Story to Share

This is a post that you never think you’ll post or necessarily want to post, but I think it needs to be shared. I have full permission to share both my daughters' stories.

My middle daughter (we'll just call her A), has seemed a little off the past few days, but when you have teenage daughters, you experience a myriad of emotions on a daily basis. Tonight at dinner, her dad (J) said something to her and she just snapped and got angry with him, which isn’t normal for her. I just discounted it as hormones. Then as everyone finished they dispersed from the kitchen. I was still eating my dinner, and I got a phone call from my oldest daughter (let's call her KK) who was at work. I answered, and all I could hear on the other end of the line was hysterical sobbing. She had recently quit her job and Monday is her last day, so my initial thought was, “oh no! She’s having a breakdown at work!” As I listened, and tried to get her to speak I noticed it sounded like 'A' was crying through the phone, but she was home with me. Then I realized I was hearing both of them crying. As I was trying to process and figure out what was going on, 'A' then came storming into the kitchen. I still couldn't figure out what was happening. All I could hear through their sobs was, “now they keep posting on social media.” I got them calmed down enough to tell me what was going on, and a boy that 'A' had liked and was talking to a lot, but never boyfriend, told 'A' that he didn’t like her anymore last weekend (good ol' junior high drama). 'A' just said "whatever," and moved on.

Here's a little backstory… 'A' was born with a full head of hair and also she just in general has thicker hair on the rest of her body like arms and stuff, but she also grows a little thicker hair on her upper lip… and she has the teen curse of acne, just on her forehead. These things in general can cause self esteem issues in a teenage girl, even though 'A' has some gorgeous features.

So to continue with the story, today in class, that same boy texted her and said, “you got a pretty nice mustache!🥸” Obviously teenage girls are very insecure and this is her biggest insecurity—which I did not know until tonight. Once again, she just brushed his text off, even though it really hurt, but then tonight on her social media accounts, a bunch of people started posting comments all over about “mustache girl” and other related things. She asked them to stop and texted the boy and said, “please tell your friends to stop!” But then they went to 'KK's social media and started posting all over hers and posting, “do you like your sister's mustache?” and other stuff like that. (Disclaimer: I don’t love for my kids to be on some of the social media platforms, I do use social media and try to be positive on it, but it can be so brutal and scary for teenagers).

Now here is another backstory… just over a year ago we found out that 'KK' was pregnant (she was 16 at the time), but at 11 weeks she had a miscarriage and had to have a d&c and all that stuff. She got pretty upset about the way her boyfriend (which as parents, we were not huge fans of anyway) was treating her following the miscarriage, so she broke up with him. He was really good at manipulating his way into her life, so he weaseled himself back into her life. Whenever 'KK' had spent time with him, we knew, because she was extremely mean and moody. It was getting really bad with her, so we decided to go talk to his parents. They had never known about the pregnancy or anything. Even through talking with them, there really was no resolve. I felt like I was completely losing my daughter, and feeling so hopeless. 'KK' and the boy were supposedly going to go to prom together the following week (which I hadn’t even known about, because at the time she wasn’t talking to me at all).

The next week, one of his family members came over to talk to us, and told 'KK' she would not be going to prom with him and he was in jail, but because of the investigation couldn’t tell us anything else. That was the beginning of a VERY long road. Through the months that followed, we had interviews with detectives, contact with case workers and victim advocates, attorney visits, MANY therapy visits, and so forth. At the beginning of the process the detectives just asked her questions about him, but we weren't told why he was in jail or anything. They did say he had done something pretty bad.

Through her opening up to the therapists (still not opening up to me about anything) we learned more about her relationship and how extremely toxic and manipulative the relationship was, with a lot of emotional and mental abuse and even physical abuse (which she never realized) and such (which we had suspected, but we also learned he was manipulating her to not talk to us at all). When she was with him, if we brought anything up, or even asked questions she would turn totally against us and not speak to us for long periods of time. Eventually we learned the reason he was in jail for the rape of another girl.

As I said, the road has been long and difficult, and we are still traveling on that road. She filed to get a protective order and we are still in the process of that, but slowly, a little bit at a time, we are getting the old 'KK' back. She is making more effort to get to school, which is a huge step forward for her. And get caught up on her schoolwork-- which is why she quit her job. It has not been easy, but I am proud of her strength. I am not going to lie, I did have a lot of anger at the whole situation, I also had deep sadness, and some days it was difficult to face the day, but one thing that did not change was my love for her.

