A Time to Heal

Where I am from, in Bamako, Mali, they say something bad always happens when it is too hot outside, but that day I did not listen. I was twelve years old, and I wanted to play with my friend across the street. I saw her and her little cousins standing in the shade of a tree, and I went to join them. As I got closer, I noticed an older boy near them, taunting them.

“I told you if I ever saw you outside, I’d beat you up!” I heard him yell at my friend in our language, Bambara, and I could see my friend had tears in her eyes. I ran to her and stood between her and the bully. “Leave them alone!” I told him.

Before I knew it, he swung his stick at my face and we began to wrestle on the ground.

“Stop, please!” he began to beg when I started to win the fight.

“Will you leave them alone?” I asked him, holding him in place.

“I promise!” Satisfied, I got off of him and smoothed down my long taffé skirt and my braided hair. I turned to ask my friend if she was okay, but she just said, “Look out!”

I turned back around just as the bully launched a rock at my head. It hit me right in the mouth, and an unending bow of blood gushed from my lips. It would take several stitches to close the wound, and I was left with an ugly scar on my lips that remains there today.

I was fourteen when I moved to America. I had a hard time keeping up and understanding English, since my classmates would laugh whenever I tried to speak it. We spoke French in school and Bambara at home in Mali. English was never a language I’d needed back home.

Still, I really wanted to do well in my new school. I worked hard to prove to those students how smart I was. I was speaking English in six months, and earned an A average in my first year in America.

Writing became my escape. When I write, I see my characters come alive. I feel in control. It makes me feel like a goddess. It is where I can create a world of my own, where I can be hopeful, joyful, and free; anything can happen when I am holding the pen.

Soon, writing evolved into my lifeline when my classmates went from simply teasing me to all-out bullying. Every time I looked in the mirror at the scar on my lip, it reminded me of what happens when you stand up to bullies. I said nothing.

When they would taunt me, mock my accent, call me ugly and fat and weird, I would write poetry. “To my dear, depressed, sleepy friends,” was the name of my favorite poem I wrote for others whose depression from bullying caused them to be just as exhausted as I was. But writing was not enough.

I could not focus in class. When they would laugh at me, I sometimes quietly cried, and my teachers never seemed to notice any of it. So, I started skipping class. Soon, my A average dropped significantly.

The morning I decided to stop skipping school, I looked in the mirror and saw my scar, like I do every day. But this time, I saw something different. I saw the time I stood up for my friend. I saw myself as courageous. I saw myself as a survivor. And everything changed.

Bullies had no right to mess with my education. I realized I should not care about what they think of me, because I was here for myself, not them.

I went to the back of my favorite notebook and wrote down every word the bullies had ever said about me: stupid, fat, ugly. The names they called me over the years filled the entire page. Over the top of those words, I wrote in capital letters, “HEAL.”

I took every ounce of power out of those hateful words and gave the power back to myself and began to heal the wounds. Then I wrote another poem:

I didn’t give up, it only made me get stronger

You’ll no longer be in my way 

You’ll no longer be the reason I won’t show up

If I fail, it must be because of me and not you

I began to share my poems online and got amazing feedback. People were able to relate to the struggles I was going through and to and some encouragement in my words.

Suddenly, my writing was not just for my own healing anymore. By sharing my pain, others felt like they were not alone, that someone out there thinks their life matters.

Writing taught me that loving yourself and making peace with your soul leads you to love others better. I learned to love the world—even the bullies in it.

Writing not only gave me a new sense of self and an opportunity to help others, it also earned me my first major award. It was truly an honor when I received a Silver Key for my poetry in 2015 from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Writing even led me to pursue a degree in nursing, once I realized that my goal for myself and all people is healing. I want to help people be well, physically and mentally. I believe everybody has the right to be happy. And through my writing and my future career as a nurse, I can help heal the world.