Alexi Pappas on Asking for Help
Discover "The Mentor Buffet"
Hey There, Soul Strivers!
This week on the Soul Boom podcast, we're thrilled to welcome the extraordinarily dynamic Alexi Pappas — renowned olympian, filmmaker, writer and now podcaster!
After you check out this week’s Soul Boom podcast, make sure to check out the premiere episode for Alexi’s new podcast, Mentor Buffet. The name ‘Mentor Buffet’ come’s from a chapter in her memoir Bravey—and fittingly, in today's edition of the Soul Boom Dispatch, we share that chapter.
In it, Alexi reflects on how seeking out the guidance of strong, confident women—on her own terms—shaped her path. Whether it's learning life lessons from friends' moms or training alongside an Olympic medalist, Alexi shows us that guidance and the next right step can come from all corners of life.
If there have been mentors that have impacted your life, we’d love to hear about them in the comments!
Till next time,
The Soul Boom Team
THE MENTOR BUFFET
Excerpt from Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas
By Alexi Pappas
I always appreciate when women I admire let me close to them. I never liked female mentorship when it was forced on me, as it was in Girl Scouts, but I loved it when I could seek it out on my own terms.
The first female mentors I felt drawn to were my best friends’ moms. Until the day I left for college I had a stable of moms in my orbit, inviting me over for dinner or bringing me to nail salons or chaperoning me at concerts. I had a special relationship with these moms—if a friend and her mom were arguing about how we weren’t allowed to leave the house to walk around our small city after dark, the mom would always turn to me, as if performing an aside in a play, and smile, shrug her shoulders, and say, “That’s just how it is! I know, I know, I’m a mean old mom.”
As a non-mommed kid, I could never be fully folded into the mother-daughter dynamic. I existed somewhere outside of that food chain. I was not a daughter with a mother of her own waiting at home (moms seem to generally know not to encroach on each other’s territory) nor was I an adult peer. I was an exciting project. This was very attractive to moms, and it was a role I was glad to fill—because it came with benefits. I was allowed to be present with friends and their moms in moments when an outsider might not normally be included, like going to the pool and not being asked to leave the bathroom stall when it was the mom’s turn to change. This is how I was introduced to the adult vagina. I remember all the mom-vaginas I ever saw because it felt like seeing a sea otter in San Francisco Bay: not impossible but definitely not an everyday occurrence. It was thrilling to catch a glimpse of what I might expect from my own body one day. This wasn’t something I could ask of anyone. It had to be offered. I am very grateful for the moms who performed subtle acts of unveiling like this for me.
I also absorbed tremendous amounts of knowledge and wisdom from women I didn’t know at all, whom I’d observe in brief moments throughout my everyday life: at the grocery store, or in a dentist’s waiting room, or in a public restroom while the lady next to me examined her face in the mirror. I think about this now whenever I catch a little girl staring at me in a public bathroom or in line at the store or across an airport terminal waiting area. I wonder how much of an impact I might be making without my knowing it. As a child, I was a highly adept observer, logging every small detail in just a few seconds. With each new tidbit of womanly knowledge I gleaned, the world of the feminine widened a bit.
In middle school my friend Kati’s mom often invited me over for dinner after school because she knew my dad worked late, and by then I was too old for au pairs but too young to be responsible for meals every night after school, practice, and homework. I probably ate dinner with Kati’s family twice a week. Two family dinners per week is an above-average amount to be eating at your friend’s house, but it was either go to Kati’s where there was a thoughtfully prepared meal or be at home alone. My dad often worked well past the dinner hour and I’d be left to cook for myself. I knew he was doing the best he could, and he cooked great meals when he was able, but I have always loved good food and I’ve never been too proud to seek it out. I think Kati’s mom invited me over not just for my own well-being but also because I genuinely loved the food she fed me and wasn’t shy about expressing my gratitude. With each dish she placed before me, my excitement and awe were palpable. I would ask her, “What is this? How did you make this?” Every week she prepared things I’d never heard of before—osso buco, paella, and other dishes that perhaps were ordinary to her but that I thought were magnificent. She was always more than willing to take the time to answer my questions, like how often she went grocery shopping and how long to boil oatmeal and whether butter should be kept in the fridge or not. I learned that having genuine curiosity and gratitude was the best way to start a conversation with someone I hoped to learn something from.
