Where did my life go...?! Some thoughts on volunteering

It's been hectically busy in my life.  I feel like sometimes it's not my own.  I've taken on a LOT of volunteer positions and moved on from some others.  Basically, I'm working on expanding my resume (with causes and events that are near and dear to my heart) through volunteer experience. 

Being a volunteer is an amazing thing.  I've always believed, and I think this is my parents and grandparents doing, that volunteering is the best way to give thanks and give back to your community.  It  is a concrete way of using your skills and knowledge to help members of your community.  It's something that I have always done and I will continue to do. 

I actually told Mr. Dan the other night that I couldn't wait to be retied (says the woman whose just starting her career) so I could volunteer at all the places I wanted to.  So I could be as dedicated a volunteer as I wanted to be.  Mr. Dan just smiled and nodded.  He knows how much I want to take on - and he also knows I can't do any of it while working a full-time job.  But a girl's gotta pay the bills, right?

Anyhoar, the bills are getting paid (thank you employer!) and the volunteering is continuing to happen.  Right now I'm working as a volunteer Media Coordinator for a Dress for Success event (more info on that in the coming days), waiting for the Bluenose Marathon Organizing Committee to get up and going again (I'm co-chair of Public Affairs), being an Advisor for Junior Achievement (my kids are AWESOME!) and working with some ladies to do a fundraiser for our pug group. They're all great events/causes and I'm excited to share the deets, as they come along, with you all (even though I'm still suspicious there's only one of you, dear reader).  So for now I say: Get out there and volunteer! Go to the food bank and spend an hour, visit your SPCA or read to some kids.  Every volunteer is valuable.  Every skill you can  bring to a committee or event is valuable to your community.  Get out there and DO IT!

I swear to you, it will get better...

How is it that today, in 2011, we're still dealing with people who are bullying others?  How is it that in our "advanced" society that we have CHILDREN KILLING THEMSELVES?!  How is it that the so-called ADULTS in our world continue this behavior in the work site, ignore or defend the actions of their of children and do NOTHING to help our children...to teach our children right from wrong...to do ANYTHING to help these children understand the pain that they're inflicting on other people in the world.  I want to tell the kids of today that it will stop.  It will get better...you are STRONG....

http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1264080.html

This poor kid.  I know how he feels.  I'm big.  I always have been.  I've been bullied.  But I didn't give up - I fought back because I knew it was wrong.  I knew I had support and I knew it would get better.

I knew that some day it would get better.  How did I know that?  I don't really know...I just felt it in my heart.  I knew that was no way that this would go on for the rest of my life.  I knew there was something I could do to change it.  So, do you know what I did?  I decided to tell them how it was, and it was going to be.  I said, at the age of 14 to the people that tormented me, something like this:
I AM smarter than you are.  I AM stronger than you are.  I AM braver than you are.  And one day, in the future, I will be more educated, better adjusted, loved by my true friends, loved by my family and at peace with the choices I've made in my life.  Some day, I WILL be your boss.  And then maybe you'll realize that all this shit, all this crap you've put me and countless others through will have done nothing but proved that you are a small, unhappy person.

I just want to reach out to all these other kids that feel how I did...I want them to know that it DOES get better.  Stand up, speak out, be yourself.  Because someday, you could be their boss.  And then you can show them the compassion that they never showed you.  Gay, straight, fat or thin, black, white, Asian or pink, it gets better.  It does get better.

xo