The role of a mentor is to help us attune to, and navigate through, the twists and turns of the Weaving Way.

As we walk this path, the first steps are something of an attunement between the people and the work. Through the practices of the Weaving Way, we investigate our lived experience and, with an ever-increasing understanding of it, how we can adjust our approach to life in ways that benefit not just our own well-being, but the well-being of all that we may interact with.

Without a mentor, we may let our blind spots block our path, or we may fall into misunderstandings of our experience that prevent forward growth. A mentorship allows for a back-and-forth that keeps us honest and moving forward.

The mentor is neither a therapist nor a coach. The goal isn’t that we heal our past trauma or that we get what we want. The goal is to live fluidly with the movement of life, working with what comes up, and making meaning of it in a way that enriches our lives.

Mentors typically meet weekly with the student, weaving the threads of the Weaving Way into the mentee’s life the Weaving Way at the student’s pace. The student brings their lived experience to the sessions, and together, mentor and student weave the practices into the student’s life.

This weaving moves through a recognizable rhythm, regardless of what a given session is about.

It begins with what is — examining a situation, a pattern, or a reaction clearly, as it actually is, rather than as we assume or explain it to be.

From there emerges what must be — a workable orientation that the situation clearly requires.

Then comes the imagining — working out what that orientation would actually look like lived out and identifying the necessary practices to support it.

And then, the attempt — taking it into life and seeing what happens.

Finally, at the next meeting, realizing and assimilating – what comes back, expected or not, becomes the next “what is,” and the weaving continues.

This is iterative by nature. A mentor isn’t handing down a method to apply once — they’re walking alongside the student through repeated turns of clarity, orientation, imagination, and practice, each one sharpened and directed by what the last iteration made apparent.