When a Mentor Passes

The Message and the Mission

What do you do when a mentor passes?  It’s a particular kind of loss. It’s a chosen loss. They feel like family.  Their meaning and their influence well outweigh their origins.  They can be deeper than family in some way because there was a stepping into this relationship.

A recognition of like-mind, like-spirit, like-purpose, like… potential.

Avon Mattison-

She was unapologetically committed to her vision.  Her essence was unification. This is what spoke to me.  Years before I met her, I had pulled a similar thought, similar mission, down from the ether.  This was part of the recognition that we were cut from the same cloth, the big “Yes!” you want to scream out when you hear someone speak or see someone step forward in the world.  “Yes! Me too!  I feel that way.  I see it too!” And in that recognition of vision, you personally feel seen and just a little less alone in the world.

When I first met her, I did the closest thing to fan-girling I’ve ever done in my life and as I took her hand with tears in my eyes, I said, “You changed my life.”

I first started to fantasize about connecting with the rest of the world through silence and prayer when I was a kid.  It was part of my play when alone in the woods.  The world was my imaginary playmate…  What if I got very, very still? I bet other people can feel me around the world! I bet I can play with the whole world in my head. In my heart!  Perhaps it was simply a lonely little girls wish, but it grew into a deep understanding of the potential this simple wish could have to transform our planet to become a little kinder, a more welcoming place.  It became my life’s work.

Finding the Message

Today, I sit and watch the snow cascade downward as I float through my conversations with Avon. I look for the message in the loss.  With a true mentor the teaching can be both strongly led or incredibly subtle. I think of the comfort in being seen, as well as the challenge of be held to your best-self. You want to achieve, to reach for your best-self and to become better in the moments when you are not.

I think back to a moment in the pandemic when things were unclear and full of uncertainty. Someone reached to me, took me in hand and held me in the darkness, “I got you.” And I said, “Me too.” And I took a breath.  Ahh, the power of a simple intent. This is also the role of the mentor metaphorically.  Someone who you know will hold you in their consciousness, through the proverbial darkness, so you can take a breath and find your own way.

And then there is the big secret to the mentor relationship… we touch each other, the mentor and mentee. It may seem like one is teaching the other, but we are learning from each other.  There is no hierarchy.  Inevitably, both people are needed to fulfill any mission worth achieving. There is a passing on of good intentions that allow a vision to grow with each generation and allow us to cull and shape and make relevant… and live on.

This is when the message becomes clear.  It’s time to take the mantle, whether you feel ready or not.  We become our own guiding light.  We smile, and look upward and say, “I got this.  I got you. I’ll take it from here.  Rest.”

With such love and respect,

Deborah