Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Burn.
“What’s wrong with kids these days?” a former college friend complains. “Today’s teenagers are nothing like I was.”
She’s right about that, but it’s still ironic to hear her gripe about the next generation. I happen to know that she spent most of her youth doing Quaaludes and upside-down margaritas every Saturday night she could convince our favorite club to let her in with her fake ID. I also remember how ruthlessly cruel she could be to me, both in our high school and college years, because I was different from the other kids and somewhat of an outcast for the way I thought.
It’s even stranger that I feel a stronger kinship to today’s teens than to my own generation. The quickest way for me to feel like an outcast again is to try to date a man in his forties. It’s the same thought processes I remember from my teen years, all conformity and boring attitudes and coloring within the lines. Bleah. I’ve known for a long time that I was either born ahead of my time or destined to blaze a trail for those who would come later.
But my old college friend is right about kids today being different. They are. Thank Gods.
I first noticed it several months ago when my 15-yearold brought some friends over. Unlike my own generation, her friends thought my house was cool with its Cernunnos doorknocker, an altar in every room, the gargoyle on the wall, the wand collection on the wall, the runes painted over the doorway. But what astonished me was how much they loved the crystals and rocks. And how quickly they felt the vibrations in the stones.
When I first discovered Wicca, I heard many other Goddess followers talk about feeling vibrations in stones and crystals. Not me. I could pick up a high-vibe stone like an amethyst and feel…nothing. Just a rock. Nothing special. It didn’t speak to me. But I’d also learned to deal with being different by tamping down my gifts. I could function in my world by keeping my odder qualities quiet and forcing myself to fit someone else’s mold, and hating every minute of it.
One day, at a community festival, I passed a tent where a vendor had spread hundreds of crystals. As I walked near one of the tables, a zing shot through my hands. It felt like one of the rocks calling to me and I followed it to a chunk of light blue crystal known as celestite. It’s a beautiful, calming stone that’s wonderful for healing. I picked it up and it felt like the fluttering heartbeat of a sparrow in my palm. After that, I understood what to look for and now feel vibrations easily. But it took relearning to open that door.
Not so for my own mutant spawn. They feel the vibrations; they sense the energies. They have their own intuitive and empathic gifts. I’ve had quite a few teens, a 21-year-old guy, and several men and women in their 30’s in my home, and they not only feel what moves in the Ether but see it as well. Angels, shapes, long-dead grandparents, fairies, orbs. The older they are, the more they tend to keep their gifts hidden, mostly because they, like me, have been criticized for being different.
But I’m becoming less different every day. Not that I’m fitting in better with my generation, but more people are coming into this world who are like me.
Today’s teens feel there’s no new territory for them to conquer, nothing that my generation hasn’t already done and done to the limit and beyond. What they don’t understand is that they are the new territory. Our species is mutating. Some of us came along earlier and were misunderstood. Now the same people who labeled me an outcast are parents of others like me and it’s their children who are now misunderstood, overmedicated, and searching harder than anyone in my own generation ever did. My fellow students self-medicated with drugs, alcohol, and sex. That’s not enough anymore. The upper chakras have been activated and it’s impossible to fulfill their needs with lower chakra palliatives.
There’s a term for these “developing” mutant humans— they’re called Indigo Children. The name refers to the color of their aura. I’ve been told that my own aura (I’m more clairaudient than clairvoyant and rarely see auras) is a light blue, the color of celestite, though it radiates a brilliant white when I’m invoking the Goddess.
Though some Indigo Children have come early, like me, now it’s the majority of children born who are Indigo. Their behaviors are different, according to daycare workers and teachers. They’re more difficult to handle, often diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). They’re highly creative and often have unusual intuitive gifts their parents don’t understand. They seem to have more behavioral problems and a definite problem sitting still and accepting what they’re told.
Well, of course. All that energy they’re feeling and not knowing how to cope with it…it must be channeled somewhere.
Jan Tober and Lee Carroll’s book, The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived, presents the characteristics of an Indigo Child. My elder daughter and I have 19 of the 21 traits and my younger daughter has 17. It’s proposed that 10 traits mean you’re probably an Indigo and 15 or more is almost definitely an Indigo. So I took the test myself.
- Did I come into the world acting like royalty? Yes. It was several years before my father emotionally abandoned me and I no longer felt like royalty.
- 2. Do I have a feeling of deserving to be here? Yes.
Always. I’ve always felt I had a mission, a huge and dire purpose in life, that I would do something really important that would make a difference in the world
- Do I have an obvious sense of self? Oh, yeah. And I’d rather be dead than to give up who I am. Been there.
- Do I have difficulty with discipline and authority?
Most definitely. Though I grew up under the thumb of a domineering father and a religion that took great pleasure in squelching any independent thought, I rebelled quietly until I could give it voice.
- Do you refuse to do certain things you are told to do? You better believe it. And the more you try to force me to do it anyway, the more I’ll dig in and refuse, come Hell or high water.
- Is waiting in line torture for you? Oh, my Gods, yes!
Yes! I know I have no patience, but waiting in line is the ultimate waste of life. You’ll never catch me waiting in line at the bank or the doctor’s office without a pen and paper or cell phone or book or something. I can’t bear to just sit/stand and wait. It’s got to be one of the worst punishments I can receive.
- Are you frustrated by ritual-oriented systems that require little creativity? Yes. And if I can shake somebody up, that’s my mission…to challenge the status quo!
- Do you see better ways to do things at home, school, or work? Absolutely. I’ve made a career of coming up with better processes…or eliminating them altogether.
- Are you a non-conformist? Yep. But when I was a teen, my teachers used to make notes on my permanent record that I didn’t conform. How ironic that they told me to be myself, yet what they meant was to be the self they wanted me to be.
- Do you refuse to respond to guilt trips? I do now, but for most of my life, no. Combination of longsuffering parents and the Baptist Church.
- Do you get bored rather easily with assigned tasks?
Yes. I must have variety. Same goes for relationships. I have difficulty throwing myself into relationships where I can’t be creative or can’t find an intellectual challenge.
- Do you have symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder? Yes. Suggested by a counselor. Never officially diagnosed, but I have most of the symptoms except that I don’t generally forget appointments. I have lots of great coping mechanisms though so it never hindered my grades or ability to hold a job.
- Are you particularly creative? Annoyingly so. Just ask anyone.
- Do you display intuition? Yes, lots. I don’t like to consider myself psychic because I can’t turn it on and off, but it’s there…it’s there. No denying it anymore.
- Do you have strong empathy for others? Yes, and as of this year, my empathic gift has taken definitive form as a medical empathy. The hardest part is trying not to feel what others feel.
- Did you develop abstract thinking very early? Yes.
Enough so that my parents were often accused of doing my homework when in fact, they had no idea what I was talking about.
- Are you very intelligent? Yes.
- Are you very talented or gifted? Yes.
- Are you a daydreamer? Oooooh, yeah
- Do you have very old, deep, wise-looking eyes? I don’t think so, though for the past year or so, I’ve been told there’s a look of wisdom in my eyes now. I just think of it as knowing better these days.
- Do you have spiritual intelligence? Yes.
Wow. Okay, I guess I’m a mutant after all. Someday, when I’m 90 years old, maybe I’ll finally fit in with the rest of the planet.
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