Dear Shirley, Earth Angel:

I thought about you on my two hours walk in the rain. I know, from personal experience, how badly words can hurt. I was thinking how you must have been hurt when that terrible bully said to you what he did after gym. That bully had it in his mind, it seems to me, that you were wearing that leotard so to … sexually stimulate men. He had a pre-existing pathway of anger against women doing what he thought you were doing, so he lashed out at you angrily, unleashing words and anger he may have heard his father say to his mother, maybe, during fights. Those words were not about you.

It hurts me to think how you were hurt then and how those words still hurt.

I like your essay and I like my editing of it. I hope you use the editing as you continue to work on your essay.

Make peace with your body, Shirley. Don’t let that bully win and disarm your inner bully again and again. Have empathy for yourself, for being a recipient of cruelty.

You are such a precious child, teenager and a very young woman. Your special friend values you very much and so do I. And so do others. There will always be those who will not because they don’t know you, don’t care to know and instead, they recycle their own pre-existing anger, projecting it on innocent others.

You are doing well, Shirley. I am proud of you, for sharing as much as you did in your essay, for expressing what was so very painful to experience then. I am impressed. This truly is healing.

Till your next post, take care of precious Shirley, Earth Angel.

anita