What to Expect? Why mentoring?
One of the key components of successful mentoring is honest self-reflection. To enter in a mentoring relationship with me you should know my core values and the history that brought me to this point. To speak more plainly, what qualifies me to stand and offer my time as a mentor to other women? What life experiences do I bring to the table?
It is a fair question. In honor of the enormous respect I hold for those who would seek my guidance, I will answer this question honestly. If I expect you to be honest with me, I can only offer so much in return.
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Strong Women Raise Strong Women
My grandmother was the kind of woman that could command a room full of the bustling energy of three generations from her seat at the right hand of my grandfather. She was no more than 90 lbs soaking wet and shorter than me by the time I hit middle school. She was Catholic and strong as an ox. She’d married my grandpa after growing up on the family farm in rural South Carolina and made a home for their five kids. I adored her. She was a terrifying woman, full of love, and a force of nature.
My grandparents’ refrigerator was covered with a large sign with pictures of children playing and the words “what the hell did I do to deserve all these kids”. We called their home “the big house” when I was growing up. They took us to Mass when we came to town and forced us to wear tights even in summer. There would be no fidgeting in the pews. Back in the 60s the diocese of their city officially desegregated and my grandparents were assigned to a new parish. My earliest memories of Mass were of the large hats the beautiful older women who filled all the pews wore every Sunday. We would stay after and have potluck BBQ in the basement at Saint Benedict the Moor. We were the only Welsh-Irish in attendance. I remember feeling so loved at their parish. The ladies there called us “Sibyl’s girls” long after we were little girls. I wouldn’t say my grandparents were particularly progressive for their time or trying to make a political point by making this move. They were simply faithful practicing Catholics. If the Bishop said desegregate that was what they did. They found a home in their new church. My grandmother became the parish secretary in her new church where she later had a burial Mass with every pew overflowing.
My mother was the only daughter among their five children. Although raised Catholic by my staunch grandparents, she joined the Peace Corps and went on to marry a man who would initially be known as “weird Larry” by her brothers. When they met she was getting her degree in education and he was living in a tent. On purpose. They got married and had three girls. I won the lifetime parent lottery and became one of those girls. My mother stayed home when we were young and raised us in a Quaker congregation. I had no idea we were poor. We lived in the woods in a single wide trailer. We had a horse named Sassy that had attended my parents wedding with bows in her mane. My dad was a forklift operator in a warehouse. They were hippies minus the drugs. At Quaker church I hid in the janitor closet and read the children’s Bible to avoid sitting in silence in the pews. My mother would go on to get her PhD in childhood literacy and I would be baptized in the Baptist Church. I read somewhere in the Good Book that unbaptized people went to hell and I wasn’t taking chances. I was a practical child. My mother, ever supportive, took me to that Baptist church and took photos of my baptism. My older sister likely rolled her eyes bless her, but she did attend. She would later attend Mass with my after my conversion to Catholicism, same attitude, still my best friend.
This is where the story changed dramatically for the worse for her three daughters. Our mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when we were too young to understand. I knew as a child that my mom was frequently sick. She wore a wig and had to sleep a lot. She cried on her drive to work sometimes. I remember her having a surgery here or there. She went into remission once and life felt normal again for a time. Until it didn’t. I remember learning that the cancer was back and not feeling any particular dread. My mother was the best woman I’d ever known. She was a good listener, gentle to a fault, generous in all things, a good cook, a wonderful wife, a committed friend. She’d been in remission before and that was going to happen again. God wouldn’t take her away. She was simply too good. A few weeks later hospice came to admit her to their service. It wasn’t going away this time. This time it was simply a matter of when. The when came sooner than any of us could have imagined. Within weeks our family and friends would congregate and hold vigil. I hadn’t slept in days when I finally went to bed the night before she died. I went to bed angry at my aunt, a longtime hospice volunteer, as I’d overheard her whispering to my mom that “it was ok to go now”. It wasn’t ok to go. I was young and I needed her. My sisters needed her. The next morning someone woke me and told me it was time to say goodbye. When I went downstairs to the bed we had made in the sun room I realized everyone who had been coming for weeks was in the room sitting silently. I made my way in and sat on the floor. Our mom was barely breathing and I was afraid to move. My younger sister leaned into my lap. I’d told our mom I’d take care of her forever a few nights earlier when we’d been alone for the last time. She hadn’t responded at the time, or if she did I’ve forgotten in the ensuing years because it’s a painful memory. Soon after she was gone and everything was numb. I couldn’t tell you now what happened the two years after she died. My sister and I tried to keep our younger sister in school. Our dad shifted between distant and present depending on how well he could cope. As an adult I understand, he didn’t sign up to be a single dad. She had been everything to him. It was relatable. I felt the same way.
