Confidentiality and confidence

                            

Yesterday I was at the Brooklyn office and a 15 year old girl walked in. I sat with her in one of our rooms and start listening to her story.  What I like the most about this internship is the chance I get of speaking with a wide range of different people: teenagers, young adults, even women in their late forties (I once had a 50 year old one, but that's another story) and their boyfriends, parents or friends. 

But obviously, these stories have a condition: I can't just go and start telling everybody that Miss So and So is pregnant and looking for housing; so the first thing I told them is that what they are telling me is confidential and I would never share their personal information such as name address or phone with anybody. Sometimes they allow me to write down their initials for the posts in this blog, so that's what I'm doing now. 

This girls was S, and although her test was negative she was really thankful for all the information that I told her about the different procedures of abortion, depending on how far the woman is, we were also discussing the risks and consequences for quite a long time. Then she asked me a couple of questions about birth control and was really surprised when she found out that the pill has plenty of side effects and that condoms don't protect you from all the STD's. 

To sum up, what I love about this work that I'm doing here in New York is that I have the chance of reaching plenty of people and inform them of things that would help them to make an aware decision; and that they are calm and can speak up because they know that I would listen and understand.