Choose your words carefully

I pride myself on being a work in progress, though I am also fine just the way I am.  The past few months, I have been working with a new process that helps get to the root of my limiting beliefs, processes them and resets the thought patterns.  It is in this work that I found myself returning to a time in my life I would prefer to forget.  

I grew up in a small rural community that was predominantly settled by people of one religion.  That is to say that when I got on the school bus in Kindergarten, I was the only child in my K-9 school that was not that religion.  While I am sure my dad had to deal with the same types of situations that his children were later subjected to, he chose to raise us in the same place he was born and raised.  

For years (and I mean YEARS as I am now 40), I have had a heart-stopping moment every single time a text or email came to me or my phone rang.  This happened at home and at work. I never understood it and found it frustrating.  I would literally hold my breath when opening an email or text and pray it wasn't bad.  You see, I was always expecting it to be someone mad at me or that they were going to tell me something that they didn't like about me or that I did wrong.  Today, I remembered the source of that heart-stopping fear that has been ongoing for 31 years.

As I went through my K-9 years, I had a few kids that would be nice to me from time to time.  Some that would even try to be my friend for awhile.  One in particular, was the daughter of one of my dad's friends through school and while they, too, were of the same religion, that must have given her more tolerance for us outsiders (her brothers were also good to my sister and brother).  Then there was a gal who moved in that came from a community where she was an outcast due to the opposite reason as mine, then another 2 non-church families moved to town.  This made it easier to have some friends, but I always felt on the verge of being cast out until high school when I moved to a different school with a bit more diversity.  

I remember a time in Grade 3 when I accidentally said oh my God and was absolutely annihilated by my classmates that were in the room at recess when I did it.  However, that wasn't the trigger of my decades of fear and worry about opening a text or email.  That happened in Grade 4.  I had been hanging out with one of the girls in the class and she had invited me over a couple times for a sleepover.  Apparently, that didn't sit well with someone else in the class.  She penned a very nasty note of hate - I remember that word being in there a number of times.  I also remember her telling me that I was stupid, poor and nobody liked me and that this other girl was only pretending because she had felt sorry for me, but she no longer wanted to hang out with me either.  The whole thing oozed meanness and hatrid for my perceived difference.  My only crime was to be born to a family that did not participate in the same religion as everyone else at my school.

The point of this is not a pity party - I don't want that or expect that.  What I want is to share this as a learning opportunity.  The old sticks and stones saying?  Bull shit.  Words stay with you for a long time.  Words can hurt for a long time.  Words can cause someone to have anxiety, to go into depression, to commit suicide.  WORDS HAVE POWER.  Choose your words carefully.  Teach your kids to choose their words carefully.  I guarantee that young girl has no idea that she wreaked havoc on the last 31 years of my life.  She probably only has a vague recollection of me, if any.  However, she broke my heart and she caused me to live in irrational fear for so many years.  She made me believe I was worthless and unworthy of love.  All from a one-page handwritten note put on my desk in Grade 4.

We need to choose compassion and kindness.  As a species, we need to treat each other better.  We need to look past the outside trappings of race, class, gender and see the soul on the inside.  There is so much hate and meanness - you have only to breeze through your social media feeds to see it.  "Be the change you wish to see in the world" as Gandhi says.  It can start with each of us.  

I knew that when I was working on this issue that it was meant to be a lesson, not just for me, but for me to share with others to encourage a different way of thinking.  To encourage us to talk to our kids about what they say to someone in a Snapchat picture, text message, Kik, Facebook, Twitter and more.  It takes very few words to impact someone's whole life and outlook on themselves.  Why not make that impact positive?