If you know a girl who’s having a tough time, there’s a great organization – The Letter Project – that can help.
Don’t know a girl who’s going through a tough time? You can still help a total stranger out…just by writing a letter.
Click here to listen to Cassie read her letter to A!
Here’s Cassie’s letter to a girl struggling with bullies and confidence:
A,
Let’s level: life probably feels like it sucks right now. You’re surrounded by people that you didn’t * choose * to be around – you’re all thrown together by chance and circumstance at school, and you don’t have any say in it. You might feel like an outsider looking in. You have friends, but you don’t feel really connected to people on the level that you want to. They know you, but they don’t know you. And then there are the people who you should be friends with – because of that whole chance / circumstance / age thing…but they’re not. They’re frenemies…or worse, straight up enemies.
I’m here to tell you that you’re right: they suck. But there’s one thing you have to remember: you can never forget that – just like you – they are also fighting their own battles. They’re insecure. They’re hurting about something. They worry. And those battles can make them lash out in ways at people around them, and some of those people probably include you.
One of my favorite memes going around right now is about the grandmother who taught her granddaughter who was going through some trouble a lesson. She put some carrots in a pot, an egg in a pot, and some coffee in a pot, and boiled them all. She then explained: the carrots go into the boiling water hard, but come out soft and weak. The egg – with its liquid center – comes out hard and unyielding. The coffee, however, when it changes – it ALSO changes the water around it. You can be the carrots and wilt when faced with pressure, you can be the egg and become hardened by life’s challenges…or you can be the coffee and adapt to change the world around you.
And each of those people is an opportunity: an opportunity to flip a frenemy into a friend. An opportunity to reach out to someone who might not even know they just need some kindness. It takes someone strong to do that, and I believe that person is YOU.
But at the end of the day, when it comes to bullies and stress and hard decisions and insecurities, remember: YOU are in control. It is YOUR life. Not your teacher’s, not your parents’, and definitely not the trolls’. It belongs to YOU and ONLY YOU. You are the captain of your own ship. You get one life – make it a story worth telling. You choose who to surround yourself with, and you choose how to let things affect you. And I’m telling you now, you need to choose yourself. You need to choose to see the AMAZING person within and acknowledge her existence. You don’t need other people to bring that out or to validate it.
You don’t need to worry about your OWN insecurities that will try to tear you down. Silence the doubt. You are enough.
You don’t need to worry about trolls who try to tear you down. Your opinion of yourself is the only one that really matters, and when you realize that, you’ll become untouchable. And untouchable people change the world.