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Newsletter Volume 21 - July 03, 2002
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Morgan Matlock, the current Miss Amarillo, Texas, the former Miss
Dallas, and a contestant for the Miss Texas title, is an ardent
advocate of Words Can Heal. She has spread the message of Words
Can Heal through speaking engagements at national and state leadership
events, school assemblies, and even for firefighters at Ground Zero,
encouraging thousands of people to take the Words Can Heal Pledge.
Morgan's zeal to eliminate verbal violence from our society stems
from her own negative experience with hurtful words, as she explains
below.
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Forgiving Personal Terrorists
 I
stand in the school auditorium before 400 young faces. They are 4th
- 6th graders, who have filed into their lunch room to hear me speak
on behalf of Words Can Heal. They are talking and laughing, the buzz
of elementary school banter filling the room.
One would think that these children have no need to be taught how
too communicate. But then I focus on specific faces. I see an eleven-year-old
girl at the end of a row on the perimeter of a conversation taking
place between three other girls in her class. I watch as she cranes
her neck in their direction and smiles slightly and raises her eyebrows,
searching their faces for approval. She meets an electric jolt of
rejection as they roll their eyes and reposition themselves to leave
her out. Her face falls, and she slumps over in her chair.
I see a small-framed boy getting the back of his chair kicked repeatedly
by some bigger boys sitting behind him. He turns around and tells
them to stop a couple of times before giving up, staring blankly ahead
as the boys continue.
I notice a boy with braces and glasses, a heavy-set girl, another
whom they likely call "nerd" or "stupid," yet another who probably
bears the label, "weird" or "strange."
I recognize all of these children, not because I've met them before,
but because I was them. They are experiencing my past. I hope to give
them a future by being their voice today.
During my adolescent years, I experienced more than my share of teasing.
From fourth grade until eighth grade I went through an "awkward" stage.
My most effective bully was the girl who was supposedly my best friend.
She was always telling me how wonderful she was and how tame and pathetic
I was. I believed her. After all, she was my best friend; I thought
I was lucky to have her!
I was told I was fat; I was constantly laughed at in gym class because
I was un-athletic and "ran funny"; and kids called me "metal-mouth"
because I wore a horrible contraption called a Jones-jig to correct
my very crooked teeth. In the seventh grade I was labeled a "freak"
because I wore bell-bottomed jeans and wrote stories and day dreamed
during lunchtime. My grades began to suffer, and I sought acceptance
among the more accepting artistic (and sometimes deviant) crowd.
That's when, thankfully, my parents put me in private school. Over
the next two years, I began to fall into proportion physically and
the metal came off of my then-straight teeth. People began to respond
to me more positively, so going into 9th grade I decided I would brave
public school once more.
It's strange how a couple years can change people and the dynamics
of a social group. Suddenly the girl that "blossomed" before everyone
else, who all the boys wanted to sit next to, became the girl whom
all the guys considered they had "been there, done that." She looked
sad and hardened; she had been used.
The smart kid who had been stamped "nerd" was running with the rough
crowd and bullying others for not being his intellectual equal. Some
of the very people who had ostracized me and made me cry every day
after school were now acting like my best friends. In junior high,
the way I dressed and my creative streak earned me the label of "weird."
In high school my classmates nominated me "most unique."
Forgiveness has been difficult, I must admit. To this day, the negative
words that were spoken to me resonate in my mind and remind me of
my imperfections. I used to try to silence them by telling myself
that I am a different person now than I used to be. Then I realized
that I was denying my own humanity. Personality traits that were viewed
as shortcomings are the very things that make me unique.
Yes, I have forgiven my personal terrorists, who bullied me day after
day after day, thanks in large part to a loving encouraging family
and by the grace of God. But the only way I've found to silence their
hurtful echoes is by preventing them from being said to someone else.
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Turning The Tables On Words That Hurt
Morgan Matlock is a glowing example of how hurt feelings from negative words can be galvanized into constructive action to stop the plague of verbal violence in its tracks. We wish her good luck in her upcoming contest, and hope she succeeds in her goal of bringing the message of Words Can Heal to millions of Americans.
All of us can become Words Can Heal activists in our own communities, spreading the word -- the healing word!
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Visit www.WordsCanHeal.org for more ideas on how to heal with words.
And spread the word! Send this message out today -- together we can make a difference!
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