Lessons From Our Elders Part 2

As our child-led circle began last week the kids informed me with delight that I’m balancing on top of the rock stack in the middle. Part 1 is incomplete unless the focus turns to me in the center. I’m turning 60 this coming year, and the call to be an elder is not just for our older kids. I’ve been feeling myself balancing there since our gathering, reflecting on what becoming an elder means for me. A precarious place to be, with much uncertainty. It’s taken most of my adult life to figure out how to be this particular man and now there is clearly the call to show up as an elder. My first reaction is to turn away. A wounded man such as myself is not fit to be an elder. This is ridiculous! But there’s that call. I know now when it’s loud and clear if I don’t answer, the call may awaken me. I’m not in the mood for a grand event to open me up to this new stage of my life with the real life upheaval and sleep disruption that would follow. I better take this seriously!

I begin to reflect on why I feel doubt and I find in the center, with my emerging elder, the lack of healthy role models in my past. A lonely place. Growing up, my models showed me that a male elder accumulates wealth and status. He has a sense of arrogance and superiority. Emotional intelligence is just for the women. He seems to be the master of one thing and uses it to separate himself. No wonder I busted open at 16 years old. I was already denying some essential strengths that didn’t fit this mold. They just had to breathe with the touch and acknowledgment of a true elder that never came. It seems to be part of our collective story, as well. My individual experiences a reflection of our shared patriarchal wounding.

One thing my first experience did for me was to propel me out of the reality I was being raised in. White, heteronormative, educated, affluent was my inherited view of the world up until this point. It just wasn't going to work, and I’m grateful for the expanded vision I was gifted within my difficult first experience. It’s almost as if the momentum from the beginning has been propelling me all along to land within this moment. A multi-generational cycle at the breaking point and my broken, wise heart rests in the center trying to find balance. If I’m going to do something meaningful to contribute to this moment of needed societal transformation, It’s time to stand up and take this seriously. So, I’m going to try. I’m going to get it wrong and lose my balance at times. I’ll eventually own it when I do. Another sign of my emerging elder?

I keep crying while I write this piece. A sign that this may be the way. There is something within the tenderness and the wounding that’s trying to lead. Perhaps, this is an essential part of being an elder. Honestly fumbling with my flaws, doubts, the old shame, the rich emotional landscape, and having the courage to just be. That’s the modeling I desperately needed back at 16. This is the piece to being my version of an elder that keeps coming up and I cry. Within the tears a clear call to serve and figure out how to do this with humility and grace. Decentering myself and learning to follow, especially, as a white man with some inherited privilege. Checking myself when the old modeled patterns show up as I stumble upon my own moments of arrogance and superiority. I still have a lot to learn. This realization, as well, feels like a part of being a true elder.

I’m fortunate to currently have a small circle of male elders in my life who are fumbling along with me in trying to answer this call. The needed witness and sense of the missing sacred touch can be found within these relationships. Plotting a course without the needed guides, being led by something greater than ourselves, we move beyond the usual male banter and allow ourselves to truly be seen. Our shared experience with the loss of father and a yearning for a new way brings us closer. The collective reinforces the path ahead with true brotherly love at the center.

But if I’m to complete the journey to the center, my role as a father is at the balance point connecting the past, present, and future. Twenty-eight years ago, an explosion of love, light, and new possibilities entered my life. It was a revelatory moment of pure joy and inspiration, but also one of fear and uncertainty. I knew deep down that I was carrying the weight of unresolved issues and unrealized potential. At that point, my story was that the highs were a chance to reconnect with me and find relief from persistent, learned anxiety.

I carried all of this and helped create a beautiful life for my daughter, but something had to give. As I got older, it became more difficult to navigate the cycles and hold onto the story. Insomnia set in, and things began to unravel as mother and daughter, at 14 years old, left me in a moment that I now see as necessary for my own healing journey. But it’s also clear now that this was necessary for her. A generational cycle will continue—or potentially break—depending on how I hold this pain. It would of been easy to turn away during the years of harsh rejection but something more important led me on. My dad turned away at this point and a repeating cycle was before me, so I chose to get to work. Sometimes, a dark night of the soul is the needed medicine that later becomes the gift of a lifetime.

Alone with my pain and misery, I found an opportunity to transform. I picked myself up, took it one step at a time, and here I am, acknowledging a call to be an elder and a father. Part of why I write is to leave her some clues for her journey if and when she feels the need. The love of a father for his daughter becomes the true motivation at the center of it all.

We’re both trying now and am grateful to be building something new with the adult she has become. I just confirmed my flights to visit her new home in the sun and warmth. I recognize something in her adventurous spirit! I can feel the ancestors rooting me on right now with more tears of connection.

After the tears, possibility and renewal now rest in the center, as well. I don’t need to intellectually wrap myself around being an elder. Just keep these feeling centers open, and the way will show itself is my current sense of this new call. I’m not really leading but being led somewhere and it’s humbling to the core. That sacred touch I so desperately needed back at 16 - I’m giving that to this wounded part of myself, as an elder is seemingly emerging from this place.

So I return to our child-led circle. Nature is seemingly taking its course for us all, as the kids feel the spark of my sacred touch I seem to possess already. Our circle feels both ancient and alive as we all acknowledge and answer the call to serve that’s there for us all!

Much Love!

The Mad Preschool Teacher

He/Him