In the years that passed I grew up and leaned back into my life. My parents had always encouraged my wanderlust and love of adventure and it slowly reappeared in my life. After graduating from nursing school I took the only job that was handing out hiring bonuses in the wreckage of the 2008 economy. The Indian Health Service in Gallup, New Mexico needed a medical/surgical nurse on night shift. I knew it would be an adventure when I called in for my interview and the supervisor of 2 West simply asked, “do you think you can hack it in a place like this?” Not one to be bullied out of a $5,000 signing bonus I told her, “of course I can” and promptly googled Gallup, New Mexico. Being broke makes you brave.
Four days of driving my beat up car across the country on I-40 and I made it to Gallup. What I didn’t know then and wouldn’t know for a few years was that taking that job in Gallup saved my life. For a first job in nursing you can’t do better than Gallup Indian Medical Center. You see it all. Rodeo wounds. Syphilis. Frozen body parts due to exposure. We were still charting on paper at the time. Blissful times in nursing. We carried clipboards and counted narcotics on paper.
It was on 2 West working nights that I met the woman that became my mom. Damn she was mean. She took me under her wing and set about making me the nurse I am today. She didn’t go easy on me. Hard patients? She gave them to me. One night I had a particularly stressful patient. It was snowing outside and she told me she was going to go outside to the back parking lot to smoke in the snow. She didn’t believe in cell phones back then and I asked how could I call her if something bad happened. She stared at me like I had three eyes and dead panned “just flick the lights off and on in the room I’ll come back”. Comforting. Over the next few years she became family. She made me sopapillas and let me cry on her couch about how God did me wrong and stole my mama. She introduced me to the woman who would give me my first perm. She taught me what it means to mentor a woman. She showed me what it means to carry the light in dark times.
During the end of my time in New Mexico I was feeling lonely and unsure. I wanted to have children and a family and neither were forthcoming. I lived alone with my cat Jack. The homesickness for a home I didn’t have anymore gave me chronic health problems. I cried a lot at her house on Cactus Road. One day she took me furniture shopping. I’d finally found a rental home, a minor miracle in those days in Gallup, and she wanted to buy me furniture. She asked me if I liked a table she noticed with a vintage farmhouse feel before that become popular. I did love it. Of course I did, but it was too much. I lived alone. What would I do with a formal dining table with eight chairs? Didn’t that seem absurd? She bought it that day and told me it was an investment in the future she saw for me. She said that someday I would be surrounded by my children. She said she saw a future where that table was simply too small. A future where my grandchildren needed their own “kids table” like we had at my own grandma’s house.
Today I have six children and two grandchildren. Today I am married to the love of my life. The road has been bumpy but utterly blessed. He is my match in so many ways. There was a knowing when I met him. I had left New Mexico and found my way to Alaska. I was travel nursing and enjoying spreading my wings with a paycheck that allowed for vacations. I went to Europe with friends and moseyed around Germany and Switzerland. I’d gone to the Arctic in winter and made a life for myself in Alaska.
