March Blog Post

Amelia Canas
March Blog Post

With discussing culture and the variants that are found around us, it’s been important to understand differences. While reading pieces that talk about themes of understanding and listening, while not always agreeing, I have found it is crucial to have respect for one another.

Each piece we have read through the course of this semester has been engaging in some way. If I couldn’t personally relate to something we read one week, I would still be able to find the piece dynamic enough to find interesting. This allowed myself to stretch my views and ability to empathize greater than before.

For the month of March, out of the various articles and poems we studied and discussed, I was able to relate strongly to bullying and the article we read this week. This is an issue I am willing to talk to anyone about, having strong opinions from my previous experiences with bullying. Bullying can be found in so many environments other than grade school, though school is where I personally experienced it.

I enjoyed reading Family Bullies by Keith Berry and Tony E. Adams because of this, that bullying can be found outside of school (sad but true). They went off the example of how bullying can occur in the family settings through different pairings. I was blessed with a supportive family while growing up (well still am) and can say I didn’t experience this type of bullying – I was just able to deal with it at school with mean eleven year old girls, even better. Though I also picked this article because family communication is important. I believe this is an important fundament building block when creating a strong support group for one another. Family are the people that should always be there for you, in the highs and lows of life, through the good and bad.

I found this article interesting to read because it had personal examples that justified my own view of what family is like. As a whole, I liked the article. It broke my heart at some points, though I was glad I had the opportunity to read stories of those who dealt with such bullying. As I was reading, I kept thinking and asking myself things like how can we change this from happening or what causes people to act in such ways. I had all these questions probably because I have never experienced family bullying firsthand. The only firsthand experience I did have was being teasing and ridiculed by middle school brats (these kids made adults feel bad about themselves, no lie). This is when I realized the importance of autoethnography.

“… this approach [autoethnography] has allowed researchers to introduce and engage more silent and undervalued problems that condition people’s relational lives, problems such as grief and loss (Ellis, 1993, 1995), emotional, physical, and sexual abuse (Ronai, 1995, 1996), and depression (Jago, 2002, 2011). To be sure, autoethnographic research has often brought care, insight, and hope to problems often previously plagued with harm, uncertainty, and distress.”

So even though I couldn’t personally relate to family bullying, I learned from the stories of others who had. This approach, autoethnography, in researching is so important because it allows others to understand what they might not have experienced themselves though, still be sympatric or empathic towards the issue. Doing so allows for this needed understanding throughout our society and culture as a whole. Listening to others allows us the ability to have respect for one another.