I’d always ask Kati if we could do our homework at the kitchen table instead of upstairs in her bedroom. The view and the smells in the kitchen were wonderfully distracting, and I think Kati’s mom knew I was watching her. I felt reassured by her presence. I pretended she was cooking especially for me as she layered lasagna and peeled cucumbers, and this made me feel loved in a way that I craved as much as I craved that lasagna. I imagined she laid the pasta sheets down atop the tomato sauce in the same way that she tucked her kids into bed at night. Why focus on algebra, which has been around forever and isn’t going anywhere, when you can absorb something much more fleeting and rare like the sight of a mom making your dinner? I was prepped from very early in life to understand that some things last and some things do not. I always got seconds and thirds at Kati’s house and I even took home leftovers. All I wanted to do was absorb more of that lasagna and more of that mom.
I asked Kati’s mom to help me understand how I could become a good cook like her. Kati didn’t need this knowledge yet, but I needed it now, since I was cooking dinner for myself a couple of times a week. I needed to understand how to love myself like Kati’s mom loved her family. Food is a good way to show love to yourself. The meal I am most proud of was from a recipe Kati’s mom shared with me. It is a beef pot roast that cooks itself during the day while you’re not even home to watch it. Here is how you make it: Place a whole pot roast in the oven in the morning before school with onions and carrots and any spices you like, and then surround it with ice so that it keeps cool throughout the day. Then set the oven timer to turn on around the time that you finish school and the meal cooks while you’re at soccer practice. The best feeling in the world is when you get back from soccer that evening and dinner is ready! I was so proud the first time I made that pot roast and arrived home to find my perfect treasure in the oven after a full day of anticipation. As I ate, I decided that I liked asking moms for advice and that I’d do it more often. In high school, I asked Kati’s mom to help me sew my sophomore Winter Ball dress out of found fabric. She said yes without hesitation. It didn’t feel dumb to ask for help, and in fact, I learned that it felt better to ask for help than to wait until someone noticed I needed it.
Asking for help is a superpower anyone can have but only some people use. It is brave to ask for help. Asking for help is the first step toward finding a mentor. Mentors can help us change our lives if we let them.
When I went to college, I was drawn to confident women who were older and more experienced than me, women I admired and wanted to emulate. I had already developed the muscle that knows how to seek out mentors, so it was natural for me to transition from getting advice from my friends’ moms to seeking out guidance from my female professors.
I attached myself to one professor in particular, Cynthia Huntington, who was my honors poetry thesis adviser in my senior year. The first thing I asked her was what I needed to do to become a better writer. From my experiences with friends’ moms, I had learned that the best way to get a potential mentor to take you under her wing is to ask for advice and to be specific with your questions, and also to approach the conversation with an air of gratitude and genuine curiosity.
Cynthia told me, quite plainly, that I needed to read a lot more and write a lot more. I loved words, and I needed to consume and create a lot more of them. She taught me how to make writing my craft, just like running was, which meant it would take focus and time and dedication. Writing, like running, isn’t an innate skill that we’re born with—it’s a discipline we can learn and develop. Cynthia told me that if I wrote fifteen poems in a day and just one of them was good, then it was a productive day. She recommended that I write in three- to six-hour chunks of uninterrupted time, not just half an hour here and there. She taught me how to commit to something challenging with assurance. I wanted to be a good writer—but more than that, I wanted to be like Cynthia. She carried herself with confidence. She watched people with curiosity but never jealousy. She liked herself. She made me believe I had control over my own destiny. If I could work toward becoming a better writer by becoming a student of writing, then I could also become the best me by becoming a student of myself.
Cynthia invited me to her house more than once, but the most memorable time was on my twenty-first birthday. I never turned down her invitations and I never said no to a home-cooked meal. She lived forty-five minutes from campus, deep in the woods of Vermont. I didn’t have a car, so she decided that this dinner would be a sleepover. When I was younger I imagined that college would be like this—invitations to professors’ homes and dinner parties—and I was so surprised to see it actually unfolding. I often feel like this when something special happens.
At first I wonder how and why this special thing is happening, then, as I have learned, the answer is because I am a lucky person and I try to be the kind of person lucky things happen to. You have to believe you are deserving of good surprises in life. You set yourself up for it. You walk with your eyes open enough to catch the eye of the person who will invite you in. Maybe they won’t but maybe they will. Luck can be cultivated.
Cynthia lived alone with her big dog, Sugar, a white husky whom she sometimes brought to class. Cynthia and Sugar would walk in the Vermont woods every morning while Cynthia foraged for wild mushrooms. For my birthday dinner we ate steak with mushrooms cooked in bacon fat. Sugar sat under the table and gnawed on the extra fat. Cynthia’s floors were hardwood painted poppy blue. I’d never seen anyone paint color over hardwood floors before. She told me that the plain wood bored her.
