Dear child who is being bullied,

Don’t give up. 

At a slowed-down pace, please read that first sentence, again—absorb my plea: DO NOT GIVE UP.

I know the toxic voice of your bully penetrates your thoughts, savagely shakes your sense of worth, and drowns you in a sea of suffocating emotions. If the exhaustion of all that leads you down the road of pondering whether your existence even matters, I want you to know this . . . you matter.

Do not give up.

If fear has your voice frozen, let the love that awaits on the other side of your spoken-up words bring you comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone.

You are not alone. You matter. Do not give up.

You may think it’s you—that if you looked a different way, if you sounded different, if you had more of something, or if you had less of something, then your bully wouldn’t be bullying you.

My dear child, please know that living on ifs weakens the strength in our legs and inadvertently, and unjustly, shifts the blame onto the one being bullied. Do not blanket yourself in that blame, you did nothing wrong.

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It is not your fault. You are not alone. You matter. Do not give up.

Your bully has indoctrinated you to believe there is no safe way out. Your bully’s anthem of “snitches get stitches” is not patriotic. It has no place in human-hood. Your silence will not keep you safe. You fear the stitches, and your bully fears getting caught and being held accountable for his or her actions. Yes, bullies have fears, too, but because they ooze with a disturbed confidence, the fears they harbor are masked and along they go preying on the innocent, like you. Don’t play the bully anthem on repeat in your mind.

You owe no loyalty to your bully. It is not your fault. You are not alone. You matter. Do not give up.

You are a light in this world, and you are needed here.

Don’t be tempted to experiment with something that has the possibility of leading you to your final breath–don’t let your last success in life be suicide. Many will care if one more light goes out because even though there are millions of stars in the sky, there is no other light quite like beautiful you. It only takes one lit candle to bring a room out of darkness. It only takes the light from one candle to illuminate a hope that seeps through the cracks of what feels broken.

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You are the necessary light in your loved ones’ world.

You owe no loyalty to your bully. It is not your fault. You are not alone. You matter.

Do not give up.

Please, absorb my plea: Do not give up. Do not give up.

With love,
All those who deeply care about you