msu shooting

I wondered, before I left the US, how it would feel to experience the new stories out of my country while not living inside it’s borders. How it might feel to hear the news reporters with removed experiences of the events.

Today, marks five years since the Parkland shooting.

Yesterday, was one year since the Oxford High School shooting.

Last night, Michigan State University was held in terror as another mass shooting unfolded.

My memories swirl this morning of my four years there. Even though I have never personally been involved in an event of gun violence, my brain still flashed to the places I somehow clocked as safe in the event of an active shooter. As the buildings are reported in the news, I remember the layouts, the corner rooms, the bathrooms, the places I might try to hide in. It’s a side effect of living in a country that will not protect it’s citizens from gun violence. It’s part of the way I scan rooms and buildings subconsciously that I didn’t have the space to acknowledge until the threat became less immediate.

I was in a meeting with a city representative that is implementing trauma informed city structures. One of the people running the network mentioned a mass shooting that happened there in 2021 as a reason for this trauma informed city practice took hold. I didn’t feel like I could appropriately react and hold space because of the numbness, the normality, the repeated occurrence of these events in my home country. One of my favorite things about working with trauma informed professionals who live into their training, is that make space for others honesty. I told her I didn’t feel like I could react appropriately to that news, that the true weight of what her community is holding is hard for me to access. I told a story of practicing as a therapist in a school in Seattle, and having to stop my session - stop a child from working through their trauma via play - in order to practice with that child how to stay as safe as possible in the event of an active shooter. How much that stayed with me.

It isn’t always clear the impact of living in a certain place until you aren’t there anymore. And it turns out, hearing the news abroad is no different.