Are we a fit?

Sustaining his love of life

“I don’t want my son to be lost and consumed by the machine.”

I hear this, or something like it, from many parents. Or I see the worry and concern in their eyes.

If you’re reading this, you’re an alternatively-minded parent and you’re seeing signs that your boy is quickly approaching his teen years.

You may be a stay‑at‑home father who has consciously stepped away from conventional careers to prioritize family and community.

You may be a single mom and you know your son needs and craves the presence of masculine role models.

A natured-based, community-held rite of passage speaks to your longing for a more soulful, embodied way of navigating your son’s adolescence, and passing on a legacy of care that may one day become an established part of your local culture.

But you feel isolated in wishing him a profound, grounded, communal initiation into adulthood that helps him retain his awe, curiosity, and love of life.

I support parents like yourself.

For us to work together the following must be true

Age: You’re the parent of a boy aged 9-13.
Custody: You have custody of your son, full-time or part-time.
Understanding: You have visited my website and have an understanding of what grassroots rite of passage is
Health: Your son is physically and mentally healthy enough to be away from home on his own, participate in conversations with other adults, face challenges in nature that might include fasting, sleeplessness or other discomforts
Screens: You are willing to let your son go without a screen for one or more days at a time
Son Only: You accept that a grassroots rite of passage is an individual process, and does not include or engage other boys than your son.

A Year: You are comitted to being in the game for at least 12 months or more for it to make enough of a difference to your son, your family, and community
Agreement: All custodians of the boy agree he will go through a rite of passage within the next year.
Trust: You are willing to hand over the main responsability for your son’s transformation to close and trusted friends and relatives
Meetings: You are willing to hold a minimum of 3 meetings, each one up to a full day, with at least 4 adults over the duration of the process
Foundation: You can set aside at least two hours a week over a minimum of 3 months towards preparing the base of your son’s transformation

A sense of imminence

“Where did my son go?”

You already resonate with teachers like: Stephen Jenkinson, Michael Meade, Francis Weller, Colin Campbell, Bradford and Hillary Keeney, Martin Prechtel, Malidoma Somé, Sobonfu Somé, Jon Young, Martin Shaw, Stephanie Mackay, and others whose work speaks to soul, ritual, myth, nature and the cultural work of becoming and remaining human.

Through these teachers, and others, you have gained a basic understanding of a rite of passage as an intentional, symbolic threshold that may also mark a boy’s movement from boyhood into young manhood.

But even with all of this learning, you find yourself surprised at how soon your boy arrived at adolescence, and you wonder with a growing urgency: “Where did my son go?”

You feel as if you’re losing control

And you are scared…

Fear # 1

Loss of guidance and belonging

You fear that as he draws further away from home to seek his role in life, there’s no village or community of friends and family to welcome, bless and guide him into adulthood, only a scattering of strangers, employers and institutions that have no collective interest in or capacity to challenge his habits and certainties, welcome him into adulthood and help him love life, so he can learn to serve that which he loves and know that he is loved and needed.

Fear # 4

questionable role models

You fear that he will be drawn into shallow, disconnected versions of infantilized masculinity influenced by figures like Andrew Tate and other self-proclaimed alpha males.

Fear #2

Parental Uncertainty and Failure

You fear getting his adolescence wrong, either pushing too hard and damaging your relationship, or doing too little and letting him drift, be too close or too distant, hold on too tight for too long or let go far too soon. You simply don’t know how to guide him across the threshold into adulthood.

Fear #5

Regrets

You fear that you’ll look back to this vulnerable and beautiful stage in his life and regret you didn’t do more for him when you had the chance, knowing you left his maturation to chance, outsourcing it to institutions and algorithms, a rough initiation, not a communal one.

Fear # 3

Negative Mainstream Influences

You fear that screens, social media, productivity, consumerism, AI or algorithms will gnaw at the roots of his vitality and well-being, seducing his attention towards deadening comfort, safety, and stale domesticity, away from his human capacity for beauty, aliveness and service. You see the light in his eyes flicker. His sense of wonder and beauty dim.

Fear # 6

Risk of isolation and harm

You fear that he will lack resilience and that within a few years he will grow into an isolated, numb, alienated, desperate, violent, or possibly a suicidal man, disconnected from his true self who serves as a cog in the machine rather than as a vital and loved part of creation.

We might work really well together if you…

Value Shared Culture Over Consumption

You are keen to keep the old ways alive, at a time when so much of communal fabric is unfurling. You shape your home life around storytelling, craft, books, and communal creativity rather than prefab entertainment, delighting in meaningful family rituals that bring loved ones together in celebration and remembrance.

