I'm the least confrontational person.

I will run away from it.

I will avoid it at all costs.

It just makes me feel so uncomfortable.

And a lot of that was when I was younger when people would stare at me or say something

or whisper about me, and I would either hide behind my parents or whoever I was with or

I would see it and just hope no one else heard it so we could just keep walking and not acknowledge

it and just ignore it.

And all of that was sort of unknowingly me building up this resentment towards strangers

no matter what age they were, because I would think “they're being so mean.”

And I would just hold that with me without realizing it.

And even if it was like when adults would do it and I would catch them, and I was this

kid looking at an adult who's saying something about me, the anger that I would get so instantly

was just like, “What is wrong with you?

Look, why – you're an adult, I'm a little kid.

I didn't do anything to you.”

And my parents – the way that my parents handled every situation was so incredible.

I mean, when you're a parent, I know that – well, I'm not – my kids are fur babies,

so I don't know like when…

Mine too.

… human baby, but I will do anything to protect them.

And I'm – I know for a fact that my parents always wanted to do the same thing for me.

But instead of making the other person feel bad or to call them out, they would go up

to them and say, “Hey, that's my daughter, Lizzie, would you like to tell her hi?”

And even though that was so nice, I would hate it because I feel like that was just

drawing more attention to me.

But they continued doing that as I got older.

I never, ever, ever once saw them go up and be mean to somebody else, even though I knew

deep down that's the road they probably wanted to take.

Sure.

But to be able to watch that, and then me getting older and realizing that whenever

you see a situation where there's a bully and a victim, we automatically just tend to

the victim, and the bully is just sitting there like they should be ashamed and we should

yell at them and put them in the corner and leave them there.

But how can we help this victim and how can we love them, make them feel better?

There's two parties in this situation, and the only way that we will be able to continue

to make a difference or to be able to really teach others a lesson is to realize that there

is a bully and there's a victim.

That doesn't mean one is innocent and one is not.

It means there's two people who need our help in different ways.

And that's really, really, really important to also remember that hurt people hurt people.

So if this bully is going through something at home or in school and they don't have the

tools or the resources to say, “I'm hurting someone else but I'm not doing it to hurt

them.

I'm doing it because I'm hurting.

So how can I channel that in another way?”

All they see is “I'm hurting, now let me hurt someone else.”

So it's really, really important for us to be able to say there are two people in

a situation.

How can we help both of them and say let's take a step back and realize what's going

on?

How can we look at the bigger picture and how can we hope, help both of you in the same

way?

It's such a big, elevated, amazing viewpoint that feels to me in my heart like the true

path to healing.