If you are a target of bullying, have you ever noticed that bullies always seem to bring up your past? A past mistake? A record of some kind, such as a police record of vandalism you might have committed when you were seventeen. Maybe you got drunk at a frat party and did a table dance while stripping down to your underwear. Whatever the faux pas might have been, people sure seem to love throwing it in your face.

However, I want you to realize that they do this for several reasons. And if you knew those reasons, you just might end up feeling so much better about yourself.

Therefore, here are 4 reasons bullies bring up your past:

1. Your bullies do it out of jealousy.

A jealous person feels threatened by your good qualities and accomplishments. Your bullies may resent an accomplishment. Also, they could envy a characteristic you’ve recently developed. Maybe you’re becoming more confident lately and they’re jealousy of your confident attitude. You’ve brought your grades up and begun making straight A’s. Or you’ve won that coveted promotion at work. It could be that you’ve gotten an outstanding paying job with one of the top paying companies in town. Nevertheless, they see that you’re evolving and it threatens their power.

Understand that anytime you accomplish something, no matter how small, you will attract a mountain of jealousy your way. However, the best thing to do is to let them go ahead and act out. Realize that they’re doing it out of raw emotion and chances are, they’ll make total fools of themselves.

In other words, when a bully acts out of jealousy, he is unwittingly admitting to you and the other people around him that he feels inferior to you. Remember the quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, “Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.

2. Your past is just that – the past.

Realize that we all have pasts, some good and others not so pleasant. We’ve all made mistakes and will continue to make them. There is nothing you can do about the past. What’s done is done and it’s time to forgive yourself and move on. Even if you have others who constantly remind you of the “old you”, you must keep in mind that you’ve changed for the better and that person doesn’t exist anymore.

Moreover, here’s something else to keep in mind. Several celebrities had rough pasts before they became famous. Some came from incarceration, others were addicts or came from poverty. Therefore, never be ashamed of your past. It doesn’t define you, nor does it determine what your future will be.

3. The bullies are getting desperate.

They’re desperate to find something terrible you’ve done or were involved in to sully your reputation. Understand that if they can’t find dirt on you, their next objective is to bring up your past.

4. Your past is the stepping-stone that got you to where you are now.

Whatever you might have done or gotten involved in during your past, you had to go through that phase of your life to get where you are now. It was only a stop along the road that lead you to the place you’re at today. So, don’t be ashamed of it. Be proud of how far you’ve come since.

So, don’t let that shake you. Do not let these people tear you down! Consequently, there are so many people who either live in regret of their pasts, or they let others make them feel bad by reminding them of it. These people can’t seem to move forward because something which happened years ago is holding them back.

Therefore, don’t be one of these people! Know that your past doesn’t determine your future. See this dirty tactic for what it is and see your bullies for who and what they are. They are only jealous and desperate people with low self-esteem and insecurity issues. And the only way they can feel better about themselves is to pee on your victories and bring you down to their level. Pathetic, isn’t it?

With knowledge comes empowerment!

This is so painful to type. My tears flow down my cheeks and land on my keyboard. Tonight, my beloved Pomeranian, Roxie, gained her angel wings. For 12 1/2 years, she was my constant furry companion and we were inseparable.

I keep ruminating on the day I got her- the first time I saw her sweet little face. It was love at first sight. It was a cold November evening in 2010 when I met her previous owner in the Wal-Mart parking lot after seeing a social media post entitled, “Full-blooded Palmeranian for sale.” Yes, they misspelled Pomeranian, but that detail is something I look at with love.

I contacted the owner and told her that I was interested in the little dog and she sent me a picture of her entitled, “This is Roxy.” The picture only sealed the deal. I changed the spelling of her name because I thought that dropping the y and adding the ie made the name more ladylike.

I met the girl that evening with the forty dollars she asked for. She then handed me the puppy and to see her sweet face for the first time in person, I loved her even more. The girl then handed me what was left of her puppy food and we parted ways.

I made a mad dash into Wal-mart to get a new leash, a large bag of puppy food, a bag of puppy snacks, a dog bowl, some puppy toys, and a dog bed. It was a cool November evening, so it was safe to leave her in my car. Twenty minutes later, I came back to the car, loaded the dog care items into the trunk, and drove her home.

As Roxie, grew, she became more and more beautiful- long hair, bushy tail, she was a beautiful little lady. I would take her on long walks. Also, I would take her outside and throw the ball for her to fetch. And she fetched it, then would come back, stop in front of me, and drop the ball on the ground.

She always slept pressed next to me on my bed. There wasn’t a night she didn’t sleep with me and I loved it when she’d follow me from room to room. I used to get down in the floor and play with her and make sure to give her lots of love and affection.

