knowing me is to trust in me

I am going to go on a bit about discrimination, now some people may be bored with what I write; some will feel a little edgy as it hits home and some may start to trust me for who I am. All my life since childhood I have seen discrimination in a lot of ways, I didn't like it then and I still don't like it now.
I was 10 yrs of age when I witnessed the first discrimination against me, children can be very cruel. At the end of 1958 I along with my family emigrated to Australia to what my Parents thought would be a better life for us. The first example was just after the Ship Docked in Adelaide, South Australia, I took my sister to the play park while my parents were sorting out access to our accommodation. I was threatened by a group of girls who said because I didn't have freckles I was probably a dirty Pom, I had no idea what they meant. I knew that they were telling me I didn't belong there, it may sound silly but remember I was a child and I believed them.
We were in Australia 3 years and all of my time at school there I had to sit through the humiliation of name calling and being bashed about. My books ripped, drawn on and even stolen, what made it worse was that the Teachers took their side. I cried a lot at night but tried to keep it stifled because my Parents had told me to put up with it. They said that they had to stay in that country long enough to save to come home and they needed to work with some of the Parents of those children. So I had to grin and bare it or toughen up, so I decide to get stronger and defend myself. After a while it started to work and they knew that I could stand my ground, they got bored and started picking on other new kids. Some would turn a blind eye but not me, I knew how these new kids were feeling and I befriended them. I was still a little frightened but learned to hide it, I never had to show aggression but I could raise my voice and be heard and that made me look tough; this was my strength. My last 12 months at School there was a lot happier and once my Parents had decided to come home I was over the moon.
The next discrimination was from my own Mother, she started Lording around because we had been to Australia and able to buy a house on our return. She became very snobby and I used to grit my teeth when she interrogated my friends on their back grounds, even when I first met my husband in my late teens. She would say things like "if his father had money problems it was because he lives in a Council house", I shot back with " is that why we had no money before we went to Australia, because we lived in a council house" She hated that, she would look around to make sure no one heard me. I told her that she should never forget her roots because that is who we are and shouldn't pretend to be something else. She would never agree with me, she thought I was a nuisance and said I didn't know what I was talking about; but I did know.
All of my working life I have met discrimination and I have battled against it, be it because I was a woman in a mans world proving that I was just as good to get to be the best at what I did. Putting up with low minded and ignorant people, when they discriminate against others on there colour, creed or sexuality.
In my last job before I retired as if it has to be right up to the end of my working life and when I first got the job there (tell me please) where is it written down in an induction to the job that you have to be told that someone is a Lesbian? I couldn't believe the low minded person that was telling this, was it because of my age that she thought I needed to know this fact. The person she mentioned happened to be a very nice person and was having a really bad time from the heckling and whispers about her. I used to find her very funny and she had a great sense of humour once she let me get to know her. What surprised me was when she told me that since I started to work there she had found confidence and got stronger as a person, I got a bit weepy at that. I told her that all she really needed was a friend that would take no crap from those that discriminated against her and she said she trusted me to be her friend. She knew me and she trusted me and so to anyone with a similar problem I would say "chose your friends wisely and know them before you trust them".

(A friend in need is a friend in deed)