At the time, I was Cynthia’s most devoted poetry student and I was planning on pursuing a graduate degree in poetry. I had recently gotten the news that I had been awarded a full scholarship to three of the top MFA programs in the country, a dream come true for any aspiring poet. At the same time, I was also in touch with coaches from the University of Oregon, who were offering me a spot on their legendary cross-country team to run as a fifth-year super-senior. This offer was by no means a guarantee of an Olympic future, but it was definitely an opportunity to contribute to an NCAA championship-winning team and also explore where my running could take me—many great pro runners had come out of the UO program. I asked Cynthia for advice about which path I should take. Without missing a beat, she looked straight at me and told me I should use my body as best I can while it’s still at my disposal.
I was in shock. I pushed back—surely, she couldn’t be serious? I expected a creative mentor to nudge me toward the arts. But instead, Cynthia smiled and said, “Alexi, I think you should go all in and pursue running. You can write the rest of your life.” When she smiles, it is in a way that makes you realize how little you truly know about her. She was battling the onset of MS, rendering her whole body very frail. You could tell when you looked at her that she’d led a wild life, and now her body, which had done so much living, was trying and failing to stand its ground against this disease. I felt sad for how imbalanced the picture was: me all potential at the beginning of my adult journey, she nearing the end of hers.
So when Cynthia advised me to accept UO’s offer, I listened. This conversation was about more than what classes I might take or what kind of boy I might date; we were making decisions about my future. And I could feel that she was giving me advice from a place of deep, true understanding. She knew better than I did not only that this athletic opportunity was rare and fleeting but also that it would complement my creative career. Even if they seem totally unrelated, becoming great in one discipline will always help in another. It is a gift to receive advice from someone who is fully grounded in themselves like this, and it was Cynthia’s wisdom that gave me the courage to turn down my MFA scholarships and commit to an uncertain path toward the Olympics. For dessert Cynthia made me a birthday cake topped with a generous shelf of buttercream frosting. It was the best cake I’ve ever tasted because I knew she had made it just for me. I haven’t had many homemade birthday cakes, so this meant a lot.
For breakfast we ate bacon and eggs cooked in bacon fat. I drank coffee from one of Cynthia’s mugs, which was my favorite shade of matte red, and she told me to keep it. When I got back to campus, the sleepover felt like one of those experiences that must have happened to someone else. But I know it happened because I still have Cynthia’s mug to prove it. It is my writing mug.
I realize that the stories in this chapter revolve around food, sewing, and beauty—but it was never the actual act of baking a cake or cooking a meal or sewing a dress that affected me, it was the confidence these women brought to their actions, confidence that was so strong and deep that I couldn’t help but absorb some of it myself.
A good mentor is a living example of the type of person you’d like to be, and you can learn from them simply by being in their vicinity and paying attention. And the older I got, the more my hunger for mentors grew. I was always on the lookout.
The summer after college, I spent several weeks in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with my friend Abbey’s aunt Mary and Mary’s partner, Marion. Mary is a clothing designer and Marion is a painter and they let me fold in with their life. They woke me up at six o’clock and took me swimming naked in the ocean where we’d see famous writers standing on their decks writing their first pages of the day. Marion and Auntie Mary were in their sixties and had the vibrancy of teenagers. I felt lucky to be allowed into their space and I was happy to make their routines my own. I sat at their kitchen table like a kid after school, eating blueberries and listening to them talk about their artist life and their sugarless diet and their outdoor shower. They wanted to hear about my silly little movie, Tracktown, which at the time was just an idea. But the way they asked me about it made it seem like it could be real, like my idea wasn’t silly and that I should take myself seriously. They never told me this directly— they didn’t have to.
When I moved to Eugene, Oregon, to start my year at UO, I continued to consciously put myself in spaces with people I admired. To me, it was more important to be around the right people than anything else. During my time in Oregon I soaked up everything I could from my teammates, coaches, and the environment of a world-class athletic school. I was nervous to be competing in such a serious environment, which felt like a different world than Dartmouth running, but then before the NCAA Cross Country Championships in the fall the team captain pulled me aside and told me that I could do it. I ran an incredible race and we won that championship. I learned that I thrive when I’m around people who believe in themselves and in me.
After my fifth year at UO, I began life as an Olympic hopeful. I often took extended training trips to Mammoth Lakes, California, just to be closer to my biggest athletic role model, Deena Kastor, an Olympic bronze medalist and the American record holder for the marathon. I had always admired Deena from afar, but when she and her husband, Andrew, invited me to visit and train with the Mammoth Track Club, their training group, I leapt at the opportunity. When a woman you admire that much gives you the chance to get close to her, you take it.
