Lost For Words

It’s been a somber week in Nashville.

After the horrible shooting on Monday at Covenant School where three 9 year olds and three adults were killed, and then the shooter was killed, I sat at my workstation at VUMC in stunned silence. The victims were brought to my workplace and though I did not interact with any of it, the energy and gravity of the situation echoed through the halls and bounced off everyone. As more information was released throughout the day, my co-worker and I tried to process what couldn’t be processed. It seemed crazy to continue to work, but we had to go about our day in numbing denial. I wandered outside on my lunch break, unable to eat food and felt like I was in a daze. I gravitated toward my favorite trees on campus and begged for grounding at the very least.

I thought about what it must be like to be a kid these days. How it’s inevitable to absorb fear, and that it feels so unfair that kids have to be afraid that someone might come into their school and try to shoot them. 95% of schools participate in active shooter drills. Do they help? Do they work or do they spread more anxiety and fear? HOW DID WE GET HERE???

One of my fav Substacks is called Your Local Epidemiologist by Katelyn Jetelina. In her newsletter published today, she asks the question about active shooter drills - do the benefits outweigh the risks? She starts with:

School policies for gun violence are a band-aid for a bullet hole. We need to prevent gun violence upstream. Prevent it from even being a conversation.

The chances of being killed in a school shooting are pretty small (1 in 614 million acc to Jetelina) but the fear is pretty big, so to me the question is how can it be prevented, and it has to do with laws and limiting access to weapons. By the way, firearms are still the leading cause of death in children.

I DON’T have the answers and I wish I had an idea about what the solution is. Instead I will sit with it. Send peace and blessings to every kid and teacher and worker at every school. Hold love in my heart for the parents who have to send their children to school, hoping they will get to come home. Breathe deeply when it comes to lawmakers and send goodwill to those I disagree with, instead of hate, because coming to agreements is necessary for change. Keep sitting with it, knowing sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Weeping at the courage of the people out there working hard to have their voices heard. Know that it’s up to all of us to love peace so much we are willing to fight for it.