Getting Back to Us: Restoring the Human Support System

By T. D. Jenkins

This insightful book provides a wealth of information to readers from multiple perspectives. It allows readers to gain powerful insight into our current population data in a way that gives them a better understanding about each demographic, how we can help each other overcome generational shortcomings, and how we can live in peaceful coexistence. The book not only adds practical and statistical data to make its points, but also adds proven facts, practical recommendations, instructions, and precautions that can be used to improve relationships among families and neighbors on multiple levels.

Getting Back to Us educates the reader about the different demographics, providing characteristics and background on how and why populations in each group own the characteristics that they have. There are also some startling facts that surround each demographic, and truths that speak to the pros and cons of each of the primary generations today. Everyone engages with people from all generations, and this book will help you to understand and possibly relate to them better. T. D. Jenkins (the author) highlights many unintended benefits that have been lost to the younger generations and point out ways to resurrect those benefits back into how we raise, communicate, and engage our children and young adults and in how we rebuild our villages.

This book is a must-read for adults with young children, grown children, or an extended family; for employers and HR specialists, and for elders in the community that have an ability to impact people to establish stronger communities. Getting Back to Us offers constructive, sound advice for new parents, current parents, and people in general--to restore the knowledge, self-confidence, adult-readiness, caring, sincerity, and self-esteem back into our young people. It's like have your favorite aunt in a bottle!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638741794

Book preview

Chapter 1

Introduction

I am a mother, a wife, a businesswoman, the CEO of a nonprofit, and most importantly—a homegrown philanthropist. The world has changed so much over just the fifty-eight years of my lifetime. I am sure that you could share some stories of your own, and we probably have a lot of memories in common. So grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever relaxes you; and let me tell you a little about me and why I think it’s important to initiate this call to action for all generations—but more specifically, my fellow Generation X-ers.

We are slowly getting our wings before getting a chance to impart our special kind of wisdom with a dose of reality—to our villages that we support. The wisdom that only we can deliver to our kids, our neighbors, our grandchildren, our employees, our youth, and anyone else who will listen and learn from the hard lessons that we have learned. Only we can teach certain lessons that stopped being passed down by the generations before us and some of those after us—to the society mix that stands before us right now.

With that said, there are a few practices, habits, and reinforcements that current generations no longer give deference to. Many of those practices involve life efficiencies, practices, and traditions that should be preserved, saved, passed down (and I will tell you why), and reinstated in the human parenting and mentoring process.

There are many reasons why our younger generations may have missed the benefits of the wisdom of our prior generations. Drug use, staggering divorce rates, family disruptions due to life events, more frequent diagnoses of behavior-modifying disorders, electronic additions, and even just lack of guidance on how to apply genuine parenting techniques have all disrupted the traditional family in staggering numbers.

In many cases, our young people don’t have the benefit of having parents in their lives to teach or mentor them to be responsible adults, and now, they have children with little to no guidance on what it means to be a parent. This has left our young adults and their children out of the loop of accessing important lessons and best practices. While these rules seemed so strict to us growing up, I have observed over the years that many of them had far-reaching and unintended benefits to the people that we have grown to be today.

Our parents may have gone a bit overboard with some of their strict rules and hardline guidance, and time and reasonableness must be used to find a fair balance for application to the generations of today. But many of those rules and traditions made generations of people, who have a strong moral conscious, respect for ourselves and others, gave us a deep respect for our parents and other elders in our lives, helped us establish a good work ethic, an appreciation for other people’s efforts, and self-discipline.

This book is directed to two audiences: those that could benefit from the wisdom of the best of those practices, rules, and guidelines that were most beneficial to the older generations so that they can use them to help their children to be better for their tomorrows. Or those that are energized to not just be more of an example, but to help inject this current society with a raw dose of love for life and mankind, respect for others, and a sincere care for mankind.

My goal is to balance the influences of today’s generations so that our children can see some alternate outcomes that are kinder and friendlier than what has been demonstrated over the last ten years. That way, our offspring can be much more confident of who they are, make informed decisions about who they want to be, how they want to be, and how they want to impact their world moving forward. I am speaking from a unique point of reference, as I am a product of several village environments—and I am proof that the concept works very well.

