When MaryBeth Bowers Willet was just ten years old, her own sister, Lee, started treating her like nothing more than an object, subjecting her to cruel behavior, bullying, and emotional abuse. From that point on, believe it or not, things only got worse. Lee kept bullying MaryBeth for more than forty years, even through MaryBeth's bout with breast cancer, and tried to extort thousands of dollars from MaryBeth later in life.
Bullying, My Story is MaryBeth's heartfelt autobiographical account of her life and the decades of torment she endured since her youth. A brutally honest look at bullying from the victim's perspective, it chronicles MaryBeth's harrowing experiences with her sister and explores the many pervasive ways Lee's insidious acts affected MaryBeth's life, including making her more susceptible to bullying from other figures in her personal and professional life.
A truly gripping, emotional roller coaster ride of pain, humiliation, and, ultimately, triumph and strength, MaryBeth's story slides a crucial piece of the bullying puzzle into place and provides a rare glimpse into the victim's world that allows readers to better understand the cumulative effects of recurrent bullying and the devastating impact it can have on people's lives.
About the Author: MaryBeth Bowers Willet is a retired educator with more than thirty years' experience teaching at the high school level. She earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees from The Ohio State University and is the proud mother of two grown sons.
Since retiring, MaryBeth founded her own gardening company and took up the art of writing. Speaking to an issue about which she could no longer remain silent, MaryBeth summoned courage from within to pen her personal story, chronicling the forty years of suffering she endured as a victim of bullying and emotional abuse.
It is MaryBeth's hope that her debut book, Bullying, My Story, will shed light into the world of bullying and help end the epidemic once and for all. She encourages victims of bullying to stay strong, and recommends that those who witness bullying open their hearts to the victims and, where appropriate, to the bullies as well.
