I met with a young bully yesterday, a child too young to know such anger or to carry such pain–except that she wasn’t. This young girl showed me her heart, and it was cracked in two. One side held all the people who were nice to her; the other held all of the times she had been invalidated or abused. She weighed them up: all the hurts and compliments. She stored them like keepsakes or promises.

This bully drew me her heart. It was full of rain, or tears, and at the tiny bottom point her angel stood, drowning in the grief, and coaching her. But when the pain overflowed, it changed to anger, and to the need to wound others–to be seen, if only in the light of hurt.

This child was maybe eight, or nine. Singlehandedly, she makes the space around her hazardous. Yet I have seen the pain she carries, the tears that crest the bulwarks of her self-esteem, and, like a mighty river, flood over her and all those in her path.