The Power of Presence

by Joy Thomas Moore

When we are in pain, we feel boxed in. When tragedy or misfortune forces us off the path we have been traveling, it can be extremely hard to find a new one. But as difficult as it may be, the only way to overcome pain is to journey through it, and to be open to the possibilities and new directions that are on the other side. And what I have learned is that we are never alone. Remembering that there are others struggling with the same questions or pain that we feel can help us let go of our isolation and begin to see a way forward. I’m not saying our pain or challenges will go away, but allowing our minds to embrace this notion of mutual suffering will help us avoid the quicksand of isolation and despair.

  Decisions are best made when the mind and heart agree, but sometimes the heart is leading us to places the mind doesn’t want to go. The heart doesn’t guide us based on pros and cons and logic; it guides us back to our spirits, our true selves, the parents we were meant to be. Our minds tell us how we can get there by reconnecting logic and love.

  I once heard someone say that she believes she suffered her trials in order to be able to help others overcome their own challenges. I found solace in that idea, and comfort in its truth, especially now as I share this with you through the writing of this book.

  Mentoring Matters

  Mentors are good listeners, people who care, people who want to help young people bring out strengths that are already there.

  —Susan L. Taylor

  Presence of Mind requires concentration and focus, following our instincts, and listening and observing intently. It is the ultimate awareness—of ourselves, our environments, what’s right and what’s wrong, how to create and how to think better, more sharply, more intuitively. Presence of Mind lives within your children when you can’t be there, functioning as your voice in their ear whispering about values and choices. It helps to have a pride of others who share your values to reinforce them, but Presence of Mind is about finding ways to communicate with your kids about how to live their lives.

  Whenever I had to make a big decision, I turned to mindfulness practice—clearing my mind of the day’s clutter, breathing deep rhythmically, and focusing on the question at hand. The process was close to my “what would my late husband do” moments, because it helped me remember conversations we’d had or similar situations we’d resolved together and so provided the direction I should now take. Relaxing my mind prepared me to make more thoughtful decisions about what or who should impact the lives of my children.

  Mindfulness allowed me to be more present for my kids because it made me more confident about my decisions. And when I made better decisions about the people who would mentor my children, it instilled my presence even when I wasn’t there. The last thing I wanted, in the words of popular culture, was to be a helicopter mom who bubble-wraps her children so that nothing or no one else can get to them. As such, I had to learn to trust people whom I was confident really cared about my children, who held my values, and who could open my children’s eyes, minds, and hearts to opportunities that I wouldn’t have access to. Mentors had been part of my youth so I was sure they could and would fill in the gaps in our single-parent household. Long before I even became a mother, before my main concern was to find what my children no longer had after Wes died—other trusted adults, and alternatives to the male perspective—I believed in the power of mentorship. As the founder of the National CARES Mentoring Movement, Susan L. Taylor, says: “A mentor is an adult who along with a young person’s parents or guardians provides support, counsel, friendship, reinforcement, and constructive examples of how to make choices that serve him or her.”

  My parents were always mentoring someone, as ministerial counselors to children in our congregation or to children from my mom’s elementary school classes. They also became surrogate parents/mentors to young women coming to New York for school or work. That’s how I, as an only daughter, gained three sisters during my teens. Zelma, or “BB,” from Brewton, Alabama, was nineteen when she came to New York to go to dietitian school. Her brother, a Reformed Church minister, asked my parents to meet her at the bus stop and take her to the YWCA in Midtown Manhattan. My mom saw a young naive-looking girl coming off the Greyhound bus with a clock radio under her arm and said, “No, you are coming home with me.” Today, BB is my godsister, godmother to my children, a grandmother to three, and remains an integral part of our family. Another “sister,” Marlene, was the eighteen-year-old daughter of my parents’ best friends in Jamaica who arrived in New York to go to cosmetology school. For more than two years she and I shared a tiny bedroom with two twin beds, two small dressers, and one closet before she went back home to Jamaica. She’s a grandmother too. And there was eighteen-year-old Althea, a daughter of other friends from Jamaica who was coming to New York to work. She became a citizen, married, had children, and—before my mother moved from our childhood home in the Bronx to live with me in Maryland—made sure Mom wanted for nothing. And yes, she’s a doting grandmother as well. Long before “It takes a village” became an overused cliché, it was standard practice in our house.

  From my experience, there’s a bit of a spectrum when it comes to finding the people who fill a child’s life. You don’t want to just welcome anybody to help provide opportunities you can’t afford or access. On the other hand, and often with an only child, there are parents who refuse to let anyone become close to their child out of fear of an inappropriate mentor, or of losing influence. These are the parents who will go to extreme lengths to censor any budding mentoring relationship the child is attempting to have, like preventing phone calls, or scheduling something else during mentoring appointments, or insisting on being present during each mentoring interaction. For mindful single mothers, who must make these determinations alone, a good balance is to be cautious but aware of the benefits that an outside mentor can bring. Such a mom will thoroughly vet a mentor to make sure she and the mentor share the same values, that the mentor has the safety and best interest of that child at heart, and that the opportunities are potential stepping-stones to a more successful future. For these mothers, the mentor must become the voice in the ear when Mom is not around. This middle ground is where I tried to lower my anchor with my kids.

