In Homer’s epic “The Odyssey,” Mentor was charged with looking after Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, while Odysseus went off to war against the Trojans. The goddess, Athena, took Mentor’s form and urged Telemachus to oppose his mother’s male suitors and to find his lost father.
Athena was the Goddess of War. Her wisdom, oversight and guidance of young Telemachus in the form of Mentor is why we use the word “mentor” to mean an experienced and trusted adviser. Her divine guidance in the form of a human male illustrates how leadership and guidance are beyond gender.
My dad had two jobs most of my teenage life while fighting his own emotional war in silence. My stepmother and four siblings left us both in a sudden rush one day. Tami was tired of struggling financially and wanted a better life for her biological children. So, she packed up my family and left Dad and me to our fate.
My father believed family to be the most important source of healing and socialization. So, every year he took on major credit card debt to travel back to the Midwest and reconnect with our family, to renew ourselves. He spent the rest of the year struggling to pay down the debt by working six or seven days a week. He worked with quiet dignity and persevered through tremendous financial struggles. As a result, he didn’t have the time, energy or emotional reservoirs to mold my character on his own.
That’s where my church moms and many other women throughout my life stepped in. They provided discipline without abuse, nurturing and culturally relevant rituals to mark milestones in my development, wise counsel, character development, and educational and career advancement. Inspired by their own goddess power, they overcame tremendous difficulties and taught me to do the same.
Connie, Cathy, Ellen and Kimiko – my church moms – were my first mentors.
After escaping my biological mother’s abusive home, I was not easy to deal with because I often acted out my traumatic past. Connie gave me safe, nonviolent discipline in Sunday school. She went on to get her Master’s in Education.
Cathy always gave me hugs and said she looked forward to giving them. Every Wednesday, she would pull me into her arms and meticulously outline the details of her career and day-to-day responsibilities. She also struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. She taught me how to acknowledge and embrace my mental illness. Today, I intuitively understand the needs of my clients when they experience symptoms of psychological crisis. I am not afraid to witness their pain because Cathy normalized mental illness for me – my own and others’.
Ellen named her cat Sheyn Velt (Yiddish for “beautiful world”). She taught me even the smallest creatures hide the greatest treasures. I recently learned a Yiddish saying that helps me better understand what she meant: “Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies” (“The world is beautiful but people make it ugly”). I think the secret wisdom in her cat’s name is to see the uncommon beauty in what people overlook based on appearances.
I got divorced and Mom died in short succession. After that, Kimiko planned all my birthdays. She would call a few of my friends to come for a big dinner and cake. I always offered to help, but she insisted on preparing everything herself in spite of her rheumatoid arthritis. She showed me I was worth making a big deal over. She taught me the healing power of showing gratitude to loved ones. She also proved a disability is not a barrier, that overcoming pain is power.
I rose above my own pain and transformed into a compassionate healer with the guidance of professionals in psychology. Dr. June Breninger was my academic adviser in college. She briefly studied in Vienna, the birthplace of psychotherapy, during her doctoral education. In the 1970s, she was one of the first people in the United States to earn a Doctorate of Psychology. She was also my first clinical counselor and the first person to identify that I had depression. I poured out my most painful secrets to her and she put me on the path to overcoming mental illness – all this while she endured weekly dialysis.
Once in a counseling session, she said, “Dustin, your path in life will go back and forth and you’ll think you’ve lost your way because you’re not moving forward in a straight line. I want you to remember, although your path is crooked, you will move forward.”
On the last day of class before graduation, she read out loud “Oh the Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss. Although she has passed, I hope she can see the places I have gone and where I am now.
During that time, I had a paid practicum at an addiction recovery center. I had ambitions of obtaining a Psy.D. like Dr. Breninger. Then I met Bobbi. Bobbi was a residential therapist with a master’s in addiction counseling. I told her my career plans and my doctoral goals.
To which she replied, with her voice wheezy from COPD: “If you want to work on upper-middle-class neurososes, get a Psy.D. If you want to actually help the people most in need, get an MSW.”
Master of Social Work programs provide a comprehensive understanding of personal psychology based on scientific research into the larger context of a person’s bio-psycho-social environment. Sometimes, theoretical models of social work are called ecosystemic psychology or the person-in-environment model. In other words, mental health problems do not manifest in a vacuum. While there are biological precursors for mental illness, family trauma/dysfunction, lack of law enforcement support and/or poverty, as well as inequalities based on race, class and gender, can all contribute to an individual’s mental crises.
Because of Bobbi’s frank guidance, I briefly attended Portland State University’s Graduate School of Social Work. I wanted to provide my best skill sets to the most people in need. However, I still had my own bio-psycho-social barriers to overcome.
Even though I tentatively acknowledged my addiction and depression problems during that time, I had yet to uncover my underlying family trauma history and participation in toxic masculinity culture. By avoiding these internal obstacles, I wandered in and out of homelessness, chronic addiction and criminality through my 20s and 30s.
Then, after 15 lost years of wandering, I returned to the addiction recovery agency where I had previously been a paid practicum student, this time as a client. There I underwent the most difficult education of my life.
Most of the women and men who counseled me to graduation from treatment were recovering addicts like me. They healed me with more than a theoretical model. They healed me based on their own personal experience. They were Athena disguised as Mentors. They empowered me to make peace with myself and to see my hard-won experience as my greatest asset.
These days, Athena appears to me in the form of Grandma Sharon. Grandma Sharon is a world traveler and retired educator. She visited Rumi’s grave while in Turkey for a 4-H exchange program. And last summer she fished for piranha in the Amazon. When she is back in Portland, she reads to her neighbor’s children and babysits her housemate’s infant son so her housemate can finish her master’s in counseling.
Grandma Sharon adopted me when I was 38. Early in our friendship, we were at coffee celebrating a milestone in my life when she asked, “Do you have any grandparents left alive?”
When I told her I didn’t, she said, “Call me Grandma.”
I once shared my spirit animal with Grandma Sharon. My spirit animal is an elephant with a broken rope tied around its foot. As a baby elephant, I explained, circus trainers tied a rope around her ankle and beat her every time she tried to move further than the rope allowed. Though she grew into a huge, powerful animal with the strength to smash through walls, she was afraid to move. Her painful memories held her back. Then one day, a merciful person guided her gently until she broke free from the tiny rope. Now she walks in her power with the silly, broken rope as a reminder that she is bigger than she knows, stronger than her abusers.
With my spirit animal in mind, Grandma Sharon brought me a hand-carved ironwood elephant from her most recent trip to Cabo San Lucas. It currently sits next to my computer as I draft each article, serving as a gentle reminder to keep writing.
Every month, she gives me a card to celebrate my sobriety. When one of these 30-day milestones coincided with her foot surgery, she stopped by my house to put a card under my doormat on her way to the hospital. She always answers my frantic calls in the middle of the night when the nightmares of my past are too overwhelming.
Grandma Sharon renewed my belief that talking to strangers leads to the best friendships. Every day, she shows me unconditional – yet rational – love is always the best policy. Every month, when another 30-day milestone card arrives, I am reminded I am worth loving, that what I do matters.
Because of my mentors, I see a higher purpose, greater wisdom and my own part in a large world. I am back at work in social service, this time with a better understanding of my own mental health needs. And this month, I am interviewing at another school to finish my Master of Social Work.
This series is a first-hand account of the struggles and successes of overcoming trauma, mental illness, addiction, homelessness and more.