Nesting in Life’s Storms: Cultivating Strength in Youth

In this podcast with Jalynn Bosley, founder and director of ALIVE Outdoors, we explore the evolution and impact of ALIVE’s outdoor experiential education programs, particularly how they foster resilience, personal growth, and mental wellness in youth through outdoor experiences.Jalynn reflects on her personal journey, and how her upbringing, travel, and willingness to follow her inner compass led her to forge a nontraditional path. Jalynn and Colleen dive into deeper topics like the importance of discomfort in personal development, the risks of over-parenting, and how today’s youth can be supported in building self-reliance and inner strength.Important Messages“Discomfort means growth is happening:” Jalynn emphasizes that discomfort is a necessary catalyst for growth, not something to avoid or rescue others from. She shares the importance of experiencing struggles, challenges, and even failures help build confidence and resilience.“We have to stop pathologizing normal life struggles. Not every challenge is trauma:” Jalynn shares her observations that well-intentioned parenting or educational approaches that shield young people from struggle may be doing more harm than good. When adults intervene Nature as a Teacher: Jalynn believes that the outdoors offers a transformative environment for learning, far beyond academics.Experiences like being cold, wet, tired, or just outside one’s comfort zone can teach self-reliance, adaptability, and confidence.Global Learning, Local Integrity: Though ALIVE has grown and sees over 6,000 students a year, Jalynn and her team are intentional about maintaining small, meaningful, high-quality experiences.Jalynn is mindful that scaling impact doesn’t mean compromising depth of connection or nuance.Listening to Your Inner Compass: Jalynn shares how following her intuition and values, even when the path wasn’t clearly marked, was central to her leadership and vision for ALIVE Outdoors. This trust I have in myself was built early, through personal experiences, travel, and reflection.“We need to build young people who can nest in a gale:” Inspired by a Margaret Mead story, Jalynn uses the metaphor of “nesting in a gale” to describe building emotional and psychological strength to withstand life’s inevitable storms.ResourcesJalynn Bosley (BEd)Jalynn believes that time in nature, guided by strong role models can keep people anchored in the real world, and help maintain balance in today’s digital era. She likes that the smoke of a campfire is embedded into most of her clothes, and even after 25 years, she still finds great joy, purpose, and reward in the work she does through ALIVE Outdoors. She is a caring listener and someone who works diligently to nurture relationships that are rooted in honesty. When she is not leading programs with students, she actively consults with schools on program development, risk management and scope and sequence planning both nationally and internationally. Jalynn has worked as an educator, facilitator, and wilderness guide for the past 30 years. She is a Certified Positive Psychology Practitioner, deeply committed to empowering young people to live with authenticity, confidence, and mindfulness, ideally guiding them toward a grounded, intentional life aligned with their core values.• ALIVE Outdoors: learn more about Jalynn and the ALIVE Outdoors program.