The Power of Being Mentored Well

As I'm preparing to open a new cycle of the Crossing the Threshold 1:1 mentorship– which I have been offering mostly by word of mouth for over a decade!– I have at the same time been seeing some of my current mentees and trainees through some really pivotal points on their paths.

And I've been thinking about the power of being mentored well.

The difference that it's made in my own life. Those few mentors- both chosen and accidental– whose mentoring was life-changing, path-finding for me.

Two years ago, I sat in a small circle of peers and our guides– the desert winds blowing furiously in our faces and blinding our eyes with dust– in preparation to head out on a journey into the remote parts of Death Valley for 5 days on my own. With just water and some survival gear, without food or shelter, I would sleep on the earth floor, close to the bones, my body exposed to the elemental impulse of the wild gods. 

A crossing of a threshold in my personal life- in the old ways of trial and initiation. 

A conversation with the earth in the last deep silence you can still find on our planet. A visit with the wild bodies whose home this was. A chance to face my fears of it all, of never returning… 

Asked to speak my intention, I stated it clearly: To begin welcoming the Crone in me, the collective old wise woman who was now undoubtedly beginning to settle in my body. I was 47. 

My guide, a woman in her late 50s, whose wrinkles looked like a map of pathways already walked and whose deep eyes could pin you to your seat– a cancer survivor, a grandmother, a longtime rites of passage doula– listened intently.

‘The time WILL come’, she finally said, ‘to embrace the Crone, indeed. But my sense, dear one, is that you are here to complete the young woman. The maiden of your youth who never got a chance to be initiated, or celebrated, or thanked for how far she has brought you. All the younger parts inside you who carried your pain, your expectations, your hardship, your morals, your beauty. My sense is that you are here to love on them. To cry their tears. To throw them a party. To lay them to rest.’

I knew by how my heart and body trembled that she’d seen & spoken the truth- before I could.   

She held my hand and told me how to ‘talk to the big cats’- the mountain lions- through our collective body, once I was on my own. How to ask them to let me be their guest and complete my ceremony in peace. I would sure count on that! 

 She sent me off with prayers and wild songs and smoke, and I kept the warm conviction of her eyes and the love she showed me and her words close to my heart on those nights when the darkness fell- deep and terminal- over the land. 

I can’t describe the miracle of my time alone in the embrace of the raw desert, hundreds of miles away from humans and buildings. 

What I can say is that in the windy silence of those giant rock witnesses, the maiden inside me got to weep and pour out the uncried tears and gut-wrenching sobs of a lifetime. Tears of ache and grief and innocence that I didn’t know I held! 

I got to commune with the younger parts of me and let them speak into a wild silence that loved me back so profoundly that I could finally love myself too. 

I got to make a resting place for the young woman in me and lay her down to rest, in a ceremony of gratitude and completion. I got to honor her, so my mature self could take her throne.

But this is something I can never downplay: Without my mentor midwifing my journey so powerfully and giving me her secret recipes and soulful structures for my metamorphosis, it could have never been the transformation it was….

When I descended down the Mountain, emerging from the most unspeakably powerful journey of my life, my mentor who had stayed back to hold base with the other guides, ran to greet me, to embrace me, to feed me- all of us- soup.

Like a mother. 

I’m not one to find mentors easily. 

But her love and her seeing were just as powerful as what the Earth taught me those nights alone in the enormity of the wild. Without her guidance to grasp and anchor the magnitude of what unfolded, the journey would have been without a root to grow me back into the world. 

I think we all need our mentors at the threshold phases of our lives. 

Of course, it has to be the right fit–– on both sides. And that is all I ever hope to be to the people I mentor– the right mentor at the right time...

~~~~

Many of you know my group work but fewer have experienced my direct mentorship and the power of the Deep Body work in the most personal, focused ways.

So if you are finding yourself in the currents of profound change and transition– seeking your more aligned identity, vision, and new chapter– and you know that the right kind of support can move mountains with you, join me for the open mentorship intro to working 1:1 on the THRESHOLD Container with me. Learn more and register here:

https://www.deepbody.org/mentorship