Input and Support Needed 14

Bullying • Tags: , ,

Robert suggested a series on bullying and agreed to be my first guest. I am calling on parents who have children who have been victims of bullying or who have been a bully, as well has those who have been victims of bullying themselves to share stories of how the bullying affected them. Be as general as you like if somethings are too uncomfortable to share.

An aside: I recently updated the look and added pages to my blog. Please let me know what you think?

Final Request: Many of you know my daughter has been sharing her stories about how bullying affected her. Please stop by and comment on her post, It Still Hurts and please comment on others’ stories, starting with Robert’s as I post them as well. I will give you more details when I actually start the series. I will probably try to have a post either every couple of weeks or once a month depending on how many respond. I realize many of you feel that you cannot handle reading these stories and I understand, but I also think it is important to support those who have been on the receiving end of bullying and I hope you agree. They deserve our support! That is why I decided to change my stance and openly support my daughter. I am very proud of her.

Addendum:

My daughter’s blog is now private so I have removed the link to her blog. Please respect her privacy.

 

14 comments

  1. I’m so bummed because I knew I commented on the post before but it seems like it didn’t register.

    Anyway, I think the blog design is great! and I noticed you and your daughter share the same theme/design. One advice though, I think you should put the META widget at the very bottom since the links do not help your readers with anything.

    To be honest with you, I have visited your daughter’s blog and I find it difficult to comment. She is such a smart girl, but I sense her sensitivity that I fear my words might not be the right words to comfort her or make her feel good. But more power to her and her blog. I know for a fact that writing or blogging can be really helpful. May she find comfort in her blog and her readers.

    More power to your new series as well. It will be nice to learn of other people’s experiences …

    • Charlotte,
      I have been sure I commented on posts that vanished too. I am not sure why. I appreciate your advice and I also understand your reluctance to comment on my daughter’s blog. Overall it is helping her and just seeing that she has visitors to her site encourages her whether you comment or not.

  2. Changes? Are we supposed to notice those?

    Okay, I know I’m supposed to notice; I’m just not very good at it. I have no clear memory of what your blog looked like before. Sounds strange perhaps, but I’m a word person, not a visual person and in my head this blog is categorized as “Sue’s blog–the different one” (versus “Sue’s blog–the writing one”). The aesthetics only become important when they are aversives or really, really cool (“Hey, look, a butterfly!”).

    So, for what it’s worth:
    * the words are legible (I can read it)
    * the colors are not obnoxious (which I think is a good thing, though some marketers favor obnoxious as “attention-getting,” silly people that they are)
    * BUT I would not have noticed the new pages if you hadn’t mentioned them
    * AND the comment box is jumping around in an evil kind of way after I typed more than the first visible space

  3. I think it looks really good and is very well organized! I have one minor suggestion that you can take or leave as you wish. That would be to make the text a darker gray to make it a bit easier to read (doesn’t have to be black but it seems a bit light to me).

    • AM,
      Thank you! I’m not sure if I can make it darker with this theme. I tried different color combinations to try to find the one easiest to read. I will look at it again.

      • I took a look at the theme, and it doesn’t look like you can change that if you are using wordpress.com to administer your blog. If you have a self-hosted site, I would be happy to look at the CSS file for you.

  5. Hello Sue,

    I like the theme and colours very much. Blue happens to be one of my favourite colours (green is the other one, but really I like them all). And it is helpful to have the posts organized by subject.

    I hope your back pain eases up soon.

    I know what you mean about the difficulty in reading posts about bullying or abuse. I watched two videos last night by women who were abused and I still feel rather sick. It hurts in my heart area. But I agree it is very important to get that information out there, both for the help it may give to others who were bullied or abused, and for the education of bullies/abusers and those who oversee them. You and Miranda are doing a great job of that.
    Blessings to you both,
    Bruce

  6. Hi,
    The blog looks really good – I love the color “blue”. I like the concept of collecting stories about bullying – should help others to feel empowerment if they can share. Some of the best feedback I received about my book – “You have named my experience. It could be my story too. . . ”
    I have a question. How can you manage to market one book, write another, write a blog, gather stories for a “bullying project” , parent two children and deal with serious back issues? Just wondering. . . And, of course, good luck

    • Sharon,
      Thank you for the laugh and shot of reality! I am glad you like the new look. I am still working on the how to do it all. I am thinking about hiring a publicist and I will be scaling back to a once a week blog on this site and try to post once every couple of weeks at my other site. Tweeting is easier now because I have Hoot Suite that will post to Facebook and Twitter and I probably will only do that every other day. I wrote my first novel while waiting for the kids to finish practices and lessons and late at night and on weekends. My biggest concern right now is the back and that is a post all by itself.

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