I suffered bullying from about the age of 5 and it continued until I left school at 16…the reason for my bullying was my hair (yes that is righ hair!) every day I was subject to various types of bullying it seemed people had a real issue with my hair even teachers and parents of fellow class mates….. the worst bullying I experienced were my arm being broken at the age of 9, my hair being pulled by a teacher, getting badly beaten up at age 13, moving school and finally being bullied again at 15 and needing to be chaperoned throughout my GCSE’s as I was too scared to go back to school…it was a miracle I got the grades I did to be honest I remember trying to revise whilst I had a gang of kids shouting obscenities up at my bedroom window…the relief when I left school was huge, I got my hair straightened and went to college in another area, I am pleased to say I experienced no bullying at college and made some amazing friends (some of whom I am still friends with now) I also went to University and had an amazing time….people finally accepted me although they did not know the school girl ‘Natalie’ with the afro hair, I do feel if I still had my hair this way the outcome would be totally different….
Unfortunately I fell victim to a new kind of bullying last year ‘cyber bullying’ at the ripe old age of 35 and once again my hair was the reason for this… it is crazy even writing this as I still cannot believe all these years later my hair caused such offence….. it was such a stressful and scary time for my family and I did not know what to do and where to turn at first it had almost been a month since it all started and I needed it to stop, fortunately I have a son to protect and my motherly instinct licked in and gave me a power I wish I had when I was younger, so I contacted the police who managed to help with direct bullying but not the indirect so eventually I contacted the media who were very supportive of me and yes it did stop and I do feel this was down to the media and also I managed to raise awareness on bullying and cyber bullying through the newspaper coverage, TV, News and radio shows…I then started to receive messages from the general public there were some lovely support messages but also some sad ones as they were from people who were going through bullying or their children were and others were ones that had shared similar bullying in childhood…I received so many it took me over a week to reply to them and I wanted to reply personally as I was so touched by them.
Thanks again to each and every one of you and a massive extra special thank you to a wonderful lady named Patricia who has worked so very hard on perfecting this website…..