Guidance as a Pillar for Wholeness
How does a lack of guidance affect our lives as we grow and find our place in the world?
Elders in many communities held the crucial role of teacher and guide to children. It was so that grandparents, having stepped into respected elders in their communities and exempted from more laborious tasks, stepped in to care while the parents were busy tending to the communal work. The youngins are told stories, offered wisdom, and taught about the world. This was their time to listen to those more experienced, and slowly begin to learn about their place in the world.
It is a precious connection between children and their grandparents, a vital cord that ties two beings close to the threshold of the otherworld. Children recently having crossed into this life, and elders soon crossing back. Through this, there is a special link that is woven, if given the opportunity, that nourishes both and offers a richer purpose. Where parents are right in the middle, holding a different kind of role. Elders offer children a sense of understanding that is woven through reciprocity. Being taken care of by each other. Both in need of the other. A sense of solidarity is built through a childlike and ethereal quality of seeing the world.
Children grow up being seen and taken care of. They grow up being told the stories that help them understand the world, they are held within a guidance that supports them upon their path into adulthood. This is a vital pillar for children to become centred and mature adults. Having a system of guidance and FAITH. Something that elders taught was the legends of creation, the threads that make up life, how it all came to be. It instills this remembrance of belonging to something greater than ourselves. To a community. To the land. The earth. So many children in the last decades have missed out on this nourishing piece of communal dynamic and have been left, in a way, to fend for themselves.
It is not just guidance that matters, but the way it is delivered. Through the loving hand of patience. Understanding a child's nature makes a different impact than forceful or dominant hands. The way children are stewarded into the world matters. And creates ripples. And ripples and ripples to where we have come to. A world of people needing to reparent themselves. Unravel harm and reweave stories of love and truth.
I grew up never really knowing my grandparents. My whole family really, outside of my parents and sister. My family left a home and land they loved and started over somewhere new. Although there was grief in me for never forging this connection with them. For never hearing their stories and nurturing our bond, I knew at the same time that they couldn’t meet me in the ways that I needed. Not that they didn’t try their best. There is another layer to all of this now, the complexities of life. Our grandparents and relatives aren’t always this romanticized idea of what we think they should be. Many of them have pain, suffering, and grief that they never knew how to let go of.
I once heard someone say that in this day and age, we have a whole lot of old people and not many elders. I can’t help but feel the truth of this ring deep within me. I know my grandparents did not hold the capacity to shepherd me in the ways I needed. Nor did my parents fully. Because to be honest, so many people now are continuing to carry the shit that was given to them and their lineage. Not realizing they can let it go. So there is guidance yes. But where are we being guided? So much of what children are led into these days is academic thinking, applying themselves to become citizens that can hold up a standardized and soulless job. They are taught how to obey. How to push through, force, dominate.
A world of children who were never shown how to be mature and LOVING adults.
Where is the guidance that teaches children how to think for themselves? How to find their own path. How to reflect on what they desire to be in their lives. To express their emotions. To create art. Live in truth. This is the guidance that is needed in the world. This is what I refer to. The quality of guidance that children receive create lasting imprints.
Children cannot be expected to simply just know. Children are meant to be shepherded. To be led upon their path until they are ready to walk it themselves. And so being taught how to walk it, and where to go. It is then a big responsibility to be the steward of those souls. A big task to lead them in the right way. In right relations with all of life. This is the remembrance that is being sparked in so many now to weave different stories for their futures. There is grief in the places where we were not given what we needed in a time when we needed it. There is grief in these spaces that miss something they never really knew. Grandparents they never got to know. Families they never got the love they needed from. It is a world in grief.
And this grief has its opening now to stream out of the being. So much grief in the world that people don't know what to do with. Give it back to the earth. Let her transmute it. Your shoulders have carried it long enough. It is not meant to stay. It is meant to be felt, yes. Fully felt. Yet that story may be told differently to our children. It is our work now stepping in as the stewards to give what we didn’t get. So every generation may build upon what the others couldn’t finish. There is love for those who couldn’t show up in the ways we needed, for they too were not shown the way. Now it is our time. Leading a better path for all those who come after us. The torch is in our hands. Their little feet follow in our footsteps.