  When I became a parent, especially a single parent, this mentoring philosophy was ingrained. I vetted any adult I allowed to interact with my kids. I thought about what my mother had told me about modeling behaviors whenever I met anyone who cursed regularly in conversation. Anyone who didn’t respect the value of education or honesty or compassion for others, I kept out of my children’s lives. I may not have necessarily ended my association with them, but I made sure that any interaction with them was mine alone. I adhered to the words of James Baldwin when he said, “Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” I tried hard not to say or do anything unsuitable myself. I sure didn’t want to have to worry about deprogramming my kids from other people’s messes!

  Even when they were adults, I did my best to curate the mentors in their lives. When Nikki graduated from college, for instance, I asked what would make her happiest when she woke up in the morning and was getting ready to go to work. Despite her sociology degree, she told me she was happiest doing event planning and personal shopping. So I called my longtime friend Helen Moody, who is one of Washington, DC’s, premier personal shoppers, and asked if Nikki could intern with her for the summer. Two decades later, Nikki runs her own successful event-planning business. Sometimes when I didn’t know someone personally, I turned to friends to make the connection. When Wes was at Johns Hopkins and looking for an interning opportunity, I had a friend who knew the executive assistant to then Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke. The executive assistant scheduled an interview with the mayor, and Wes wound up receiving an internship. A Rhodes Scholar, Mayor Schmoke took Wes over to a picture on his office wall of his class of scholars. The mayor asked Wes, “Have you ever thought about the Rhodes?” Up until then, Wes hadn’t given it more than a passing thought.
But that tiny spark of an idea put into motion the events that would impact Wes’s life forever.

  While I was essentially the gatekeeper of relationships in their early years, as my three got older they started identifying their own mentors, and they did a great job. When Nikki moved out to Virginia, she connected with college friends of mine, Judge Gerald Lee and his wife, Edna. Living just a few miles away from her, they have essentially become her godparents. As I witnessed their relationship blossom, I began to wonder why we don’t encourage our children to select their own godparents when they come of age. When they are babies, we select friends who are in our orbit at that time. Those relationships don’t always survive the years, so I was thrilled when Nikki’s relationship with the Lees grew so organically, so importantly. Years later, Shani and Jamaar became the godparents of Eliza—the teenage daughter of one of Jamaar’s former law professors—because of the friendship he and his wife saw her forming with Shani and Jamaar. Like me, Eliza’s parents welcomed positive relationships with people who would echo our values when they weren’t around. Great mentors become great friends.

  A pivotal mentor in Wes’s life was an American history teacher at Valley Forge Military Academy by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Murnane (retired). Mike became one of Wes’s favorite teachers in high school, providing a perspective on history that stimulated his mind and curiosity like no other teacher had done before. Wes recalls that Mike (who to this day he calls Colonel Murnane even though they are more like buddies, going to events and games together!) made history relevant, sparking ideas on how to use lessons from the past to affect today’s outcomes. Wes loved going to class, and his grades reflected that. When Wes was about fifteen or sixteen, Mike told him about an annual American Legion competition on the Constitution. It was a two-part event that involves an eight-to ten-minute prepared speech and a three-to five-minute extemporaneous answer to a question on any aspect of the Constitution. Each January, the instructions and schedule go out to all the American Legion posts in the country. In February, competitions begin in the local posts in each state. The winners then go to the county, district, interdistrict, section, and finally state competition in March. At that point, the student will have accumulated $7,500 as a state finalist. Then the student can get an additional $3,000 for the next two interstate-level competitions. The three students who advance to the final national competition will get $18,000 for first place, $16,000 for second place, and $14,000 for third place. At the end of the day, the national winner would have amassed more than $40,000. Uninterested at first, Wes says hearing those numbers finally convinced him it was worth a shot.

  I’d met Mike several times during the year, including during the trip he took with his class to visit Congress in DC, so I knew he wouldn’t have asked Wes to embark on such a journey had he not had the confidence that he would do well. So when Wes called to tell me about it, I enthusiastically encouraged him to go for it. The next few weeks were intense as Mike worked with Wes, both preparing his presentation for the speech portion and practicing possible questions for the extemporaneous part of the competition. I collaborated with feedback on the phone, putting final touches on the speech. When Wes came home for two weekends before the first competition, he started to work with a speech coach I had found. Finally, the first competition in the Wayne, Pennsylvania, American Legion post commenced. Wes began with an impassioned examination of why, even though the Constitution began with “We, the People…,” it was never written with his ancestors in mind. His speech ramped up when he described how the authors had the foresight to make it a living document:

  The Fifth Article to the Constitution ensured that if ratified, additional amendments to the Constitution could be added because they anticipated that times would change, opinions would change, America would change. My parents and grandparents worked long and hard so they could be called Americans… and despite the obstacles of slavery, Jim Crow, and Separate but Equal, they persevered. Because they persevered, I am as American as anybody in this room.

