Here is the truth – I go dark when there is a school shooting. I obsess over the news and my husband has to force the tv off. I have massive anxiety at school. I run around and check our crisis plans at school and annoy all my people trying to find it and check it’s validity. I read all the Facebook posts and get sad over and over. My husband tells me sadly that he knows in this situation, I would most definitely sacrifice my life for the life of my students (as is reverse for his first responder self as well). But mostly I hope that I won’t have the reoccurring nightmare that’s been haunting me since One Tree Hill’s school shooting episode way back when. I get anxiety because what I know is that people/kids that do this are STRUGGLING. Whether it’s mental health, childhood abuse or family/attachment dysfunction – the hurt is so bad that they feel it has to come out in this most brutal way. And my entire life’s work is working closely with these people and these children and working tirelessly to make sure it doesn’t happen here.But my work stops at 3:30 in the afternoon. And it stops when a family can’t access mental health resources due to language barriers or insurance barriers or an incredibly long waiting list barrier. And unfortunately it stops when people blame guns (although I think gun control is a needed topic to discuss) or politicians (although I think there are obvious problems here) or parenting styles (although shifts in society are concerning to me in this realm too). So what can we do? We can love. And we can report suspicious activity and suspicious people. We can pray. We can teach our children that reporting is a life-saving behavior, not “narking”. We can monitor our childrens’ social media and teach them about the harmful effects of comments like “KYS” (kill yourself) and other such anonymous feeling disses. We can attack bullying head on with clear policies and an increase in social/emotional lessons teaching empathy and how to manage stress. But most of all, we can love. On kids that our ours and the ones that are not. Love on the kids that have no one and on the ones that seem to have everything but when they go home and lock themselves in their room to hurt others online, show that they are truly alone.

Now to get back to that work with my own hurting little beings in my home and in my school…..one day at a time. ❤

Click here for a great article on how to talk with your children about school violence.