Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up
Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life
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Archive of "relationships" Category
Guest Post: Support your local everything
Last Tuesday, I published a guest post by Gary Alloway, where he wrote about disconnection and suburban poverty. This week, Gary is writing about the changes we all need to make in our communities. Check out last week’s post and I hope you take part in the conversation.
“Support Your Local Everything!” I saw this bumper sticker in a local coffee shop recently. The coffee shop was supplying coffee for over 20 businesses in the area. They provided quick, personal service when their equipment broke down. They bought many of their ingredients from local vendors. And they paid their employees a livable wage along with benefits. I wrote previously that what makes suburban poverty unique is the experience of disconnection. Therefore, the solution to suburban poverty is building healthy communities. This begins with a sense of locality.
Do you live in suburbia? Who lives in your community? What are their values? What makes your community unique? What does your town smell like? Most people in suburbia cannot answer these questions because our geographical identity and culture is not determined by where we are, but by an urban center that is 20 miles away. In college, a friend of mine took a course on city planning where every student was asked to write about a place of interest. Every urbanite and small towner wrote about his or her community. Not a single suburbanite did. Suburbanites are not taught to be aware of where they live (an ignorance facilitated by large tracts of unincorporated sprawl with no centralization). Tackling suburban poverty begins with opening our eyes to our communities. We will not take ownership of our community until we actually know where we are and are proud of it.
If you need help with this, I suggest walking or biking in your community. (This will be awkward in most suburbs, but do it anyway). At a slower speed, we see the ways our communities are put together. We will find historic houses, small creeks, and interesting people. But we will also see the low-income workers waiting for the bus. We see the prostitute who always hangs out at the budget motel. We notice the apartment complex where the paint is peeling off. At 75 mph, these are blurs. At walking speed, we actually see the suburban poor.
Proximity allows us to help the poor in more meaningful ways. It is very difficult to integrate someone into your life when they live 30 miles away. When they are your neighbors, you can invite them to church, have them over for dinner, help them find a job, or give them a ride to a doctor’s appointment. In relationship, the poor stop being a project and start being people. Poverty is a dehumanizing experience. Relationship is just as necessary for healing as any sort of financial assistance. Locality allows us to have real relationships with the poor rather than just writing a check and crossing charity off our to do list. Relationships contribute to healthy communities, rather than quick fixes.
And any healthy community must have strong local business. Local businesses provide jobs and will not move these jobs the second cheaper workers become available somewhere else. They are more likely to support local charities and advocate on local issues, rather than doing their corporate responsibility by sending a large check to a large, disconnected charity. Local businesses also have accountability. When an owner is a neighbor to their employee, he is far less likely to pay exploitative wages. When an owner is a neighbor, she is far less likely to do ecological or economic damage to the larger community. And money put into local business is far more likely to stay within your community and actually trickle down, rather than build up corporate headquarters a thousand miles away. Many local businesses cannot compete with the flashiness or locations of the chains, so you may not even know they are there. Take your time. Open your eyes to your community.
Also hidden in our suburban communities are the saints who have been working with the poor for decades. Poverty is a huge issue and frankly, we lack the funds and the expertise to make a dent in the larger issues. But in partnership, we are able to bring together resources, ideas, and leadership in ways that can change a community. So we need to know who is at work in our community. Our church talked for years of starting a community center in our warehouse space. The only problem was that such a project would probably cost $100,000 to start, meaning it would never actually happen. As we went into our community, we discovered that our township had been planning community events, but lacked a meeting space. We are currently in discussion about hosting community events that they would fund and staff. A local mindset breeds connections and partnerships that are necessary for healthy community.
In a culture obsessed with the bottom line, we often lose sight of beauty. Most suburban communities are not built to be beautiful. There is little value placed upon green space. Architecture is based upon convenience rather than style. Things like murals and landscaping are neglected because nobody is on foot. The arts are left to the city. The poor need good jobs. The poor need real relationships. But the poor also need beauty. And the lack of beauty in our communities makes us all poor. Beauty is a tough sell in communities obsessed with upping the tax base. But if we have pride in our communities then we will desire them to be attractive and unique. And hopefully we will make them beautiful.
