LIFE-TRANSFORMING THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM MEN

This is the first of a series of pieces I'll post on this topic over the next week or so. I hope you enjoy them. I look forward to hearing your feedback...


Have you ever thought about the people from whom you learned the most in your life? And, if so, were most of your greatest teachers women or men? As I look back on my 57 years on the planet, the list of males who taught me life-transforming lessons is definitely longer than the list of females.

Maybe this is because we don’t think of our fellow women as teachers (even though the majority of grade-school instructors for Baby Boomers like me were females). In my case, I think I tend to take for granted the words of wisdom imparted by my mom, girlfriends, sisters, and female coworkers, colleagues, professors, and bosses because women tend to share these types of conversations amongst themselves all the time. We’re always learning valuable little tidbits from each other, but, as I’m writing this, not many things I’ve learned from women stand out as earth-shatteringly profound.

When it comes to men, however, I’ve noticed that many of the lessons I learned from them DO stand out and have made a deep impression. Interestingly, most of what they taught me was not from their words but, rather, from their actions, role-modeling, the experiences I shared with them, the support they gave me, or the outcomes of the interactions I had with them.

IN MY YOUTH…
My brother Tony: In the early years, I think I learned the most from my brother Tony. He was 6½ years younger than me, so I was asked to play the role of “Mommy’s helper” for many years. From that experience, I learned not just the logistics of caretaking but the purity of love. I felt for him like most mothers feel about their children: protective, deeply connected, and very caring. But, because he looked up to me as his oldest sibling, I also learned what it felt like to be admired and respected.

Tony and I had a really special relationship based on laughing at the same goofy TV shows, a love of the outdoors, a sarcastic way of bantering back and forth and teasing each other, and an ability to call each other on the carpet for our idiosyncracies. We even wrote funny letters to each other when he was in college in the mid-70s. And he walked me down the aisle when I married the first time in 1979 (since my dad had died in 1975)—a bittersweet memory, since Tony himself died in a head-on car collision just 6 months later when he was barely 20.

Shortly after that, I learned another valuable lesson from Tony, when a teddy bear he had given me seemed to speak my name in his voice one rainy night while I sat reading in bed. The lesson: love is eternal; the soul lives on. Those who loved you will always be with you, even after passing away from the earth. Later, with the help of a medium, I got other messages from Tony—that he was alright, at peace, and wanted to help me any way he could. His enduring love—and just knowing he was there for me whenever I needed him—sustained me through many rough times in life after that (especially as I struggled during and after my separation). And I truly believe my prayers to Tony and my Dad (my angels on “the other side”) helped bring my second husband Jim into my life at age 50, after many frustrating years of post-divorce dating.