How do we heal personally and collectively after tragedy strikes?

It is our duty as a community to protect our children

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This has been a hard week. I work in a school, and I send my two children off to school every day. Monday morning’s news that there was a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee hits in a deeply vulnerable place.

I wrote and re-wrote this week, and still couldn’t put all the feelings to paper. This week, I am sharing something I wrote in response to the Uvalde school shooting that took place last May.

Here is today’s pocket.

istock photo- not my actual child, but this is what Seabass’ gi looks like

My children participate in the martial arts practice of Kendo.

To obtain bogu, or armor, and a shinai, a bamboo sword, in the martial arts practice of Kendo, takes months and years of preparation. You must train with a Sensei, or master, and learn respect and proper technique. You must prove that you will be safe with the armor and weapons that you have earned. 

To obtain an AR-15, one simply has to turn 18 and walk into a local Walmart. 

I am a high school English teacher and an instructional coach.  It is June, and we are wrapping up the first school year we have experienced post-pandemic. It would be an understatement to say the year has been long and hard. Absences are higher than ever, and mental health issues are on the rise. Behavioral incidents seem to have increased across our district, along with student outrage. The ramifications of extended online schooling during the pandemic are staggering. In my current role, I serve both students and teachers, and I work closely with administration. Everyone is working so hard. Everyone is completely worn out. 

I teach Native American Literature, and in this course, students learn about multiple intentional atrocities targeting Native Americans. The book we just finished, Killers of the Flower Moon, covers the decades of pre-meditated murder against the Osage people, for their headrights, for the money they received after oil was discovered on the land they were forcefully removed to precisely because it was deemed worthless. 

Recently, we held an event preparing for Orange Shirt Day, which is a day of remembrance, honoring the horrors Native children faced in residential boarding schools where they were forced to assimilate. One of the women who spoke at our event shared a story about a young child who was forced to eat an orange. Oranges were foreign and strange to Native children who were used to foraging the land for food. This student refused and was forced to eat the orange. So distressed, this child vomited, and then was forced eat the vomit. 

So the question on my mind, the question I formulated after talking with a dear friend who is a Professor, is how do we heal personally and collectively after tragedy strikes? 

This is the question that I posed to my class the day after an eighteen-year-old senior locked himself in a fourth-grade classroom and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers with an AR-15 rifle which he had legally purchased on his birthday. This is the question I posed to them after the nineteen police officers on site did nothing while the shooter barricaded himself in the classroom. Actually, let me be more clear here, some of these police officers restrained the parents who tried to go in the building themselves to save their children after they realized the police were doing nothing to help them. 

Before getting his armor, my eleven-year-old son is given a special uniform. Underneath the bogu, he wears a kendogi, a jacket made of thick cotton with beautiful embroidering on it, along with a hakama, wide pants that almost look like a dress.  His uniform is different from his older sister’s and from the other adults. Their attire is completely dark blue while his kendogi is white. 

The first time my son put on his armor and sparred with the other members of the club, some of the other members hit him hard, not intentionally trying to hurt him, but hurting him all the same. In recounting the story to me, he said, “but Sensei noticed. He told them that they should not hit anyone wearing white that hard. They should use more restraint, less force, because white signifies the wearer is a child whose bones are not fully formed.” It is the duty of the community to protect and watch out for the children. 

Our country is no stranger to atrocities committed against children. Residential boarding schools existed for almost a hundred years. Thousands upon thousands of children were ripped from their homes, stripped of their culture and robbed of their identity. Thousands upon thousands of children were sexually and physically abused. Thousands upon thousands died in these schools, never to return home. 

This year alone there have been 27 school shootings. 

School shootings are horrific, but they are only one part of the devastation caused by gun violence in our country. According to the CDC and the Brady report, 1,839 children die from gun violence every year in the United States. 

How do we heal personally and collectively after tragedy strikes? How do we heal when the same type of tragedy continues to strike again and again, and we feel helpless? It took almost a hundred years, but residential boarding schools were eventually closed in this country, opening a pathway to a new phase, one of remembering, honoring, healing and learning, so hopefully the mistakes of the past are not repeated. 

It is easy to become cynical in response to the gun violence committed against children in our country. What happened in Uvalde feels eerily similar to what happened in Sandy Hook ten years ago. When that atrocity occurred, we were saddened and outraged, and yet it feels like not much has changed. 

But some things have changed. In the state of Washington, where I live, you cannot by a gun until you are 21. There are five other states who have made this change to the law. They made this change because there was enough public outrage to demand action. 

I don’t have an answer, but I will no longer be passive on this issue. On Monday, I will attend my first Moms Demand Action meeting. I will be part of the outcry, demanding that we don ALL of our children in white, that we prioritize their safety over profit, that we protect their bones with every fiber of our being. 

Afterall, it is our duty as a community. 

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. Do you have stories of personal and collective healing? We could use those right now.

“My voice feels tiny and I'm sure so does yours, but put us all together we make a mighty roar…” (“Resilient” Rising Appalachia) How do we heal? How do we change?