There is no age limit for bullies


Yesterday was “Stand4Change” day, a pun on the May 4 – a day against bullying. People at work were joking if this will be a day every fourth of the month. In all honesty, I don’t think that would be a bad idea to make it a monthly event. To tell you the truth, I think it would be great to be a DAILY event.

Yesterday over 1.3 million students in over 2,100 schools participated in this event. You don't know how excited this makes me. To me, the best result of these pushes against bullying, the speakers that come to school, etc. is to make bullying the "uncool" option. I feel like that's one of the reason that kids bully -- to feel like they're cool or better than others. I feel like this push against bullying within the last few months that I have seen grow into a movement shows kids that it's the opposite of "cool" to bully.

I have personally seen the epidemic bullying has grown into, and I'm hoping that this will counteract the epidemic. And it makes me feel so hopeful. To tell you the truth, when I heard about the epidemic bullying has become, I seriously considered not having children ever. I would not want to bring someone into the world, someone who I love more than life itself, with the extreme possibility that he or she could be tortured everyday at school. With that possibility in mind, I just couldn't morally do that.

But maybe, just maybe, that will change.

I think this needs to be a pledge everyone takes, no matter their age, not to bully. No one deserves to be bullied. And sometimes, bullying doesn't end in high school. Many bullies carry this into adulthood, into colleges, into workplaces and into their relationships and marriages.

Afterall, why is there a staggering amount of women (one in four, to be exact) who has experienced domestic abuse in her lifetime? I can almost guarantee you that these "men" (more like boys) were once bullies in their school years.

I encourage everyone, no matter who you are, to sign this petition on Stand 4 Change's website.

This is the pledge:
I PLEDGE:
  1. To SPEAK up when I see my friends or students being bullied. I will let my friends, my family and my teacher know bullying is wrong.
  2. To STAND up for my friends and other students who are being bullied, and not be a bystander.
  3. To DEFEAT THE LABEL by not calling names, spreading rumors or using mean or hurtful language in school or on the internet.

Monica's goal is to raise awareness about suicide and help erase the stigma associated with mental illness. In 2012, she won first place in News Enterprise Reporting by the Michigan Press Association for her series on suicide in the community, and in 2013, was named “Digital Innovator of the Year” by the Local Media Association. In 2019, she received the Ambassador Award from the suicide prevention nonprofit Six Feet Over. She started the blog Meant to Live to help others by sharing signs of depression, reasons to live, resources, suicide and bullying prevention groups, other people’s stories and memorials. She especially wants to show people that they are not alone.

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