On bullies, boundaries, and the quiet strength our families and communities need right now.
Friday nights in our house are pizza and a movie night. And since we’re officially in holiday season mode, this week’s movie was Christmas… Again?! A Groundhog Day style Christmas story where the main character keeps reliving the holiday until she finally figures out the true meaning of Christmas. Nestled inside the repetitive plotline are several scenes where a neighborhood bully named Gretchen steals the donation jar from two younger kids. At first, the main character, Rowena, is too wrapped up in her own world to step in. But as she re-lives the day over and over, she starts thinking about others. Eventually she decides she’s going to stop the bully… and repeatedly gets tossed around by this big meanie herself.
Then she tries kindness. She hands Gretchen a Christmas present. Gretchen’s face softens. Her eyes brighten. For a split second you think, Ah, this is the moment. Kindness breaks through. The heart grows three sizes.
And then?
Gretchen shoves her to the ground, grabs the gift and the donation money, and sprints off.
I actually laughed out loud. One of those surprised, “Okay, you got me” laughs. Not because bullying is funny, but because the moment captured something painfully realistic: sometimes kindness doesn’t melt a bully; sometimes the bully just… stays the bully. At least at first.
Rowena even tries to out bully the bully, learning Judo so she can overpower Gretchen, but that still does not work.
I then found myself explaining to the kids why being mean isn’t funny, and why I laughed anyway. My son asked if I ever had a bully when I was a kid. So we ended up having one of those unexpected parenting conversations about boundaries, courage, kindness, and what it really means to stand up for yourself and for others; and how to do that in the kind, right, human way.
It also connected back to last week’s Thanksgiving post, where I wondered whether some of the harshest public figures might soften around their own family tables, whether the versions of them we see on the news are often their worst and not their whole selves. I still want to believe that. People are more layered and more decent than the clips suggest. But believing that doesn’t mean giving anyone a free pass.
The truth is, we have far too many leaders across politics, media, and business who seem comfortable behaving like bullies. People who punch down. People who stoke division instead of easing it. People who act like cruelty shows strength, when in reality it shrinks the world they lead.
And what troubles me most is this, kids see it. Kids copy it. Kids normalize it. If we don’t challenge bullying at the societal level, we silently teach the next generation to assume this is how power behaves: loud, aggressive, unkind, uninterested in understanding.
Fast forward to the day after pizza and a movie, and we’re standing outside the Texas Capitol, the workplace of some of those very same public figures whose rhetoric often sounds like Gretchen with a microphone. But we weren’t there for politics. We joined thousands of Austinites for the annual Christmas tree lighting and holiday sing-along. A tradition that started decades ago in the Capitol rotunda and has grown into a packed downtown celebration. Warm lights, warm voices, warm energy. It reminded me again that when you get real people together in a real place, shoulder to shoulder, we’re almost always better than the headlines suggest. Kinder. More patient. More human.
Capitol tree lighting and sing along - 2025
That’s what I tried to explain to my kids: kindness is important, but standing up to a bully doesn’t require becoming one. True strength, the kind I hope they carry forward, is a combination of compassion, understanding, empathy, courage, humility, and just the right amount of toughness.
And this is also why I’ve spent so much of this year volunteering with the Texas Forward Party. Of many things, I’m really proud of our Kindness campaign. A reminder that kindness isn’t just a nicety, it’s a strategy. A way to rebuild trust in a time that desperately needs it. A way to elevate leaders who don’t rely on fear or fury to get attention. A way to show that communities can move forward when we choose connection over combat. And to add a little bit of Texas flair, I got to create a “Fixin’ to Fix It… with Kindness” t-shirt, because I genuinely believe we can fix the future by how we choose to show up now.
The holiday season has a way of nudging us toward our better selves. Maybe it’s the lights downtown, maybe it’s the familiar songs, or maybe it’s that people finally slow down long enough to actually see one another. When I look around in real life, I see far more kindness than cruelty, far more cooperation than division. That gives me hope.
The movie we watched may have been silly (one step from a Hallmark classic) but by the end, Rowena realizes she isn’t the only one dealing with change. Her family, her neighbors, even her bully, are all navigating something. She stops focusing on herself long enough to understand the people around her. And strangely enough, she wins the bully over not by force or by flattery, but by getting her to laugh by setting up a joke booth.
And maybe that’s the lesson the holidays always seem to give us… kindness and a bit of jolly (levity) are powerful things.
Family first. Neighbors first. Humanity first.
Rooted in Wisconsin. Growing forward in Texas.
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