OGT DAILY - Day Thirty Nine MENTORING

My goodness - I have been at this almost forty days!  Longer than even this new retro/wacko/regressive administration.   I have such stamina!   Cue cartoon image of bicep:

Today I've been appreciating the relationship I have with students, interns and various supervisors with whom I consult about students.   There is nothing more gratifying than the learning that occurs between two humans with efforts toward helping to understand more clearly how to be an effective human being.   This is especially true in the business of therapy when the work is understanding humanness.  I have been mentored by so many people in my life: my grandmothers, my sisters and aunts, my mother and father, a high school English teacher made me feel I was unique at a time when life was a fast moving pile of quick sand threatening to suck me away - I still have her note tucked away in my Merriam Webster; film teachers and editors I assisted who were legends in the film industry; writing mentors.... I could go on and on.   I have learned from so many over the years.  My husband taught me how to cook!   My children taught me how to laugh and play again and to invent stories before bedtime so they could wander off to sleep.    What I am surprised to find is that some how over the years I have now become "the mentor" - eminence gris - to my students.   How did that happen?   Yet I enjoy the appreciation they express when I can share the simple business of my life as it relates to caring for children in therapy.   

I still seek out mentors of my own.  My current supervisor studied with Anna Freud!   And he takes such pleasure in life that he always makes me laugh.  My violin teacher is 95 years old!   Every week he is there dapper as ever waiting to correct my intonation.

Maestro Elliot Magaziner 

I guess one of the silver linings of this new activism - the Indivisible Movement- is the learning we are doing from each other and from activist mentors who are so eager for acolytes.   It is refreshing to be able to teach and learn and continue to grow.  Now that is the opposite of isolationism and conservatism.