“It really changed my life to write this book. I’m not who I was at 16,” Aija Mayrock said, an NYU sophomore in Gallatin.
Mayrock sat at the table in a coffee shop on 4th Avenue, her hands folded just mere inches away from her book, The Survival Guide to Bullying, that is now a Barnes and Nobles best-seller.
She was always a writer. From the young age of six or seven, Mayrock was already creating stories. However, a few years later, when she would first experience bullying, her love and motivation for writing dwindled.
“I guess I didn’t think I was worthy enough to write,” Mayrock said.
However, Mayrock’s love for writing was reignited when she moved to California from New York at the age of 14 and won the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for a screenplay that she wrote about bullying.
“I realized that words were a way for me to help people and to tell stories. It was kind of a second beginning for me,” Mayrock said.
A writer, actress, and activist, Mayrock hasn’t quite come down from the high of her incredible success. However, she didn’t begin on top. She actually started at the bottom, with nothing more than just an unfortunate history of bullying and her creative outlet of writing.
“I had no idea how to write a book, but I went through all of my old diaries and journals and I tried to create the guide that I never had, but always wanted,” Mayrock said. “Over the course of the next two years of high school, I interviewed professionals, doctors, parents and other kids being bullied to see their perspectives in order to be able to create the perfect guide for every single kid.”
After self-publishing her book, she traveled around Southern California, giving talks about the issue of bullying and what it means in the context of middle school or high school. One month later, Scholastic offered to publish the book. Now, it’s a Barnes and Nobles best-selling novel and is available in six countries.
While the fame and fortune is fun, Mayrock doesn’t refer to her appearance on The View or even her partnership with Teen Vogue as her most memorable career moments yet. She reflects on the 8-year-old Aijas from all over the world that deal with bullying, who finally have a resource that Aija wishes she always had.
“The best thing for me is that every day I wake up to thousands of messages from kids all over the world who are telling me that my book has changed or saved their life,” Mayrock said. “I recently got an email from a girl in Morocco, like I don’t even know how she got her hands on my book - it’s just insane.”
Mayrock isn’t just a testament that hard work pays off. She is proof that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Bullying isn’t an epidemic that has no cure. While the cure isn’t a vaccine, it’s the simple act of being kind.
“You have the ability to change or save someone else’s life and you have to brave in that moment and intervene,” Mayrock said. “There were people that saved my life just by being kind to me and by taking that step and standing up for someone.”
Looking back on where Mayrock started, she admits she often thinks about where she started. The key to success and healing? Never take no for an answer.
“I didn’t let anyone tell me “no.” Because I got rejected and people said that there’s no market for this book, I decided that I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me,” Mayrock said.
