I started my blog in 2007, and it was not until a few years ago that I heard the term troll or received cruel, nasty, or hateful messages.

As a longtime book writer, who worked alone and rarely spoke with readers, I did not know how to handle it.

Even recently, there was a greater consensus about rudeness, minding other people’s business, and arguing respectfully.

I was taught it was bad manners to tell others what to do and intrude on their privacy.

My grandmother would have smacked me if I had sent the messages I was starting to receive.

This wasn’t just the grumpy geeks and hackers who traveled the Net from the beginning. This was something different.

After 2016, those universally shared conventions about manners and decency seemed to crumble and disappear, at least online. As the country polarized, so did the idea of speaking to each other, even when we disagreed.

People who thought differently became the enemy, never to be negotiated with or accepted.

A blog offers a barometer of civility since it draws messages from all kinds of people worldwide, especially in the United States.

Digital messages, even hateful ones,  are free, anonymous, and without a face-to-face response or consequence.

I grew up with arguments all around me, but the cruelty and contempt in these messages were also new to many other writers and bloggers I knew.

Those blog writers began calling it the Troll Wars, a new term for me.

We realized that if we wrote online, we would be criticized in this new way, not just disagreed with, but hated. We would be the target of digital and emotional abuse.

We also learned that the bigger our audience, the worse the trolling and cruelty. It was getting worse and would worsen as my blog grew.

We started talking to each other about it; we wanted to help one another understand what was happening and how to deal with it.

We discovered early on that the bigger our audience became, the more the messages.

The messages were really not about anything but cruelty and hate; there was no creative or thoughtful content. There was no dialogue.

And if we responded, that was just an invitation to more hatred. They learned to blame us for what they were doing and accuse us of what they were doing.

There was no real communication possible.

A good example is a message I received yesterday from one of the last of the farm journal trolls:

Her fake name was Polyanha, and she fit the profile of the troll perfectly:

“I fear for these children,” she wrote. “You are horrible and vile when you sense any criticism and say horrible things to your blog readers. I don’t know why this situation would be any different if someone acts in a way you don’t like.”

Polyantha is smart.

She knew that suggesting I might harm the children I have been working with so closely would hurt me, and she also presented herself as a caring person trying to protect children.

She wasn’t offering any proposal or police or even a discussion. And she provided no details or examples of my horrible behavior.

It rang false to me.

I am sure I have never spoken to her in any way or form (I remember names like that), good or bad.

She didn’t get the fix she wanted. Right now, she’s sending hateful messages to someone else.

I will share this with my students; I’m trying to prepare those who want to start writing blogs for the world that awaits them, both positive and negative.

I tell them they must be ready to be criticized and assaulted and praised and supported; there are plenty of Polyanthas out there. The students must learn to stand up for their writing and keep writing.

That’s not easy to do when you are in adolescence.

If they don’t fight for their work, nobody will.

This is another way to turn trolling into good. In the same way that I am working to turn fear into love, I have learned to channel trolling for good.

I came to understand, along with the other bloggers and writers, that we would have to learn how to deal with this kind of criticism if we were to survive.

Many people I knew with blogs went quiet and stopped writing in public online. So many voices were lost. The awful thing is that we never know who is gone.

So many people won’t even consider publishing their thoughts and ideas online.

I swore to myself that I would not be one of them.

It was in 2016 that these messages came to me almost daily, and as soon as I wrote about politics, they zeroed in and started to call me the ugliest names possible – horrible, vile, pedophile, a thief, a liar, etc.

Their hatred and toxicity shocked me yet again.

They were always there, but the viciousness soared to a new level.

I tried to fight back, a foolish position, much like putting a finger in the dike. There is nothing real to fight with.

The more I fought, the more they attacked. And the angrier and more hateful I got.

I had to do better. I decided to make these assaults work for me, to use them in a way that did me good,  not just harm someone.

I had to ensure they would never get the ultimate victory, which would be turning me into them. At times, it happened.

They needed a response; it made them feel important, just like heavy trucks need diesel to run. We were the targets and the fuel.

But the only way to fight was not to fight.

For the longest time, I tried to respond to them, shame them, challenge them, and argue with them.

