Tree Langdon & Sabana Grande’s Guide On How To Handle BULLIES
By: Sabana Grande
Tags: Biography, Parenting, Bullying, Life Lessons, Relationships

Recently two friends and writers at Illumination decided to collaborate on an article. Sabana Grande proposed that we write about an important Life Lesson we have learned.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons in life and am sure there are many more to come.

According to a popular book: If Life Is A Game, These Are The Rules, by Cherie Carter-Scott, we will learn a lot of lessons in our lives. Rule number 4 resonates with me the most. “A Lesson Will Be Repeated Until Learned.”

A Repeated Lesson, by Tree Langdon

I’ve been bullied most of my life.

I am the second daughter in a family of four children and my older sister was a bully. At first, she was happy to help take care of the new baby, but as I grew older, she became jealous and was often mean. I learned how to pacify her. My parents didn’t teach me how to stand up to her, so I did the best I could.

She basically groomed me for future bullies to come.

My technique involved a combination of keeping the peace and going along to get along. I would rarely say no to anything and ended up in a heap of trouble as a teenager.

My first two relationships were with men who manipulated me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand there are two sides to the coin now. I know I let them get away with it.

At that stage in my life, I didn’t know I was allowed to do anything else.

Eventually, I got married to the worst bully of them all. He was abusive and my passive behavior gave him permission to continue, even after our first son was born. I knew I had to do something, but it took another two years and the birth of our second son for me to find the courage to leave.

He was still a bully and co-parenting was difficult, to say the least. Counseling and some great friends helped me stand up to him. I learned about narcissistic behavior and realized my part in the relationship.

I learned how to stand up to a bully, but the lesson wasn’t over. I had run away, but that wasn’t enough.

The year my oldest son turned seven, I was tucking him into bed and noticed he was favoring one arm. After some persuasion, he admitted that a group of boys at school had been kicking him on the playground that day.

The next day I confronted the ringleader, threatening him within an inch of his life if he ever dared to come near any member of my family again. Then I turned myself into the principal’s office. It was a step forward, although a grown adult confronting a seven-year-old bully wasn’t a huge leap. It made me realize I had to teach my son more than I had learned from my parents.

When I landed a great job, in the finance department at the local college, I was thrilled. After several years, my boss retired, and his replacement turned out to be another bully. I was astounded to recognize the same behaviors as all the other bullies in my life.

I walked into her office and told her I was leaving. I also told her why. I couldn’t believe how freeing it made me feel and I realized I had finally learned the lesson. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.

I had learned how to stand up for myself.

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

A Self Esteem Lesson, by Sabana Grande

When I was a kid, I was bullied in school. Unfortunately, I learned the WRONG lesson from the experience as you are about to discover.

When I emigrated with my family to another country when I was 10, we spent a year in a newly built city where I made a lot of friends in school. I would, for a while afterward, remember it as “the last good year of my life.”

My mom married my stepdad who was a nice guy and we moved to a rural-ish town. Up until that point, I had been raised in a different country by my grandparents, and then for a year in this new country by my godparents before we moved to this town. I had never been raised by either of my parents until then (except financially speaking).

Being in a new town in an already new country with people I didn’t quite know so well (my mom and stepdad) sapped my confidence. By a stroke of misfortune, I was also put in quite a rough school. There were 3 elementary schools in the town. Two of them had years-long waiting lists. One of them didn’t. I went to that one.

I was 11 years old and in 6th Grade when the bullying started. I had up until then been a sheltered child. My fellow 11-year-olds already knew about hardcore pornography and smoking. There were also organized fights at breaktime. I was really not in my element.

I was a goody-two-shoes, know it all, academic type. People used to constantly knock stuff off of my desk as I would try to pick things up and they would keep knocking things down. They also made fun of me relentlessly, partly because I was foreign.

I was also loud and annoying, to be fair. I think I did it to compensate for my fear.

High school began after 6th Grade and would last 6 more years. I never quite settled into my prior, confident self.

At home, the situation was worse. I can relate to Tree Langdon’s experience with narcissists. My mother hadn’t been raising us up until that point not just so that she could work abroad, but because she didn’t have the patience. She liked saying, “You ruined my day,” to everyone around her, and enjoyed making fun of me at social gatherings in order to get people to laugh at me.

I confided in her everything that happened at school. She listened in silence.

In the days after, when I would then fail to do as she said—we hoovered and cleaned the entire house twice a week, my little brother and I — she would say things like, “See, that’s why you’ve no friends. That’s why nobody likes you. You never listen.”

It hurt. I did have friends at school, although I was not the most popular.

At one point, I remember that I was embarrassed when a friend of mine saw my first touchscreen phone. (I had bought it with my own money, and whenever my mom noticed that strangers saw it in my hand, she would tell them “he’s not worth it” and they would look at her incredulously.)

Anyway, on this screen, there was a widget app that had a to-do list. And on that to-do list was (right at the top) “Don’t tell mom anything about self.”

Obviously, when my friend saw it I was embarrassed.

It was my earliest goal — not telling my mom anything about me that made me vulnerable so as not to make things worse.

My mother reveled in making my little siblings cry as well by calling them “wusses” and “losers” when they were hurt, even though some of them were even less than 10 years old. Her empathy was sparse.

What I did, however, admire about my mother was that she was a go-getter with a strong “You can do anything,” type of attitude. She instilled in me a sense that anything can be accomplished if you work hard enough and I am proud to have learned that from her.

As for the ‘getting bullied at home because you’re getting bullied in school’ thing, I became very quiet. For years, literally years, people would ask me to repeat myself several times because everything I said, I said at a very low volume, if I said anything at all.

By 17 or 18, I don’t remember, it had turned into a superficial charm. Whenever someone said something I would have a little joke, something quick-witted (repartee) to reply with. People laughed and seemed to like me. It also ensured that nobody ever got to know the real me.

I then read ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ by Robert A. Glover and it said that if you want real relationships with people, you’re going to have to be yourself regardless of the potential for getting hurt.

I am still working on that to this day. I can carry a whole conversation on little jokes and repartee, believe it or not.

Trying to be different takes time. At least now I have the confidence to be myself. All it needs is practice.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

What I Learned From Tree Langdon’s Story:

There were certain things I noticed in Tree Langdon's story, lines such as “I learned how to pacify her,” or “gave him permission to continue, even after our first son was born.”

I think one of the first things I come away with from the story is that Tree Langdon is a kind person. The way she has phrased this story is not in the manner of, “I’m a victim.” Despite the fact that I am sure the subject is very close to home for her, she writes very courageously and serenely. There is no hint of resentment in her tone that I can discern.

Those lines show that she has a habit of putting other people first, which if nothing else, I consider an attribute of someone with a good heart.

As for not letting people trample on that good heart, I am happy she has been able to make changes in that respect throughout her life.