Mentoring

Today I started meeting with a teenage mom to help her work on getting established on her own two feet again. She's currently living with her Aunt who has done a lot to help her. Today I heard her story about how she got to this place in life, and in a lot of ways, it's a sad story. A story of rejection, pain, hurt, neglect, and searching for love and acceptance. A story full of naive and uniformed decisions. A story of survival. It's good for me to hear the heart of a teenage mom, because I often times find myself judging their choices, but in a lot of ways, her parents fell short and contributed to this outcome. It gave me a lot of compassion and sympathy for her, she's still a child looking for love.

The exciting thing is that as I talked to her I told her I wanted to teach her ways to become independent and to be able to provide for herself and her baby. She loved that idea and is excited about having some tools to help her get out on her own. I was really honest with her though about how difficult it'll be and told her it's going to take a lot of work on her part. I'm happy I can help her though and hopefully be someone who makes a positive difference in her life. Next week, we're going to work on getting her set up on a budget so she'll be able to start paying for her baby's needs.

I guess I'll always be a teacher. The teacher in me wants everyone else to know what I've learned. I guess that's why the blog too. If I'm learning something new and helpful, I figure others will benefit from the same information. So, this time with this young mom is much like a teaching and learning experience for me. I hope some of the tools that I'm working on right now will be the beginning of positive tools for her and eventually a great future for her and her little girl.