Overcoming suburban poverty is not about diverting that donation from Africa to Levittown. It is about building healthy communities – communities where the poor can find decent housing and good jobs, communities that have relational networks of support, and communities where people care for their neighbors. This is a multifaceted and deeply complex. But it begins with a local awareness that is so often lacking in suburbia. Want to help the suburban poor? Support your local everything.
Meet my niece!
I’d like to take a moment to introduce everyone to the newest addition to the family: Natalie Clayre!
Natalie has one day, one hour and fifty minutes of living under her belt.
And she’s amazing. She’s so beautiful, I don’t know what to do with myself. And there’s something about watching her father hold her oh so carefully that overwhelms me.
It makes me want to make such a beautiful soul with Brian.
My Niece
We’re so blessed to have the new person in our family. Our lives may have changed tremendously over the last year but none of that matters when you look at this face that just wants to be loved and supported.
Already, everyone wants to be near her. Everyone wants to love and be loved. Everyone wants a moment to touch a miracle.
She humbles you.
She doesn’t know anything about career development. She couldn’t give a rat’s ass about her daddy being a gamer or her Aunt Dorie being a blogger. She doesn’t know we dream about her changing the world someday. She doesn’t even know that her tongue is permanently attached to her yet!
But she has her priorities in check. She is living the balanced life we all dream about it. Her only concern relates to when her mommy will feed her again.
She’s smarter than I will ever be. Someday, I’m going to look at this kid and wonder how she knows so much.
Natalie Clayre
But today, I’m just going to look at this face and be grateful that my family has been changed by her. And in such wonderful ways.
Congratulations Jason and Kelly! Your family is beautiful!
Guest Post: Disconnection and Suburban Poverty
Today’s guest post was written by Gary Alloway. Gary is a graduate of Penn State and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a part time pastor at The Well. Hassling Gary is a hobby for Brian and I (more so for me, Brian might just be along for the ride) - at the moment, my favorite thing to hassle him is whether he is Gen X or Gen Y and his preference for Bright Eyes.
This is the first of two posts by Gary about suburban poverty. I hope it makes you a little uncomfortable and I hope it makes you want to change something.
When most people think of poverty in America, they think urban or rural. Yet more than half of those in poverty in America live in suburbia. Bucks County (where I live) is one of the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania, yet 5% of the county lives below the poverty line. While the problems of suburban poverty often mirror those of the city, the defining characteristic of suburban poverty is disconnection.
In suburbia, communities do not function as integrated units. We do not know the neighbors. We rarely walk anywhere in the community. We do not know who owns the stores in which we shop. Public places, such as parks, community centers, or local cafes, almost never serve as meeting points. As a result, all of our relational encounters are voluntary. And birds of a feather flock together. To the middle class, the poor become invisible. We do not see them, hear them, or know them. Most people in suburbia are ignorant of the poverty in their own backyard. It is common for churches and other community organizations to seek to help the poor, driving past the budget motel and the low-end apartment complex on their way to the inner-city.
Because we are disconnected from those in poverty, we do not build communities that accommodate the poor. Low-income housing is neglected in favor of faceless high-end housing that will increase the tax base (as though someone who buys a characterless house on a characterless street in a characterless town will have a great investment in the community). The poor are forced to scrape for housing they cannot afford. Budgets become fragile, making homelessness a real threat. Those who can afford housing often do so by working hours that disconnect them from their families.
When low-income housing is built, it is usually tucked away behind the strip mall or next to the railroad tracks or off the highway; places we drive by at 75 mph and hence, never see. The end result is very small ghettos – pockets of poverty that mirror the worst inner-city neighborhoods, but due to their size and location, are invisible. It is hard to overlook the 25 square miles of poverty in North Philadelphia (though we do our best). It is very easy to overlook the apartment complex. We do not know the poor, so we do build communities that accommodate the poor and their isolation is furthered. Disconnection breeds disconnection.
