While I was writing a letter to Brandon this last week, I found I was still in the throws of grieving and missing my three children who are absent from our home. As I wrote him, some much needed understanding started to fall into place for me. I realized the beauty of the process of life for the first time sense Mariela died. It felt so refreshing to feel the spirit prick my heart and give me some help to cross the bridge to a new level of understanding and acceptance. I have prayed during almost every quiet moment since Rebekah left, for acceptance of this new phase of my life. I have thrown 100 percent of my heart into raising my children. After Rebekah left, her absence on top of Brandon and Mariela's was just too much to bare. I realized how vulnerable I was caring so much for my children. I wanted to withdraw that vulnerability
Back To School: a third of students will be bullied. Here is what we can do about it.
Previously, I posted on school security measures as response to the national school safety debate. However, I believe that schools must be protected from threats both inside and outside their walls. Within the mental health segment of the issue lies one key cause of suffering in schools: bullying. In 2016, National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) found that 33 percent of students who reported being bullied at school indicated that they were bullied at least once or twice a month during the school year. This figure shows that bullying is a chronic issue. In 1999, two ex-bully victims killed thirteen people in the Columbine Massacre. Georgia was the first state to enact anti-bullying laws only months later. For the next 10 years, we saw the culture shift. Movies and documentaries premiered detailing kids’ experiences with bullying, the media reported on extreme cases, and schools and governments began to make change. The federal government began collecting data on school bull...