“I always felt like I was a freak when I was growing up and that there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t fit in anywhere.”
“In eighth grade, I weighed 175 pounds and my nose was the size of a softball. Once, I was sitting at lunch and got surrounded by a bunch of kids who let me have it about how ugly I was – my unibrow, the fat rolling over my jeans. I was pure hell. My mom had to pull me out and put me in another school.”
“There is no greater healer than laughter.”
“I don’t like to make fun of people, it’s a form of bullying. I’ve been the butt of jokes before, a punch line, and that just gave me more fuel to say I’ll never do it.”
“I used to be really insecure about my curls. In school, a lot of girls had really straight hair and they would be like, ‘Why does your hair look like that way? It’s so frizzy.’ I felt really different and awkward about it, so I went through a phase of straightening my hair every single day.”
“I always try to remind people of their beauty and their good qualities. People do love you and people do care, and no bully is worth taking over you life.”
“I believed wrongly that if I could just be perfect he, my father, would love me enough to not have a drink. At night when alcohol made my Dad especially violent, we would all get hurt physically or emotionally. The booze made him act viciously and say terrible things; “You’re stupid, hopeless, worthless, you’re nothing, you’re a big zero.” Sadly, his rants became my reality. I believed I was what he said.”
“Know yourself, and look at the people who love you, like your family. You know you are not what the bully says. Don’t change”
