Wanted: A Female Mentor

This is a topic I've been discussing on the side with Amy. (Side meaning email, since she's several states away.)

She has recently found someone she'd love to have mentor her. I told her of my longing for the same. Somehow, being 42, I feel I shouldn't need a mentor, but something tells me that's the devil talking. Pride will keep you distanced from people. There have been godly, older women in my life, but I feel I am always the one initiating, and it's usually when I have a serious problem. And by serious, I don't mean a broken oven or I'm out of gas on the beltway. (For those I'd call my hubby, anyway.) When you're always initiating, you can begin to feel like a nag or a burden.


I have close friends who are intuitive, insightful, and interested. But the "i" word "initiative" is severely lacking. Why is that? Am I unapproachable? Do I come across as more "together" than I am, or "too far gone"? Do people assume that my age and my "avid Christianity" (as my aunt puts it) make me an unlikely candidate for a mentor?

Just opening this up for dialogue. Do you have a mentor? If so, how did it happen, and how often do you talk with her? If not, why not? I don't want to hear "busy lives" because I think that is a socially acceptable excuse. Call me harsh on that one, but I have felt very shoved aside by the "busyness" of other women. I was busy with three young kids under the age of five once upon a time, but ladies in our church were always in and out of each other's homes. Two of them took me under their wings. One is still my good friend, the other is a New Ager, but her counsel was good at the time! (She had a husband who talked to her worse than you'd talk to dogs, but she always spoke well of him.)

I am in a different season now, but in some ways it's more difficult. Three of our four kids are nearly grown and I don't know what I'm doing. Where are the women who have transitioned from Mommy to Mom to Friend Called Mom? Where are the grandmothers who have been there/done that, and will initiate a relationship with younger women?

Or is it the responsibility of the younger woman? Initiative is one of the characteristics I highly value, so when I see a problem or an opportunity, I like to initiate. Are there other people, women my senior, who are just chompin' at the dentures--I mean bit-- (how I loathe cliches!) to share their wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, from everything from pickling cucumbers to parenting older teens, to preparing a will?

What say ye?