Roxie was my sidekick, my best friend. And though, in time, I may get another puppy, Roxie can never be replaced. No other pet will ever take her place in my heart. She was brilliantly smart and was an outgoing little dog and to see her and know her was to love her. She was very affectionate and would always jump on my lap and lick my face.

It’s going to be tough and I don’t how I’m going to get through this overwhelming sadness that fills my heart. Being without my baby is going to take a lot of getting used to. I do know that I will smile again eventually and I will remember her with a smile rather than tears and weeping.

Tonight, I held you one last time.

Rest easy my sweet Roxie. I will see you again in Heaven some day. 🐾🐾

November 8, 2010 – January 11, 2023

Here lately we’ve been hearing corrupt leaders use the phrase, “For the Greater Good,” or “For the Good of Humanity.” I agree that we should reach out and help our fellow man when he’s down. Also, I realize that these terms can be deceptive. People use these phrases to slyly promote the self-interest of only a few in authority.

Therefore, we must realize that the majority of politicians are experts at giving the illusion of compassion.

Understand that anytime someone tells you that you should  do something that is unsafe, or wrong “for the good of humanity,” you can be sure that what they’re asking you to do isn’t in your best interests. It never is.

A Subtle Guilt Trip?

Realize that the use of these two excuses is a form of manipulation.  Bullies and people in power use them to guilt you into doing something that will be harmful to you or to another individual. In that, they play on your empathy and love for humanity.

We see this happening today. But this is a tactic people have used all through history. And when you get hurt because you allowed them to convince you to do what you know to be harmful to you, they will then disappear and leave you to suffer with no recourse. It will be a herd lesson you’ll have to learn. Then, when you speak out and warn others not to make the same mistake you made, the same people will come back with a vengeance. And they will gaslight you and do everything they possibly can to destroy your credibility.

That’s why it’s imperative that you see these two phrases as sure signs of manipulation and follow your instincts. You most also question their motives and try to figure out what would be in it for them if you complied. Also, you must weigh the pros and cons on their side and those on your side of the equation. How would they benefit? How would you benefit? What could possibly go wrong if you complied?

Who Benefits from Your Compliance, You or Them?

Always ask questions even at the risk of invoking the anger of the authorities. And, more importantly, do your own research and gather your own information. Know that you have a right to know the truth.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Here’s what one parent had to say on Facebook. I’m withholding her name to protect her identity.

“I think I am going to throw up! I’m having a PTSD moment.

Please read the entire post and share. Parents need to know.

This man should be prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law in which is possible. Cyber Crimes and Stalking and Doxxing and a whole slew of other charges they can find!

Why do I feel this way? As you have been made of aware what happened to my child and the dysfunction by so called professional Educators and so called Professional Councilors and even a School Psychologist involved. Targeting and bullying and destroying a child and a parent. To my surprise after even dealing with legal aid who did absolutely nothing and I am doing everything possible I can for my son I get all my child’s education records!

I suggest to all parents you do the same. You might be surprised of what you might find!!

There is a envelope in my child’s education files! What do I find? I find Hippa Law Violation: Private medical records sent to the school and it even had mentioned my personal information and of course no one would believe me and everyone else covered their asses! Till this day no one has been prosecuted for anything these so called professionals did to my child and breaking laws.

Just disgusted at what these people have lowered themselves to, Arizona Educators, here in Ohio and across America.”

https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Farizona-school-district-says-independent-investigator-examine-alleged-dossier-parents&h=AT35l_7jx66xUS0_i2Yte80gFDNoSBs2P1LA1PxxNIxSth56CJZVrECXDJwX0Fa0yZcU5zpXIJMt6hUgSHCY0y8us4sfFUhfrzFChI2mTw0qzapXJKt-vhFny6emgEFTwBeBpQI_LJVbvbZRJA

My take:

This is bullying on a grand scale, by school officials. And my advice to these parents is to take their kids out of public school and homeschool right away. Taking their kids out of these schools is the only way to even hope to hold these school officials accountable. Because with each child that exits public schools goes an average of $100.00 of funding per day in attendance. And it adds up quickly! Without kids, schools lose money! So, hit them where it hurts, parents!

With knowledge comes empowerment!

When you’re able to pick up on the vibes of the people around you, you have a gift. And it can be a godsend to targets of bullying.

Imagine that you’re able to feel other’s energy and sense their moods and auras! It’s great because it warns you ahead of time that negative people are nearby. Therefore, it gives you the cue you need to steer clear of them. In that, it gives you the chance to avoid harm before it happens.

However, the sensations themselves don’t feel good.

In life, there will be many people you meet from whom you’ll pick up some yucky vibes. In other words, you’ll notice that something just doesn’t sit well when you encounter such people. These feelings and sensations are always physical- you usually feel them in your body, most often, your stomach.

In cases like this, your body is like a radio tower that picks up frequencies, and it doesn’t lie.