I am very thankful that those villages were supportive, shared a lot of the same values and rules that worked, and made me a very socially conscientious person. I was orphaned by nine years old, leaving me to move with my mother’s sister and her family. My aunt’s family shared many of the same values that my mother had and they introduced me to my second village—their neighborhood.

In that village, I had two of the best childhood friends a person could have. My friends and their parents were an extension of my parents. I listened to the stories they told, celebrated holidays with them, went to church with them (learned about Catholicism!), ate dinner, mourned the loss of family members, ran errands, did favors and tasks to help them, and got in trouble—all with their kids; as their kids did with me and my aunt’s family. The elderly on the block were looked after just as though they were our grandparents. We shoveled snow from walkways, helped with groceries, and carried bowls of food to neighbors. Our world stemmed beyond our doorway, and we remained within the two boundaries by every adult within that village. This was one of several villages that helped to guide me to adulthood, keep my morals intact, and that taught me to be a woman, mother, and wife.

As a successful outcome of several villages, I would like to invite you to join his village with me. I want to share information that you may find useful to help you be a better you, guide your family to be more self-confident, knowledgeable about their role in their world, complete the adult mentoring process with your grown children, and help with making more focused, attentive, and family-focused children.

Just the other day, I was flipping through the news articles on my phone and I saw an article that absolutely validated why I needed to push forward. TIME Magazine published an article called How to Raise Optimistic Kids in Pessimistic Times: Can I expect my kids to practice what I don’t preach?¹ The Author, KJ Dell’Antonia, wrote an excellent piece about how to raise optimistic children in an age of pessimism. One line, in particular, spoke to me and confirmed for me that I should keep writing this book.

But when it seems like everything from our headlines to our entertainment options suggest a dystopic society careening towards catastrophe, I’m finding it tough to set a positive example—even as I think it’s more important than ever.

I can fully understand where the author is coming from, and I want to share some optimism, some old-school learning, teaching techniques, and some techniques to give our kids the self-confidence, homegrown adult training, and knowledge they need to be successful, independent adults. I offer alternatives to convey these lessons when other attempts to do the same—do not work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson stated our goals for life best when he said, To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better by…a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Our report card on our life is the legacy we leave to the people that we have encountered and influenced in our lifetime. This is not just limited to our relatives, but to our friends, our communities, our villages, but also to our impact on the human population.

Our existence in this human experience is a gift! It comes with the ability to feel and share emotions like joy and happiness and love; that emanates through our bodies and gives us a euphoria that we are blessed to ever experience. You know, it’s the one that makes us feel warm and bubbly on the inside because of the joy it brings. It has nothing to do with money or possessions; but the joy of living life on a higher plane and celebrating this experience with other humans as we coexist in this lifetime. It’s taking in the views of the stars and planets that we can see with the naked eye, or the majesty of snow-capped mountains as we look out into the distance.

I hope people look at you crazy, then look up, and see what you are looking at and acknowledge the wonders of the universe; and respect our place in it. Our families are so overwhelmed with self-caused stress that they aren’t able to see the real-life blessings that are also in front of them. We can show them how to mitigate a lot of the stresses that they are going through, but we must also show them how blessed they are—and to be thankful and grateful for what is going right in their worlds.

For my angels that are willing to help me spread the wisdom of our times to the families that want and need them, you would be the blessing that someone needs to hear from. I am asking you to live your life with more purpose, with more meaning, with a determination to leave a positive legacy and influence over the generations you leave behind. For those of you who are already doing this—thank you! I see acts of kindness and heroism in protecting the vulnerable on the news and in headlines all the time. It warms my heart that goodness is consistently triumphing over evil. But there is a certain resistance to the level of hate and chaos that we are seeing in humanity now. I am asking you to help me impact our world by re-teaching our sphere of influence to love unconditionally.

I honestly believe that many of the behavior problems that we are seeing in our young people are a direct result of the lack of those lessons and values that we need to teach. The lack of these values has caused so many of our young people to lack love for themselves, lack of learning