This disconnection is difficult to overcome because suburbia presumes the automobile. Without a car in suburbia, you are screwed. I work with single parents trying to overcome poverty in Bucks County. Imagine trying to coordinate day care, a job, school, and visits to your case manager when you live in a town where the bus comes once an hour to a stop that is half a mile away. Imagine getting to the grocery store and back. The middle class do not ride public transportation so they do not invest in it. And the bus becomes the ghetto, a small convoy of the poor, disconnected from their community.
Even the most motivated person has trouble overcoming suburban poverty. I used to work at a homeless shelter in downtown Denver and within a ten-minute walk, one could reach the free clinic, the day shelter, the food bank, the social security office, and hundreds of jobs. But while I was there, gentrification was dispersing poverty, pushing the poor into the outer rings of the city and into suburbia. Bucks County has many social programs to help the poor, from welfare to job training programs. But they are disconnected. The locations are disconnected. The organizations are disconnected. Those who take advantage of them will find themselves trying to put together a puzzle of pieces that don’t create a clear picture.
Urban ghettos can be places of immense oppression, where the depth of suffering is palpable. But urban ghettos can also be places where tragedy binds residents together in vibrant community. The suburban poor are more likely to find themselves alone – isolated from communities where prosperity is the norm – a silent anhedonic suffering. Physically, socially, and spiritually, suburban poverty is an experience of disconnection.
Live your life as if it were a video game
Guest post today by Jun Loayza! In case you haven’t discovered him on your own yet, Jun is the CMO of Future Delivery, blogs regularly and is part of the Brazen Careerist community. I asked Jun to write about something he is passionate about and I love his perspective on approaching life. I hope this changes the way you approach living.
“My name is Cloud Strife, and I fought against the evil forces of Shinra. I stood against the evil Sephiroth and managed to save the planet by destroying him.”
Yes, I was an uber dork in high school, but living in this fantasy world is just oh so fun. The game that I’m referring to above is Final Fantasy VII – it was the last role playing game that I ever played and truly lost myself in. Playing video games is extremely addicting in our society. We see it all the time with hardcore gamers in World of Warcraft or Starcraft. WoW is so addicting that players have actually died from starvation!
I used to live my life like an NPC (Non Playable Character). We have all seen these characters in video games; they stand around in towns to make the place look more lively and fun. They’re always doing the same exact thing, never progress, and are just bystanders to the actual main story of the game. I was an NPC because I was just on cruise-control with my life. I never really had to try hard to achieve anything because everything just came to me: I wanted to get into UCLA, and I got in; I wanted to become a brother in Delta Sigma Pi, and I received a bid; if I wanted to start dating this cute girl in class, I (usually) started dating her. Because of my easy-going life style and my philosophy of letting things just happen to me, I was a true NPC of my life. I was just watching it go by.
Fall 06 was the turning point in my life. I was interviewing for full-time offers in Consulting and approached the recruiting process with the same NPC mentality. After a few interviews, I started feeling confused because I hadn’t heard back from the companies. I went home one weekend to visit the family and saw the letters on my desk, the letters that you dread as a high school student looking to get into college and as a graduating senior looking to get a full-time job. They were my first rejection letters.
It felt like a ton of bricks had just given me a blow to the chest. I had never felt so useless, unwanted, and rejected. I had been cruising in my life, just letting things happen and never truly taking the initiative to progress my life story.
Do you know how you spot an NPC in real life? Go up to someone and ask them, “What’s new?” If they say, “Same old, same old,” then you just found yourself an NPC.
My life of playing video games, ditching class, and non-stop drinking must be put to a stop now. I turned to my friend and now business partner Yu-kai Chou who had a similar turning point in his life. He advised me, “Why don’t you live your life as if it were a video game?” “What in the world are you talking about?” I asked…
Your primary goal in an RPG (role playing game) is to increase in level, gain new abilities, and become a more powerful player. It’s fun to do it in a fantasy world, so why not do it in real life? You can gain new abilities by learning a new programming language, learning a new language, or reading a new business book. You can gain in your social attributes by constantly networking and joining social networking sites that will increase the variety of your social circles. You can level-up in real life by developing yourself personally and professionally. This is what I decided to do and it has dramatically changed my life for the better.
