Shocking Reason Teenager Was Bullied

A young Australian who was bullied relentlessly after losing his mother to cancer when he was just 13 is urging people to dig deep to help support Canteen Australia.

Jacob Boutcher's world was turned upside down when his mother, Jodie, was diagnosed with rare acute myeloid leukemia in 2013.

The Boutcher family was celebrating Jacob's 12th birthday when his mother was feeling unwell.

Doctors quickly discovered her cancer and she spent the next 18 months between Tasmania – where the family lived – and Melbourne receiving treatment, including two rounds of bone marrow transplants.

“She was getting into a stage where she could be put into remission and she came to Tasmania, which was a surprise,” Jacob told NewsWire.

“We were able to go out together and then mum went (to Melbourne) for another check-up and everything hit the fan and her body started shutting down.”

Now 22, Mr Boutcher remembers those final moments with his mother as she lay in an induced coma.

“At that age, I was 13, I didn’t really know what was going on,” he says.
“Nothing really clicked until the moments happened.

“It was a very shocking experience and obviously being in the room and having his life support being removed had been a very vulnerable position.”

But as the teenager tried to rectify his grief and learn to navigate the world without his mother, his friends weren't there to support him in his darkest hours.

“I went from being a 13-year-old boy, naïve about the world, to maturing very quickly,” Mr. Boutcher said.

“It was like going from a 13-year-old mindset to an 18-year-old mindset.

“My friends would make jokes about ‘your mom’ and make stupid, immature comments.

“I told them 'it's not funny for me anymore, you don't know when the last moments are.'

“I was really on the outside.

“I attributed it to the fact that they didn't know how to express their emotions to someone who lost a parent, so their default behavior was to make fun of them.

“But people who I thought were my best friends pushed me out of my friendship circle.”

Having trouble learning to deal with all these emotions, he came across Canteen.

The Australian Good Grief Camp, which provides support to young Australians who have faced cancer in their lives.

“I was trying to find a new identity and understand what it meant to not have a mother. I was very alone during that time,” Mr Boutcher said.

“But Canteen was able to give me people who had been through similar things and understand what I was going through.

“We are (now) all one big family, I was lucky to have bonded.

“The canteen allowed me to make many new connections with like-minded people who understood the grief we were going through.

“It was a way to learn how to express the emotions I was feeling at that time, and also how to grieve the death of a parent from cancer.”

Canteen Australia has launched its latest fundraiser in hopes of raising $416,000 for young people affected by cancer.

The campaign encourages people to make a taxable donation before June 30 to help children like Mr Boutcher get the support they need during a difficult time in their lives.

Mr Boutcher now lives in Melbourne and is studying to become a social worker to help children go through experiences similar to his own.

He said he hoped to continue to help Canteen Australia and others going through difficult times.

“I just want to give back to people and know that there are kids who may feel alone and not them, to have a social worker who has also been touched by cancer and can understand,” he said.