  Wes won that first leg of the 1996 competition in that small room. Mike Murnane was there, as he was for each of the weekly competitions for the next month and a half. As Wes advanced victorious through the various levels of the competition, different groups of people were also there to support him. At the state championship, my brother, his wife Pam, her sister Toni, my parents, and the girls were all there to cheer Wes on. The next level of the competition, the district, was held the following weekend, in Annapolis, Maryland, and as I walked in I saw the president of Valley Forge, Admiral Virgil Hill, and his wife, Kim. I was so touched that they were there to support Wes, as mentors and as cheerleaders. Wes was thrilled they were there as well and was delighted they could go back to school and report that he’d won that level too! While Wes lost the next regional round in Virginia, I was so proud of how much the experience changed him. Even in his disappointment on the day of the loss, his mind refocused on using this as a character-building experience and what he would need to do to win his next competition, and the next, and the next after that. And remembering he had already earned more than $10,000 in scholarship money, the defeat stung a little less. None of it would have happened had Mike not been attentive to my son and recognized his potential. I’m so grateful that Wes was able to blossom under Mike’s tutelage.

  Mike continues to epitomize the true meaning of the word mentor, which derives from the Greek word meaning “enduring.” When Wes received his commission as a second lieutenant, it was Mike and I who secured Wes’s army pins on his lapels; he was there when Wes and Dawn got married, and whenever their schedules allow, they get together to share Mike’s favorite pastime, watching any University of Maryland team game. I still speak with Mike fairly regularly. He recently revealed that Wes was the first student he ever encouraged to go for the American Legion competition, and he was the last. What he saw in Wes was a promising orator and enthusiastic student of history. I guess Wes’s current success as a highly successful public speaker and television commentator has borne out his faith in my son.

  When I clear my mind to express gratitude for our family’s blessings, I think of mentors like Mike Murnane, who epitomizes the words of William Arthur Ward:

  The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains.

  The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

  LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Don’t be afraid to share your child.

  I have seen how my sharing of my children has developed them into people who now share themselves with the world. When you’re validating a mentor for your child, whether it is to address an academic endeavor, a struggle, an athletic interest, or a more specific or sensitive need, your mind will be reeling with questions and concerns. Calm your mind and use its more efficient resources, like analysis, judgment, and intuition. You can also incorporate some of the following tips, inspired by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, into choosing—or helping your children choose—the other adults in their lives.

  Define the relationships specifically around a tangible goal. Wes and Mike had a relationship built on a shared interest in history and a focus on the competition. It gave them a shared focal point and also was a way for Wes to have a relationship with someone outside of the family who valued his mind. After that, the relationship grew organically; at its heart, though, was Mike’s interest in helping Wes develop as a thinker, which in turn gave Wes the confidence to think big.

  Define the role each party should play to achieve the ultimate goal. The parent’s role is to supervise the child’s interaction with the mentor and provide support as needed, while mentors provide direction and advice on completing the project. Make sure your child knows that you’re not ceding involvement in his or her interests to the mentor, and be sure to ask questions and keep tabs on the big picture even if you’re not part of the day-to-day.

  Assist your child in identifying potential mentors. An effective mentor should share your child’s inte
rests and your values. Professional and religious organizations, universities, and community groups are all good sources for potential mentors. Contacts you have may be helpful. You can also check out the following programs: National CARES Mentoring Movement, National Mentoring Partnership, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and iMentor. Information on all of these can be found at www.power-ofpresence.com. What’s important is that you assess early on that your child’s mentor is going to be amplifying and supporting the values that you’re already working to instill in him or her. You also want to make it crystal clear that as much as the mentor will be valued, you still have the biggest influence over your child.

  Make sure your child knows that mentoring is a two-way street. If a mentor-mentee relationship is to be enduring, your child must realize that at some point his or her skills, time, or talents may become of use to the mentor. Encourage them to know that relationships are give-and-take and that whenever possible—even an issue such as helping the mentor with social media or providing some research assistance—they should provide their talents in the same unselfish way their mentors have provided theirs.

  Minds Are Masterpieces

  Sibling relationships outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty, and distrust.

  —Erica E. Goode

  One of the projects I worked on during my decade in television production was a four-part series called Images and Realities. We looked at the myths around and realities of life for African American men, women, families, and children, respectively. The late Gene Davis, the supervising producer of Essence: The Television Program, produced this series under his own production company and drew our crew from colleagues at Essence and other shows he’d worked on. I was fortunate enough to become one of the writers for the four productions.