So what did I do? I gained in my leadership attributes by founding Bruin Consulting and the Undergraduate Case Competition at UCLA. I gained experience points by founding The Veridical Group – a small business consulting firm. I increased my social level by creating a blog and making an effort to meet the blogging community. I turned my life into a video game and made it my goal to constantly keep leveling up in real life.
This life goal has lead Yu-kai and I to found Future Delivery. Our goal with Future Delivery is to help student and young professionals have fun with career and professional development. We recently launched our site FD Career which helps you lead your life as if it were a video game. Every time you gain an internship, get a high GPA, or become the leader of an organization, you gain experience points and level up on the site. As you gain in level, you earn prestige, are rewarded new features and abilities, and gain the ability to recruit with prestigious firms. Yu-kai and I had to go through a huge road block in our lives to reach this epiphany. Our hope is that with FD Career, students and young professionals will realize that leveling up in real life is much more fun and rewarding that leveling up your fantasy character in a video game.
I am Level 34 in real life. What level are you?
A Girl’s Best Friend
Today I’d like to share a guest post from Deb. Deb lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, blogs at The Writer Bee and is part of The Well community. At the bottom of the post, I’ve linked to a few of my favorite posts she has shared on her blog. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Only a week into getting back to “the real world” after having spent 10 days with my best friend at her home in Seattle, I’m still feeling the pain of being separated from her and thought I’d take a few minutes to speak on this.
The importance of friends in our lives is really immeasurable. We need relationships. We’re designed to need them. When we don’t have them, we make them up (think: imaginary friends) or we start talking to volleyballs (think: Tom Hanks). The point? They’re important. As a single chick, I think they’re more than just important…they’re vital. I mean, I love my dog, but let’s face it – she’s not actually human. Maybe a man’s best friend can be a four-legged, furry beast with no language skills, but that doesn’t really work for me.
That may be part of the difference between friendships with men vs. other women. I think it’s great to have friends from both sides of the gender camp, but we are wired very differently and there’s no substitute in life I’ve found for a girlfriend who can commiserate with me over coffee about the things in my life that are strictly “girl-things” (although a pint of Ben & Jerry’s is a close second…)
In my early-20s when my single friends were dropping like flies from the dating scene as wedding rings were slipped on their fingers, I feared our relationships would change…or, worse yet, that I would actually lose their friendships. That their “significant other” would step in and take the place of all their other friends making us null and void. While it was a bit touch-and-go for awhile as they all sorted out the “what it means to be married” mystery, in the end most of my now-married friends seem to value our friendship just as much (if not more) than they did before. Phew!
My friend in Seattle actually just got married last December to a fantastic guy who it took awhile to find, but was absolutely worth the wait. Our friendship (which has been to hell and back a few times over the past 12 years) has remained constant and grown even stronger. As an added bonus, I also enjoy her husband so much that I’m excited to count him as a friend also. This a huge blessing next to friends I have whose husbands I barely know or don’t much care for.
When you’re thirty-something and single with no end in sight, your friends are more than just friends. They’re family. If I didn’t have my friends, I would probably spend a lot more time in tears, drunk, or both. I’d laugh a lot less. I’d feel a lot more lonely.
So listen-up all your married women: Pay attention to your single friends – they need you…and you need them (whether you recognize it or not). While your husband and children (where applicable) come first, keep in mind that it’s important to keep other women friends in your life (and try to find some single ones if you don’t already – we have different perspectives and stories to tell).
The point? My friends are my lifelines. They keep me grounded, make me laugh, cry with me, are in my corner, give me perspective, teach me, and love me. We might be thousands of miles and timezones apart, but I know they’re just a phone call, an email, or a flight away if I need them…and that makes all the difference. Good thing, too, otherwise I might begin chatting to random sporting equipment.
