MENTOR

I know I am a day late with this blog. I would not make a very good newspaper publisher or editor because you wouldn’t get your paper on time and if it was a daily you probably wouldn’t even get it every day. I spent yesterday with two great friends driving up from Glen Alpine, NC to Stone Mountain State Park, NC. Yes there is a SMSP here in NC as well as the more famous one in GA and I am sure there are more I don’t know about. We stopped in North Wilkesboro on the way up because we saw an antique store that looked interesting. Once inside we discovered it had four floors and decided we would need to come back because this store alone was a half-day adventure. It was full of the dreams of folks from the past and held dreams for new folks from the future.
We finally made it to the park were we saw deer, turkey and beautiful trout streams. I saw the biggest tom (a male turkey) I had ever seen in my life. There were three men there with packs on their backs and poles with round circles on the end. We tried to guess what they were geared up to do. We could not. Finally I walked over and asked them. They were student researches from North Carolina State University and the devices were to shock the fish in a portion of a stream so they could get a count of the fish. I wanted to go with them for a spell, but they didn’t invite me.
I don’t know much about being outdoors, but what I know I have learned from other people being kind enough to share their knowledge. The person who has been most patient with me and taught me the most about the outdoors and fishing is a guy named Russ. It isn’t the fact he has a graduate degree in the subject or worked and wrote in the field his entire working career that makes him a good mentor. It is first, that he is willing. Secondly, that he has the patience to deal with even me. Thirdly, he knows when to teach and when to let you try on your own. He makes a good mentor.
I found this in yesterday’s New York Times “On Saturdays during the school year and all week in the summer, PinChang Huang, 16, leaves her home in Queens just after dawn and boards a crowded van bound for a nail salon on Long Island.
Through a long workday, she gives manicures, pedicures and massages, and observes her clients at the Aroma Spa with a careful eye. Older women are most prone to yell if you make a mistake. Customers who read books tend to tip the best.
PinChang has not seen her mother since she came to New York with her father and brother four years ago from a small village in China. She spoke no English and had no friends, and all the buildings looked the same to her, so she often walked into the wrong apartment complex on her way home from school. To ward off frustration and loneliness, she started keeping a journal. “I wrote down everything I saw, everything that made me happy or upset,” she said. “I wrote the things I wished I could say out loud.” In front of a packed auditorium at the New School in Manhattan one night recently, she got her chance. PinChang and her mentor, Deborah Kolben, a former managing editor at The Village Voice, read an essay they wrote together about PinChang’s getting her first manicure. PinChang spoke about the peculiar sensation of being on the receiving end of an exchange that often makes her feel “like a slave.” The reading was hosted by a nonprofit group that pairs high school girls from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to be writers with women who are authors, journalists, playwrights, poets and editors. The group produces an anthology of student writing each spring, and puts on several public readings.”
My point is simply that whether you are suffering from a mental illness, sexual abuse or spiritual pain everyone needs a mentor if they are ever to learn to DREAM AGAIN.
You can reach me directly at edcooper@projectdreamagain.com
{Being on this resource list does not imply their endorsement of this BLOG.}
www.mentalhealthministries.net
www.pathways2promise.org
www.mentalhealthchaplain.org
www.annafoundation.org
www.ncmentalhope.org
www.faithnet.nami.org
www.ffcmh.org