Mommy Loves - Your Bullies

Someday you’ll read this. Or you won’t. But if you do: I’m sorry.

I held you. I rubbed your back. I said all the right things: “They’re insecure.” “It’s not about you.” “Walk away.” mommy loves your bullies

And your bullies? They are survival. They are the raw, feral truth of the playground jungle. They don’t care about your feelings. They don’t care about my organic peanut butter sandwiches. They see your weakness—the same weakness I coddled—and they eat it for breakfast. Someday you’ll read this

That spine? I didn’t give it to you. Your bullies did. I held you

Because they are teaching you a lesson I am too cowardly to teach: The world does not owe you softness. And if I don’t let you get a little hard, a little sharp, a little mean around the edges—someone else will do it for me.

Not in the way you think. I don’t send them cookies. I don’t high-five their parents at soccer practice. But when you came home with dirt on your new sneakers and that hollow look in your eyes—the one that says, “They got me again” —a very small, very dark part of my chest exhaled.

Last Tuesday, you cried because three boys called your new backpack "baby trash." You asked me, “Why do they hate me?”