The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens [Paperback]

Julie Tallard Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2001

Shows teens how to harness the intense emotions and drives of the late-teen years using wisdom from cultures around the world.

• Includes exercises, personal and community rituals, and resources that show how to successfully navigate the Thundering Years without heading toward violence, drug abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors.

• Includes inspiring quotations from many spiritual traditions as well as the words and real-life experiences of other young adults.

• Presents an honest view of the passions and pain that occur during this major life transition.

According to native traditions, the Thundering Years are the time in life to listen to intense feelings, dreams, desires, and goals--to be outrageous and even difficult. The Thundering Years are the teen years, the time when you are journeying into adulthood. They are exciting years, full of potential and creative energy, and they are painful years, full of turmoil and self-examination.
     Author Julie Tallard Johnson has collected wisdom from cultures around the world to help you survive your Thundering Years with your soul, creativity, and even sense of humor intact. She offers numerous techniques and traditions to help harness the powerful energy released during this time. She shows that when you connect with your thunder in a respectful way, you are given the confidence you need to accomplish all your dreams.

Includes: 

Mindfulness and energizing meditations
Vision quests
Dream weaving
Drum medicine
Initiations and rites of passage
Rituals for releasing anger and celebrating the seasons
Making your own journals and medicine bags
Finding your creative community

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Psychotherapist Johnson has many years' experience working with young adults and teenagers. Her latest book is loosely Native American in inspiration but admittedly draws from many traditions and cultures to help young people get through adolescence (the "thundering years") with a sense of balance, integration, and the sacred. Both the young and their parents and guides should find this book's exercises, insights, and suggestions entertaining and helpful. Recommended for most collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Thundering Years shares native world wisdom to help smooth teen's transitions into adulthood."
(Nexus, May/June 2003 )

"This book describes many ways to create peace and happiness, some on your own and some with your friends."
(His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama )

"In an attempt to provide you with authentic containers for the tumultuous energy of the Thundering Years, many are rediscovering indigenous ways. The call to awaken our ancestral wisdom is strong. Personal and community rituals are ways of reuniting us when we are in a state of alienation and turmoil with Spirit."
(Sobonfu Some, African shaman, from chapter 5 )

". . . so well organized and so succinctly presented that the reader is drawn on to a deeper appreciation of the truth that your life, your future, who you are, is in your own power."
(Napra ReView, May/June 2001 )

"Substantive activities and grounded writing make for an appealing invitation to self-discovery." (
Mothering, Nov/Dec 2001 )

"This is a very inspirational book that offers alternative spiritual approaches for the teen years that are much lacking in mainstream American culture. It is highly recommended for teens and the adults who car about them."
(Theresa Jones, Circle Magazine )

". . . highly recommended.  Parents who read this will no doubt wish they'd had this resource twenty years ago!" (Barbara Ardinger, The Blessed Bee, Winter 2001-02 )

"[Johnson] offers numerous techniques to help teens direct their powerful energy, live creatively, tell their stories, and release anger through ritual." (
Spirit of Change, Summer 2008 )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bindu Books (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892818808
• ISBN-13: 978-0892818808
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #806,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

