Aurora's Blog

At first, I wasn’t going to say “female” because she’s a great role model in general.

But, then I thought about how truly necessary and wonderful it is to have these incredibly strong female  models in a still male-dominated (sorry, but its true) world. And I thought about how thankful I am that I  have  my personal, real-life (well, real in my life) Hillary Clinton (who is real, but I’ve never interacted with her).

My high school theater teacher – let’s call her B – is this amazing, incredibly strong woman/mentor/role model who’s been very much in my life for many years now.

I went to see B in a reading on Wednesday, and she was phenomenal.

There are a number of things I adore about her. One story that I think illustrates how much we all adore her:

I was out to dinner with a friend of mine from high school. And I said, “You know what’s great about B?” And he gave me this look like, “Are you kidding me? You know you’re gonna have to be a little more specific, right?”

We burst into laughter, saying there were so many things we’d have to sit around for 4 days of non-stop talking ’til we even got close to exhausting all of the wonderful things about her.

But, I’m gonna pick out a couple of things for this entry.

For one: She’s incredibly confident. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen doubt in her eyes. She carries herself in a way I hope to carry myself someday. I really don’t know how to elaborate other than to say she’s wonderfully confident.

Two: Related to confidence – she’s been teaching for 40 years. So, she’s older than some people. I don’t deal with aging well. I know a lot of people who don’t deal with aging well.

(An interesting idea from Sarah Silverman in Comedians In Cars Drinking Coffee was that some of these women from the Real Housewives shows are so concerned with youth and just trying to look/be as youthful as possible that they’re not giving their daughters any reason to get excited about aging.

Of course, she said it better than I am, but I found it to be an interesting thought…)

So, my teacher – Again, she just seems very confident in her skin. She didn’t run out and get a bunch of Botox (like you know I’m gonna do). She never thinks she’s too old for anything. She is the kind of woman who makes me believe good things can come with age.

Oh boy, I could list a million more things.

But, here is just one more wonderful thing about her. She’s incredibly strong while being incredibly supportive.

I feel like as a woman, if I’ve ever had to wonder, “What’s the right way to walk that line of being incredibly strong so that no person ever walks over you and you are always respected, but so human and caring that everyone feels uplifted/supported by you and generally better when you’re around?” – B is that line.

She does it perfectly.

I don’t know how she does it. But I would never let her down (or at least I will always strive not to). I will always work to my fullest potential for her. Yet, I’m never afraid of her. (Okay, maybe just a little scared of her – but in a totally acceptable way).