IT'S anti-bullying week and I dread talking about it to my children.

They are still so young to not understand fully what I am saying. I want to be transparent and honest with them and educate them in the realities of bullying and the implications and aftermath.

I am someone who knows all too well and this is the reason the boys are and will be in self defence classes. I was bullied so much that I had to spend a whole year in the headmaster's office and the police were involved.

I couldn’t move schools because the lovely children made up a fantastic nickname for me which was spread so far and wide that kids from other schools knew me by it and if I walked home or got the bus and I saw kids from other schools they would somehow know! How?! I don’t know. Did someone take a picture of me and add it to the bullying bulletin?

I didn’t have many friends. I was very boyish and I loved sports much to my mother's dismay, she wanted me in full makeup and dresses all the time just like her. But she used to be a model and dancer and had unrealistic expectations of her children, mostly me.

I had made friends with the boy over the road. Danny, he was called. He was an absolutely amazing skater and did awesome tricks. I aspired to be as free as him and to be as talented.

One day when some kids from another school thought that it would be funny to kick me with their skates on, he saw and came to help. They put him in the hospital, he was ok but he and his family moved away and I never spoke to him again. He saved my life that day. I dread to think what would have happened had he not showed up.

Everyday I feel terribly guilty for the damage that was caused to him and I wish I could apologise and thank him all at the same time.

When I wasn't in school for a couple of days due to concussion, that just added fuel to the fire when I did go back. They found it hilarious that I was black and blue. It’s like they had a competition of who can beat me the hardest, who would be the ones to break me….they never did. They kept trying and trying and trying until it got so bad.

I finally snapped in my last year. That summer I spent time with someone who was a karate teacher, he had been abused and bullied also and taught me a few hard lessons. I didn’t want to learn them. I just wanted everyone to not be so nasty. I wanted to do something or change so that they would stop, but what could I do?

One day I took scissors to school because I had had enough. That day all the boys pushed me about, they were taunting me and spitting at me. I was so scared I wet myself. Suddenly I just didn’t care anymore. That’s the first time I stood up for myself, that’s the first time I broke someone’s nose and it wouldn’t be the last time I had to fight.

I panic to think of Austin ever getting bullied and I worry even more if he is involved in any bullying. He doesn’t like to hit or get hit and his answer is to just run away and at six years old, choosing to solve his own conflict that way is admirable.

Everyone has been bullied at some point however mild or severe. The message of kindness just resonates all through the year, not just at Christmas and not just anti-bullying week.

Jolene Wilson, Weston Mum.