AAbout the Author

Julie Tallard Johnson is a licensed psychotherapist who maintains a private healing service, Healing Services Overlooking the River, established in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, in 1995. Here she offers the Wheel of Initiation course, spiritual journaling classes, and one-on-one transpersonal counseling. Her studies and investigation into cognitive-behavioral therapy, mind training, Buddhist philosophy, transpersonal counseling, and group dynamics lead to her development of the Wheel of Initiation and a year-long Initiation course, which she has facilitated since 1998. She employs a multicultural approach in her work, knowing that each person has to find a spiritual practice that is personally relevant for them. In 2008 the land adjacent to her practice was opened up so that others could enjoy its Three-jewel labyrinth, one-acre prairie spiral, and 40 acres of nature paths as a place for meditations and writing retreats.
Julie obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she had a double major in sociology and social work. In 1982 she began her career as a social worker and case manager of a program in Minneapolis for those with chronic and persistent mental illness. She soon became supervisor of a new program where she designed and coordinated "friendship circles" for the mentally ill.
While in graduate school at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, she researched self-help and support groups and could not find one that was set up for siblings and adult children of the mentally ill. As a result, she designed and authored The Eight Stage Healing Process for Families and Friends of the Mentally Ill. This book was published by Doubleday in 1989 and Julie toured the United States, Canada, and Australia teaching the eight stages and offering instructions on how to set up a healthy self-help group. She founded the National Siblings Network in the United States through the Alliance of the Mentally Ill, and Australia adopted her eight-stage protocol, incorporating it into their primary national program for families of the mentally ill.
Julie has studied neurolinguistic programming (NLP), cognitive behavioral and rational emotive therapies (RET), as well as mind training. Through her continued studies she came to value narrative therapies (storytelling) in helping others to heal, and she has integrated this dynamic into her own work.
In addition, she is a teacher of Vipassana meditation, which she has also practiced for many years. She took instruction in Rebirthing Breathwork as well as Shamnic Breathwork, Bindu Breathwork™. Along with this she studied and applied mandala work and the healing power of circles, wheels, and mandalas in the transformative process.
Julie is the author of nine books, two for adults and seven for youth.
They are:
Hidden Victims Hidden Healers: An Eight-Stage Process for Friends and Family of the Mentally Ill
Understanding Mental Illness: for Teens Who Care About Someone with Mental Illness
Celebrate You: Building Your Self-Esteem
Making Friends Finding Love
The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom of Teens
Teen Psychic: Exploring Your Intuitive and Spiritual Powers
I Ching for Teens: Take Charge of Your Destiny with the Ancient Chinese Oracle
Spiritual Journaling: Writing your Way to Independence
The Wheel of Initiation: Practices for Releasing Your Inner Light

Julie has also self-published a manual for group facilitators of the Eight Stage Healing Process. She has received many positive reviews and awards for her books including three Roundtable awards, Best Youth book from New York Library, and the Independent Book award for best multicultural book for youth for The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens (His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote a piece for this book). Her Teen Psychic: Developing Your Intuitive and Spiritual Powers book received a Star Review in Publisher's Weekly and remains one of her most popular books with young readers.
Julie has a monthly blog that she updates regularly, offering readers a means for spiritual inquiry through journaling and meditation. She also writes a column on spirituality for a local newsletter, From the Spirit. She lives with her husband, Bill, and daughter, Lydia, in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration and Survival, July 16, 2002

By 

John Cornell "A Reader's View" (San Francisco Bay, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens (Paperback)

A lot of useful inspiration and practical information from the world's spiritual and religious traditions has been brought together in this psychic survival guide for teenagers. With many quotes from both modern writers and sacred traditions, the focus is on learning to be strong in oneself and compassionate towards others, what Johnson calls being a spiritual warrior. The tools and insights are directed toward the transition from childhood to adulthood - learning to be an independent person in the world. Johnson calls this time, which people are called upon to face in their teens and early twenties, the thundering years. Native American wisdom is used as a principle guide, but many sources of wisdom are brought in - Christian, Buddhist, Sufi, modern psychological. Young people are encouraged to live creative lives and to tells their stories. A cornucopia of techniques for living a vital life and dealing with its challenges are presented - everything from meditation, working with dreams, drumming, and various forms of exercise to helping others, connecting with nature, and creating rituals to mark the changes in one's life. Many useful books, resources, and Web sites are included at the end of each chapter. As most topics have to be dealt with relatively briefly, these references allow readers to delve more deeply into areas which they are drawn to. This is an inspiring guide and companion, not only for young people, but anyone hoping to ride the waves of modern life more effectively, and enjoy the ride.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thunder On!!!!, May 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens (Paperback)

I am so excited to see a book available to teens that confirms for them....and for us their parents, that their loud confusion, creative depressions, outbursts of truth and pain, all have such an important place in the process that is life.

Having waited until mid-life to honor the journey, I look forward to the process found in this book assisting society, teen by teen,person by person,in honoring our place here, by connecting us with the planet we are on and the energy we all share. I encourage teens every where to read up........and Thunder On!!!!!!!!!!!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important contribution, May 20, 2001

By 

Vera J. Elleson, Ph.D. (Pleasant Hill, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens (Paperback)

This is a well-written book that promises to be helpful to therapists as well as to teens. I found the ideas thought provoking and sound. Vera J. Elleson, Ph.D.