A boy stopped me in my school hallway to ask me to go to school. asked me if I needed help finding my classes, and it saved my life. You see, it was the first day out of a school that had imprisoned me, where my own classmates fought to strip me of my safety and my voice.
everything that I was, through death threats and physical attacks that left me bruised and bleeding. They pushed me farther and farther into a hole until I could no longer see my own future. But there he was, a stranger who saw my struggle and how obviously lost I was on a new campus, and he took the time to stop, notice me, and help me. I was seen for the first time in two years, and it saved my life. This is the story of how I went from the victim of physical attacks to the CEO of a nonprofit aimed to help kids across the world.
But if you'll take one thing away from my story, it's that all it takes is one person to change the world, and that person can be you with a simple act of kindness. My story starts almost five years ago when I was entering the seventh grade at a new, prestigious, all-girls private school. So there I was in my itchy new uniform...
about to start my middle and high school career. I fully expected three things. One, I would make lots of new friends.
Two, I would enjoy all my classes, including math. And three, I would eventually graduate from there and go on to some college. But within the first few weeks, I started to notice that I didn't exactly fit in with anyone.
But I told myself, it's just the beginning. Everything will be okay. Essentially, things were fine until I was able to get a job. until they weren't.
It started with those little things that are easily explained away. People would ditch me as a joke, or they'd say mean things in passing, and every time I tried to join a lunch table, I'd get the same line as in the movie, you can't sit with us. While on paper, these don't sound like much, it was the overall cumulative effect that began to chip away at my self-esteem and self-confidence.
Then, in the spring of my seventh grade year, I was physically attacked twice in two days. I came home sobbing with bleeding red scratch marks down my face, bruises down my leg, and my hair in knots. And then a week later another attack happened. I was walking to class when a group of girls surrounded me and they were all calling my name and laughing and converging in when one girl grabbed my laptop computer and ran.
while another one attacked me from behind and pinned me to the floor using her foot on my head. I remember my head hitting the ground and my face scraping against the concrete and my ears ringing. Everything was spinning and I could hear them laughing at me. I was able to writhe and struggle as hard as I could and get free of that girl and run after the one with my computer and get it back.
But as I turned to run away, I felt the blow of her fist on my spine punching me to the ground. That moment plays in my head over and over again, and I don't know if I'll ever forget it. After that point, I was completely ostracized by everyone. I was shoved into lockers, verbally bullied, cyberbullied, and ate lunch alone every day. I became so afraid to go to school, not knowing if I was going to be attacked again, and I felt like nothing.
I felt like my life no longer mattered and every day became a battle to smile, to eat, to sleep at night, to look and seem okay despite what was going on in my head and it was a battle I was slowly losing till I hit the point where I didn't think I would survive long enough to see my high school graduation day. The final straw for me came the next year in eighth grade in science class. We were working on a group project.
When the girl next to me became enraged because her project failed, she was standing on the desk with scissors in her hand when she spun around fuming, and I still clearly remember the scissors glinting off the fluorescent lights as she pointed them at me and said, I'm resisting the urge to slit your throat with these. Even though the teacher was right there, he did nothing. The students around me did nothing.
Nobody did anything. Even the administration did nothing. According to them, it was all my fault. Instead of blaming the bullies, they blamed me. I was screaming out for help and no one was stopping to even notice, and I've never felt more voiceless.
It was at that point I realized that things were going to get worse. weren't going to get better, so I began to look at other schools. And then my salvation came to me in the form of an envelope full of confetti and a piece of paper with the word accepted on it. I was so blinded by all the years I would actually get to see, and the new school that I fell in love with loved me back.
And from the first day, I had people stopping to help me find my classes. So we've come full circle. I got out, and I was finally happy.
My story doesn't end here. I began to think, what if I didn't have to go through what I went through in the first place? What if things could have been different?
I was lucky to have escaped, but in a way I felt stuck. I felt guilty for getting the chance to see that I was better than the person that my school community painted me to be. Why did I get that second chance when so many kids out there still suffer? I realized that if I didn't speak out against bullying, I was just as bad as all the students who saw me suffer and said nothing.
So at my new school, every time I saw someone sitting alone, I would always invite them over to my table. And some of these people, one girl in particular, are now my best friends, who I never would have met if I hadn't invited them over. And it wasn't until years later that I found out that around the time that I invited that one girl over to my table, she had been struggling with self-harm and... thoughts of suicide. Finding a group of friends changed her mind.
And so I saw firsthand that one small action which may not have meant that much to me at the time completely changed her life. And so that's when I came up with the idea for Sit With Us. It's a free lunch planning app that helps promote inclusion in schools.
By giving kids at least one person who sees their struggle, it can save them from so much suffering. It did for her and it did for me. The way it works is simple.
It takes kids looking for tables with tables of friends in their schools and pairs them together. To start, you create a profile page like any social media site with your bio, picture, interests, whatever, and you can add friends. Then if you choose to be a sit with us ambassador, you can take a pledge basically saying that you'll host open lunches where anyone who tries to join your table is welcome.
So if you're a kid in a school looking for a table to join, you just open the app and there's a whole list of places you can go without any fear of rejection so you know you're always finding somewhere safe. Since our release last September, we've gained over a hundred thousand users and we're operating in seven different countries and we continue to grow every day. What I'm most astounded by is the difference in people and schools and organizations and places of worship who have been looking for a simple way to better their community and who have incorporated SIT with us to fit that need.
So what do I want you to take away from this? It's a simple but meaningful message. All it takes is one person to change the world. And that person, starting right now, is you. It's up to you to make a difference in your communities, to leave this world better than the way you found it.
Something as seemingly small as lunch can make a school way more inclusive. And something like a simple act of kindness can save a life. So imagine what you're capable of.
We all go through life not always being conscious of the people around us, so if we take just one second to be more perceptive and be more kind, imagine what you could do. Even if you don't use the app, you can embody the spirit of Sit With Us by inviting someone alone over to your table. You never know, your future best friend might be sitting at the next table over. So, what will you do next? Thank you.