Gaia Girls goes through a Rite of Passage
This May marked a Rite of Passage for our girls and for Gaia Girls Passages. Just before sunset, nine courageous girls stepped out into the mystery of the night to tend their own fires and stay out under the stars through the night, only to return to the known world in the morning. This was our first group to have been brought through this initiatory experience. Several others groups are being prepared to follow in their footsteps in the years coming. And so, Gaia Girls is entering a new phase as our girls do the same.
Some of the girls in this group I met when they were 8 and 9 years old, when they joined our very first group that met in my backyard 5 years ago. As their most consistent auntie and mentor through these years I intimately witnessed and supported their journeys from the innocence of childhood into the changing waters of their teenage years. Supporting these girls has been a joy, honor, and challenge, which has grown me to be able to hold girls through this time of great change. As much as I’ve asked them to step into the unknown, to step more greatly into their courage, love, trust and integrity, I have had to do the same.
Before the girls went out, each of them faced fears that mirrored fears that they are facing in their lives. They each held an outer intention of how long they intended to tend their fires, and an inner intention of what part of themselves or their lives they were bringing to this fire to gain insight or transformation with. They were aware that what they were approaching was something that most adults in our current society have never done.
The journey through the night for each girl was different, but each of their stories holds a truth and insight that will now live inside of them as they walk into their teenage years. As we know and as we teach at Gaia Girls, the journey that night, which called upon all of their courage to face the darkness, the solitude, and the task of tending fire, was the easy part. Now comes bringing those truths back into their lives. GGP is currently in the process of refining our offering for Teen Gaia Girls, to be launched this coming fall, to help in the integration of these truths into everyday life.
