Bullied, Growing up a Victim: How My Life Started

My life started out with me being born the youngest of 6 children.  I love my parents and am very proud of the fact that they did the best they knew now.  That being said, my father didn’t know what fear was, and my mother didn’t know what healthy self-confidence was.


The emotional challenge for me was that, during my early years, my father was working very long hard hours, and so my mother was the one who had the dominate influence on me.  Add to this picture the fact that our family moved a lot.  At one time I counted the number of times our family had moved.  I no longer remember where all the places were, but I remember counting 18 moves over a 9-year period.  One of those moves had us living in the same place for 2-years straight.

I was 3 years old when our family circumstances caused us to start making all these moves.  9-years later, at age 12, we finally settled into the home I got to finish growing up in.  An important side effect of moving that many times is that I didn’t have time to learn how to make friends, have normal “get acquainted” conversations and all that goes with it.  Add to this picture the fact that these years of my life were heavily influenced by my mother’s habit of letting her fears make many of her decisions for her.  That’s not a good foundation for a healthy growing up life.

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Thank you for taking time to read my story.  If you are personally able to relate to any portion of my story, please contact someone you can trust and make the decision to begin the potentially long and painful process of learning how to believe in yourself in a healthy way, and how to reach a point where challenging and potentially painful situations in the present no longer sends you back to relive a painful past.

I have done this.  I do not consider myself to be better than anyone else, but I do believe in exercising my right to not stay stupid.

By Dave Kemper
© Copyright 2014 by David William Kemper.  All right reserved

No part or portion of this publication may be modified in any manner without the express written permission of the author.  Quoting from this publication is allowed on condition that the name of the author and the name of the publication are included.