Phoenix Child, Alica McKenna Johnson

Teenagers frequently come into magical powers in fiction, my characters included. Of course it’s an metaphor for puberty, the power of their budding sexuality, and their maturing into adults.

But I also think it’s an expression for the forces of nature that teenagers become.
Your average eight year old feels things intensely and their emotions—joy, anger, sadness, happiness—surround them.
Teenagers are different; they fill a car, room, house with their seething anger, soul crushing pain, ecstatic joy, or gleeful happiness. No one is immune as their emotions take on an almost physical presence—filling every corner, attaching to the air you breath, sticking to your skin.
We write about teens coming into magic powers because in a way they are. They are usually blind to it, unaware of the effect they have on others, but we can feel the power of their adult emotions, the strength of their hearts and there is no getting away from it.

Photo by Jussi Ollila

Photo by Jussi Ollila

Acceptance, breathing, drinking, and trying to build up psychic armor is all you can do until the current emotional storm passes, and you can breathe for a moment. Until the next thing happens which makes their teenage world explode.