almost a month. They are hurting, and I’m struggling to help them in the way they need…
Congratulations Rachel!! Can’t wait to have you in class!
I’m so drawn to this topic, thanks for sharing Pixie. My husband and I are always having conversations about how to raise sons in an empowering way. He remembers a lot of phrases like ‘be a man’ or ‘real men don’t ___’ growing up. We’d like to look at what our son sees and experiences, and be able to speak with him about it. I want vulnerability to be comfortable for him, so he doesn’t build walls or live out stereotypical archetypes that aren’t for his highest learning and growth.
I’m visualizing a world where it’s the new norm for men to be initiated in their manhood. Really powerful!
As the mother of 3 boys this conversation interests me greatly. My eldest just turned 18 and I really had to think about what kind of thing I could do for him that had a ‘right of passage’ feel that I could get behind. He’d been wanting a massage for a long time and so I took him to my favorite massage place that has a very Japanese feel and he loves Japan too. I waited and walked in the garden while he was nurtured and he loved it. This may not be the kind of ‘right of passage’ you are talking about here but it worked for us and it kind of felt like the tables were turned and it was meaningful.
What a fascinating topic! Of great interest to me as a wife and as a mother to a boy!
I am so very excited about the content and rippling societal affect it will have on the young men on not only thevSL family, but all the ones that we touch…at our last sweat, my 6 yr old nephew came down to the lodge (without telling his dad who was with the kids while my sister attended) he insisted that he wanted to go into lodge and my sister and the water pourer told him he could help with preparing the lodge, making ties, preparing the cedar line, smudging everyone, and after doing all of these things he still insisted he wanted to go into lodge. The elder decided that if Jen (my sister) was with him, he could come in because he was so interested in everything and asking questions and seeking knowledge. I have always thought that part of my mom’s spirit and some of my paternal grandfather’s spirit came back to the earth plane when Colton was born…he says and does things that I do a double-take, because they are things that my mom or grandpa would have said or done…he’s wise beyond his earthly years of 6!
So Colton went into lodge and asked all kinds of questions and shared profound insights from his heart, and came out with a great thirst for more knowledge about the ways of the elders and traditions…we need to engender this thirst in more young men, (and women) so that they can carry these traditions on through future generations. Thank you for doing this important work Pixie!! And thank you for this generous giveaway!!! (I shared on FB, Instagram, and Pinterest)
Wow. The most important thing this conversation would do is help this Mama be able to actually support her nearly adolescent son where it is needed rather than just butting heads and like we are doing at the moment.
I think rites of passage would be important to men to help them learn what is needed to be a good man in a positive way and give guidepos5s for those that are a bit lost, but also to show them how valued and honoured they are because those messages can get lost within the celebration of female power these days…within the media and in society in general.
I am also sharing on Twitter and Facebook.
It’s a love letter to the men and boys in our lives, to share the spiritual growth as well as physical.
We are engaging in more conversations at home regarding how nature is communicating with us, so I am encouraging my partner to join in this session.
❤︎
(Shared on Facebook, instagram, pinterest, and Twitter.)
This is exactly what the moon lodge in my community is seeking, hope im given the opportunity to fill my cup so I can share.
Sharing this on IG, pinning it, and getting the word out to the other mama’s of boys I know who are looking for something just like this!
The current imbalance in the system affects us all, and our boys need our loving healing attention just as much as we women need it. In my heart, I believe raising boys to know themselves, and know their place in the world, will help us move to more loving balanced, respectful relationships so we can live together more peacefully. Thank you for this conversation/offering Pixie.
Maybe honoring boys as they transition to manhood would help both them and us to envision them as important participants in the community, and set better expectations for the future. Thanks for focusing our attention on this important work Pixie! Thinking ahead for my 3 year old boy.
This class speaks absolute volumes to me, I am in the midst of raising four Kings myself and share a life with another. I believe rites of passage, and ceremony of all sorts is lacking in our society and with the transitions of boys to men. It is a mental shift that takes place, it is as important as the change itself and I hope to gain knowledge from this opportunity on how to create that transition for each one of my kings, 12, 8 year old twins, and 2 1/2 year. Of course, for my life King, who walked a road very much a lone and would have benefited greatly from ritual and passages, it is NEVER too late! Thank you so much for this!
Congratulations, Shelly! Can’t wait to have you in class!
How wonderful to include men and boys in rights of passages. I have a 10-year-old son that I would love to learn how to empower, understand, make him feel confident, secure and compassionate. Just like my daughter, I want to raise my son to be well-rounded and respect and accept all parts of himself the feminine and masculine
Yes! Our society needs this and others like it. I am interested as a mother, wife, therapist and woman. Thank you for the opportunity.
