Life & Therapy

Now it is our turn. A shooter came to our town. He killed 10 people in a grocery store we have all been to. The first I heard about it was just that there was an active shooter in Boulder, and my heart dropped because my daughter was out in an exposed public place at that moment. Then I found out it was elsewhere in town. Never during this whole experience did I feel surprised. Oh, I guess it’s our turn now was my main thought that day.

The next day was the day it actually hit me that this had happened in our town, not just some other town. That brought the pain. I also went into blame mode for much of the day, as if I actually know why these things happen, and who is at fault. I do not know why these things happen, I do not know who is at fault, and I don’t know how to fix it. I have some opinions, I have some ideas that might actually be helpful, and I think that every single one of us has some piece of the solution, but we can’t seem to come together to put all those pieces on the table. It is so hard to listen to each other. And listening is unbelievably crucial. But instead we talk. The media talks. The politicians talk. Everyone on social media talks. Meanwhile, this keeps happening, and if it hasn’t come to your town yet, you probably know that your town is not immune, and you could be next.

I already know this, about needing to listen, but regardless, that day I went straight into the blaming stage. I had ideas of why this keeps happening and a I had a full story, and I went there. But the blaming stage cut me off from even barely grasping the enormity of this and kept me from seeing any of the many layers of the tragedy, and separated me from thinking about those who are grieving. It felt like action, but it was not. To be clear, the blaming stage is not the same as the problem-solving stage. In the blaming stage, you try skip over whatever feelings senseless violence brings up for you: anger, sadness, helplessness, frustration, shock, fear, something else. Those feelings are hard to feel, so instead, you then tell a story about the shooter, about the politicians, about the laws, or the lack of funding for mental health, and throw all of these feelings that need your attention, at whoever or whatever you want to take them out on. But in that moment, those feelings need to be listened to, not thrown at someone else. The blaming stage cannot replace the listening stage, but shooting after shooting keeps happening, and the listening stage gets trampled on every time.  That day, I had to move beyond the blaming stage, and I started to listen. I’m still absorbing this, I’m still trying to figure out how I can listen to my grief and that of others, I’m still in the feeling and listening stage.

The next thing I discovered is what it is like to try to feel while others who mean well and want to be supportive are in the blaming stage, or even in the very important problem-solving stage. I am not the person you should be talking to if you want to blame or problem-solve right now. You think it’s the guns? You think we need more support for mental health? You think it is the media? If you have listened enough, really listened, take action.  Please call your elected officials and talk to them. That is someone you should be talking to. And then do something. Step away from social media, tear yourself from the compelling conversations and DO SOMETHING! Join the movement, send money, talk to the people in front of you, not just online. Then go back online if you feel like you have to, tell everyone what you did, and inspire them to do it too.

The next step was telling our young kids. Because we sure as hell didn’t want them hearing about it from their friends, especially in the form of gossip. This is not the first time I’ve lived in a town with a mass shooting, but it is the first time I’ve lived in one while being a parent. This voice in my head really truly wanted say to them, “But it won’t happen to you.” Except we do not lie to our kids. I can’t promise them that a shooter won’t show up at their school, a movie theater, a grocery store, anywhere. And this isn’t the first mass killing they have been told about, because this is their world that they are growing up in. We explained to them about mass shooters when all the area schools were shut down one day because a mentally ill Columbine massacre fangirl came to Colorado with an automatic weapon and had plans to recreate Columbine, and she was on the loose. Then, too, we did not want them to find out from gossiping classmates. That’s when our kids learned that people shoot up schools. And this week we had the task of telling them that now our town, the town that they are growing up in, is the latest recipient of a mass shooter’s rage. They took in as much as they could, then they clearly needed to stop taking it in. And we respected that, because, as our daughter then told me, “Mom, it’s the kids’ job to just survive, it’s the parents’ job to worry about us.” I’m still taking that moment in.

Another aspect of being in the town where tragedy hits is that for the first few days at least, you are aware of the media whether you want to be or not.  There was a vigil downtown.  We did not attend, but the entire time, we heard many helicopters flying over that vigil.  Imagine trying to grieve, or trying to connect with others with that amount of noise.  Imagine some uninvited, heavily made-up stranger with a camera person and a microphone asking you how you are feeling while you are still trying to understand something of this magnitude.  I share this, because when it doesn’t happen in your town, or in a town where you know someone, you learn about it through the media, and you only hear the bits that make good viewing.  But the most powerful bits do not make good viewing, and there are layers and layers of them, and this is why I’m writing from my experience, to give you the tiniest bit of perspective from the outer layers of this enormous event’s impact on our town.

You might know someone who was affected far more deeply by this or any other senseless act of violence: someone who has actually lost a loved one, or someone who was there and is now traumatized. You might wonder how to support that person. And I am not an expert on this and, unless it has happened to you personally, neither are you, no matter how much training you might have. The person you are trying to support is the only expert on how they feel about tragedy befalling them, and they did not ask for that job. Grief can last for decades, so don’t offer something you don’t have the stamina to see through.

There is no one-size-fits all thing a person in grief or trauma needs at any given time. Some people want to talk about it, others do not. Some people want to be around others, some people want to be alone. Some people do not know what they want, and only find out what they want by getting what they don’t want. I have my own sorting process, both as a therapist and as someone who has seen a lot of friends through grief. The first thing I have to remind myself is that this is not about me. It is not about my need to feel like I am taking action, it is not about my need to get it right, it is not about my need to feel immune from tragedy, or about my need to feel good about myself, or about my desire to stop the suffering. This is about the person in front of me who is in pain. Can I just be with them and their pain and suffering without trying to take it away or make it make sense? If the answer is no, then I cannot help in that moment, and I alone need to address and meet the needs mentioned above until the answer is yes.  When the answer is yes, then the question I need to ask them is, “What do you need right now?” Sometimes that question is too open-ended, so sometimes it is helpful to offer examples, “Do you want to talk about it right now, or would it be more helpful to take your mind off of it?” “Can I bring you food?” “Do you need someone to clean your dishes?” That is where I start. And when the talking does happen, I try to listen. And I try to listen when I’m told that I said the wrong thing. It is a simple thing, and one of the hardest things to do, and I am not always great at it. Being great is not the goal, though. Being there is.

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If you are trying to figure out how someone could commit such an atrocity, or if you are tempted to blame the shooter’s family, you may want to read this interview with sister of Kip Kinkel, who was the high school shooter where I lived in 1998.

If you would like to use this space to talk about how you are feeling, please feel welcome to do so but if you want to express your opinions or your ideas of why this happened, or what needs to be done, or if you want to debate, this is not the forum.