Other Posts by The Writer Bee:
Just call me Crackles
When Brian and I first decided to get married, we had this dream of owning a business someday. Or rather, we dreamed about building our own real estate empire. We wanted to buy old houses, renovate and remodel and then either rent or sell the properties. Brian would be in charge of the actual construction and I would be in charge of everything else. It seemed like a brilliant idea.
In fact, it still does.
We finally bought our first property three weeks ago and we get the pleasure of really learning about what having an entrepreneurial marriage would look like. And by pleasure, what I really mean is something more along the lines of having our eyes opened by surprise and shock.
We really weren’t expecting this.
But we’ve also learned a lot of good things too. About ourselves, about our marriage and about how we want to build a business.
Your Network
Your business is only as good as the people who support it. And the character of the people who support your business are a reflection of the character of the business. If your network is filled with people who suggest actions that are illegal or slightly unethical, take a step back and ask why those people are in your network. We learned this lesson but interacting with the seller’s representatives. We will not work with people who exist in that network again because we know there are problems within that network, we just don’t quite know where.
Your Work
I’m a self starter when it comes to projects. I want to show up, get the job done and move onto the next thing. I’ll take a break when the task is completed or if the task is too big, I’ll break it up into smaller chunks. Brian, on the other hand, is not a self starter. He’s much better at making the day fun. And that’s okay. Between the two of us, stuff gets done and everyone has a good time.
Our Marriage
Sometimes, you just need to be reminded how well you work together. I won’t lie; it’s been a rough few months for my husband and me. With family drama, house drama and work drama, it isn’t always easy to connect. But working together on the house gives both of us a chance to look at each other at our best. And I shouldn’t forget to mention how great it feels when we can share the sense of accomplishment (instead of telling the other about a sense of accomplishment during dinner). Team Morgan becomes stronger because of it.
Our Knowledge
My husband has totally different set of skills than I do. He creates beautiful things in homes and I know he makes other people’s lives better because of it. Working together gives me a great opportunity to learn new things from Brian. Learning new skills changes my perspective and helps with problem solving elsewhere. I might not use carpentry skills everyday in the office but who can’t use a new way to look at the world? Once you have an understanding of a skill set, you can look to apply that set in new directions.
Our SillinessOn our first day of work, my dear sweet husband started giving out construction names. My mother was named “Butchie”. Because of my dad’s resemblance to the guy on the Mr. Clean bottle, he was named “Sparkles”. But what did Brian name his wife? “Crackles.” Why? Because “Cracker” was already taken by someone else he knows.
So I did what any good “Crackles” would do: I told them all to shut up and get back to work
College stole my interns – I want them back
I hate to say it, but summer is over. Retail stores have Back-to-School displays that are thoroughly picked over. Even the school buses in my township have been doing dry runs before classes start on Tuesday. Even the trees look tired from being leafy and green for so long.
And as my friend Carmella pointed out, Starbucks will be selling Pumpkin Spice Lattes on next Tuesday. Nothing says “fall” quite like pumpkins.
Summer is gone and autumn is here. And the call of autumn took the interns away and back to college.
I miss the interns already. We had really great interns this summer.
And it is a little tempting to say “have a great semester, give us a call sometime” and then never talk to those interns again. Why? Because we’re busy. But we are all so busy so really, that’s not an excuse anymore. The people who are really busy and successful still make time to connect with other people.
But those interns are more than just transient people who come for a summer to work. Those interns are the people who will someday shape the industry you work in and the world you live in.
Think about it this way: Your interns just went back to college. Chances are those interns are talking about their internship experiences with professors and advisors. Maybe they are even talking to their friends who would be looking internships next summer. If this summer’s intern was great, wouldn’t you want them to pass along the names of other people who might be great as well?
