As the Public Inquiry into the mass shooting of April 18-19th was approaching, the Mass Casualty Commission asked the public how the massacre has affected their lives?
Sophia shares honestly about how unrecognizable she was right after the events.
She withdrew from socialization for a year and a half and dealt with her feelings of hopelessness and fear by micro-managing her environment with A LOT of OCD tendencies.
We talk about big picture questions, like "Why now, with the girls so young (they were 11 and 13)?" and "Why us, why our family?"
Sophia expresses how important it was for her to process it all with us, since it might have been too much for her friends.
She talks about her school experience, post massacre, during a pandemic. She wanted to talk about it and no one acknowledged it.
She wishes someone would approach her and say, "I'm holding space for you and I want you to know I'm here for you, for whatever you need."
This experience has inspired Sophia to increase awareness into trauma-informed best practices.
After a small poll regarding trauma with her peers, she concluded that the majority of teens have been traumatized.
Jenny talked about the prevalence of traumatized kids and how they act out to cope. She believes trauma literacy needs to become more of a priority in all of our workplaces.
Jenny shared a quote by John Eldredge "The accumulation of event after event that we're assaulted by, erodes our confidence that we are a part of something grand and good and reduces us to a survival mindset."
She then went on to share the common feelings of being anxious, overwhelmed, scared, irritable like a wild animal, much of the time after the April event.
Jenny notices that her life is divided into life before and life after the massacre.
She has noticed way more fear and has grown super cautious.
And anger? Jenny notices a deep rage surface when she sees her sister's name on the news in google.
She's thankful she's got tools to self-regulate, like RBC (relax, breath, choose) which she explains in her Mindfulness in Schools Manual.
Both agreed that it's too much to take in for a reasonable mind, since what he did was in such a state of insanity.
We hope this conversation supports your own healing journey. We invite you too to talk it out, with a family member or a professional, because it really does help.
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