I grew up in a healthy family which was surrounded by a present and active extended family. Throughout my early life I also enjoyed a rare gift: a healthy spiritual family. When it came time for me to raise my own family, I had already internalized in my right brain what "family" should feel and look and smell and taste like. I came into my adult life pretty sheltered, but my navigational system worked great. I was able to lead with the well-developed instincts of love and not fear, and this made raising a family (though still humbling, hard work) really joyful and satisfying. I knew that "love" in a community was a complex source of power, similar to nuclear power - clean, safe, and effective, so long as it is properly contained. My early experience of love taught me that relationships must be navigated not just through feelings but according to this network of life-giving attachments. I knew - not with my mind but with my experience - that each attachment gave life and that each was to be protected by wisdom and an eye for what was life-giving for everyone. I knew that "everyone" involved people who might not even be born yet. I knew I needed people, and that people needed me. This was joy. This was peace.  Then, in 2010, my excellent and wise father died at age 58 of a brain tumor. This unleashed over a decade of unraveling in my family networks - both in natural and spiritual families. As I felt the terrifying realities I had never felt before - realities of being alone, being without, being seen with reproach, suspicion, and contempt for my lack of proper connections, having no way to explain, and consequently losing favor, blessing, resource, protection, and inclusion in the very same groups in which I had once been a cherished daughter, sister, and mother - I felt what many, many people feel who were not given what I was given as a child.  The painful past 20 years of my life have given me, as an adult, the experience I believe many in Gen Z have had as children. After 60 years of aggressively unraveling the knit of family in our culture, Gen Z arrived on the scene at the turn of the millennium to a society in which most of the living generations had forgotten how to live in long-sighted communities. By the time Gen Z was being born, we'd already started seeing human life, the environments of life, and the systems that perpetuate life, in ways that are not sustainable for future generations to thrive. Or even exist. Much less, there are few whole communities left in our culture who can actually pass along the vital, life-giving processes and principles in a joyful, life-giving way. Oh, we have books and rules and we're stinking good at passing along our "values" all packaged up in fear and the threats of what happens if we fail. But that's not how the secrets of healthy families are meant to be shared. They are passed along in warm kitchens, on long walks, in the dark hours of night, through stories and songs and gentle wisdom. When I was introduced to the Life Model, I recognized it immediately as the scientific explanation for the healthy experience I had enjoyed in healthy communities as a child. The Life Model teaches us all, in a left-brained way, what we need in our right brains if life together and individually is to work the way it was meant to. We need this teaching in our culture right now. Gen Z, you especially need it, as you step into the adult and parent stages of your identities. These are the stages when we begin to share, to pass along what we have received to the next generation. But we cannot pass on what we have not yet received. At Generation Life House, we want to pass on this knowledge in both word and action. Our coaching, training, and real-life applications are meant to give you ways of grabbing hold of the actual experience of living in healthy relational community. The Life Model is the best way we know of to explain what this requires and how to remediate what has not yet been given in natural, God-designed ways. If your childhood lacked what is necessary for healthy adult and parent living, the Life Model will help you identify what's missing and will point you to the sources of life - God, people, creation - where that asset was meant to be gained.  Gen Z needs the Life Model. There are many organizations out there that offer ways of learning it and living it. This Crash Course is my way of sharing what I have found to be most vital for a Gen Z community to step into adult and parent life in a way that gives hope for your future and the future of those you love.