A seventh grade student named Olivia recently presented a spoken word poem for a writing class. Her passionate performance impressed not only her class, but the internet as well.
On May 25, Arizona’s 12 News station published a video on Facebook of Olivia performing the poem in her Queen Creek Middle School writing class. Olivia wrote the poem as part of an assignment to create a slam poem about a topic she felt strongly about, according to 12 News.
As of Tuesday morning, the video had over 320,000 Facebook shares, 185,000 likes and 20 million views.
Olivia’s beautiful performance gives a peek inside the mind of a young teenage girl and the struggles she faces every day. Throughout the poem she breaks these struggles down into 12 different points such as body image and the intense pressures to fit in.
“You take each comment, each judgement, each assumption, each opinion, each strange look, each remark, each criticism, each review, each report, each assessment and with it your self esteem plummets like a sinking ship,” Olivia says at the beginning of her performance.
Olivia says that middle school is a time to find yourself, but it takes time.
“Going through your middle school years, you are on your own journey to find yourself, on a small jet,” she says. “And sometimes you cannot control what happens to you. The turbulence will throw you off course.”
In the Facebook comments section of the video, the teacher who assigned the slam poem to Olivia, Brett Cornelius, wrote that the class was “moved to tears” by her performance.
“She’s brilliant beyond words...” Cornelius wrote on Facebook. “What’s even more incredible is that she worked on this for over a month, truly digging into the raw depths of teenage hood and expressing her feelings of the good, the bad, and the ugly of walking the halls of the school as a young woman. She’s humble and honest, that’s for sure. I’m proud to have met this little lady!”
Olivia sums up the poem by delivering a powerful rallying cry for young girls to love themselves ― just the way they are.
“You are loved. You are precious. You are beautiful. You are talented. You are capable. You are deserving of respect. You can eat that meal. You are one in 7 billion,” she says. “Most of all, you are good enough.”