Bullying awareness week

With all of the Pope related news at the moment I almost feel like I have to start with "Forgive me readers for I've been slack, it's been 10 days since I posted..."

I'm not religious but I do appreciate that we live in a world that is strongly affected by the views of the major religions. For that reason I hope that the new Pope - Francis - can make positive improvements within the Catholic church in areas that are most out of line with progressive reasonable thinking especially in line with the sanctity of marriage, choice in sexuality and other contentious issues.

This week, aside from having a new Pope elected is also Bullying awareness week with a number of programs being run in the schools to raise awareness of the issue and suggest strategies for dealing with bullying. This topic is much closer to home for us than the larger world issues as our lovely, clever daughter (DP nearly 14) was the target of bullying for her last couple of years of primary school. Now DP has always been a bit shy and we never thought that she would grow up to be a motivational speaker or stage performer (and she probably still won't) however, her last two years at High School have brought about all sorts of positive changes in her personality and willingness to get involved in activities that take her out of her comfort zone. She is always volunteering to assist with something.

Two days ago DP told us that she was going to be giving some talks about bullying to a number of groups within the school. It transpires that these are not planned, prepared speeches but talks about her bullying experiences and some of the things that have helped her deal with and grow from the experiences. It also turns out that DP has volunteered for these speaking opportunities not as a result of students being asked to volunteer but because it is something that she feels strongly about so she asked one of the teachers if it would be possible.

DP was routinely in tears from bullying during year 6 and to see her standing up before her peers and talking about the experience from the point of view of a bullied student is a wonderful and warming thing. I continue to be amazed and impressed by the way she is growing into a confident young lady from the timid little girl she used to be.

In unrelated general goings on I've been getting to the gym almost as planned and feel that it's starting to pay off at least a bit. I can see the progress that I've been making on the workout sheet. My writing is coming along a little slower than I had hoped but is still progressing. I'm at 17,000 words in a revised draft of my story where I kind of planned to be closer to 30,000 by now. However, I'm happy with the way the characters are developing this time which was one of the major flaws in my first draft.

So six weeks in progress is good and the motivation is being maintained.