Reflections on Recent Events

Spoiler Warning: This post I'm using as a therapeutic exercise to come to grips with the recent events of the Newtown school shooting from Friday. I'll use a separate post to add pictures of Juliana and share about her 8 month milestones.

Anytime there is a mass shooting, I reevaluate what would I do if there was an active shooter at my school, at my work, outside, at the mall, etc. However, this time it's different. I know what I would do if there was an active shooter, but what would my daughter do? She's a baby, so I know what she would do. What she would do if there was any loud noise. Cry. Sit there, look for an adult to pick her up, face red, scream, and cry. Hardly appropriate in an active shooter situation. So the question becomes what would my day care do? I had a hard time dropping her off this morning. I became emotional on the drive there, I'm emotional typing the words now. I'm helpless because I am not there. As parents, I think we feel that if we're present with our children we can be in control. For the most part, yes, we can control what goes in their mouths (no! not the stink bug!!), where they go (let's not go into the kitchen to play with the trash can, okay?), who holds them, who they play with, etc. However, if she was with me, and there was an active shooter, I cannot control that situation in the same way, but I would feel better because I know I would do everything I possibly could. Trusting someone else, however, is scary. It leaves you vulnerable. President Obama said it in his speech last night at the interfaith vigil, as parents, we have our heart outside of our body. I believed it before, but I didn't comprehend it.

I was reading an article about how to talk with your children about what happened. And above all, to make sure that you, as the parent, don't seem anxious, nervous, or scared about taking them to school on Monday, because then that will make them scared. You need to reassure them that school is a safe place. One mom I was talking to said she felt like she was lying to her daughter saying that school was safe. But the thing is, school is safe. Home is safe. The scary part is that they are also vulnerable. They are places where you don't expect something to happen. For example, when I was in college I took a Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) class with my mom and sister. We learned the basics of what to do, how to react, if someone moves to attack or abduct you. It's scary to entertain the possibility of that happening to you, but, to feel empowered to know that there is something you can do in that situation, it makes the situation less scary. To know that when adrenaline starts coursing your veins, you have a battle plan, you know where you will run, you are aware of your surroundings, you know how loud you'll scream, it makes me feel more in control. Honestly, when I'm walking to meet my carpool, when I'm riding a bus, I'm thinking about what I would do. It's become a second nature to me, most of the time I don't even realize I'm thinking about my "battle plan." Where I don't think about it, or have a concrete plan is at home. On the one hand, I think that if someone came into my bedroom in the middle of the night I would be so irritated at being woken up, I would make my displeasure known and the good guys would come with no harm done to me or my family. On the other hand, if someone wanted to hurt me, that would be how to do it. But instead of being helpless, what I can do is prepare myself. How would I react, where would I go, what would I do. I don't have a good answer to these questions because it scares me to think about being hurt where I feel safest. But, I know I need to address these questions now.

A friend shared an article (that I agree with, personally) discussing how the number one enemy with active shooter situations is denial. Denial that it's a possibility. I don't want my daughter growing up terrified that every stranger is going to kill or kidnap her, but I do want her educated on how to protect herself, how to find help, how to get away. The best way I know to do that, is to address these things myself. Brian and I were discussing this the other day and I said the biggest thing that frightens me is the time it takes for emergency responders to get to you. If Brian had a heart attack, how long would it take for the ambulance to get to our house? Would it be too late? So, what can I do about it? I can educate myself on CPR and be the first responder until the professionals get there. Again, I think it boils down to education so I can put myself in control of the situation, as much as humanly possible. I don't want to ever live with the thoughts that I could or should have done something.