Value Depth rather than Breadth

As a depth‑oriented parent you’re drawn to the subterranean layers of life—the unconscious, hidden patterns, grief, meaning, and transformation–over breadth. You’re not satisfied with surface‑level solutions or quick fixes. You seek what feels alive, even if it’s messy and uncertain. You’re willing to craft something with friends and family that feels aligned with your values and the teachings you’ve come to trust, rather than to send him away to a program.

Honor the origin of things

Intellectually curious and well‑educated, you’re drawn to meaningful, values‑aligned work rather than conventional career success. You spend time tending to the hearth of your home, growing food if you can, baking when there’s time, buying organic when possible, cooking and eating together, mending, crafting, and honoring the origin of things.

Love Myth

You love mythology, play, and the imagination. You do what you can to keep old ways and communal stories alive in an age dominated by rationality, data, and speed. You serve creation, not the machine, and you value imagination and wonder as paths to connection.

Are Wary of Screens

You encourage your son to spend time outdoors and by the fireside, his senses steeped in sensuous nature. You want him close to the elements, far from the immediacy of screens, engaged in the living world. You seek to gather around conversation, song, or shared silence rather than digital noise.

Are a Maker

You are a maker and a gatherer, perhaps a farmer, gardener, artist, or craftsperson, You find joy in pottery, woodworking, fermentation, crochet, and other handcrafts that bring people together. You might be self‑employed as a culturally creative solopreneur, or work in a small, values‑driven organization. Whether as a forester, permaculturist, herbalist, death‑doula, or midwife, your work and hobbies spring from a reverence for the handmade, the natural, and the slow.

Value Alternative Schooling

Your son’s education has leaned toward alternative, holistic paths such as homeschooling, Waldorf, or Montessori. This aligns with your values of imagination, creativity, and wholeness. You believe that education begins in wonder and that real learning should nourish both intellect and soul.

SEEK Intergenerational Community

You seek spaces where people of all ages connect and support one another, knowing that maturity and wisdom grow best in community. You devote yourself to actively healing relationships, volunteering where needed, nurturing circles where the old and young belong equally, sharing meals, and meaningful labor, partly because you know it’s the soil in which all of our children will grow towards adulthood. You want to pass that sense of participatory belonging on as a gift to your son.

Have Experience in Ritual and Circle Work

You feel at home in communal acts of meaning. You’ve sat in men’s or women’s groups, grief circles, or seasonal ceremonies. You honor life’s thresholds and cycles with intention and artistry, blending your love of myth, community, and craft into practices that root people back into belonging.

Understand The Basics Of Rites Of Passages

You have a working understanding of what a rite of passage entails, you have read pertinent books, watched relevant videos, maybe participated or facilitated in programs.

Want To Foster interdependence

You believe that resilience in uncertain times is based on mutual dependency, deep friendships, and nurturing a complex social ecology. You’re willing to sit with discomfort, paradox, ambiguity because you sense that real change happens there, in relationship, discovering how to proceed together with the people you hold dear.

Honor the Complexity of Life

You’re uninterested in conventional parenting advice, techniques or styles. You want something that honors the depth of your son’s journey.

Seek a Deep Connection to Nature

You are aware your son was born wild, and he thrives in the flux of dandelions, fox and moose, Orion’s belt, waterfalls and oak trees.

Your family values serve a web of kinship

You value reciprocity, generosity, hospitality, respect, courtesy and other village-minded ways, and wish your son to know some of these and how they support all the relations on which our lives and our health depend.

We likely won’t work well together if you…

Want Only Mainstream Success For Your Boy: You are seeking to make your son more conventionally “successful” in the eyes of mainstream society, valuing achievement and status over inner growth and belonging.
Want To Fix Your Son: You approach your son’s development as a problem to fix rather than a transformation to nurture—wanting him improved, corrected, or made better.
Believe Men are Toxic: You secretly wish your son could stay a boy forever, because you view most men as predators and perpetrators. You want your son’s rite of passage to somehow make sure that he never becomes ‘that kind of man’, rather than offer him the communal flowering of his soul.

Believe Parents Should Be The Central Pillar: If you believe your role as parent is to remain the central influence in your teenage son’s life, reluctant to invite other adults to share in guiding him toward maturity.
Are Impatient for Results: You’re expecting quick, specific, and measurable outcomes (higher grades, room cleaned, nicer to siblings), rather than allowing time for deeper transformation.

Wonder, gratitude, sense of beauty

Grassroots Rite of Passage

You wish you had a map, trusted guidance or communal support for such a rite of passage…but you look around your community and it just isn’t there (even if you’ve worked towards it for years).

Yet there is a way of supporting his healthy transformation into a young man with the help of trusted adults, rooting him in place and in time, strengthening his sense of belonging and purpose.

I call it grassroots rite of passage.

It is a communal tending to his growing heart–a touchstone of resilience–to help him face what is yet to come with wonderment, gratitude, and a sense of beauty.

And with his love of life burning bright.
You can read more about my approach to Grassroots Rite of Passage here.