When You Say "Enough" and "Never Again," Do You Believe Yourself?
Are you in integrity with your own values? How do you know? Would you like to feel more empowered?
It's yesterday afternoon. I'm on my phone deep in conversation when my cell vibrates with an alert from the New York Times. Something about elementary school children being shot. My mind tries to make it make sense. Is it the anniversary of Sandy Hook? A retrospective piece? I return my focus to the person on the other end of the phone. Finish about ten minutes later. Hang up. Check my alerts.
As I ingest the news out of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, my stomach stirs its bile into a froth and threatens to spew it upward like lava into my throat. I also feel the need to leave. The ancient parts of me that still reside in my central nervous system know that retching and running are valid responses to a threat. But these neurological systems were designed to save me from poison and saber-toothed tigers, not America.
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Think back on it. How did your body respond when you first heard the news (this time)? And was it different than last time? Or Parkland? Or Sandy Hook? Or Columbine?
What I'm asking is, are you getting inured to it, or do you still feel sick?
What I'm asking is, are you checking out or are you doing something about it?
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Who did you check in with? Who did you check up on? Who did you call or text or email? Knowing that my 83-year-old mother would not hear the news until Lester Holt said it on NBC News, or she read it in her newspaper the next morning, I go over to her cottage to tell her. I'm making it sound like I did it out of a need to inform her. But that's not true. I carry the news to her – to someone; to the nearest person I can find – because I need to be hugged.
I text my son, a twenty-two-year-old who works at a local elementary school where he is an aide for children with special needs. Gonna hug you extra hard today, I tell him. I get three hearts in return.
I text my other baby, my daughter, a twenty-year-old rising college senior who lives nowhere near. My daughter you are far away. You are grown. But right now I am a mama who just wants to gather my children close. Sending so much love today and every day my beautiful girl. She replies: Mama, taking a quiet moment right now to feel you gathering me close. I love you. I'm safe and I'm happy.
I think about the parents who will never again receive a text like this.
I text my partner, Dan who is welding steel into art in the garage. I say: Look at the news. He replies: Fuck.
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We have a violence problem in America. A mental health problem. Too many automatic weapons. Not enough checks on who can have one. And a senate increasingly controlled by people who represent far fewer than half of the citizens of this country, which means our laws, supreme court, and presidency are held hostage by the political minority.
Read the underlying article this graphic is from, here.
We've created a society where any of us just going about our daily lives doing the things we need and want to for work, love, and life can be gunned down by someone whose right to bear arms trumps our right to continue living. The living are left with our grief, fury, and an untenable burden of fear of the next sniper that we carry with us wherever we go. The stress from that alone, in the aggregate, can lead to early death.
I've never met a framer of the Constitution and I know you haven't either, but I'd bet my life on the fact that they did not write the Second Amendment to encompass or condone what now passes for law in many states. Nor, in their 18th century existence, could they have envisioned a class of weapons that would spew dozens, hundreds of bullets at humans without the need to re-load. (Frankly they couldn't envision me, a Black woman, having the wherewithal to tell anyone anything, either. That's a different subject, but it does get to the larger issue of whether jurists should favor the court's 'original intent' when they wrote the founding documents versus seeing ours as a 'living Constitution' that adapts carefully over time.)
I've had cause to ask myself this question, which I'll now put to you: Is this even a society, a civilization, if we can't stop the routine murder of large groups of CHILDREN?
I'm sure you have some ideas for what to do. I have a few, too. Here are my thoughts about what to do to help yourself and others process what has happened, followed by some thoughts about how to get more active.
Care for those who are grieving. When tragedy occurs, my simple life hack is to offer compassion to anyone who is most closely impacted by the situation. In the case of the elementary school massacre in Ulvade, Texas, this would include, but is not limited to: Texans, Latinos, educators, and people who have lost a family member to gun violence. So ask yourself whether you know any such people, and if you do, text them this simple message: "I saw the news. It's horrific. I'm thinking of you." You might be surprised by the results – a simple text can have a profound impact. Just last week I offered this advice following the Buffalo grocery store massacre, and one of you tried it, and you called me on my hotline (1-877-HI-JULIE) to share the great impact your efforts had. (If you want to hear that person's story, check it out the Live I did on Monday. You'll find it at the 14:28 mark.)
Be present with your thoughts. Unburden your body from these painful feelings by writing them down (paper or electronic). Maybe write poetry (for inspiration, see an example below.) If you don't bring your feelings into your consciousness, they will lurk inside you and continue to impact you for far longer than they should.
Talk about it with others. Sit with a person or people you trust and create space for each of you to say what you're feeling. Let each person take their turn. Practice active listening with each other, which means your comments are only a reflection back of what you heard them say without any judgment, opinion, or relating to it in your own way. This is how we help each other feel heard and demonstrate that we are listening. Everyone takes their turn. Everyone's feelings are valid and matter.
