Mental Health Awareness and ANTI-Bullying

A few years ago, I was fortunate to be co-speaker at the UNDPI Tuesday's Youth-Led Chat Series to speak on "Bullying: Complicit Silence in the Face of Indignity". In honor of May being #mentalhealth awareness month, I wanted to continue that discussion and share my story and experience on mental health and bullying. 

It is my hope that young girls and young boys who struggle with low self-esteem, insecurities, and/or have been bullied or are bullies themselves, read this and see how our words and actions can be unkind to others, even if it was in jest. Mental health and bullying affect us all, this can be in the classroom, at work, and even within our families and siblings. 

It is my intention to spark a conversation which can be taken into the inner circles of the home with the support of a person's family, friends, and colleagues in their respective spaces and change the outcomes into a kinder one, because we CAN change how we treat others and we CAN choose not to be bystanders but "upstanders" when we see others being bullied whether that is physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and the more popular one amongst teenagers, cyberbullying. It is critical to understand that a reaction will not cause a solution. We need to be pro-active and less re-active. Talk to your children, observe them, listen to them, support them. Teach them that kindness matters.

I was an incredibly shy and introverted kid and was quite often bullied during my middle and high school years. I remember one time in middle school during lunch, I had a classmate come up to me and belched in my face and spat in my lunch tray. I remember classmates crushing biscuits and stuffing the crumbs into my new white binder, and I remember the girls gossiping about the way I dressed because I didn't have the newest brand name shoes, bags, polished nails, make-up, and clothing (I was never into it, I am still not) because I wore what my parents could afford, as we had at the time, recently migrated to the U.S. I remember crying when I got home from school in the bathroom and in retrospect saw how a large chunk of my self-esteem and confidence dropped from such an experience.

As I found my way in women's support groups, meditation, creative writing, art, yoga, and traveling, I found healing through these forms of therapy. I started to evolve in my thinking and while the memories left emotional scars, they no longer controlled me. I found my little nerdy introverted self had a fiery voice. My negative thinking and speaking about myself and fearing my own greatness was now my conscious CHOICE to flip into a positive one. I would like to share that I did meet with my bullies further along and I was able to see them for where there are in their own personal journeys and while it did give me personal satisfaction that I could whoop their butts academically, I no longer ran away from them, I wanted to talk to them and help them. I had taken back my power and control. If my sharing resonates with you, I hope you know that "YOU, yes you, are beautiful, smart, and confident, too." #LetsBeKind