What Valley mentors carry into the room is key to trauma-informed guidance

Matt Sandoval

Submitted photo/ Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona

Opinion

Valley mentors should apply a trauma-informed lens when helping children, families

OPINION — Many people become mentors because of what they survived. That’s not a flaw in the system; it’s often the source of their compassion, their staying power, their ability to see a young person clearly.

But it’s also a risk. The very experiences that draw mentors can flood the room if we don’t learn how to carry them differently.

At Free Arts Arizona, we serve young people who have experienced abuse, neglect and family disruption. We value connection through arts-based programming. Many of our volunteers come to us precisely because they’ve been there. They know what it’s like and they want to help.

This National Mentoring Month, I want to offer a framework we’ve adopted for training staff, mentors and artists — take the lesson, leave the story — inspired by the wisdom of Miller at thankyoumiller.com.

The room before training begins

Picture a room full of people drawn to mentoring work. Many carry their own histories of difficulty. Some histories are close to the surface; others are buried deep. Two patterns emerge almost every time.

Some arrive ready to disclose. The room feels safe. The mission resonates. The impulse to share is genuine. Others arrive with heightened sensitivity because their own history makes them more vulnerable to being flooded by others’ stories.

Both responses make sense. Both require care. They both point to a tension at the heart of trauma-informed mentoring: how do we bring the wisdom of our experience without setting down its full weight in front of people who may not be ready to hold it?

The lesson vs. the story

“Take the lesson, leave the story” is not about silencing yourself. It’s not “get over it” or “your story doesn't matter.” The story is yours. It happened. It’s real. Pretending otherwise compounds the suffering.

The framework is about context and an interpersonal container. There are spaces for a mentor’s full story: therapy, trusted relationships, support groups, your own writing or art. A mentoring session with a young person isn’t that space. Neither is a training room full of people at different places on their own journeys.

In practice, it’s the difference between saying, “I know what it’s like to feel unseen” versus offering a detailed account of every time you were unseen and by whom. Both are true. Only one serves the room.

The key insight is this: you may be at a place to carry your story, but your audience may not be at the same place. That’s true for the young people mentors serve and for the adults working alongside us.

From story to toolkit

Here’s where the framework goes deeper than simple boundaries.

One risk a person may face is fusing with a single story: “I am what happened to me.” Another risk is extracting a single lesson and closing the book: “I learned X, I’m past it.” Neither perspective alone serves the mentor or the people they mentor very well over time.

The opportunity is more expansive. Mentors have many stories, and each story contains multiple lessons. A story of being unfairly treated might also be a story of endurance, of developing a justice orientation, of becoming someone who notices what others miss.

The move is both/and: the story is held, not denied and the lessons are formed that stand alongside it, now portable and now lighter to carry. Mentors are more than their narratives. Among the multitude of stories in a mentor’s life is a hidden wholeness that can be discovered. And the people they mentor can feel that.

Over time, I’ve learned to internally draw what is needed in the present moment to show up authentically. The lessons become a toolkit: not a fixed identity, but resources available for connection, for showing up, for being genuinely useful to someone else. This is empathy as a toolkit, not empathy as flooding.

An invitation

People don’t have to start with the story that shaped everything. Almost any difficulty, including a frustrating day, a misunderstanding or a small loss, can reveal what they value and what they’re committed to doing about it.

Start small. Notice: “That bothered me because I value ______” and “I responded by ______.” Build muscle with smaller stories. Learn your own pattern. See what you reach for, what you protect, and what you move toward. Those patterns are a protective form of love for yourself and others.

Then when you hold a bigger story, you’re not doing it for the first time. You’ve practiced finding the lesson without being swallowed by the telling.

Try it out loud or on paper: “This happened to me and I became someone who ______.” Feel the difference in weight.

The next time you feel the pull to share your story in a space that can’t hold it, ask: what lesson does this moment need? What can I offer without setting down the full weight?

This isn’t about hiding. It’s about caring both for your own story, and for the room you’re in.

This National Mentoring Month, as we celebrate the power of mentoring relationships, let’s also honor the complexity mentors carry. Experiences matter. Wisdom matters. With the right framework, mentors can bring both into the room without losing themselves or overwhelming the person they’re there to serve.

Matt Sandoval is CEO of Phoenix-based nonprofit Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.