Bullying; Powerful Video and Voices From Youth

This post is another keeping of the promise to the sparrow.

April is the Month for remembering the Value of Children and that high risk children and families need support...in all ways our hearts can find and every day. (April:National Child Abuse Prevention Month)


I was so impressed with this video and message from Youth wisdom, I wish to share.




An Excerpt from Rising Sparrow, Jane Marla VerDow

Content I had done all that could be done in these first hours, proud and at peace,I sat down to breathe, book in hand, and cracked the cover of Dear Daisy with the intent to read the story I had written.
An author, first book…heart open to explore what pages had transformed to become, now bound between hardcover. Discovery, exploration, touching land…all of this I felt…

Still…Life does not stop for this. Life has a way of not allowing itself to be edited out. I can’t tell you what page I was on when the phone rang. I can tell you not more than one-third way through I learned that where the author ends a book is often times not where the story chooses to end. A sparrow, one close to my heart, too overcome and challenged by this world, had fallen to the ground. Disbelief how life had written this epilogue chapter...days later I returned and continued to read the story I had written sensing this sparrow reading by my side. The author’s copy of Dear Daisy will forever hold my tears.

As for the fallen sparrow?
I had made a promise as we read Dear Daisy together, him There, me here…
I would not ignore nor turn my back on sparrows needing voice. Their song, his song would be heard.


Jane Marla Ver Dow
Author, Rising Sparrow Press


Books by Author:
Dear Daisy tells my story...Rising Sparrow is "my new shoes"

Autographed Books by the Author are Available

Content Synopsis/Dear Daisy

Dear Daisy, nonfiction, reads as life is presented day- to-day and by seasons. The author, a gifted storyteller invites the reader into the world and relationship between a Colored illiterate Migrant Woman sharing her wisdom with a boss man’s child under cherry and apple trees during the early 1960's. Daisy, an Angel on Earth years later mystically reappears an Angel from Heaven to guide the grown child on her pathway back Home.

Dear Daisy tells a story 2000 years old yet reminds us how challenges continue to play out and that we each contribute to writing the story.

As the story begins, the author caught in a personal struggle of survival under conditions felt oppressive, writes to Daisy. As the reflective search for self and path unfolds, the 9-11-01 story strikes as a Holy War between extremists of Nations. Before the dust settles, 10-28-01 brings world chaos personal. Living the assault aftermath, the author struggles to forgive and declares through writing an Epistle as part of her emancipation pathway that violence as a rightful expression and worship of God is not the God of her faith.



Previous writing on this blog, Click Labels for this post

(Sample)
http://storytellersandwriters.blogspot.com/2007/03/promise-kept.html

Bullying, Harassment, Assault, Teen Suicide, Bullying the Bully ...When do we reach Enough?

Teen Bullying: Special Series
by Lucinda Franks

Lucinda Franks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who was on the staff of the New York Times and has written for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review and Magazine. Her latest book is My Father's Secret War, about her father, who was a spy for the OSS during World War II.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-31/teen-bullying-special-series/tmz?obref=obinsite

I strongly encourage you to read through comments following each post. Ponder this question: Any wonder our children are lost and bullying is the epidemic and escalated violence that it has become?



As for the fallen sparrow?
I had made a promise as we read Dear Daisy together...now, yet
another There, me here…
I would not ignore nor turn my back on sparrows needing voice. Their song would be heard.


Editorial as written by author, Jane Marla VerDow to newspaper (2004)

Not Just Kids Play
"...Though our emotional shock is focused on the attack(s) may we remember that failure to provide, failure to act is an equal atrocity under terms of child abuse laws. As I read her article I noted: 2nd grade to fifth grade (time), multiple attacks (events to document), progressive violence (pattern), children reporting and demonstrating symptoms (victim voices), adults knowing (witness), policies written (criteria). What proof of circumstance are we looking for or who’s voice are we waiting to hear before action can lead towards a path to peaceful resolution?..."

"...Before we drift back to sleep dreams may we open our eyes and ears to realize that this is not an isolated event reported one day in a newspaper, our newspaper. Bullying is real and children are unprepared to face this alone or to resolve what society creates on pathways where justice is denied. We all are invested in the outcome. By what higher standards will we each hold ourselves accountable? Time will tell the story. While time passes and the Summer Sun provides its light may we reflect upon this question: Are we so concerned with how our Institutions look to a community that we fail to wonder how we appear to our children?"

Jane Marla Ver Dow
Author, Dear Daisy, Rising Sparrow Press



(Full Post:

For additional related posts on this blog, click Labels school violence, bullying, Rising Sparrow

Censorship

Hosting Activism in Art Spaces - Short Version from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

My words: At what cost, censorship? What purpose does censorship serve a society?
At what cost do we preserve institutions of a society that fail to live up to their foundation, values, message, and mission? What cost, Power?

Be the change you dream for your community, society, World.

Jane Marla VerDow