change: here, now, beginning with YOU

A friend inquired after the sustainability of my shaved head and effort against bullying. “It’s a really long time – are you getting tired of it?”

Well, of course. And that was the whole point of choosing such an extended experience. Kids who are bullied in every corridor every day are tired of it too, but that doesn’t mean it stops. Adults who are bullied in their work place feel as if it just goes on and on…and that’s the point. It DOES.
IT HAS TO STOP.

In conversation with Gina, who is a human rights activist, I made a case that global tolerance for bullying begins in childhood
(it’s just part of childhood,” “It toughens kids up for the REAL world.”) and is the basis for tolerance for atrocities in adulthood.
It’s tribal. Everywhere. It’s tribal everywhere. That reflects the inclination to “look out for my own kind.” If the victims were people “just like me,” individuals would immediately stand up for the one being bullied. It’d be more natural to be fired up about that.
NEWS FLASH.
“They” are us.

Kids are not a different species. They are not miniature humans, they are humans. They are people. Homosexual individuals are not a different species. Women are not a different species. People who wear glasses, dress differently, people with tattoos, people who shave their head (list here the dozens of things that you allow as identifers as “different from me”) are HUMAN. That’s why my activist friend works in a field called HUMAN RIGHTS. And the curriculum for HUMAN RIGHTS begins before we go to kindergarten. It starts with how we watch our family treat the neighbors, the stranger in the grocery store, the players on television and in movies.

Opponents to these views can cite the tendency in nature for animals to be drawn to “their own kind.” When you cite that as the basis for discrimination, want to start walking on all fours, defecating in the bushes and eating carrion cuisine, THEN you can talk to me about animal behavior being the justification for poor Human behavior. In the meantime – let’s manner up.

THEM is US, dear souls, and the smaller the globalization of our planet gets, the more important this fundamental civility becomes. Standing shoulder to shoulder there are human beings who are different…but there are not different human beings. We’re all humans engaged in the process of being.

Getting bullied and having the process dismissed is unacceptable. Making hateful, damaging statements and then simply apologizing with, “I misspoke” essentially means, “I should have framed my bigotry in a more acceptable manner.” Hate and prejudice and bigotry run deep in the veins of culture and they dress up so well: nice suits, pretty jewelry, polished pews. But regardless of how you suit it up: it’s still hateful and insidious and it’s time for a global, “NOT okay. Choose another way.”

Today. Everything begins with YOU, the human who is reading these words. What can you do for the sake of global human rights, beginning in your own experience? What can you do is someone tells you they feel like ending it all? Or, if YOU do?

If you wonder, “What can I do?” which is the very place where the change begins…
…here are places for your answers to begin:
http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/adults
http://www.thetrevorproject.org
http://www.itgetsbetterproject.com
http://makeitbetterproject.org
http://operationrespect.org

Personal update on my S.T.A.N.D.

S.T.A.N.D. Start Today A New Direction

I’m going to answer the many personal questions all at once – here, today.

I am very satisfied with the results of my effort so far. People are re-posting, tweeting and starting conversations with the educational prompts I have provided. Knowledge spread is a good thing. People are making contribution to TheTrevorProject.org I’m lettering gift original posters and mailing them out every day.

It’s impacted my behavior everywhere I go. Dawn to Dusk. I am swinging the pendulum very far the other side of bullying: I am a kinder driver, more gracious in the grocery store and a better patron at every establishment. It’s upped my consciousness about how little things make such a big difference.

I’ve seen bullying and have been bullied. My response is far more thoughtful, thorough and intentional than it ever would have been prior to S.T.A.N.D. (Start Today A New Direction). I offered comfort to the person I saw bullied. And I responded with 110% love when I was bullied and diffused an otherwise volatile situation.

I get cold and I haven’t had a single hot flash since I shaved my head.
Hats don’t fit as well as they did. And yesterday, in a wind storm I impulsively reached to keep my bangs out of my eyes and laughed right out loud when I realized I had no hair to get in my eyes.

Shawn, owner, of THE COLOR BOX salon here in Freeland, is tending the health of my scalp every week, for free. He was bullied as a child and is very much a part of the STAND I am taking. He told me his own story of “It gets better” and it made me cry. My friend, Grady, lends a voice of experience to this whole matter: there will always be bullies. But after high school they aren’t concentrated in one central place and you get your voice. You learn how to recognize that they matter less than they used to. You learn appropriate ways to respond.

Mid week, my husband has been shaving my head. And each time I become quite sick to my stomach. I commented to a friend about this. I wondered aloud if it was as my energy-worker friend, Llynya, informed me that hair holds a lot of body memory and that I should expect some emotional impact from the process. She wrote this morning this:

ps, I'm reading a new reflexology book called, "The New Reflexology"
[redundant] by Inge Dougans. I just read this morning over coffee and blueberry pancakes from the café that there are 2 sources of Chi - prenatal jing/essence stored in the kidneys and environmental, which enters the body through the top of the head, skin and eyes. You may be right about the shaving disturbing the energy. I was thinking that maybe that's why in some cultures it's taboo to touch a child on the top of the head. I really don't like to be touched or tapped on the top of the head either, but I always thought it was because of (some abuse she experienced as a child which involved being hauled around by her hair…my summary). I love how life just keeps adding to what we know and are.

I was bullied as a child by peers and by adults. I have the scars on my bare skull that demonstrate the many places where my head was cracked open. I have followed the impulse throughout my life to stand up for others who were being bullied. And now, in this process, I am facing, at a deeper level than I might have anticipated, how bullying has impacted me at a cellular level. At the same time that I am STANDing up and speaking up for others, I recognize that I am learning a new direction for myself. Start Today A New Direction, then, is first
an instruction I deliver to my own soul. And in offering that direction to myself – I hope that I can inspire you toward a more thoughtful journey in being a voice for those who are, in the moment, trying to find theirs.