We dropped off True earlier in the morning at my parent’s house. There were plans to build a birdhouse with Grandpa.
A couple hours later, the horrific news came. Shock. Tears. Overwhelming sadness. As a parent, I could barely breathe. We stopped what we were doing and went straight to my parent’s house to scoop up True and hold him tight. We haven’t let him out of our reach since.
We are in deep prayer and mourning over here. We’re trying to stay away from the television and instead we are lighting candles, and sending up eons of wishes of comfort and light. We have to collectively help hold the magnitude of this for those who are suffering. And for a long time.
Our hearts are broken.
For those of you who have older children, Brene Brown has gathered up a list of helpful resources on how to talk to children about violence toward children. You can click over here to see her list. Super helpful.
Thank you for this touching post. Thank you for expressing my own feelings so beautifully.
You don't need to be a parent to have been horrified by this. Staying away from the television doesn't make it go away. Getting angry and motivated to make change in regard to gun laws is what is needed. What will happen though is it will all be forgotten about by the news media in a few days, and apathy towards gun laws will prevail. We do not have these kinds of regular massacres in Australia as you do over there, and i think something culturally is very very wrong in the USA
tonight i stopped at target and while i haven't spoken about the tragedy with my three and six year old (obviously) i made them both sit in the cart, knowing it wouldn't make anything different for anyone but to allay my own anxiety and heavy heart. for some reason, this isn't impacting me as strongly as 9/11 did when i had a kindergartner who would come home and draw pictures of planes crashing into buildings – perhaps it was because i couldn't control the information he was receiving at school or opt-out of his participating in practice lock-downs, i had to accept this new part of our reality as a nation, a world, wrought with sick and incomprehensible violence. since then i've grown a lot and was also a social worker, working one on one with some very broken families. i don't know if it's because earlier this week i couldn't stop crying for two days but so far today i haven't shed tears but i did light two candles and i even prayed though that's something i haven't done in twenty years.
I have granddaughters 4&8 – both in school today. It was all I could do to keep from going and getting them out of school and never letting them go back. I am cold from the inside out and cannot stop crying. I can't even imagine how bad it must be for the people who have lost their babies. Babies they thought were safe at school.
change. it's the only forward movement out of deep and soul destroying tragedy <3
Bless you Kelly for this post. I have a son in kindergarten and I too am heartsick over this. It is to much for words. My first thought was as yours to hug my son and wonder at what we as a society could do to help. We must all bear this together.