Shara Grove Holistics

The South represents summer and youth. Think boundless energy from warmth and heat, but with that can come recklessness or a lack of care for others. The South represents the bringing together of soul and body through the mistakes made and lessons learnt, and I think it’s fair to say we have all learnt lessons from our teenage years.

That middle chunk of years between adolescence and adulthood, is where you can really shape who you want to become as an adult. This can either be plain sailing, or you can reach the early years of adulthood and have some serious re-training and re-educating to do (that has been my experience at least).

What I find interesting is the contrast between indigenous teachings and the modern world, for obvious reasons of course but in this case, I want to talk about that teenage chunk of years.

The South on the medicine wheel (going back thousands – hundreds of years now) represented youth. Youth back then was a vital time in life to learn skills, respect, morals, survival and about the culture. The learning in this phase of life shaped who they would become as adults, elders but also who they were as individuals. Their own uniqueness. It shaped where they sat within the groups and tribes. It shaped how they handled fear and anger. It shaped how they loved and respected and it shaped how they provided and protected. The Southern time in one’s life was arguably the most important time of their life.

Now lets look at modern times. I am going to speak about my own experience but in a broader sense (I’m aware that not all people, places or countries are like mine and my story). My teenage years were shaped by grief. I had friends whose teenage years were shaped by restriction. I knew people whose teenage years were shaped by confusion. Some were shaped by lack of emotion. Others were shaped by material love and I know there were some shaped by lack of respect. All of these led to teenagers experiencing either chaotic, rebellious, volatile or disconnected youths. Now I’m not saying they didn’t manage to turn it around, as many absolutely have and have done amazing jobs of it, however, there is a difference between youth back then and youth now. The stage of life is no different, in both ages Southern stage is still super important, the difference is how South is lived.

The Southern stage of life these days is vastly different from what it was back then. There are a thousand more things for teenagers to think about. There’s pressure, distraction, violence, egos and fears. There’s competition, several hierarchies for them to think about, so many options and choices. There’s a lack of guidance and experience from those that should know better. There are those that try but are exhausted from the job. The youth these days go through a tremendous task of just being a teenager. To the point where that whole stage of life is now almost pointless, for they don’t learn about emotional regulation, their personal skills, survival, being in a community and their culture. Instead, they are forced to learn about things that are almost irrelevant to their past, present and future lives.

We as humans, are so incredibly disconnected from our natural physical, mental, emotional and spiritual way of living, that it feels beyond help for the vast majority of us. We’ve been torn from our tribes and communities. Stripped of our basic survival instincts, or even worse we’re told and medicated to numb them. We aren’t treated as individuals but as groups that mean numbers not personalities. Our personal interests, skills and talents are shamed or bullied out of us.

Instead, we spend our teenage years pretending to be adults. We pretend that we have our shit together. We pretend that we know about life and have experienced it. We pretend that we are philosophical. We pretend that we know more than our elders. Why? Because our youths are spent in the most worthless and damaging way, and this isn’t exactly a new thing either. When we started to lose our personal communities, when we started to grow our numbers for survival, status and gain, we lost our meaning of being within a tribe. We lost our function, purpose, enjoyment, skill and drive. We started to evolve in a way where you had to provide something towards surviving, instead of providing your body and soul as a way of adding something to the group (your individuality).

When you take a look at the South on the medicine wheel, you really notice how disconnected we’ve become. We’re no longer human living for our existence on this planet; we’ve become robots living to survive on this planet. We’ve lost our true essence, our spark in how beautiful it is to be human. To be these mammals that can feel deeply, that can see magical things and do incredible tasks.

We’ve lost our humanity, and although I believe we are on our way into a better world (once this one crashes and burns), it saddens me that we won’t go back to how we used to live thousands of years ago.

We’ll get back to a natural way of living, I know it.