What is a mentor? It is someone you can go to for guidance, understanding and compassion. It is someone you can talk to, someone you can trust and who will keep your secrets (unless they legally must tell as in sexual abuse), and it must be someone who will understand and not condemn you if you have made a mistake.

"I have plenty of friends I can talk to," you may be saying to yourself. Friends are wonderful, but a mentor needs to be someone older with a little more life experience under their belt. Some of your friends may have made the same mistakes you have and didn't really know what to do either. Or some of them may have no clue as to how you feel because it hasn't happened to them. Either way, someone older can give you valuable advise.

Who can a mentor be then? Guidance counselors, teachers, coaches, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, ministers, youth counselors, and of course, parents. I list parents last only because your problem may be your relationship with them. If that's the case, it is difficult to open up about them to them.

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