I have a hair trigger about criticism since I had heard some all my young life.

Some of my readers were hit by friendly fire; I sometimes couldn’t tell friends from foes or innocent bystanders from troll warriors.

I didn’t start this blog to fight with people. I was struggling to find the right balance.

Sometimes, I mistook legitimate questions and disagreements for trolling and responded angrily, sometimes hatefully.

For a while,  it got so ugly I couldn’t tell the difference.

I love arguing with people and sorting through disagreements. Many of them are correct and helpful. I am no saint, and I never assume I am always right. And I am very often not correct.

I do tend to stick with my core positions, but so many of those have changed.

Conflict is just as healthy as praise, offered straightforwardly. Like any human, I’m nowhere near perfect.

But there is no talking to the new army of trolls.

They are many bred in politics; many are just broken people with failed lives, who live to hurt, and do hurt.

And because they are usually angry or unhealthy, they have a good radar for the weak spots of others.

Anyone who denies that they can sting is usually kidding themselves or not wanting to look vulnerable.

Acknowledging the hurt was the key to coming to terms with it for me. I had to stop giving these poor people what they most needed – pieces of me.

After years of fumbling and bumbling and some therapy sessions, I have learned how to deal with these attacks, which are now so accepted and ingrained in American culture. Mostly, I yawn.

I’m in that better place, even if the country isn’t. I can only speak for myself.

The attacks have made me stronger.

I understood my anger and took it to the right place, not online, but with a therapist. I have a good one. She showed me that the problem was my anger, not their hate.

Learn to let go.

Initially, striking back turned out to be healthy; it made me feel stronger.

I had to stand up for what I wrote and what I believed in, and in so doing, I honed my values. I think I found a way to turn the trolling for good.

I can learn from everything when I’m open to it.

At long last,  I had a voice and platform to challenge the peckerheads, toothless ducks, and mentally disturbed people who have nothing better to do than send strangers hate mail online.

It felt good. Take that, you schoolyard bullies.

And that is important. But it’s not a good answer. I needed to work more work on myself.

It’s different now.

When I get a hateful message, I stop and think about the person sending it.

They have nothing to do in their lives but hate people who have done them no harm.

None were regular blog readers; they just trawled around on Facebook looking for targets.

Many psychologists have studied this phenomenon and point out that this isn’t something healthy or grounded people take the trouble to do.

It’s like being a vampire because you can drink other people’s blood. They are disturbed, with a new and accessible outlet for their hurt and anger.

When I thought about it, it made me sad for them, and when you are unhappy about people,  they are not hurtful or frightening.

Seen as objects of mercy, it reduces my anger and pushes me toward empathy. I still have my issues to handle, but I believe I am a better human because of the Troll Wars.

It is always good to put myself in the shoes of others.

I didn’t wish to be any of these people who send awful messages to people they know nothing about; what a tragic waste of time. There is nothing about them to covet or envy.

Trolls, I found, seek attention and a feeling of power. Deprived of attention, they are like Dracula caught in the sun. They just melted away or hid.

Since I began deleting most of them (I had onto one or two for old times’ sake), almost all of them have gone away, and the Troll Wars are over for me.

It was me who kept them going. And me who stopped. Digital violence is still violence.

I should say that I also received enormous and much more significant messages and support for my work. They comforted me. But they often didn’t stick as much as the nasty ones. That was one of my illnesses.

These messages are comforting and affirming, and inspiring. They helped me get through that time.

It was vital for me to sit down and think about what I wanted, and I enjoyed the freedom to write on my blog and share my life as openly and honestly as possible. And to use the power of the blog to do good.

I found that facing them made me more robust, and ignoring and deleting them made me wiser. I am also wary about my anger and impatience with people I think to criticize me, even when they are not.

That was a tremendous gift that the trolls gave me.

I need always to be open to disagreement and challenge, which should not be confused with hate and cruelty.

I look back on the troll wars and feel so differently about them now that I can back. They can send me all the messages they wish, but I am no longer in this awful and pointless war. I can’t get to love them, but I can get to pity them—what a horrible way to live.

I’ve learned to love and respect myself, even when others don’t, which is one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received.