But Alvena is also extraordinary. At the start of Grade 4, Alvena decided to take a stand against her bullies in one of the bravest and most inspiring ways. We all know it can be hard to put yourself out there, knowing others can judge (just see any YouTube comment if you want to see what I mean). Yet Alvena, a member of the Ahousaht First Nation, decided that the best way she could fight back against the bullies was to make her experience public.

She posted a picture of herself, in sports gear and ready to exercise, to the Facebook group Healthy Active Natives. The 9 year old then told her mother:

“I want you to tell everyone I get bullied about my weight and I want you to show everybody what I look like. I want you to show everybody that I am going to change because I want to start exercising, I want to start eating better.”

The photo, along with a chart keeping track of Alvena’s exercise work out, went viral almost overnight. The pair received hundreds of positive comments, thousands of likes, and even some donations, with well-wishers sending handy items like new shoes and store cards.

Annette, Alvena’s mother, told the Huffington Post “As I was reading [the comments to Alvena] I started crying because she was crying. I hugged her and asked if she wanted me to stop and she said, ‘No. I just can’t believe how many people care.'”

Annette has now started a new Facebook group called Team Avena so their many supporters have somewhere to channel their good vibes and supportive comments. As it stands Team Avena has over 1000 members, and is steadily growing.

As positive as all of this is, it also comes with a troubling undertone—something that Alvena’s mother Annette touches on in one of her comments to Nainaimo Daily News. Annette tells that paper that someone as young as Alvena shouldn’t have to worry about how much she eats or her exercise, but is supporting her 100 percent regardless.

And indeed, the focus of this story has very much been on Alvena changing herself to better fit in, rather than addressing the horrible attitudes around fat, and fat-shaming that played such a huge part in the attacks. With shows like America’s Biggest Loser becoming increasingly more pervasive in modern day society, and a growing acceptance of fat-shaming and the so-called “War on Fat,” people with different body types are facing more and more discrimination.

Thankfully, there many, many people fighting back. One website to check out is Militant Baker, and its many, awesome campaigns addressing existing prejudices on body types. One in particular, Bodies aren’t ugly, bullying is, compiles photos of people with a variety of body types juxtaposed against hateful messages formed from the auto-complete function on Google—capturing just how widespread body-shaming is for men and women of all ages. Each photo also features a defiant declarations against such shaming.

It seems that kids at Alvena’s new school, where she recently started, also have the right idea. Annette told the Huffington “It was a really good feeling for me to pick her up today and have her say, ‘Kids are telling me I’m pretty, mom.’ She’s never had that. She’s never had friends like that.”

That’s the start of this inspirational poem by Canadian spoken word artist Shane Koyczan.   The poem, appropriately called “Instructions for a Bad Day” offers some helpful advice on how to deal with those days when everything just won’t go right.  Now hopefully you’re not having a bad day, especially seeing as its Friday. However, if the thought of the looming weekend still isn’t enough to get you through, then give this poem, “Instructions for a Bad Day” a good listen, and I guarantee that you will start to feel better in no time.

The poem is set to a montage of different images by Jon Goodgion and from “Life in a Day” by Kevin Macdonald, beautifully accompanying  Koyczan’s fiery and passionate delivery. His simple language conveys urgency, and a clear, relatable message which we can all understand, even if the bad days he’s describing aren’t our bad days.

The video has been around for a little while now (nearly a year) but was recently picked up again by some online sites such as the Huffington Post. Needless to say the whole experience is very moving, and is a wonderful demonstration of the power of the spoken word, a mastery of which Shane Koyczan has repeatedly demonstrated.

His first published work Visiting Hours was chosen by the Guardian and the Globe and Mail as part of their best books of 2005, and “We are more,” one of the poems in that collection, was performed by Koyczan for the 2010 Winter Olympics. He then started to focus on addressing bullying within schools and wrote Stickboy, a novel in verse, which looks at the life of a bullied child, and ultimately how he chooses to become a bully himself.

However what Shane is probably most famous for is his “To this day” poem (which is now an App), a harrowing example of different types of bullying, and the long term effects simple things like name-calling can have. The animated version of the poem can be found on YouTube, with over 12 million hits, and the app is still being used by teachers and parents to help deal with bullying.

Koyczan  started a Kickstarter project on Monday to help fund his third book of poetry A Bruise on Light, with the aim of reaching $15,000. Five days later the campaign has received nearly $40,000, and still has another 26 days to go. As enticements, Koyczan offers both “undying gratitude” (for pledging $2) and  his own version of Cyrano, in which he’ll hide in the bushes and feedsyou romantic lines to help you ensnare your love ($8,000, so far unclaimed).

I hope you’re having a good day, but when those bad days do show up, give “Instructions for a Bad Day” another listen. Or, as Koyczan tells us, “Be calm, / loosen your grip opening each palm slowly now, / let go.”