Know Your Dignity.

Every year as part of the Religion courses at my school, for 3 days we have speakers come into our classes to do presentations and host discussions as part of a workshop called, "Know Your Dignity."  I look foreword to it every year because it gives us a chance to really reflect as who we are as human beings, and what our purpose is here on our lovely planet.

Today was the last day of the workshop for my World Religion 30 class, and we were split up into two groups, boys in one room with a guy named Mike from our church, and girls in the other with one of the youth coordinators, Gillian.  

In our group, we went through and discussed this blog post by Kate Connor called, "10 Things I Want To Tell Teenage Girls." And, number 10 really stuck with me, and I wanted to share it with everyone reading my blog.

10.  You are beautiful.  You are enough.  The world we live in is twisted and broken and for your entire life you will be subjected to all kinds of lies that tell you that you are not enough. 

You are not thin enough.  You are not tan enough.  You are not smooth, soft, shiny, firm, tight, fit, silky, blonde, hairless enough.  Your teeth are not white enough.  Your legs are not long enough.  Your clothes are not stylish enough.  You are not educated enough.  You don’t have enough experience.  You are not creative enough.

There is a beauty industry, a fashion industry, a television industry: and all of these have unique ways of communicating to bright young women: you are not beautiful, sexy, smart or valuable enough.

You must have the clarity and common sense to know that none of that is true. None of it.

You were created for a purpose, exactly so.  You have innate value.  You are loved more than you could ever comprehend; it is mind-boggling how much you are adored.  There has never been, and there will never be another you.  Therefore, you have unique thoughts to offer the world.  They are only yours, and we all lose out if you are too fearful to share them.

You are beautiful.  You are valuable.  You are enough.

This message is extremely powerful.  Every day, all over the world there are so many people that suffer from depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem because they feel that they are not good enough to live the lives that everyone else is living.  I know that I've found myself saying that I'm not good enough to do what I want, and it takes a lot to get yourself out of that funk.  Positive self-talk is so important.

For anyone that's interested, here's the rest of that post:

http://kateelizabethconner.com/ten-things-i-want-to-tell-teenage-girls/

And, there's another one called "Ten Things I Want To Tell Teenage Boys" if you want to check that one out too.

http://kateelizabethconner.com/dear-boys/

Bullying

Pink Shirt day was this week, to spread awareness of bullying.  This tradition started in Nova Scotia when a high school boy was picked on by his peers for wearing a pink shirt.  The next day, some of the football players at his school responded by wearing the same pink shirt the next day.  Cool right?

I've had my fair share of experience with bullying.  In grade 6, I starting getting picked on for being a 'Teachers Pet' for staying after school was done to help clean the white boards.  It seems silly to me now, but I know that back then it really hurt me.  In grade 8, I had a group of kids that I thought were my really good friends make a facebook group about me, posting things about me that weren't true, and trying to make me seem, literally, like a 'devil'.

Last year in grade 10, I was bullied even worse by a group of guys that were in my gym/science class.  They liked to mock me in the hallways and throw things at me as I walked by.  In class, they would single me out, and make extremely inappropriate comments towards me in front of my peers and teachers.  The disappointing part was, my teachers knew it was going on, and didn't do anything to stop it from happening; it started getting so bad, that I didn't want to wake up to go to school in the morning, and I would make any excuse I could think of to get out of class for extended periods of time.  But, I didn't retaliate.  I could have easily sat back and ridiculed them as hard as they ridiculed me; and there were times that I made that choice to say something back that I knew was wrong.  I didn't reach out for someone to put an end to it until these guys added me to their conversation on facebook so that I could read their conversation that completely tore me apart.

Why am I posting this on my blog?  It's not to try and gain sympathy points from everyone; yeah, this stuff was pretty bad, and I felt sorry for myself at the time, but I AM a stronger person because of what these kids did to me.  I realize that now, but there are unfortunately some individuals that are bullied 10x worse than I every have been, and they most likely will never reach out for help.  

As an instructor of the kids classes, I believe that it is important to make my story public so that maybe my students can some day read it and learn from it.  And maybe, someone will see that they can push through and find a safe-haven from bullying.  

Bullying hurts; and believe it or not, we have all been the 'big bully on the playground' at one point in our lives.  Bullying hurts, but there IS help out there to make it stop.