“Darcy returns to the people the medicine of rites of passage in a way that honors the harm that has been done and delivers the hope for a healthier and more just future.”  — Kruti Parekh, Los Angeles Youth Justice Organizer

Now Available

Through real-life stories and quotes from young people across lines of race, class, culture, and gender, along with cutting-edge social science research and step-by-step exercises, readers ages 16-28 are finding this book invaluable in supporting them on the path to true adulthood.

Rites & Responsibilities

restoring rites of passage for healing, justice and liberation

 an online communal inquiry and initiatory journey for white, white-assimilated, and white-passing folx

February-November 2024

Learn more and register on the course webpage!

About Darcy Ottey

Darcy Ottey (she/her) is a cultural practitioner, facilitator, and network builder. She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Youth Passageways, an intergenerational and cross-cultural network supporting the regeneration of healthy passages into mature adulthood for today’s youth. A queer, white, able-bodied woman in her 40’s from a mixed middle/working class background, rites of passage have been part of Darcy’s life since her coming of age journey when she was 13. 

The descendant of Quaker settlers, British coal miners, and Ukrainian peasants, Darcy’s early encounters with nature and ceremony instilled a deep sense of belonging and connection with the more-than-human world. Her formal and informal education brought understanding of the colonized and colonizing contexts of these experiences. Her work focuses on synthesizing these experiences by helping to dismantle cultural practices that harm while building a world where all people have access to cultural practices that heal

Darcy is grateful for her teachers and mentors. She loves dancing (especially under the full moon), learning to make Slavic folks dolls, and preserving food and plant medicines. She (sometimes) makes her home along the Methow River in Okanogan County, Washington, the territory of the Mətxʷú people and the many beings that survive and thrive throughout the watershed.

Darcy holds herself in accountability to her ancestors, the circles of leadership and partnership comprising Youth Passageways, and the beings of the Methow River watershed. 

  • “A compelling, comprehensive and comprehensible guidebook for young people who long for meaning, belonging, and a creative participation in the great work of our time: the slow, visionary work of building just, equitable, and life-enhancing cultures. A lifelong student and innovator of nature-based human development and cultural restoration practices, Darcy is among our best guides enabling younger generations to discover how they, individually and collectively, are uniquely made for these times.”

    — Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft and The Journey of Soul Initiation

  • “When it comes to growing up, our modern culture acts as if we are all amateurs. Rites and Responsibilities stands on the ancestral wisdom that is in the bones of all people and all generations. We've lost our way in these trying times, but this book shows it's all accessible. Our young people must be seen, heard, guided, and cared for on their journey toward adulthood. We know how to do this. Using modern techniques of research and inquiry, and her own extensive lived experiences as well as stories of many young people, Darcy proves it's never a lost art."

    –Luis J. Rodriguez, author of the memoirs Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions & Healing

  • “As a formerly lost young person, it wasn’t until rock bottom experiences that I realized that I could afford myself the love of finding guides that actually cared. Darcy and community are among those teachers, with this book delivering much of the knowledge and understanding gained through the school of life that has desperately needed to be documented for the collective to behold. It will serve as a pillar in youth education and emergent strategies that will carry us through paradigm transitions and emerging shifts to come...”

    –j. nyla “ink” mcneill, Owner, Mx. Lifestyling and Steward, School for the Ecocene

  • “This robust and passionate book points towards becoming ever more human in an increasingly inhuman time. Filled with stories and insight, Darcy has diligently gathered all kinds of gifts here. It rehydrates wonder.”

    — –Martin Shaw, author of Courting the Wild Twin