Now, back to the original story… knowing "KK"’s backstory, you could better understand why she would have such an upsetting reaction to these messages about her sister. Once I finally learned what was going on, mama bear came out. I went straight out to hubby in his shop and said, “C’mon, we are going to his house!” He had no idea what was going on, but he dropped everything and just followed along as we were briefly explaining it, then got in his truck and headed there. A lady answered the door and I said, “Is this (his name) house?” She said yes, so I asked if she was his mom and she said, “yes, what is this about?” I told myself to stay calm, and so I briefly said, “we need to talk to you about (his name) and his friends bullying my daughter.” She looked at 'A' and said, “I don’t know you, what is your name?” When 'A' told her she said she had heard about her and thought they were good friends.

'A' was still somewhat crying and having difficulty calming down on their porch. We briefly explained what was going on, then 'A' said she had screenshots and showed his mom. She immediately got on the phone, her son was at his dads, so she called the dad and the first thing she said was, “take his phone.” She left the room and was on the phone for quite a while and we stood and talked to her girlfriend/wife who was extremely kind and understanding. I was telling her that I don’t do this kind of thing and if we ever had problems in the past we would just talk to our girls about it to help them move forward and tend to try to keep it to ourselves to avoid confrontation, 'KK's experience was the first time we talked to parents of someone we were having problems with.

You now know the story of everything we have been through in the last year, so we knew we needed to stand up for our daughters. I told them (the boy's family) that as a teacher, I would have parents who have had problems with me (because of something their child told them), never address it with me and they’d go straight to admin, or the ever so wonderful social media and complain about me. There was even a time that a parent was trying to get the other parents to sign a petition to get me fired. Education truly IS a very difficult field! Please be kind to your kids' teachers, I promise they care about the success of your child. Most of the time that there were complaints it would be discovered that the whole problem was miscommunication and they were only getting half the story (parents I’m not saying to not believe your kid, but be open minded when they come home and say things that happened at school or with their teacher) a lot of time it’s the students perceived something a certain way and the teacher had no idea it even happened. I will be the first to tell you teachers are not perfect, so if you have a problem, reach out to the teacher in kindness, teachers do not want their students to struggle with anything trivial. In 'A’s case it was teenagers not thinking about what they are doing and how hurtful it can be, even if they think it’s a joke. So, that’s why I decided to go to his parents first, to start at the bottom to try to resolve it. This was only after 'A' had tried to get him and his friends to stop unsuccessfully.

His mom was so understanding and really handled the whole situation well. She even told us how embarrassed she was that her son did that. You definitely could tell they didn’t raise him to be like that, but like I said, teenagers don’t really think most of the time. In fact I do feel a little bad because of how much trouble he got in and we don’t want to make things harder for him, or his family, but it needed to be addressed. Even in KKs situation—there’s an empathetic part of me that does feel bad for her ex boyfriend and his family.

As a teacher, there were so many times that kids would tell me they were getting bullied and upon investigation it was found that one person said something mean to them one time, which isn’t considered bullying. We always would have discussions about the difference between bullying and being mean, but I would always address it with all parties involved to get the whole story, because if even one person involved feels like it’s bullying, you address it. Most of the time that would resolve the situation and we’d all move on, but at times there has been legitimate bullying that often would occur outside the classroom like at recess and lunch. But the truth is, bullying is out there and it happens way more than we would like to think and people are finally starting to address the problem more. Even though I am no longer a full time teacher, I still spend a significant amount of time in the school and I see and hear a lot of kids just not being kind. Sometimes the fine line between being mean and actually bullying can be hard to define. Just do all you can to help everyone involved feel better and don’t discount their feelings—I did that once, early in teaching with the sweetest girl in my class. It still pops into my mind that I really should have handled the situation MUCH differently, even though the problem was later addressed and resolved, I should have done more to help fix it earlier.

