CODY
GREGGS-DORSEY

In 6th grade, the last bell was the worst part of my day.

Everyone else heard it and thought about going home. I heard it and started doing math. Would there be a roof over my head tonight. Would there be anything to eat before school breakfast at 8 the next morning. Some nights the answer was no.

They teased me for my clothes. They teased me because I smelled, and they were right. I didn’t have deodorant.

What none of them knew was that the hours they made unbearable were still the safest hours I had. School was the bad part of a worse day.

Nine months of that. Bullied all the way through the day, then home to more of it.

That is why I stand with Jason. Not because it is a good cause. Because I was that kid, sitting in a building full of people who had no idea, and not one of them ever said anything to me.

No child should ever have to endure that.

There were nights growing up when my family didn’t have a roof over our heads. Five of us slept in a car. We stayed in a tent. We moved between hotel rooms when we could scrape the money together. And the next morning, I still had to go to school.

I sat in classrooms hungry, running on no sleep, quietly breaking apart on the inside, while my appearance, the same clothes, the exhaustion on my face, told everyone exactly what was happening at home before I ever said a word.

Kids don’t need you to explain your situation to target you for it. They just need a reason, and I gave them one just by showing up. That’s where the bullying started for me. Not because of something I did, but because of something I couldn’t hide: the reality I was living in.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I understand it now. Bullying doesn’t just attack who you are, it attacks you when you’re already at your lowest, when you have the least left to fight back with. I know that firsthand because I lived it, hungry, exhausted, and alone in a room full of people.

That’s part of why this work matters so much to me now. Grounded Kings, One Good Word One Good Deed, none of it is theoretical for me. I built these things because I know what it costs a kid to walk into a building every day already broken down, and I know what it means when nobody steps in.

I didn’t have someone show up for me back then. So now, I show up for everyone I can.