Straight Talk For Teens By Teens

They say you need a role-model in life: one you want to embrace, or one you want to run from, either can get the job done. I had a big dose of both, big enough that it set me, from my earliest memories, thinking about the spectacular nature of human nature — and later, the role of science, art, faith, and freewill.

I was born to first-generation immigrants, my mother’s side from Norway, my father’s from Italy. Both families arrived during the Great Depression and, shattered by poverty, both were forced to give up some of their children. In the shadow of that experience, my parents did their own shattering into alcohol and multiple divorces. The software to map all my step-parents, step-siblings, half-siblings, etc., would surely have to be 3-D.

My mother gets the credit for bringing me up. Sober, she was a vibrant, creative school-teacher. Drunk, she was Erik the Red reincarnated. In her wake, I moved 12 times in 8 different Northern California towns, attending 10 different public schools. Upon high school graduation, I drove as fast and far as possible, eventually landing in Oregon where I worked my way through college and became a geologist. Seven years and four scientific papers later, it became clear that saving the planet meant working with consciousness, not rocks. With my background, it was hard to tell the difference.

After surviving cancer and teaching a year of high school science (those confusing similarities again!), my first child was born. One look at him and I flatly refused to return to work. Three more children followed and I stayed home for 16 years “raising” them. The farmer metaphor in my writing and lectures comes from this period because this was a serious 4-H project. During this time, I tethered myself to a slow master’s degree in Consciousness Studies. It was similar to a counseling psychology degree only edgier and more diverse.

As my kids got older, I blended my experience in parenting, science, art, athletics, and philosophy into a non-profit called Teens-Matter where I taught self-development classes to at-risk teens. This work showed me how exploited and undervalued teens are, and how much they have to offer the world.

To bring their voices forward, I organized a handful of these at-risk teenagers, along with my own teens, and in 2004, we began writing Straight Talk for Teens by Teens. Today the column is widely syndicated with over 47 panelists representing 11 states.