When you pick up negative vibes, you’ll get that sick feeling in your stomach. Sometimes, you even get that cold, creepy shiver up your spine. You’ll feel as if the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck.

What’s best for you doesn’t always feel or taste good.

Paying attention to these not-so-good feelings is like taking a spoonful of medicine when you’re sick. No, it doesn’t taste good. In fact, many kinds of medicine taste downright nasty. However, if you’ll just hold your nose, put the spoon in your mouth, and swallow the concoction, you’ll feel so much better later.

In other words, if you’ll pay attention to those bad vibes instead of ignoring them, you’ll be able to excuse yourself from the encounter and avoid a potential attack. You’ll also be able to better avoid the suspicious person in the future.

Then, once you’re away from them, you’ll feel so much better, not to mention, safer. Also, you’ll feel so proud of yourself knowing that you likely dodged a bullet.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Nefarious people are experts at hiding their evil and they do it under the cover of concern and love. Bullies and fake friends are such people and it can be difficult to spotlight them. After they’ve harmed us, we’re often left shocked and bewildered.

Fortunately, there are signs you can look for if you know what they are. Here’s what you can do to spot frenemies, fakes, and undercover bullies:

1. Always observe the people around you – without looking like you’re watching, of course. Use your peripheral vision to scan them and your environment, and you’ll quickly pick up on the moods and sense the elephant in the room (if there is one).

2. Look for body language that isn’t congruent with words and context – Actions speak louder than words. If their body language isn’t congruent with words, background, or the situation and shows even a hint of hostility and discomfort when they’re around you, then “Houston, we have a problem.”

3. Watch for micro flashes – If you’re not careful, you’re likely to miss those tiny, split-second micro flashes of contempt people give without realizing it or when they think you aren’t aware of it. There are good actors; don’t get me wrong, but there are certain things the body gives away involuntarily, and if you look for it, you’ll see it.

When you’re around fake friends, sometimes, as you turn your back, you’ll see a tiny micro flash of contempt on their faces out of the corner of your eye. Then, you’ll get that nagging feeling in the pit of your gut. Don’t ignore that because you don’t only imagine things! Eighty-six these creeps fast!

4. Notice the person’s feet – You can tell a lot by the feet! If the person is talking to you, facing you, but their feet are pointing away from you, that means they aren’t as “with you” as you think. Put some distance between you and that person.

5. Watch for crossed arms while talking to the person – If you’re having a conversation with the person and they cross their arms over their chest, that’s a dead giveaway! They’re exhibiting closed body language, and they’re closing themselves off to anything you have to say. It’s time to make an excuse to end the tete-a-tete and walk away. You don’t want this person around you.

6. Looking at you without blinking – if they do this, it’s a sure sign of contempt, or they’re trying to intimidate you. Either way, this person is not the person you want to be around.

7. Other signs to look for – a furrowed brow, one corner of the lip slightly raised, an icy, piercing stare, smiling at you with their mouth but not the eyes (no crinkles around the eyes). Any of these signs, you might want to distance yourself.

8. If they look at you, then look at each other when you walk away – again, you want nothing to do with these people.

9. Watch what you share– Very important! Don’t tell anyone anything they don’t need to know. Not even to those who seem friendly Don’t reveal information that’s better off private. Don’t badmouth anybody, especially the bullies, to anyone. They may smile in your face, but you can be sure they’ll report back to the bullies with anything you say and try to fan the flames.

10. Watch for eavesdroppers – If you have an innocent conversation with someone in the hall, be on the lookout for eavesdroppers. Don’t talk near corners or open doors. Many times people will listen in on your discussion, then report back to the bullies with it. Pay attention to people who walk by.

And if you see other people standing around while you’re speaking and those people aren’t a part of the conversation, take the discussion to a place more private, being sure you aren’t being followed.

In order to protect yourself, you must keep your eyes and ears peeled and be an avid people-watcher. Only when you pay attention to other people, will you be able to see behind the masks bullies and fakers wear.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Judgemental girls tauting fellow student

First, let me say this. If your friends are allowing themselves to be used by your bullies to get personal information and deep secrets about you and your life, then they aren’t friends at all. What they are, is a bunch of traitors, back-stabbers, two-faced sellouts!

They’re worse than enemies because, with enemies, you know exactly where you stand with them. Therefore, you know it’s best to keep your distance from them, or better yet, tell them to keep their distance from you. You know to keep these people out of your life.

Not so with traitors. A traitor will be sneaky, and they’ll make it a point to stick close to you so that they can continue to get juicy information about your life, with which to report back to your bullies with.

So, what are ways bullies use your so-called friends to bait you?

1. They have them ask you questions- personal Understand that these traitors won’t seem nosy when they ask you. They’ll act concerned for your well-being. They’ll have you fooled, thinking they really care about you when they’re only trying to gather your private information.