Does anyone remember the school shooting in Jonesboro AK in 1998? Two boys (6th grade and 8th grade) pulled the fire alarm and then hid in the woods surrounding the school shooting as the children and teachers left the building. Four girls and one teacher were killed, with ten more people injured. I was in sixth grade. I don't remember how I heard about it, I don't remember if my parents talked to me about it (I'm sure they did), but I do remember I was in my 6th grade English class and was extremely upset by it. I was excused to the teacher's lounge to work on the Mac computer, typing an essay about it. It was a fictional story where I described how a girl had broken up with her boyfriend, and he came to school with a gun trying to kill her, instead shooting other people before the police intervened. I described the gist of the events from the Jonesboro shooting (fire alarm pulled, etc). I vividly remember writing this essay, but I always finished my thoughts thinking how extreme I was, how silly I was to do this, telling myself I was doing it to get out of class that day, down playing the effect this shooting had on me. But now, I get it. I was trying to sort out the events. I was trying to understand why someone would do something so senseless. I think the exercise helped me realize that it was an extreme situation and I didn't need to be paranoid or worried about fire alarm drills and having an active shooter.

Columbine occurred the following year when I was in 7th grade. I don't have any major memories of that event, except for talking about where to go or what to do in the classroom if there was a situation with an active shooter. I don't remember doing active drills for lock down, but I do remember wishing we would do them with some regularity since in middle school, we were in different classrooms for different subjects. Virginia Tech was a lot closer to home. I remember my best friend and I were in a computer class when she pulled up the news on her phone with the number that there was an active shooter on the loose and the death toll was at 20 and climbing. We had friends at Tech. We were going to school just a short 2-2.5 hrs up the road. The gunman was still on the loose, how did we know he wasn't going to come up to our school? In college, we didn't practice lock down drills. I had my mental "plan," sure, but college campuses are a lot bigger, and how would we know if there was an active shooter on the loose? We couldn't check email on our phones (or I couldn't at least). Then came the Western Psych shooting here at Pitt. I got the notices on my phone via email and text. The building was just 2 or 3 buildings over from where my lab is, but I had a plan. I was working on an experiment in a room where I could close and lock the door if additional protection was needed. My building is extremely secure because you need card access that's cleared for specific floors only, to open the elevator, etc. All of these electronics were turned off when we were on lock down. Not to say that a shooter couldn't have gotten into the building, but it would've been very difficult.

I would like to tell Juliana that gun violence is a thing of the past, a thing of "my generation." But until things change, I won't be able to say that. I can't protect her every moment of her life. She is her own individual, and I want her to be self sufficient, confident, independent, courageous, ambitious, creative, etc. So the only thing I can do, is make sure I provide and educate her on the "tools" to protect herself. To always be kind, to be helpful, to feel safe in telling me anything that makes her nervous, uncomfortable, to share her activities with friends with me, to yell when something doesn't feel right, and to always know that she is the most loved little girl in the world (at least in my world =)

I count my blessings even more now. I'm so blessed to have a little girl who is wonderful in every possible way. I'm blessed with my education because it's given me the tools to learn how to protect myself and family. I am blessed to have such an amazing and loving family. I could go on and on.

I'll finish this post with a link to a blog post that has gone viral. If you haven't read it, make sure you have some tissues, an open mind, and take a gander. This mother writes about her son who is mentally ill and who becomes violent whenever he is upset and she compares herself to the mothers of any of the mass shooters. Mental health is a discussion I won't touch on now, but I think it is also an intricate portion of the puzzle.

One more thing... I began by asking: What would day care do? I was nervous to find out that they don't have a plan (as of this morning when I talked with them about it). But, I was encouraged to hear that they were actively thinking about it and would tell me what they discussed when I pick up Juliana this afternoon. So, although I can't follow Juliana around every second. And I can't hire an armed bodyguard to follow her around, I can bring up the issue and make them aware of my concerns. So many times, about little things, I've belittled myself, saying that I'm a young, inexperienced mom, it's not a big deal to bring it up, or to ask that her crib be moved to the one quiet corner in the room in the hopes that she naps better. But, I'm that little girl's voice. I may not be there all the time to keep her safe, but I can make sure that the people who I'm paying to take care of her will keep her as safe as I would.