My daughter would come home sad everyday. She would cry every week. We would have pep talks regularly, but I could not mend her broken heart. I could not take back the words kids said to my child. Her loneliness haunted me. As a mother, I was watching a child dying on the inside. It was like watching a beautiful flower wilting in the cold.

When I discovered that my daughter was having a hard time adjusting to school a few years back, I did everything I could to make sure she understood that making friends was an easy task. If I learned something from my life, it's that we have some of our worst experiences as kids, so that we can grow up with thick skins and deal with the adult world.

After hearing all the stories in the news about young women committing suicide after being bullied for weeks/months/years, I had to sit back and ponder. I was bullied for years. How bad did it get? Bad. Am I overreacting? No.