But think further down the line too. Someday that intern is going to graduate and with graduation comes the need for a job. Do you want that recent grad (who was a great intern) going to your biggest competitor and working for them? Probably not. If you think like I do, I’d rather they come back and work for me.
Just because the internship is formally over does not mean that you end the conversations. This is the time where you step up the effort to develop a mentoring relationship even more.
So how do you accomplish this?
- Let your intern know that you would like to mentor them. Not everyone knows how to ask for a mentor. By letting them know that you are interested in building that relationship, you let them know that you value their contributions and think they have potential. It is also incredibly exciting when someone you respect approaches you about building that relationship.
- Talk to your intern about the classes they are taking and organizations they are joining. It doesn’t always have to be over the phone – email works great too. But don’t forget to take the conversation off the internet and into real life at least once a month.
- Encourage your intern to start blogging. And stay in the blogging conversation with them. Leave comments on their page or have them guest post on your blog. Or better yet, do both!
There’s no reason to forget about interns just because they are gone. This is part of networking, part of building your business and part of building your brand.
Babies? Maybe Later
After nine months of trying, my best friend is finally pregnant. Thank God. I’ll miss calling her weekly and starting the conversation with “so, are you knocked up yet?” but it is a small price to pay for her happiness. She’s wanted a baby for a while now.
Brian’s older sister is pregnant too. She’s due in October and expecting a little girl. She started trying around the same time my best friend did but things worked out a little faster. I have to admit, I’m looking forward to being an aunt again.
Even our next door neighbors at the new house have a new baby boy. I think their six year old daughter was confused when her brother turned out to be a baby and not a kid her age to play with. She also wants to know when Brian and I will be having babies because “there aren’t enough kids around here”.
It seems like there are babies everywhere. I guess it is a side effect of actually being an adult now.
I’ve always wanted to have a big family. I may not have dreamt about being a bride when I was a little girl but I dreamt about being a mom. I am an only child so I used to daydream about a house filled with chaos and madness and kids everywhere. The idea of a big family still sounds very appealing. But when the 6 year old asked me about having kids, I froze.
I am not ready to be a mom.
I am not ready to give up my freedom.
I am not ready to stop being selfish.
And I don’t think I should be making babies until I’m ready to put a child first. As an educated person who understands how babies are made and can take the necessary steps to avoid premature baby making, having a child before I’m ready is just irresponsible.
The downside to this line of thought is that I keep hearing that there is no “right time” to have a kid. Because children are messy and inconvenient. They say things that make the neighbors cringe. Kids are expensive.
And once a child arrives, you can never go back to not being a parent. It is one of the most permanent changes you can make. (At least if you are a woman. In the case of my birth father, it didn’t seem to slow him down.) Children change priorities. They change your life.
And that change is appealing, but not yet. There is so much I want to do with my life before I start to worry about the dangers of vaccinating children and start to focus on providing my children with a strong start in life. I want to travel, to write a book, to actually finish renovating my house. I want to be a wife and appreciate my time with my husband. I want to see what I can accomplish in my career. I want to be able to take off on a weekend trip on a moment’s notice and not worry about tracking down a babysitter.
I told my new 6 year old friend that there would not be any babies anytime soon but my nieces and nephew would come to visit. And in typically 6 year old fashion, she quickly moved onto the next topic that interested her. It was adorable.
Here’s what I’m ready for – I am ready to be the favorite aunt. I’m ready to do the fun things with kids and not worry if the homework is done or if they are behaving correctly. I’m ready to rediscover the world through the eyes of my niece but I am not ready to rediscover the world through the eyes of my daughter.
I really thought someone would have shot me
Preemptive apology for the disjointed nature of this post.
Last Thursday my grandfather fell at his nursing home and broke his hip. On Friday, he had surgery to replace that hip. On Sunday, he woke up seemed very confused by me. Yesterday (Tuesday), he finally woke up and knew who people were.
It has been a rough couple of days to say the least.
Partially because we weren’t sure he was going to make it. Partially because we were afraid he would make it. And so we sat in hospital chairs, murmuring back and forth that everything was going to be okay.
