The Need for Community in Rites of Passage Who of us in our digitalized and remote lives has not wondered about our disappearing sense of connectedness — face to face, person to person and within a tribe? The more we find ourselves hitting “send,” “reply,” and “post,” the less connected we often feel and…
Interview with Linda Sartor & Doug Paxton Recently our newsletter editor Renee Sweezey had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Linda Sartor & Doug Paxton, who were preparing to lead a Vision Quest to Death Valley National Park. I enjoyed learning about how they came to this work, and I found their insights to be of…
A Leadership Conversation Nurturing soul-based leadership that is grounded in the natural world has become an increasingly important concern in our work at Rites of Passage. In a recent leadership conversation, Tom Anderson, Dana Carman, Dane Hewlett and Executive Director Mike Bodkin joined Rites of Passage staff member Renee Sweezey to talk about their…
A Look Back: Alison DeLong Inerviews Mike Bodkin Alison DeLong interviews Rites of Passage Executive Director Mike Bodkin about how he came to this work and the journey he’s taken since…. “You might wanna come where there’s nothing.” It was this daring invitation spoken by Stephen Foster to Mike Bodkin that changed the course…
Jumping Mouse and the story of authentic leadership…. By Tom Anderson In his book, Seven Arrows (New York: Random House, 1972), author Hyemeyohsts Storm tells a remarkable story about an ordinary little mouse that spends his days doing ordinary mouse things: examining and collecting, gathering seeds and nuts and storing them away for the…
Dana Carman Brings Visionary Leadership to ROP Imagine a world where CEOs, Directors and our nation’s President all make decisions that honor our interdependence with the earth and that allow for personal growth and business production to be mutually beneficial. Our complex and high speed world is demanding that today’s leaders develop more than…
Bears by Tom Anderson According to a new CNN poll, seventy-three percent of Americans said that they were somewhat or very scared about the way things were going in the United States, even though they also said that things were going fine for themselves personally. Think about that for a moment: Seventy-three percent of…
Parents at the Threshold By Alison DeLong My son’s first birthday was a joyous event this month. Deserving equal celebration, my husband and I toasted our glasses, in a humble honoring, for surviving our first year as parents. Stunned by the quick passage of time, I remembered last year’s pregnancy culminating in the monumentally…
Why this Work is Important to Me Let me introduce myself: I’m Mike Bodkin, the Executive Director of Rites of Passage. This is my first attempt at blogging, so forgive me if I stumble a bit. For many years, I worked full-time as a youth and family counselor at a local non-profit, later adding…