I got nervous for every single long run and workout that I did with Deena, and there was one particular two-hour run that felt especially daunting. It was the longest run I’d ever done, and a long run is a hard thing to fake. The distance and pace were ambitious, but I didn’t want to drop out early; I wanted to be alongside Deena for as long as possible. Sure enough, about an hour and a half into the run, I sensed the hurt coming on. My legs felt like two cylinders of canned cranberry sauce, splatting just a bit more with each step. If I had been alone, I would have slowed down. But that wasn’t an option here. So I shifted my attention away from my own pain and instead focused on Deena. Specifically, I focused on her breath, which was calm compared to mine. I pretended she was breathing for both of us. She sensed my pain and distracted me by pointing out a passing hawk and trying to guess where it came from and where it was heading. I held on to our pace for the sake of hearing the rest of Deena’s hawk fable. No one had told me spontaneous stories like this when I was a child, and I relished it deep in the youngest place in my heart.
Deena made me feel like a more capable athlete and she also made me feel like a more capable person. She pushed me from a place of magnanimous love. To be pushed by someone who truly believes in you is a huge gift. It is like they’re pushing you and pulling you at the same time. It is a love that comes from a place of wanting you to be there with them.
It is not always easy to put yourself in the same spaces as the mentors you look up to. Sometimes I will go through Herculean efforts to put myself near a particularly tantalizing mentor.
Take Rachel Dratch, who played my mother in my first movie, Tracktown. Rachel and I both went to Dartmouth and were even in the same college improv group, years apart. I also studied comedy at Second City just like she did. Despite these connections, Rachel was not immediately accessible to me. I had met her once, when she came to do a book signing at the Dartmouth bookstore, but I was among a crowd of other students who were also eager to meet her.
When my now-husband, Jeremy Teicher, and I wrote Tracktown, we wrote a role for Rachel with the hope that we might be able to ask her to consider being in our movie. We were able to get a copy of the script to Rachel through a connection in the Dartmouth running community. Several weeks passed, and then Rachel reached out to me one night asking if we could meet for coffee the next day in New York City if I was in town. I immediately responded with the white lie that yes, I was around, and I’d love to meet. In reality I was at a race in Boston— but as soon as I finished competing, I skipped my flight back to Oregon and hitched a ride with a runner I met that night at the race to get me to the city the next morning. We drove through the night together and got to NYC just in time. I stayed up all night and it was so worth it. I think if Rachel had known what I went through to make it to our meeting, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking me to meet—but I didn’t want any logistical obstacles in the way of actually getting to spend time with this woman I so admired. Rachel was my dream movie-mom.
Knowing I may never be in the same room as people has never stopped me from making them into mentors. I’ve learned how to look up to women I admire from afar, which takes the same kind of imagination my little-girl self used when I pretended someone else’s mom was mine. For instance, even though I’ve never met Melissa Clark, I feel like I’ve drawn as much comfort from watching her New York Times food videos as I did from watching Kati’s mom cook. When I watch Melissa’s videos I pretend she is my mom telling me how to make a crumble—joking that it doesn’t really matter if the strawberries are chopped perfectly because people don’t like perfect! If you’re feeling brave, add mint! She taught me that it is better to be brave, not perfect. With Melissa, I always try to listen to what she’s actually saying beneath the recipe itself. What she means when she says she is going to save the crisp edges of the casserole for herself is that she values herself enough to give herself the best part of her creation. She is kind to herself first.
Britney Spears is another example: she taught me to unapologetically commit to my goals after I read in a magazine that as a child she used to take over the family bathroom to sing into her hairbrush because she knew she was destined to be a singer when she grew up. She took her dreams seriously and I latched on to that idea like a barnacle.
And there were others. I listened to the audio edition of Tina Fey’s book Bossypants twice in one week because when I found out that she is Greek like me, I decided that she could be my mentor, too. When she talks about the way she looks, I thought, that’s the way that I look, and that made me feel more capable of becoming someone like her.
When I was little other people believed that I lacked something because of my mother’s death. I can never know for sure exactly what I missed out on. But what I do know is that her death forced me to seek out female mentorship on my own terms, and the mother-shaped hole in my heart has now been filled by wonderful women of my choosing. My greatest loss has become my greatest gift: I’ve learned that the whole world and all its inhabitants are there for me to observe, absorb, and imitate. I will never outgrow or be too proud for mentors.
Even though my mother’s experiences are forever closed to me, the rest of the world is wide open. Like a buffet, I want all the shrimp, all the pasta, and all the chocolate fondue. I don’t have the one person; I have every person. I can pick and choose bites of anything. My selections might not all make sense on the plate together, but I crafted this meal; it is mine, and I love it.
Excerpt from Bravey by Alexi Pappas. Alexi Pappas is an Olympian, filmmaker, and author celebrated for her work exploring the intersection of mental health, athleticism, and creativity. Alexi reveals how we can all overcome hardship, befriend pain, and seize the day. Find her on Instagram: @alexipappas.
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