Be yourself. Be different. Be you. 👚

👚 Pink Shirt Day (also known as Anti-Bullying Day) started as something very small. 🇨🇦 On the first day of high school in 2007, a boy was bullied for wearing pink. A few older students and their friends went and bought 50 tank tops from a discount shop. 🛒 Along with spreading the word to wear pink the next day, they hauled these shirts to school and handed them out to boys in the school foyer. When the bullied boy walked in and saw this, imagine how he felt. 🥺

Nothing changes if nothing changes.☝🏽

👚 Pink Shirt Day is now a movement celebrated globally. 🌍 In Canada it is the last Wednesday of February. 🗓 April’s International Day of Pink is also an effort to stamp out discrimination, which we know takes all shapes and forms. 😞

In teaching our kids how hurtful bullying and judgement can be, wearing pink is but one symbol of kindness and care. In school, we had our students decorate shirts with meaningful messages. I noticed that quite a few wrote messages about being different. This gave me pause. 🤔 What a concept. To be different. To not be like others. There was a time when the message was to fit in, go unnoticed and be the same as everyone else. To not be different. And then, to not talk about being bullied. To not help those who were bullied.

How marvellous that kids today are saying the opposite. 👏🏽 Sure, it frustrates us when they don’t ‘listen’. We have rules and we have social norms. But at the same time, don’t we want them to be unique? Stand out? Challenge the status quo? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Be yourself. Be different. Be you. Words to live by. 🙏🏽