Get support for talking about gun violence with your kids. With gratitude to the Parenting Journalists Society for sending me these links, you can read Common Sense Media's advice on talking to kids about gun violence, here, get advice from Mental Health America on talking to kids about school safety, here, and get tips from the National Association fo School Psychologists on how to talk to children about violence, here.
In short, while social media is a place to receive, show support for, comment upon, and share information, each of us desperately needs heartfelt human-to-human connection. Go be that human in the lives of other humans. In so doing, you'll be part of the solution. In the comments below, tell us what you're doing, past or present to show up for humans.
As for what to do beyond supporting those impacted, processing your own thoughts, and helping kids do the same, here are my thoughts on the larger political stuff, and of course I welcome yours, too:
Get more informed about the gun issue. Watch this video by Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr made hours before their most recent conference finals game against Dallas, in which he all but yells, "90 percent of us want universal background checks but we're being held hostage by 50 senators who want to hold onto their power. It's pathetic. I've had ENOUGH." This is a succinct summary of a major aspect of the problem. Share the video. Adopt Steve Kerr's language as your own.
Support leaders who are taking a stand. In the hours following the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy (who represents the Sandy Hook community) called hard at his fellow senators for their inaction: "What are we doing? Why are you HERE? Nowhere else does this happen except in the United States of America. And it's a choice. It's OUR choice to let it continue." Watch the video. Adopt Senator Murphy's language as your own.
Join a local protest against gun violence. I can't know where you are or what's happening near you, but you can Google it. Don't just go once. They're hoping this will "simmer down" but this is a moment to disrupt business as usual in our America for countless reasons. Let this be a summer of relentless ACTION.
Stand up to their narrative. I posted a pretty heartfelt video in the moments after learning of the elementary school horror. Most of the viewers are in agreement with my concerns. A few criticize me for "politicizing" the issue. Y'ALL. THEY ALWAYS SAY THIS. But a heartfelt response to human suffering is not politicizing anything. It's the exact opposite. So, when you hear this retort, stand up to this. Tell them "This isn't about politics, this is about people dying." Tell them "Peoples' lives matter more than gun rights." Tell them that. Stand up and say it wherever you need to. Know that I'm standing with you.
Understand the dynamics in the Senate. Each state gets 2 senators regardless of whether they have 580,000 residents (Wyoming) or 39 million (California), so small states have wildly disproportionate power. And this power impacts who wins the presidential election, who gets put on the supreme court, and the laws that govern all of us. The small states tend to be red states. Their leaders tend to be in the pocket of the NRA. Read this piece by National Public Radio on the entrenchment of minority rule. Read this piece by Anne Helen Petersen on what it FEELS like to live under minority rule. The idea of "abolishing the filibuster" in the Senate is about trying to ensure that 51 votes (instead of 60) can move an issue forward. Read this hot-off-the-presses piece on this issue in the Atlantic. Also check out this piece from Indivisible.
Call your U.S. Senators and Congresspeople. Leave a message. If their voicemail boxes are full, make a note to try tomorrow and the next day. Let the anguish and anger and accountability feel like a tidal wave they can no longer run from. Even if YOUR elected leaders seem to be on the right side of the issue, they still need to hear from you. (Apparently, it's not only of zero use but even counterproductive to call leaders outside your district. For more on that, click here.)
Join organizations that are leaders in this space. Cure Violence works to interrupt and end violence in community after community. Moms Demand Action, founded shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting has chapters all over the country and makes a point of being non-partisan. Indivisible is a nationwide grassroots effort to protect our democracy.
Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. As it's become increasingly clear that the tyranny of small red states controlling the Senate (and therefore also the electoral college), which will prevent the democratic majority from legislating, selecting the President, and selecting supreme court justices, I've been noodling over whether we might have a mass migration to turn a small number of red states blue. I'm talking Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota, even Florida, where the democratic candidate for Senate lost by a relatively small number of people? Is anyone working on this? Would anyone do this? Am I nuts? I think it's time to ask ourselves these big questions.
As ever, please share your thoughts below. Before you get there I'll leave you with this poem by Brian Bilston.
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🧐 If you missed last week's post about how parents can improve kids' mental health by taking a pledge to change our behaviors, you can read that here. Other popular posts in Julie's Pod include one on the day COVID got me which is here, on the trauma and tragedy of youth suicide which is here, and the role parents can play in turning normal childhood fears into outright anxieties which is here.
😭 As it happens, as I'm writing this for you today it is second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It appeared that people "got it." That change was possible. Is it?
📑 If you want to learn more about White Replacement Theory, check out this informative link from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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