By Catharina Steel
When the bullying began…
When I started at a new school in a country town at six years of age, I was a confident kid. Two years later, a big boy was placed into the same class as me. He bullied me throughout the next eight years, and I hated going to school because of him, and the other bullies wanting to get on his good side. At times I was practically ostracized.
I’ve since come to believe that he singled me out because I was the child of foreigners. I’ve concluded this because he bullied me for certain physical features including my height, my nose, my bottom lip, and my hair color, and I haven’t been able to identify any other possible causes for it. I still struggle to understand why I was singled out—particularly by this boy who was much bigger than me—and why he chose to pick on a girl.
Devastating impacts of being bullied
One year I only went to school for 50% of the year because, when I felt unwell, I couldn’t face school at all and told my mum I felt worse than what I did. (I’ve since been diagnosed with allergies which contributed to me often feeling unwell.) When looking back, as part of the process of attempting to understand, and come to terms with, what I’d been through, I realized I had done this unconsciously.
By age ten I was displaying signs of anxiety, and by age fourteen, I was dangerously depressed and began writing seriously dark poetry, something I continued to do into my early twenties. I was sixteen when we moved back to the city, but I had turned inward—no longer able to trust others.
Reading fantasy—a great escape anxiety management tool
There were several things I enjoyed doing which, it turns out, are great tools to help manage stress-related anxiety caused by being bullied.
Did you know that reading, even for just six minutes, helps to relieve stress—including the stress children face when being bullied? (2009 study by the University of Sussex). Reading also helps people process how they’re feeling, including their feelings about being bullied.
As an adult, understanding how reading helps me is interesting, but this wouldn’t have meant much to me as a child. What did matter was that I got to travel to magical places; experience what friendship should look like, including reading stories which tackled bullying; and I discovered magnificent creatures. My imagination lit up as I read, picturing the scenes in my mind. I would become so engrossed in the story that I forgot about the bullies, giving my mind a chance to “step off the anxiety gas pedal” and relax.
I also spent considerable time outdoors. I would often bring my toys outside and make up imaginative stories, using the fantasy books that I’d read as inspiration. It turns out that spending time in the great outdoors, away from urban environments, can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression (Barton & Pretty, 2010).
Paying it forward—writing for young readers
When I first started writing, I wanted to write an adventure story set in a magical world like those I’d read as a youngster. I remembered how much these types of stories had helped me cope with being bullied, and I wanted to give young people like me another story they could read to escape, if only for a short time.
Because I had so much to learn about writing a great story, including developing my characters, I didn’t think about all the aspects that contributed to helping me feel seen and understood in the stories I’d read. Over time, I began to understand the importance of this and set about drawing out these elements which I had naturally included in the story, but hadn’t delved into them enough.
As I considered Jess, Zach’s twin and Tilly’s cousin in my story, “Vanishings,” I could see that I included traits which came from me as a bullied child, so I pulled this out more by showing her struggle with anxiety while in the great outdoors (since she is unable to see what might be lurking behind a tree or bush and she feels exposed).
The story naturally allowed her anxiety to seep away the more time she spent in this environment (despite the stress of being in a dangerous forest with an evil witch who is after them). This ties into the benefits gained from spending time in the great outdoors.
As I further developed Jess’s anxiety, I drew from many aspects of my own experience, especially when considering how she would respond in certain situations in the story. I felt strongly about including this characteristic in her because I remembered how this mattered to me as a young reader.
I hope to show readers who struggle with this that they aren’t alone. I wish to encourage them to seek adventures (with an adult present) in the great outdoors because I know how much this helps, as does reading imaginative fantasy adventures!
Catharina Steel has an adventurous spirit and enjoys traveling and exploring. The forests in The Wythic Wood Mysteries series stems from her love for hiking, the outdoors, and the enchanting essence found in these settings. During her leisure time, Catharina enjoys viewing properties, walking in the southwest region of Western Australia where she dwells, reading, sketching, and watching TV series. Find out more about them at www.catharinasteel.com. You can follow Catharina on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and subscribe to her Youtube channel.
ABOUT THE BOOK: In “Vanishings” (May 20, 2025, SparkPress) Tilly’s friend Michael disappeared from Wythic Wood a year ago, and he’s still missing. Convinced that no one’s searching for him, Tilly persuades her Gran to allow her to spend the summer with Opa, their family’s magical teacher and wizard, at his home in Clayton Forest—which just so happens to be right next to Wythic Wood. In Clayton Forest, alongside her twin cousins, Jess and Zach, Tilly meets magical beings like fairies and gnomes, gets lessons in potion-making and a goblin style of martial arts called Gobight fighting, and starts to understand her own magic better. But none of this excitement distracts her from her real goal, and with Jess and Zach at her side, she soon embarks on a perilous journey to uncover the truth about Michael’s vanishing. But as usual, impulsive Tilly doesn’t exactly think ahead—and she and her cousins soon find themselves hunted by the Witch of Wythic Wood and the creatures under her command.
