PALERMO – The mother of Hayley Blowers downplayed rumors Friday that bullying triggered her 16-year-old daughter’s April 4 suicide.

“She had self-esteem issues, she had other things going on,” Raini Perry said Friday from the family’s Palermo farm. “But I don’t want to share them because they’re personal.”

Perry was meeting her daughter’s friends and readying herself for today’s 11 a.m. memorial service at Palermo Christian Church.

Perry said Blowers was a normal teen: bright, happy one minute and moody other times.

“She was not exemplary; she was an average teen who just loved her friends, loved to bake and make candy and share that and make people happy,” Perry said.

Blowers had aspirations of becoming a pastry chef, Perry said, until she tried and loved the plumbing and heating trade.

She was enrolled at Erskine Academy in China and spent part of her day studying at Capital Area Technical Center in Augusta.

The manner of Blowers’ death was confirmed as a suicide this week by the state Medical Examiner’s Office.

But friends and acquaintances of Blowers have been saying that online bullying was to blame.

The explanation doesn’t fit, Perry said. “Hayley would stand up for other kids. She might not like things, but she would stand up for herself.”

Michael McQuarrie, headmaster at Erskine, where Blowers was a junior, agreed. “This issue is far more deeply rooted,” he said. “It’s too complex … to say it was simply cyberbullying.

“We’ve absolutely had a tragedy. We had been working with this young woman who had received support for both inside- and outside-school issues.”

But he said the Internet played a role. “This young woman clearly lived in this Facebook world,” he said.

Among the mourners today will be two friends who want Blowers’ death to help bring about changes in awareness of bullying and cyberbullying.

Lexi Ross, 15, of Whitefield, and Courtnee Roberts, 15, of Dresden — Hall-Dale High School ninth-graders — said Blowers was bothered by Facebook postings “that were rude and disrespectful.”

In the wake of the tragedy, Ross and Roberts gathered signatures asking people to cooperate in combating bullying.

On Thursday, the girls took their petition with 356 signatures, to the State House, where legislators are considering two anti-bullying bills:

L.D. 1237 requires school administrative units to adopt a bullying prevention policy by Aug. 15, 2012.

L.D. 980, requires school boards “to adopt policies prohibiting offensive student or organizational behavior, including injurious hazing, harassment, bullying and cyberbullying” and makes violations a civil offense.