The Bully Project

To share that I was moved by the documentary "Bully" would be a huge understatement. I believe I cried a good hour of the 90 minute documentary because I have kids. That is what tore me up. This incredible documentary shared the stories of five children and their families and showed intimately the impact of severe bullying. I'm not talking about someone who occasionally hears a snide remark, but instead, these five kids endured death threats and self esteem blows that would make your knees cave in. The courage these kids had to get up and go back to school each day was ridiculously amazing.

Tragically, two of the kids featured took their own lives. That was a big message of this film, as some of the school officials who were on camera have that old attitude of "kids will be kids" and "boys will be boys", which is utter nonsense. What a defeat to the families, and especially to the kids to know that the school condones the behavior by lack of action. When kids are being threatened on a daily basis with physical and verbal assaults that would cause an adult to immediately dial 911 and yet, kids are told to "suck it up", where can they put all of that? The stress that these five kids endured day in and day out made my heart hurt and made the tears flow non stop. It was so clear to see it on film that the kids being bullied were being told to solve it themselves and that is so ludicrous when their basic safety was being threatened hourly. It was just too much for an eleven year old or fourteen year old to solve on their own. An adult would struggle if asked to solve these situations on their own....

I highly recommend this documentary because several of the families came together and heroically are speaking out to "Stand for the Silent" and to share with kids that standing up for a fellow human being who is being bullied can make it stop. The dad who had lost his son told these kids, (paraphrased): If you dare to stand up, then one more kid will stand with you and two become four and four can become an army against bullying.

Amen to that!

http://www.thebullyproject.com/about_film

Grocery Store Detective

Since there are so many ingredients to avoid in our food supply, I decided to borrow a trick I learned from reading Robyn O'Brien's book, The Unhealthy Truth.  Robyn recommends to get your kids involved with looking at labels and to teach them what to look for. This way, they can treat the job of label reading as a detective and become interested in helping. It pays off-

So far, my son has found tartrazine in the egg rolls that I bought as a "fun treat" and a couple days ago he found BHT in a hot cereal that I bought accidentally. I did something unusual on Monday and went shopping at 7:15 in the morning, right after dropping my daughter off at school. In one sense, it was pretty nice to have the grocery shopping completed at 8:00 in the morning, but I wasn't fully alert to check all the ingredients.

I have shared with my kids (in the cereal aisle), that one of the ingredients we want to avoid is BHT, as it is a chemical preservative that we don't want to eat. My kids were bummed when some of their favorites had BHT, but they found others that they really enjoy with no BHT so we moved forward.

In my half-sleepy grocery shopping state, I did buy a hot oatmeal with BHT and my son caught that mistake right away. I like having him on my side and it is good that he knows things to look for on a package. The tricky part is staying on top of all the "new" trends and chemicals that are infiltrating our food supply. Of course, real food is best and this is another great reason that I adore the info that I find on:  www.100DaysofRealFood.com

If you want to read more about BHT, I recommend:

www.HealthyChild.org

• Tip: there is a White Pages report you may pull up on Healthy Child and it is titled "Toxic Food: U.S. Children at Risk from Chemicals in their Daily Diet

and

www.RobynObrien.com

Sticks anyone?

During dinner tonight, I told my family that I would need to go to the grocery store for a quick trip. My husband asked if it could wait and I said no, as it was one of those once per month type of needs and I had run completely out of my supplies.

My son asked, "Why do you need to go?"  Well, I am one to be pretty up front and name things as they are instead of having strange secrets that are confusing to my kids. So, I replied, "I need to get tampons and pads." I watched my son think that over and waited to see if he had another question. He didn't.

After dinner, however, he ran to my bathroom and yelled, "Mom, I found four sticks. You don't have to go to the store now."  Well, that sort of amused me, as I didn't realize that my son knew where I kept those, but why not, kids are curious and they look in every corner. I smiled and shared that I still needed to go.  What he didn't know was that those four sticks were sitting in my cupboard unused because they are not organic. I refuse to use the non-organic tampons due to all the nasty side effects, but that is a post for another day.

Starting something new

Here we go! I have been wanting to set up a blog for a long time and have had plenty of encouragement, but alas, things have gotten in the way such as diapers that needed changing, laundry that needed folding, orders that needed to be entered, phone calls that needed to be returned.... Questions that stopped me: Will I know enough "technical" info to start a blog? Will I have enough to say? Will anyone read it? Sometimes that list of self doubt just gets longer instead of shorter. Do you agree?

Today was the day that I decided all of those "reasons" were less important than my desire to start my own blog. So, here we go! I hope you will join me on this journey and that you will be encouraged, inspired, that you will learn something new or even just have a shift in thinking. I love to learn new things and my hope is that you do as well.

Here we go with post number one and I will leave you with some inspiration from Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ― Marianne Williamson, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"