Start Strong 7/14/11 Conference

BOM and the Jane Campaign gathered at the Family Violence Law Center early morning on July 14, 2011 to attend a conference through video chat. We joined other youth around the country from Idaho, Boston, Texas, LA , Bridgeport, Rhode Island, Austin, Bronx and other states and cities. The point of the whole conference was to see how teenagers in different areas of the country are dealing with break ups and how they call it off. “Start Strong” has sites in 11 cities in America. Their famous slogan for breaking up is “Face it, don’t Facebook it”. They have this slogan because so many people are ending their relationships through social networks, the most used one being Facebook. For example, young people are putting their break up on their relationship status or sending a message through Facebook-without telling their boo what is going on!. Together, all the youth across the sites discussed how people are breaking up nowadays, and what are some terms people have for their Boyfriends or Girlfriends. It was very interesting to see that other parts of the country have their own slang and terms for relationships. It was also funny to see some familiar faces from youth conferences past, even though the video was kind of blurry. We talked about how to break up healthily and what will be the unhealthy ways. We also came up with ideas on how to spread the word about breaking up and ending on good terms. We came up with having hoodies with a catchy phrase on it that will basically state how to break up healthily. It may sound stupid but what the whole point is for others to know that when it comes down to relationships things can go awfully wrong after a break up; you just don’t know what people are capable of.

Even though many people feel like sometimes breaking up is not a big deal or is just something that occurs and that’s the end of it all. It’s nothing like that; there are always feelings involved and once the feelings are really deep the other person may feel crushed after the break up. Some teens respond more negatively than usual, including attempting to commit suicide. Knowing the right way on how to end a relationship is very important because you may never know what will happen next. Some tips that will help lead to a healthy break up are:
• Don’t beat around the bush
• States your reasons clearly
• Don’t scream or get too emotional
• DON’T DO IT OVER FACEBOOK OR TEXT
• Make sure you have eye contact and that they are getting what you are trying to say
• Be mindful of your ex’s soon to be feelings
• Let them know that you would still like to keep in contact but at the moment you are just not ready for a relationship. (if that’s what you really feel)
• Be real
• No sugar coating
• Don’t do anything that will make your partner look bad in other’s eyes (e.g: Like showing people naked pics they sent you long go or talking about their personal life to others)