I just learned that I am going to give birth to a boy in October! He will be my first child and I so want to raise him to honor the sacred, to be for the highest good. I have worked with the sacred feminine, yet have struggled to find the balance with the sacred masculine. This boot camp is exactly what this soon to be mama needs. Thank you for offering this incredible opportunity!
I’m not sure that I am raising my son but I am certain that he is raising me.
What I do know is that the divine feminine needs the divine masculine in order for us all to be whole.
My manchild is crossing over from man to child and I feel the gapping need for him to be shown the way by his menfolk in ritual and rites of passage, but they have fade leaving him to find his own way. There is an element of lost without those to shine the way for him, to lead by example, to be strong in their softness and to give him permission to be his true and whole self.
This is such important work, like the piece of the puzzle that feel off the table and somehow swept away. We need to bring it back, the men folk need to bring it back…
Gxx
Oh, I Instagramed and facebooked 🙂
Tradition, ancient Rites of Passage help boys translation to manhood in a space of sacred knowledge and love as opposed to modern rites of passage, which generally involve copious amounts of alcohol, violence and greed. What it means to be a man is now defined by advertisers, marketers, corporate puppet masters. Globally, collectively, we are raising confused and fearful boys who have little in the way of guidance and community. I am a single mum with two young boys and would live to take part in this workshop. My ex husband is unwilling to walk the path of consciousness and I accept and honour that. It’s not his lesson this lifetime. However, it is mine and I would like to raise my boys with heart centered guidance, helping them to grow in to divine young men with a balanced feminine/masculine energy. Cultivating self love, compassion, courage and strength. Rx
I have wanted so badly to share my SouLodge experience with my love and now I can! I am really looking forward to this class and to working the medicine with him.. Thank you for this offering.
In terms of a question, I’d love to hear about rituals that grown men can undertake to initiate themselves if they don’t have a community to initiate them. <3
I forgot to mention that I shared on fb. <3
I love that you are doing this. I feel it is so important for our men and young boys to have the gift of initiation, and rights of passage. As a mother, raising 3 young boys and a daughter, I am finding all sorts of support and opportunity for my young daughter but their is a seriousl lack when it comes to young boys. Modern society makes it so very difficult on these boys to be and remain comfortable with their feminine and compassionate side. I would love to be a part of this special medicine.
As a mother of a son and a play therapist who works with boys, I am concerned about the messages our society gives boys that they must be tough and strong, provide financially for their family, and that the worst they could do is be perceived as weak. I see how this hurts them not being able to express themselves emotionally or do a job or work in the world that they are truly passionate about.
Jodi
::Fingers crossed hoping to win the give away::
I was just speaking to my husband about how women are emasculating the masculine (husbands, sons and even ourselves etc) This completely resonates. Such powerful stuff to learn and apply with my husband and son. Aho Pixie!!
When it comes to the initiation of a boy into a man, I feel the lines have faded in the façade of artificiality. But when it has come to the commercialized material status of manhood(we cannot completely avoid) and the internal mists of ones own humanity, the initiation has been far from grasped(or so it may seem). As one who is still on his own journey towards conscious revelation the subject of Men & Masculinity as well as the cultural identity for such is always a provocative spiritual and intellectual stimulate I crave. The rites of passage in the perspective & introspection of what is even considered a man in western culture & when/where do we place our boundaries as these hunters with gathering tendencies ? Without limiting ourselves when evolving into manhood what is left behind & what is taken in? How is/ will this spiritually & emotionally effect men & women? What is the structure that allows for the of initiation into & so much more. So many questions, emotions & subjects just flood in. Ether way powerful work being done.
Wow! As a single parent (with no paternal interaction) of a 10 year old boy who is living with his older sister and mom, I am so excited about opportunities for my son and his passage into manhood.
I would love to be a part of this incredible experience and learning how to best serve the boys who are out future men!
Congratulations Michele!! Can’t wait to have you in class!
Feeling very excited about attending Golden Eagle.
My husband and I converse about this topic of boy-men often, and the devastating affect it has had on our country. We both find this bootcamp to be interesting us and drawing us closer.
I am a first time mom to a 6 month old baby boy and I would love to take this journey with you and other moms who are raising boys. I am sharing on my Facebook.
Sincerely,
Sasheen
Boys needs rites of passage into manhood and good role models. Often boys are shut down, given mixed messages and no healthy outlets for their anger and confusion. Rites of passage can clarify the purpose of masculine energy, show how to be in right relationship within themselves and the world, and thereby help heal the distortion in both masculine and feminine energy. As the sacred masculine heals so will the divine feminine and we can all come back to honoring our birthright to enjoy being in a body as a man or a woman in balance, reverence and connection!