Everyone needs a team of emotional cheerleaders.  Are there people in your life that you view as mentors and guides who have blazed a path and shone a light so that you could find your own  way?

I have been blessed to have had many role models for creativity, joy, life long learning and resilience. Some of them have even lived in my home. My paternal grandparents traversed what I imagine were, at times, stormy seas from their native Russia to their new home in America. They made a new life for themselves and then their 4 children who went on to create a new generation. My maternal grandmother was a kid in a grownup suit who would both entertain and educate me. My parents have always been my most ardent yaysayers. My son is one of my greatest teachers in this lifetime, although I have resisted mightily, the lessons he has offered about patience and flexibility.

Back in the mid 1990’s I encountered a woman whose voice on the radio, leapt out at me on her weekly Saturday night talk show on Philly based WWDB fm. The station format has changed, but ‘back in the day’, the programming offered informative and enlightening hosts and guests. Her clipped British accent, along with her raucous and sometimes irreverent British humor, charmed me. Yvonne Kaye is her name and I am proud, all these years later to call her my mentor. As we got to know each other, she held out her hand to guide me through the muck and mire of co-dependent patterns and dysfunctional relationships; both personal and professional. She taught me that laughter is often the best medicine and that “discipline is freedom,” which I resisted as intensely as the aforementioned life lessons offered by my son. Ironically, he resists that message now! I honor Yvonne, now  a seasoned woman (in the 7th decade of her life), who describes herself as “ripening.”

This Thursday, on It’s All About Relationships, on Vivid Life Radio, I am eager to interview a woman who honors her mentors who have inspired her to shine her own light.

As an emotionally under-nourished, overly-sensitive child, multiple bestselling author and medical expert Karilee Shames’ young life was plagued with maternal loneliness and misunderstanding. Yet she quickly learned to seek out women who modeled the qualities she most sought to emulate and soon realized that she, herself, had become a mentor to others. Amazing Mentors: The REAL Hot Mama’s Path to Power is a tribute to those who have helped to shape her life, and the lives of so many other women, including Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, US Army General Clara Adams, Yoga Journal Co-Founder Rama Vernon and more. www.amazingmentors.com

Listen in from 8-9pm est on www.vividlife.me