Empowered Voices: Tara’s Journey from Motherhood to Advocacy

Tara Townes is a remark­able moth­er and pas­sion­ate advo­cate whose jour­ney has trans­formed her into a bea­con of hope for familes affect­ed by dwarfism and bul­ly­ing. After her son Encore was diag­nosed with dwarfism, Tara’s per­spec­tive on soci­etal labels shift­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly, ignit­ing a mis­sion to raise aware­ness and fos­ter under­stand­ing. She believes that every indi­vid­ual, regard­less of their stature, is beau­ti­ful­ly diverse and deserv­ing of respect and love. As a Cer­ti­fied Bul­ly­ing Pre­ven­tion Expert, Tara has ded­i­cat­ed her­self to edu­cat­ing com­mu­ni­ties about the com­plex­i­ties of bul­ly­ing and the impor­tance of empa­thy. Through her non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, Tiny Be Mighty, she pro­vides cru­cial sup­port to fam­i­lies fac­ing the dev­as­tat­ing impacts of bul­ly­ing and sui­cide. Tara’s com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a world where every­one can thrive is not just inspiring—it’s a call to action for all of us to embrace our unique strengths and advo­cate for those who feel mar­gin­al­ized. Join us as we explore Tara’s jour­ney, her insights on com­bat­ing bul­ly­ing, and her unwa­ver­ing belief in the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty and com­pas­sion.

1. Tara, your jour­ney as a moth­er and advo­cate for those with dwarfism is incred­i­bly inspir­ing. Can you share how your son Encore’s diag­no­sis influ­enced your mis­sion to raise aware­ness about dwarfism and bul­ly­ing?

My son Encore’s diag­no­sis great­ly impact­ed my mis­sion to raise aware­ness for dwarfism and bul­ly­ing as it intro­duced me to my call­ing here on earth. As a moth­er who birthed some­one soci­ety deems as dif­fer­ent, hand­i­capped, and dis­abled “soci­etal labels,” com­plete­ly enlight­ened my per­spec­tive on how the world views peo­ple who are diverse. my word is beau­ti­ful­ly diverse because we are all dif­fer­ent and we are all beau­ti­ful in my opin­ion. His diag­no­sis also showed me the dai­ly fight that some­one of small stature has to endure, and how they gross­ly impact their men­tal capa­bil­i­ties and cop­ing skills. With that said, his diag­no­sis push­es me to take action ver­sus feel­ing like he’s a vic­tim of cir­cum­stances or even feel­ing sor­ry for him. it woke some­thing up in me to advo­cate for oth­ers, espe­cial­ly those who feel lost and who they are and how they were born. I am com­plete­ly inspired by peo­ple who are con­sid­ered less than who take their less than sta­tus and become more than sta­tus quo. that’s how his diag­no­sis has con­tributed to our mis­sion to raise aware­ness about dwarfism, but to also stand firm in the advo­ca­tion of oth­ers who have not been con­nect­ed with their own strength. Last­ly, meet­ing oth­er par­ents along the way who have had chil­dren con­tem­plate sui­cide or com­mit sui­cide inspired the mis­sion to form our non­prof­it try­ing to be mighty.

2. As a Cer­ti­fied Bul­ly­ing Pre­ven­tion Expert, what are some of the most effec­tive strate­gies you’ve found for com­bat­ing bul­ly­ing, espe­cial­ly in schools and com­mu­ni­ties?

As a cer­ti­fied bul­ly­ing pre­ven­tion expert, one of the most impor­tant things that I dis­cov­ered on this jour­ney is the lack of bul­ly­ing pre­ven­tion edu­ca­tion and empa­thy skills we pos­sess as a nation. More­over, the lack of laws manda­to­ry laws that pro­tect our youth in their school set­ting. Some of the most effec­tive strate­gies I per­son­al­ly use are edu­ca­tion and train­ing. Edu­ca­tion regard­ing the sev­en types of bul­ly­ing and the six char­ac­ters I per­son­al­ly uncov­ered through my sev­en years of research, not only train­ing stu­dents and youth, but train­ing the lead­ers who direct the steps of the youth. Teach­ers, par­ents, pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure mak­ers, care­tak­ers, etc. and learned that is not only pre­ven­tion, it is dis­sect­ing the mean­ing of being bul­lied and all of the char­ac­ter­is­tics that come with the bul­ly­ing trans­ac­tion. Anoth­er effec­tive strat­e­gy is to reform the bul­ly if there is no bul­ly, there are no vio­la­tions. Some oth­er strate­gies to men­tion, CBT, DBT, Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing, art, music and role play­ing.

