There is a version of mentorship that lives on conference panels. It is warm, brief and photographs well. Then there is the version that happens on a Tuesday evening when a woman rereads someone else's draft for the third time because the argument still is not landing.
The second version is the one that changes careers. It costs hours that nobody logs and patience that nobody applauds. It asks the mentor to be honest at exactly the moment when being kind would be easier.
Mentorship is not advice delivered from above. It is attention given repeatedly, at cost.
For the woman being mentored, the cost is different but real. It requires showing your unfinished work, naming what you do not know, and returning after feedback that stung. Most people quit at that point and call it a scheduling problem.
At PAW, we structure mentorship in circles rather than pairs, because a circle distributes that cost and multiplies the perspective. A woman brings a live problem, three others have already solved a version of it, and the conversation moves from encouragement to specifics inside ten minutes.
If you are considering stepping into this, understand what you are agreeing to. Then agree to it anyway. The women who shaped your path paid the same price.