2. They have them stick extra close to you. Your so-called friends will latch onto you like a tick to a dog. This is so they can watch you closely and scrutinize everything you say and do. They will also try to find out who you associate with besides them, who your family members are, where you live, everything.

3. They have them go through your belongings when you aren’t around. Oh, yes! Your fake friends will go through your purse. They’ll go through your notebook to see what you’re writing in it, and they’ll snoop through your email. When they’re visiting you at home and you must excuse yourself to the bathroom, don’t be surprised if they even nose through your mail. They may even swing by the night before trash pick-up day and grab your trash after you set it out by the street to be picked up, then take it somewhere safe and snoop through it.

4. They have them hawk your social media profiles and pages. Sadly, many people must a lot of things on social media they really shouldn’t. Or they post things that are too easily taken out of context. In the early days of Facebook, I’ll admit that I posted a complaint from time to time- posts about bad service, idiot drivers, and ignorant people (without name-dropping, of course). Although I didn’t post anything personal, it still wasn’t good policy. Understand that these are posts that can very easily be taken out of context, so it’s probably better to keep any complaints private.

If nothing else, realize this- anyone who claims to be a friend while doing any of the four above-mentioned sins has no place in your life and if you find out they’ve betrayed you, it’s time to ditch and switch to new friends.

It’s best to make friends outside the bullying environment. Then you can show these new friends the awesome you that you can’t show in the environment you’re bullying in.

And understand that when you drop these people, you might be friendless for a while, but think about this. Did you have any friends in the first place while your fake friends were betraying you? Wouldn’t you rather be alone than to deal with fakers who only pretend to be for you when they’re really siding with the enemy?

With knowledge come empowerment!

Father told a funny story to his son.

1. Before you get in the car to go somewhere, make sure you’re wearing a good pair of underwear with no holes in them. You never know when you might get in an accident and they have to cut your clothes off of you.

2. Don’t sleep in the nude. You never know when your house might catch fire in the middle of the night.

If you remember your grandmother’s wise but funny nuggets of advice, feel free to comment below.

They not concerned with facts, only the excitement that the rumors and lies create and the close bonding it brings their group.

Understand that your bullies already know the truth. Oh, yes! They know that you aren’t what they say you are. And they know that they’re lying through their teeth. That’s the sad part. Maybe it’s the reason they stay so angry at you all the time. They hate you because your truth contradicts their lies.

Bullies know that you’re better than what they try to make you out to be. But, here’s the thing.

The truth doesn’t fit their narratives, nor their agenda. So, they’ll become desperate and go out of their way to make the falsehoods look true. Realize that the bullies are benefiting from the ruination of your reputation. And they’ll move Heaven and Earth to keep those benefits.

Your bullies are the ones that have to work so doggone hard because it takes a ton of work to cover up lies and half-truths. Lies tend to have a never-ending chain. They tell the first lie and have to put out a second lie to cover up the first. Then they must lie a third time to cover up the first two lies about you. And on and on it goes. It’s a never-ending chain.

Lies have a way of building and they build so much that it soon becomes hard for the bullies to keep their stories straight. I mean, seriously! After so long and so many lies, who can keep up with all that? They eventually lie themselves into a crack they can’t pull themselves out of.

If you stay calm and play your hand correctly, your bullies will eventually spin themselves into their own web and get stuck in it. So, sit back and watch them fall into the trap of their own making. Even better have lots of pun- oops- fun watching the show!

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Every blogger in the universe has had this happen. An unnamed cyber-bully or one with a fake name trolls your blog, then makes vile comments against you. You can tell the person isn’t a blogger because their name is in black, there’s no blog associated with their screen name, and their spelling and grammar looks as if they never got past the third grade.

Lord knows I’ve had my share of them so I’m positive that every other blogger has had a few too, if they’ve been blogging long enough. If you haven’t, give it time.

Luckily, we bloggers can moderate each comment and we have control over which comments get published and which don’t. That’s a good thing.

So, if you get a troll who harasses you on your blog and the comment is so out of left field that you think the person must be sending their comment from a mental institution, the best thing to do is to trash the comment.

It’s what I did earlier today when a commenter who called his/herself Sheina-Ashley Vann launched a personal attack on me today. I could tell this person was clearly off their rocker because the comment was pretty bizzare- and that’s putting it mildly.

Trashing the comment without reply is the best thing you can do because you erase them from your blog- you make the trolling person irrelevant. And that angers a troll more than anything because they want you to react and you don’t. You only make them disappear.

Then chances are that person never bothers you again, unless they’re a psycho. And if they do, you can always do the opposite- sometimes you must publish the comments to expose them for the mentally deranged kook they really are. And that can make them go away as well.

It really depends on the person you’re dealing with amd the concept and circumstances around the incidence. Some troll comments are better exposed and some are better trashed. Only you can decide which.

With knowledge comes empowerment!