3. You found­ed the non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion “Tiny Be Mighty.” Can you tell us more about its mis­sion and the impact it has had on fam­i­lies affect­ed by bul­ly­ing and sui­cide?

Tiny Be Mighty’s mis­sion is to save lives by way of edu­ca­tion and our safe­ty app “Bul­ly­ing Bud­dy”, We also assist fam­i­lies nation­wide with bur­ial expens­es, bereave­ment coun­sel­ing, legal refer­rals advo­ca­tion, and relo­ca­tion assis­tance.

4. With your back­ground in cur­ricu­lum writ­ing and devel­op­men­tal ther­a­py, how do you believe edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions can bet­ter address bul­ly­ing and sup­port chil­dren with unique chal­lenges?

The role of the edu­ca­tor or the leader is to be edu­cat­ed on the mul­ti facets, bul­ly­ing and men­tal impair­ments due to bul­ly­ing and invoke and our youth. I feel it is so impor­tant to imple­ment empa­thy and social, emo­tion­al and aware­ness with­in every genre of cur­ricu­lum. I think it is utter­ly impor­tant for edu­ca­tors to also be aware of their emo­tion­al state when they in the pres­ence of stu­dents. The lead­er­ship teach­ers in this case for edu­ca­tors or unequipped emo­tion­al­ly to sup­port high emo­tion­al trig­gers and sit­u­a­tions it’s going to be near­ly impos­si­ble to sup­port the stu­dent in every way that they can. An effec­tive cur­ricu­lum should be sourced from empa­thy, and pro­mote social and emo­tion­al well­ness and cop­ing skills. It’s not just about self-esteem because some­times self-esteem obvi­ous­ly it’s just one per­spec­tive or aspect, but when we under­stand how to express our emo­tions as humans and how to com­part­men­tal­ize engage them, we have more than half the bat­tle one with redi­rect­ing neg­a­tive behav­iors and or bul­ly­ing.

5. Your work with the Women’s Wel­fare to Work pro­gram and oth­er phil­an­thropic efforts is com­mend­able. What advice would you give to indi­vid­u­als look­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­ni­ties through men­tor­ship and sup­port pro­grams?

The invite the advice that I would extend to peo­ple who want to make a dif­fer­ence in advo­cate is to def­i­nite­ly find what makes their heart sing and soul dance. What I mean by this is get­ting involved in some­thing that you’re very pas­sion­ate about because it becomes more of a ser­vice a job or a task to do. The last thing peo­ple need want to feel is that they are bur­den­ing some­one or that peo­ple have to do some­thing for them some­thing about love and pas­sion that the uni­verse.

6. You often speak about the impor­tance of cre­at­ing our best lives and liv­ing beyond our­selves. Can you elab­o­rate on how this phi­los­o­phy has shaped your work and per­son­al life, and how oth­ers can apply it to their own jour­neys?

What I mean by cre­at­ing, our best selves are liv­ing in the best ver­sion of our­selves. As human beings, we all have strengths and weak­ness­es, but we don’t have to be weak as a result of them we can grow from them. When we grow, we become the best ver­sion of our­selves and we can water oth­ers. It also means con­nect­ing your­self to your birth giv­en great­ness. A lot of peo­ple walk around, still not know­ing what to do with them­selves and they have lots of regrets so live life above the lemon that throws us and live it to the fullest with no regrets how­ev­er peo­ple can use this phi­los­o­phy is by, com­plete­ly whole­heart­ed­ly con­nect­ing them­selves to the things that they desire in life not the things that they just dream about. I feel look­ing at things from a per­spec­tive of ver­sus I might be able to some­thing that will ren­der incred­i­ble results in the direc­tion of liv­ing our best lives. Not tak­ing things per­son­al that is a big one. Becom­ing repel­lent to neg­a­tiv­i­ty, con­stant­ly redi­rect any­thing that is not speak­ing, peace, love and great­ness.

Please be sure to keep up with her by fol­low­ing her social media links below.

Web­sites: https://thebullyingbuddy.com/

                  https://tinybemighty.org/

Face­book: https://www.facebook.com/BullyingBuddyConsulting

Insta­gram: https://www.instagram.com/bullyingbuddy/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/bullying-buddy