Melissa Michaels

Youth On Fire Melissa Michaels

Like our planet, young people across the globe are heating up. As they come of age, some are boiling with outrage about the environmental toxins, unconscionable injustices, and social challenges they face. Some are setting their communities ablaze with gang warfare, bullying, hazing, or other destructive acts of violence. Others are barely flickering, having dimmed their light through self-destructive behaviors, lost in addictions or a variety of numbing habits that sublimate their life force. Many youth are simply invisible, lacking the encouragement of adults, disregarded or discarded with no opportunities on the horizon. Yet at the same time, there is an ever-expanding group of youth on fire. In positive ways, they are collectively ignited-illuminating the path from addiction into action, from fragmentation into integration, from isolation into community. Youth On Fire tells the timely story of hundreds of diverse young people rising from the ashes and dancing into inspired leadership and creative action-bringing light to people and places suffering around the world. The processes, protocols, and practices described within these pages galvanize individuals and communities on every continent. If you are a young person or working with youth as an educator, parent, rites of passage guide, mentor, counselor, somatic practitioner, or community organizer, this book is for you.