Coming of Age:
Nature-Based Programming for Teens
Teen Boys
Threshold Council
* * * * * * * *
This program is for teen boys aged 13-17 to gather in the falling twilight around a fire with peers and mentors to play games, learn and practice outdoor skills and crafts, listen to stories, and engage in meaningful sharing and discussion. These gatherings promise to be fun, poignant, and deeply supportive of youth in their navigation of adolescence and its themes of emergent identity, shifting relationships, and finding place in the greater communities of peers, society and culture.
These fires will be facilitated by Kevin (see bio below) and other carefully selected mentors from the community who embody and model integrity, authenticity, emotional literacy, intellectual curiosity, and healthy masculinity. With a foundational trust in the unique unfolding of each teen’s developmental journey, we mentors refrain from giving advice or sharing personal opinions. Rather, we support teens by offering our deep listening presence; by facilitating thoughtful discussions; and by guiding exploratory activities and games. It is our deepest intention to offer vital support to adolescent youth as they answer the call to the grand adventure of adolescence - the adventure of discovering their own truths, forging their unique path into life, and deepening self-trust.
Upcoming Dates:
Stay Posted for Open House Dates
or
email Kevin at faunaforestfarm@gmail.com for more info
* * * * * * * *
Programming for Teen Girls and Rites of Passage
Coming Soon!
Click the button below to register your interest and stay informed about future teen programming.
Donations for Returning Teens:
Meet the Guides
Shae’s commitment to supporting teens in the pivotal, often difficult passage that is adolescence grew from her years guiding adolescents and young adults in the field of wilderness therapy. Over and again, she heard teens express how lonely, isolated, and unseen they felt in their lives and in their families as they did their best to navigate the coming of age trials in modern-day times.
Through these experiences, Shae witnessed young people share and confront their sufferings in a context that offered the resourcing and support of the natural world, skilled mentors, and a caring community of peers. She witnessed, through this intentional context, teens turning their pain into a claiming of their own story, agency, and lives. In the words of one teen, “I realize, now, I am on a quest.”
These experiences led Shae to pursue a degree in Clinical Mental Health from ETSU and to partner with Dr. Novotny in the development of a Nature-Based Therapy Graduate Certificate.
Shae brings to this program a love of the developmental passage that is no-longer-child, not-yet-adult, and years of practice supporting young people in their journey of becoming through therapeutic nature-based arts, songs, myth and storytelling, emotional literacy, creative expression, conflict transformation skills, psychoeducation, and the creation of a safe container to hold it all.
Photo by Kennedy Hunt
As a therapeutic mentor, group facilitator, and rites of passage guide, my offerings bridge the space between formal therapy and older, more embodied ways of finding healing. For those seeking a therapeutic journey beyond the four walls of an office, I offer something more expansive: the trusted therapeutics of time spent in nature, of finding depth and authentic connection with community, of learning ancestral skills, of myth, ancestry, and dreams explored for what they reveal in us, of somatic and emotional regulation, of self-generated ceremony and rites of passage, and of fun and camaraderie! It is no surprise that in these contexts an enchantment with life and the world are rekindled, and one’s unique challenges reveal themselves as treasuries of meaning, purpose, and vitality.
My approach grows from a foundation forged by my own healing journey through childhood adversity. In adolescence and young adulthood, I practiced meditation and yoga, traveled the world, homesteaded, and explored various healing experiences and modalities. In my 30s, I settled down to deepen and train in men's work and psychodynamic process-work with Mankind Project, myth and story-telling, rites of passage guiding with the School of Lost Borders, and mentoring youth in nature connection, rites of passage and ancestral skills within various public and private school programs. All of which has left me full in heart, vitalized in purpose, re-enchanted with life, and dedicated to offering my attuned presence and mentorship in support of the adventure of healing, pscyho-spiritual renewal, and living with meaning and purpose.
I have recently taken the academic plunge and am studying Rites of Passage at East Tennessee State University through the disciplines of depth psychology and anthropology. I also mentor youth with Journeymen in Asheville and lead wilderness rites of passage, experiential therapeutics, and psycho-educational groups for men in recovery at Red Oak Recovery in NC. And - most excitingly - I am bringing teen and rites of passage programming to life this coming fall at Fauna Forest Farm!
Our Approach
We are excited to be moving towards a long-time dream of offering rites of passage programs on the farm. These programs will be specifically designed to support the beautiful, often difficult, passage that is the teenage-years.
We recognize this passage holds an immense opportunity for adults in teens' lives to support them as they deepen into questions about life, relationships, their emotional worlds and changing bodies, meaning, purpose, and identity. We are committed to contributing to the creation of a vital cultural fabric within which this potent developmental time of self-inquiry, change, depth, identity formation and individuation are held with soulful and attuned mentorship and presence. We believe the teenage years to be a sacred portal meant to ready young people for a thriving young adulthood.
Working with adolescents in a therapeutic capacity over the years has highlighted the modern-day cultural tragedy of far too many young people spending their teenage years largely feeling lost, purposeless, lonely and without positive role models and mentorship. We believe this important time of transformative potential deserves, instead, to be held in community-- with connection, resourcing, creative expression, self-discovery, heartful sharing and witnessing, and experiential learning that supports young people along the journey of maturing into their authentic selves.