I have had varying thoughts about the whole bullying issues going on throughout the world. I am not going to lie, sometimes when I hear or read stories about bullying, I do have some skepticism, that skepticism is more so thoughts of What is the real story? What are both sides to the story? I know that there have been times in my life where I have not been kind to people. There have been many times that I have said some really stupid things to others. There have been times in my life (okay, really A LOT of times) where I have lost my cool and gotten angry at people. And sometimes it takes me a long time to forgive. To me, forgiveness is very important. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that suddenly everything is all better and life is easy. But it does help ease some of the burden we carry.

I don’t share this story for sympathy or as a sob story or anything like that. I share it for awareness. Awareness for what sometimes goes on with your and my children. My husband and I have never been the first point of contact for our kids when they are struggling with something. Most of the time they go to one of their sisters first or a friend, and then by the time we find out, they have been carrying that burden for a while. So yes, I do believe that our kids keep a lot of things from us, and a lot of times they don’t share things because they are embarrassed or worried about our reaction. We want nothing more than to be there to help our kids get through this difficult thing called life, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be different emotions—Including anger, sadness, frustration, etc…

What I do know, life is hard. There is not much that is easy about it. You see those memes that say something like “everyone is going through something hard.” That is absolutely true. EVERYONE has hard things they have to deal with. I mean, look at our world right now--look at the situation in Ukraine. That is absolutely heartbreaking. There are people going through some really hard stuff. What my family has been through in the last year has been hard for US. People may think that what we’ve been through is not that bad or difficult, in fact some people may prefer our challenges over theirs. I see so many people and their challenges and think, “I couldn’t get through that or what they are going through is horrible.” Sometimes I think about how could you identify the person on earth who has the hardest life? What is the hardest challenge someone is going through in the world? I don’t think there is one hardest thing. There are things that are extremely hard for those going through it. There was another time in life where our challenge was health problems for my husband and a prolonged hospital stay. I was trying to help someone else in their difficult situation plan a big fundraiser I was working with a group of people and I told them, that I needed to focus on my husband and needed to take a step back. I was told that I shouldn't complain because this other person was going through something much harder than I was going through. Why do we compare so many things with others? Why does it have to be that we can't think something is difficult or have emotions about something because someone else is going through something? Why can't we just show more love and support to EVERYONE, because no one has a piece of cake life.

I’ve learned a lot in the last year. And that is that we need to give others the benefit of the doubt. When 'KK' got pregnant, I just knew that EVERYONE that found out was going to be so judgmental toward her, toward us as parents, and so forth, and especially as active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But at the end of the day, all we saw was love, kindness, and compassion. If anyone was judging us, they were doing it behind closed doors or behind our backs, and that’s their deal. Not just in these situations, but many times I feel like people are going to judge me because of the way my kids dress sometimes, because of the things they do or say, or anything else. Trust me, I don't condone many of the things they choose to wear, I don't condone things they may choose to say or post on social media, but we have this wonderful gift called agency. I can try to parent my heart out and try teaching my kids and guiding them until I'm blue in the face. We all come to a point in life that we have to make all our own choices and live with the consequences of the choices we make. At the end of the day, we are the person looking at ourselves in the mirror, when we look at ourselves, we should ask if we were kind to people? Did something we do or say make life harder for someone else? Are we going to try to do a little better tomorrow?

I do know that we will all continue to have difficulties in life. But no matter the circumstances, let’s all try harder to be kinder each day. Let’s be more forgiving to others flaws. Let’s not be afraid to share our stories, maybe your story can help someone else. Maybe your story can give someone else hope. Someone once asked if I regretted telling people about our situations, in particular sharing with others that 'KK' was pregnant so soon, and if we had waited to tell people about it, since she miscarried, no one would even know. We had been to the doctor and had seen the heartbeat, so I told them no, I don’t regret sharing. I needed the support. I needed to share with people because I needed them to help me heal. I made the choice that sharing was something I was supposed to do. My coping mechanism is to not keep things to myself—although maybe sometimes I overshare—I guess it’s who I am, and not everyone will be like that. Let's also try to be more aware of "stupid" things our kids may post or say to others, I know my kids have posted things that have made me completely lose my cool with them. I try to remind them how they would feel or have felt if that same thing happened to them. Let’s just be more accepting, loving, and caring toward each other. Because today is a new day and my daughters are out there facing the day regardless of anything that has happened to them.