How Do You Process Heartbreak?
On Friday morning, in a small Connecticut town, every parent’s worst nightmare came true. Twenty innocent children and six brave and honorable adults entrusted with their care lost their lives in a place that SHOULD have been safe. Just like every other parent in America we are grappling with what you say in response, how you talk about what happened with your children, and how you continue on in the face of such darkness.
For now, we are still considering our words carefully and working through some incredibly difficult and emotionally draining soul searching. We have given all of our writers the opportunity to contribute to a posting we are planning for Wednesday. Some will contribute and some have found it just too difficult to write about this tragedy.
In the meantime, we offer these links to articles we have found useful in the past few days. Some of these articles offer insight, others empathy, and still others advice. If there is an article or post you have found particularly helpful in processing this terrible tragedy, please feel free to share in the comments.
God Bless.
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I had a talk with my five year old about the tragedy because I wanted to be sure she knew that school is normally a safe place. I was very shocked at what all she knew since my husband and I made a point to turn off our TVs this weekend and didn’t discuss anything with her around until we gave ourselves some time to process everything. I was also very surprised with the empathy she had not only for the children but for the shooter’s brother and family. She told me she was sad because people died, but it also made her sad that the brother had to face Christmas without his mom or brother and even though she knows the shooter was bad, his brother doesn’t deserve to be alone at Christmas. Because of my daughter, now when I think of the community, and the victims of this tragedy, I’m remembering also the family left behind that has the stigma that their relative murdered innocents.