My ex-wife and I split up (that’s an entire book in its own right) and I found myself raising her daughter alone. Me, by myself, with a very angry pre-teen daughter I loved in spite of her mama’s bad attitude she carried with such ease. Being a single mother, it occurred to me that the best place to raise her alone would be the same small island I first came to in Alaska as a travel nurse. The first time I’d gotten off the plane for my new ER/acute care nursing job I knew it was home. Everyone was unbearably friendly. I needed a car during my first week on the job and a staff member shrugged and said, “just take mine whenever you want”. I asked her for the keys. She laughed and said no one here takes their keys out of the car. Just bring it back.
So, I packed up my daughter and I took her back to the safest place I’d ever been. Small town, island living, Southeast Alaska. Later I would discover that coincidence of all coincidences the same man everyone had tried to set me up with a few years earlier at the hospital was now our neighbor. He stopped by to drop off salmon after a fishing trip. He lived up the hill from me. I had every red flag in the book. I was divorcing a lesbian and raising her daughter by myself. That doesn’t look good on paper. He didn’t run. Soon after I got a phone call from the Office of Children’s Services in Alaska. The foster kids that were our neighbors in Anchorage needed a permanent family. Would we take them? I said yes and then panicked. I had a new boyfriend. I had a kid already. I was living in temporary housing. I walked into the hallway at work and crossed paths with my boyfriend.
“I just told OCS I would adopt two kids. What do you think? I just said yes.”
He smiled and high fived me right there in the hallway. “Let’s do it.”
In that moment I knew that God made this man to be my husband and God had made me to be his wife. I saw our legacy playing out over years.
Since that time we have married and now have six wonderful children, four girls and two boys. We have a granddaughter and a grandson. Our oldest has married and been given away by her misty eyed daddy at an off grid party up the Stikine River. Our youngest daughter is the fourth of her name. She shares a name with me, my mother, and my grandmother (and her daddy’s fishing boat). We have built a cabin together off grid in the wilderness of Southeast Alaska. My husband patiently nursed me back to health after I was paralyzed by Guillain-Barre in 2017. He meant it when he said “in good times and bad” and never flinched even when his new wife needed a walker or had to be carried up stairs. We have traveled in an RV, played blackjack in many casinos, jumped in the arctic ocean, mined for gold, raised a great dane, and generally enjoyed our lives building a small army of children and grandchildren.
Life has been unbearable at times and at others been so sweet it takes my breath away. As a nurse I have helped many people birth babies and held many hands as people died. I have been mentored well. The women in my life gave me every tool in my arsenal of good humor and coping mechanisms when life gets me down. I know what it feels like to lose the rudder of your life. Women are not meant to be without other women. While nursing has provided me with a wonderful career and many adventures, my true vocation is as a wife, mother, and mentor. My heart is so full at the thought of giving back to others even a small portion of what I myself have been given by so many other strong women. I hope these words help you trust that your fears, hopes, and challenges are safe with me. Mentoring is not about judgement or blame. It isn’t even about woundedness. Mentoring is the opportunity for another woman to hold you up when the need arises. Sometimes mentoring is buying a large table and praying for the people that will come eat at it when the time comes. Whatever your needs may be, I am here. Let’s chat.
So what will happen in session?
Great Question. First you will pick what kind of mentoring you are hoping for. Often I find myself mentoring women seeking romantic partners. If you are actively looking and would like my help with this, please do pick Romance Review. General mentoring from parenting issues, to major life transitions, confidence boosting, or a whole host of other session styles are also welcome.
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Upon booking a session you will receive an intake assessment. This form is for you to reflect on, complete, and send to me before you first session.
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Please note that session 2 intake is for clients looking for help with romantic partnership. Feel free to skip these questions if you have needs and goals unrelated to romance/love/partnership.
Session 1 intake paperwork is for *ALL* clients. This helps me get to know how I can best serve your needs. Mentoring is about YOU. Click the button below to see the intake questions if you 'd like to see them in advance.
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Please send all questions to lu@matriarchmentoring.com
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Please note mentoring is only for 18+ women. Matriarch mentoring is not offering services to minors at this time.
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