Lessons in Mentorship
And the joy of passing it forward
In October 2012, I was on a desperate mission to learn one thing: how to survive.
My husband had been in the hospital for more than six weeks with a severe traumatic brain injury and my life was collapsing around me. I didn’t know anyone personally familiar with the circumstances in which I found myself - non-widowed but alone, juggling a menagerie of needs and responsibilities, thrust into public view, terrified for the future.
It was the favor of a lifetime when a friend shared the phone number of author Lee Woodruff, whose husband, ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, survived a TBI after being hit by a roadside bomb while reporting in Iraq.
Lee and her family were only six years removed from their own life-changing, traumatic event, but in my mind, she was the preeminent expert on surviving impossibly hard things. Not to mention, being effortlessly cool along the way.
Fast forward to last weekend, and it was a great honor to hug Lee in person after years of long-distance friendship. She can’t possibly know all she’s taught me: how to build a rich and sturdy existence outside of my marriage, how to craft something beautiful out of extraordinary pain. How to become indefatigable along the way.
Twelve years ago, some part of me recognized that my survival was contingent upon finding a mentor. But for those of us committed to a life of growing and learning, mentorship is always a necessity.
It’s wonderfully liberating to acknowledge we don’t know everything and, therefore, we need teachers in our lives. Last week I wrote about books as teachers and there really couldn't be an easier source of mentorship to tap into. Books require no introductions, no connections, no formal contracts. They’re always available and there are millions to choose from.
But there’s no substitute for a human mentor.
I’ve had dozens over the last decade, but they don’t all know it. The power of social media has allowed me to follow individuals whose careers, writing ability, resilience, change-making, and creativity I’ve admired from afar. I’ve entered their spaces, listened, engaged, sought answers to big questions, and then continued along my way, grateful for their guidance.
Five years ago, I would’ve used the word “guru” or “hero” to describe these folks, but I’ve since accepted that even the most inimitable sages are human too, and it’s healthy to regard them as such. You don’t have to worship an individual to learn from them (in fact, please don’t!). You don’t have to hang on to their every word, become a disciple, or lavish them with gifts and praise. Wisdom doesn’t convey by proximity alone, so just because Oprah isn’t responding to your DMs doesn’t mean you can’t still revel in the rip currents of her brilliance and walk away as intimately enriched as if you were sitting in her living room (admittedly, I’m still working to accept this one).
In my experience, the best mentors are the ones who use a light hand. They don’t offer promises of knowledge or purport to be the only source of information on a topic. They don’t suggest you can’t live without their wisdom and they don’t lead with ego. They are simply humans who believe in service, passing on hard-won lessons, and helping others to do the same.
This leads me to the cyclical nature of mentorship.
I’ll never forget the day our local rehabilitation hospital called to invite my husband to be a mentor to other brain injury survivors. Talk about the circle of life! Only a few years earlier he’d been in the position of receiving such mentorship; now, he’d been chosen to impart his knowledge to others. It still sends a quake of gratitude through my spine that I get to do the same.
Just as it’s a privilege to be mentored, it’s a privilege to mentor others. The writing community is composed of folks who are constantly - and happily! - paying it forward, so if you’re seeking mentorship, it’s important to simply ask.
Not every mentor will have time to connect one-on-one and that’s OK. There’s much to be learned simply by considering the following questions,
Who is doing work that profoundly resonates with me?
What did their path to getting started look like?
What kind of communities are they part of?
Of course, there is also a list of logical don’ts to follow when reaching out to a potential mentor. Namely, making forceful demands (for blurbs, agent connections, cold hard cash, whatever), and badgering of any kind. One time a writer reached out to request a favor and when I didn’t respond within two hours, I got a nasty follow-up saying that if I didn’t write back right away, they’d leave me alone. Forever. (True story.)
But in most cases, I’ve found these mentorship interactions to be, at minimum, cordial, and sometimes even life-affirming.
And, in rare cases, you might just make a new friend.
Mentorship is beautiful especially when it happens organically. Sometimes we don’t realize we are being mentored or that we are mentoring until the story plays out for a while. I agree getting to pay it forward is a beautiful cycle.