I did a lot of writing since Thursday, but all of it was intensely personal. I thought about posting it but I realized that if I got one negative comment on what I wrote, I would be devastated. And if I can’t handle the criticism for what I write, I shouldn’t be sharing.
But yesterday, my grandfather woke up. And this time he knew who I was.
It is really hard to see him like this. Because this is so different from the way he lived his life. And when the person you respect most in the world looks at you and says “I really thought someone would have shot me before I got to this point”, it can break your heart.
After I fed my grandfather dinner last night and left the hospital, I started wondering about how you measure lifelong success. Or if you can even measure it at all. In the twilight of life, what are the markers of success that really matter?
My grandfather wrote a list of things to be included in his eulogy in 1985 when he retired from his career. I was three years old at the time. He ended it with a statement about spending his retirement with his granddaughter and living happily ever after. Twenty three years later: Did he really live happily ever after?
If we look at the 1985 list of accomplishments and then ask the question “was this life successful”, I think it is easy to come to the conclusion, that yes it was. But when we move forward over twenty years and ask the same question, reaching the same conclusion becomes complicated.
The last twenty years have been stagnant.
And maybe that’s what he really wanted.
But it seems at conflict with the first sixty-five years of life. And I have a hard time believing someone worked so hard for 65 years just to let it all go so quickly.
Maybe the apathy is a symptom of a larger problem that I am just not seeing.
I think this is so disconcerting to me is because I see a lot of my grandfather in me. And I fear living my twilight years in the same condition that he has lived his.
I would hope that I would keep growing and changing well into retirement. I would hope that I would continue to do one thing that terrifies me each day until I die.
So now I’m left with questions. How do I live my life? Do I need to change the way I live now in order to ensure my own happiness sixty years from now? Will the decisions I make today impact my ability to die with dignity?
A mentor for my marriage will matter more
I suck at finding mentors. I hate asking people to mentor me. I don’t know how to do it without it becoming awkward. And I secretly fear that the person I’m asking will laugh and say no.
When I was in college, it was so much easier. The theatre association I joined assigned every new member a mentor, it was just up to you to maintain the relationship. When I joined my sorority, you picked your big and your big then mentored you through out your Greek Life experience (and I still go to my big when I’m mulling over major life decisions, Thanks Michelle!). When I was elected president of my chapter, there was an alumnae member just waiting to be my advisor. Everything was provided for me.
But now, I have to find my own mentors. And I don’t know where to begin. I really don’t have a mentor for my career or a mentor for blogging.
I’m more concerned though about finding a mentor for my marriage. Because, at the end of the day, I will only be married once. Making this work, and in a healthy way, is so important. I won’t get another shot at a happy marriage but there will always be a second chance with my career.
There are a few reasons why finding a couple to mentor my marriage is so hard.
- So many marriages end in divorce. And so many marriages end after the kids have already grown and left the house. I don’t want to be mentored by someone whose marriage is falling apart but at the same time, you don’t really know if a marriage is successful until one of its partners has died.
- We would have to find a couple that would be beneficial for both of us. This mentoring relationship wouldn’t just be about me and the mentor but me, my husband and the mentoring couple. Just thinking about establishing a relationship makes me realize just how different Brian and I truly are.
- My husband and I are Christians. Brian has a Pentecostal upbringing whereas I have a Presbyterian past. But here’s where it gets complicated: I broke away from the church for years (hello sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll). It took a long time for me to come back to the church and when I did, I discovered it was really difficult for me to relate to other Christians. Brian, on the other hand, has no past like that to deal with and address. My past is just as much a part of my marriage as the present we now share. We encounter very few Christian couples who understand what that sort of past really means.
With that being said, not having a mentor is just not a good idea. But I’m not quite sure where I am supposed to go next. And when something is so important, how do you establish criteria without crippling yourself in the process? It almost feels more difficult than the decision to become a married couple.
Where do you find your best mentors? And how do you establish that relationship once you have realized the potential?
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