I Want to Be a Mentee

I switched careers officially in April 2009. I felt like a pioneer, shedding the comforts of living in one place to traverse a great landscape; enduring a chuckwagon wheel breaking and going without - food, water, even strength. I took a risk, and I've done the best I can to adapt - until recently. . . where I realized I need something new now. I need support, a number to call, a friendly face that has been through these trenches and can say that the turns I took were right or maybe too cavalier; too reckless. What would my mentor do differently next time?

Where is my mentor?

It's not just reassurance I need, though positive feedback makes me stand tall and feel capable to not only hit the road on an adventure but have the courage to make the return trip too. I crave a critical eye; someone who cares enough about me to be honest. Someone who has been there before and understands the challenge of self-preservation when you're sitting in front of a young woman who has been raped and is recounting her story from last night, still fresh and open. After hearing about trauma, poverty and crisis, I don't intuitively know how to go home at the end of the day and take care of myself. Even in my sleep, I'm still taking care of these beautiful young people.

I feel trapped many days, working under the weight of what feels like a great and global responsibility. How do I continue to admire a client's journey when I resent, at times, his presence in my doorway? Because it will be another crisis, and I'm already brimming with the residue from the last one. How do I not feel that their problems are all the same, and become blasé to what a conversation with me means to them? I realize that all professionals go through this, but being removed from someone's admission that they are homeless feels downright inhumane.

I love my job. I love the challenge, but I need someone to teach me the power (the necessity) of a deep breath and to not neglect my long-term goals, in and amongst holding back the dam for clients. I know part of it is relinquishing: responsibility, onus and the need to be vigilant no matter what. I am entitled to days where my performance isn't profound, this much I know. It's impossible to be present and to take action for every hand reaching out of the sand.

I guess I need someone to tell me that it's ok. That they have done it before and that my sanity and self-care is the most important task I have every day.

Rap and Rapport

I'm no certified counselor but as I establish rapport and relationships with clients at work, we get in a rhythm that might as well be official "sessions." Brandon comes in every week. Thursdays at 2 p.m. We started working on an outlet for his stress, as his nails were down to the quick. He loves hip-hop, like many of the young adults I work with, but beyond Jay-Z there is J Dilla and Wacka Flocka Flame and, as I told him, The Rolling Stones.

Brandon is a lot like many of our clients. He is Black. He is young. He is unemployed. He is hopeful. But unlike many who self-select to the wayside, he's been determined. And so we write.

Because he has a speech impediment, I suggested his command of the language might best be typed. We started working on an essay, about his love of music and goal of being a producer. It's been through edits aplenty but more than that each time we renew it he's there, present and available. It's an opportunity every time he shows up to continue to inspire, engage and interact. We're getting close a final product but it's more than just a blog entry now.

It's a relationship. Close enough now that I can poke fun at him that he can only carry a black folder (he's a Vice Lord, Chicago's number two street gang and black is all there is) and he can tell me about his dad, Supreme Chief of the Vice Lords (that's like CEO) who did eleven years in a combination of Pontiac, Centralia and Rantoul penitentiaries. He gets upset that rappers like Lil' Wayne think they are "street" because they will do time and man up to the sentence but but when you are a celebrity, according to Brandon, you can't be street. It's different where he hails from.

I just listen mostly. He tells his friends about me. I'm not a nosy white girl, he says. I ask tough questions that get him thinking. The reality is many of his peers won't seek counseling but they need it the most. They won't meet with a white counselor because we can't relate to their legacy and heritage and identity. But I think it's moments like we had today, talking about Coltrane and racism, that I get really amped to be a counselor. To find those entry-points, exercises and conversations that really begin to help. Even if it is just listening.