At the age of 12, I was bullied. It was a dark time for me, but it created who I am today. What I experienced is something no child should ever have to go through in life. Being a child, adolescent or teenager is hard enough without the added stress of bullying.
In today’s society, children are told to move past the pain and hurt they experience, not move through it and deal with it. This is exactly what I had to do for myself, and it worked. My experience taught me how to be confident in myself and who I was meant to be; not who my bullies said I was. I moved through my pain in a healthy way, making a stronger person, a more confident me.
After that year, I went on to representing my middle school class at the award’s ceremony, was captain of my high school lacrosse team, graduated at the top of my high school class with honors, 4.2 GPA and a scholarship for the prestigious Concordia University Irvine, where I graduated Summa Cum Laude.
During my college years, I truly started to grasp what the bullying had done For me, not TO me. It took me until then to fully understand that my experience of being bullied helped shape me into the person I am today. I was able to see life for what it was and what it could be. I was given the insight into how to turn what is intend for evil, like bullying, into good. I was able to remove the labels that bullies attached to me, and see myself for who I really am.
Today, I stand before you as a changed person. I am no longer the little girl who was the target of insults and ridicule. Instead, I am a woman, unique in my own way, with talents and gifts that I want to share with the world with the hopes of making a difference. I want to help children, adolescents, teenagers and adults see that they can rise above bullying and become the person they were meant to be. They can live the dreams that they have always imagined and most importantly, believe that anything is possible with self-confidence and self-perseverance.
You can either live in fear or in the best version of yourself. You make the choice. I did, and now I am exactly who I was intended to be!
About Brittani Saint
#Beat the Bully