I have been traveling quite a bit to different campuses and organizations over the last few months (spring is always a busy time for me with National Eating Disorders Awareness Week falling in February or March annually).

[MeTaylorDiannaSchallesKSU_web]
Taylor is in the middle. She is Bella’s owner.

This spring, as with every spring, I have met a lot of inspiring people. The standouts?

A young woman who raised her hand when I asked the participants if any one of them had nothing they wished to change about themselves (this has never happened during a “Beauty Undressed” event before), the young daughter of a campus event coordinator who told me all about her pet hedgehog named Bella, and the group of Tri-Sigmas who gave me a glimpse into what my Mom must have been like as a founding Tri-Sigma member in her college years.

[MeTriSigsSC_4132012]
Me (left front row) with the Tri-Sigmas

Each time I head out on a trip, I bring along with me all the new information I’ve soaked in about how to best approach, meet, and make friends with ourselves.

I feel very fortunate that over the last year or so (okay, maybe the last decade or so) I seem to be led to one book after another that perfectly encapsulates and explains something about my personality, character, preferences or self that I had long since given up hope of ever understanding.

Each time I find one of these books (or it finds me) I have the exact same reaction: “Wow! This one is IT! This is the one I have been waiting for! This is the most brilliant book EVER!”

And each time, I truly mean it – and I think that I truly mean it more than I have ever meant it before.

Of course, with my latest literary find, I literally DO mean it more than I ever have before. Of course.

Entitled, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking”, just the title itself had me drawing a deep breath of relief – as in, “Oh thank god I’m not the only one who has noticed.”

Our world really does seem like it can’t stop talking sometimes, doesn’t it?

Furthermore, sometimes I get the impression that those of us who crave less verbal volubility in our lives are doomed to be forever misunderstood as lazy, unfriendly, stupid, bad tempered, or bad mannered.

In fact, as I turned each successive page of “Quiet”, I came face to face with one quality after another within myself that I had often previously attempted to “fix”, change, explain away, hide, or reverse….in other words, for most of my life, I have wanted to be somebody other than me.

How painful.

Each month I answer recovery questions and share insights in a newsletter I call Good News for Eating Disorders Recovery.

The newsletter is just one of the many ways that we can connect together to share the challenges and victories of our complementary recovery journeys. I get so many questions from readers, and I also get to share my favorite movies, books, and “aha moments” that I have discovered in the preceding month.

I thought I would share this month’s message with you here as well, because it is spring, and everywhere we see nature renewing itself….and one of the most amazing examples of that is right here in my hometown of Houston, Texas!

You, Too, Can Renew

[MemPark_web]
Memorial Park, Houston, TX

No, this month’s title is not a Dr. Suess riddle (although I flatter myself that the late, great Doctor would be proud.

There is a wonderful park not too far from my house. We Houstonians are very grateful for it, because there isn’t too much green space left for us in a city of more than 6 million folks.

My landlady and I have had our differences over the years, so when she loaned me the first book in the Dragon Tattoo series, I accepted it more as a mutually desired peace offering than with any real literary enthusiasm.

Truth be told, I was scared of the books. I have a phobia about serial killers (unfortunately realized a good 100 “Medium” episodes too late) and I knew full good and well the book was named “The Man Who Hates Women” in the Swedish edition.

But I was determined to read it anyway – for the aforementioned reason.

I started reading, and promptly started having nightmares. Of course. I have a phobia, the book was addressing the phobia, and certainly there were many other rather awful events that befell the heroine along the way to the end of page 650-I-lost-count.

But, as I am sure the writer intended, by the end of the first book I was also hooked.

I am a bird nut. A bird fanatic. A bird lover extraordinaire.

I think it is extremely fun to spend my free time taking pictures of my bird, Pearl, and then writing about all the cute things she does in the special blog I started for her, Love & Feathers. Sometimes I spend so much time chasing Pearl around with my iPhone camera that I forget I have actual work to do.

This also helps Pearl remember, yet again, why the iPhone is mortal birdie enemy #1.

But pets are such great mentors because they keep us honest. For instance, Pearl now knows that nighttime is neck feather-scratching time. If I do not respond to her first reminder chirps, she will. not. stop. until. I. do.

It does not matter how comfortable I am in whatever part of the house I am hanging out in. My feathered gal’s got nothing but time, and her tiny but powerful birdie lungs never wear out.

Perhaps this is one reason why I am now on my third go-round reading one of my all-time favorite books, Wesley the Owl.

A friend and mentor of mine recently recommended a book to me.

The book is called Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself by Judith Duerk.

It is currently in its 15th anniversary of printing – so pretty popular, I would say.

While I tend to be a rather structured reader in the sense that I read from start-to-finish, chapter by chapter, assuming that is usually the most useful way of digesting the contents of your average book, this book didn’t arrive with that sort of vibe.

My friend had recommended it to me because I am continuing to enjoy the aftershocks from turning 40 — more of a mid-life evolution than a crisis, I’d say — and she thought it might help me make some sense of my longing to transition from a daily schedule that basically consists of work-til-I-drop into something with a bit more work/life-balance.

That process, according to Judith Duerk, can reasonably involve connecting with other women who are undergoing the same.

Totally makes sense. Sounds like mentoring, in fact.

Oh boy.

Here we go, right?

“The role of death in mentoring”? Will anyone even read this? Will they have nightmares?

I hope not.

In a previous post I shared that, for the last couple of months, I have been training to become a hospice volunteer. One of our assignments was to read a book called “Final Gifts”.

Final Gifts: Life’s final lesson for us all

This book, written by hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, chronicles story after story of the final months, weeks, days, and breaths of some of the many patients they have cared for over their careers. You will need kleenex, and that may be off-putting to some.

But you also need this book. We all do.

For the next several posts, I will spend considerable time sharing ten valuable lessons my mentor, Lynn, has taught me thus far in our mentoring partnership.

I am sure when Lynn first met me, she didn’t realize she was signing up to mentor me for a decade and counting!

I am glad she doesn’t seem to mind.

Without Lynn I most certainly wouldn’t be here. MentorCONNECT, the nonprofit I run, wouldn’t be here either.

When I met Lynn I met someone who convinced me that my dreams of the human being I could one day be weren’t entirely out of the question.

When I met Lynn, I met an embodied version of hope.

So the first thing my mentor taught me is “there is never a reason to give up hope.”

Along the path to self-transformation, self-evolution, or recovery (whichever name we prefer to use) we will encounter many feelings.

Depending on our perspective, those feelings can look like sharp mountainous boulders, or glittering precious gems.

Or we may choose to see only the “uplifting” feelings – like joy, happiness, love, comfort, peace – as gems, and the “depressing” feelings – sadness, grief, anger, fear, apathy – as boulders.

The choice, as Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us in his classic mentoring tome, “Letters to a Young Poet”, is up to us.

It truly is.

We really do get to choose.

One of the elements of my longtime relationship with my own mentor, Lynn, that continues to surprise me the most is that my mentor also continues to have hardship in life – just like I do.

It is so tempting, in reading her reliably wise words to me, to brush aside the FACT that anyone – and I mean anyone – who is able to write such wise and comforting words must have experienced the personal life circumstances to form them.

Mentors do not become mentors in a vacuum, just like Olympic skaters do not get the Olympics by winning the skating lottery.

There are years of hard work, tears, trials, self-effort, mentoring, errors, mishaps, missteps, victories, setbacks, and continued determination and patience that form a mentor out of the malleable clay that is a human being.

Mentors are made, not born.

Mentors have been mentored.

Mentors are willing to serve because they once needed (and often still do need) their mentor just as much as we now need them.