Episode 209: The Journey to Becoming a Village Auntie and Girls Group Facilitator with Johannah Reimer

With fellow educator and Orphan Wisdom Scholar Johannah Reimer, Kimberly discusses Johannah’s long cultivated journey with Girl Groups that work on collective rites of passage. They explore the difference between weekend and longer form rites of passage processes for girls crossing the threshold to adolescence and womanhood, as well as ways to de-emphasize soul work that doesn't center "the self." Johannah emphasizes the impact she has seen guiding Girls Groups and their families into relationships that reflect boundaries, values, and connection. Johannah talks through her passionate approach to the Matricarchical archetype, as well as their shared thoughts on being a single parent. Johanna describes her upcoming 9-month Girl Group facilitator training  “Pathways to Womanhood” where she shares her elemental curriculum, which has been honed over 10 years of work with girls of all ages. Links to a free workshop and the facilitator training below.

 

Bio

Johannah Reimer is a soulcentric educator, ceremonialist, teen mentor, and an artist of many trades. Trained as a Waldorf teacher, Johannah has been working with children of all ages for over 20 years and holds a particular passion for tweens/teens striving to meet their developmental needs for mentorship and initiation in a culture that has forgotten how to do so. An apprentice of visionaries: Sage Hamilton and Melissa Michaels of SOMA Source, Johannah has worked for many years as a Waldorf teacher under the guidance of her elder Sage, and as an embodied leader for international youth in movement based Rites of Passage with Golden Bridge & Golden Girls Global.

What She Shares

• Initiatory rites for girls crossing the threshold into adolescence

• Village mindedness in a Culture without village norms

• Severance - a death happening in rites of passage

• Stepping into a threshold, into a new phase of being

• What does it mean when girls go on a quest to leave childhood behind and then return back to their parents and community?

• Parents also cross a threshold when their children go on such a quest.

• A year long process that she does with 5th graders

• The conflation of big experiences with rites of passage

• Distinguishing between a rite of passage vs. a threshold

• How short-term retreats are often not living up to the term rites of passage

• Girls Groups are designed for a longer-term structure within a collective

• The power of collective work vs. over-emphasis on the self

• Working with teens you sometimes need an iron fist and a velvet glove

• The power of improvisation when working with teens

• The power of parents letting go of control

• Parents fear of their own children: important to assert boundaries/values and stay connected