This chapter is an excerpt from PROtect Yourself Now!Violence Prevention for Healthcare Workers and is intended to raise your awareness and leave you with a sense of hope. We don't have to put up with bullies anymore.

As I sit here at the keyboard writing this chapter I'm finding it interesting, if not somewhat depressing, reflecting on the number of incidents throughout my career where I have come up against a bully. There always seems to be another around the corner!

Calley provides an enlightening story of the pressures she experienced in starting to work in a dysfunctional workplace. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

As an avid gardener throughout my adult life I have enjoyed the anticipation of watching a plant progress through its yearly life cycle. Most of our cultivated garden plants have a characteristic or trait that endears itself to us. The fragrance and vivid colours of the rose and lavender families, the first signs of life every spring as the croci break their heads through the sun heated soil and even the pesky dandelion have a beauty of their own. We desire them in our gardens for the sense of beauty of Mother Nature that they bring and to fuel our desire to feel good about the good things in life. But what about those plants that have a rugged, dangerous beauty to them? Do they also have a revered place in our garden?

Take for instance the Canadian Thistle, a plant that wears its own armor and protects itself to the death. Protecting itself from gardener’s hoes I would imagine. Left to their own design these majestic, yet aggressive plants will try to take over the world.

I had one of these entities in my front garden that I had apparently missed removing on an earlier weeding. Standing about 30 inches tall it was well on its way to developing its arsenal of spikes and thistle pods to take on the world. I decided to let the plant continue on its life’s journey. That was a moment in time that I would really have liked to have the option of having a “do over.”