More than 900 school shootings have taken place in the United States in the 10 years since the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left six adults and 20 children dead.
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PHOTO: Jackie Hegarty is a survivor of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. I, myself, was afraid to show my emotions. I felt like keeping my composure was the only thing that was going to get me through the long days. So I bottled things up. I tried not to think about it, I pushed it away to try to live my life as a"normal kid."
I think the biggest thing I want to stress is that everyone's trauma is different. Don't invalidate your trauma just because"other people" have it worse, or that other people deserve to have a stronger response. Trauma is not a scale, we can't just rank tragic experiences. Two people who had been present at the same event of gun violence can have drastically different experiences.
Not even an hour after finding out about my sister's passing, the media had gotten my number. My phone was buzzing almost every second, to the point my phone started glitching. A day later, they found our house. You'll learn that you may have a love/hate relationship with the media. It can be frustrating at times, but they are the people that are going to get your story out, if you want it out. Honestly though, not all media will be sensitive to your situation.
You just need to remember those people don't know you, and it's just some random person who probably has nothing better to do. The good part of social media is that, a majority of the time, the love and support outweighs the hate. PHOTO: Jazmin Cazares's 9-year-old sister Jackie was killed in the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
One of the most difficult parts of this journey was figuring out how to navigate returning to school. I still had to finish the remainder of my sophomore year, junior year, and senior year. Classes were no longer the main focus but figuring out how to move forward was constantly on my mind. I struggled to even walk into the building at first or go near the parts of the building that reminded me of what happened.
PHOTO: Maria Cochran and Andressa Green of Chardon place flowers on the sign outside Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio, Feb. 28, 2012. I'm writing to you because I understand what you're going through and how you're feeling. At my school I had to jump out of a window and run for my life. I sat with friends as we wondered what would happen to us, and if we would make it out alive. I was you, and I'm here for you.
PHOTO: A board where community members can share words of support alongside the memorial outside of Oxford High School, where four students were killed and seven others injured on Nov. 30, 2021, Dec. 7, 2021 in Oxford, Mich. Other people should know being a survivor isn't easy. We have our moments of sadness, anger, guilt. We are also some of the strongest and most resilient people. We overcame a traumatic event, we survived and we are here to carry on the legacy of those who aren't here with us today.Reach out whenever you need me. I'm just a call away.Natalie Barden, 7-year-old brother Daniel was killed in 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, ConnecticutMy name is Natalie Barden.
I am writing to you, a future school shooting survivor, as you are now part of this sad little club, that is actually not so little anymore. Though we've made progress and there are school shootings that have been prevented, I know our country is not yet free of school shootings.PHOTO: Mark Barden and wife Jackie Barden lost their son Daniel Barden in the Sandy Hook School Shooting in Newtown.
My dad changed his entire career. When I was little, he was a musician. He would stay with us during the day and then gig at night. I think about being shot a lot, or someone coming into my house. I'm not sure I'm the best person to give advice on how to cope, as I'm still trying to figure it out. There are periods where the anxiety or the grief feels insurmountable, but there are also times that I feel incredibly happy and safe.
People often ask me about what it was like to go through something like that. Though I understand the question, I feel like I didn't go through it, but am still going through it every day. PHOTO: Missy Jenkins Smith is a survivor of 1997 shooting at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky. There are times that you will get frustrated, but it's OK for you to scream, cry and let those frustrations out but then focus on the positives in life.
PHOTO: Missy Jenkins Smith says she received thousands of letters after being injured in a 1997 shooting at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky. I hope you never have to experience waiting in a parking lot down the street from your school, not knowing whether your friends or teachers or siblings or cousins are going to make it to that parking lot.
I hope you're upset. I hope you're angry. I hope you know your voice and actions matter. I'm not just going to tell you to vote harder -- It's clearly not working. Two days away from my 18th birthday, I barricaded in a small office with 59 other students for three hours when two seniors killed 12 of my classmates and my typing teacher before killing themselves.
I went off to college and I didn't want to tell people my story because I was scared of their judgment. I knew that if I thought my own experience wasn't worthy of being traumatized, others certainly would think the same.
I reconnected with my Columbine Rebel family and discovered what it was like to not be alone in my struggles. They know my story, though I started out telling them my history purely because I wanted them to take the drills seriously. However, in me being vulnerable and open with them, I opened the lines of communication and became the trusted adult for many of them. In fact, they gave me feedback while I was drafting this letter.
PHOTO: Heather Martin is a survivor of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. We would find out later that she had been shot in the left shoulder, the bullet had bounced around in her body missing all major arteries and organs but had hit one of her lungs and passed beside her spinal cord, before exiting out the right side of her back.
I'm sorry that you had to witness something so terrible at such a young age. I unfortunately have been where you are. I know you're scared, confused, lost and trying to make sense of it all, but please keep one thing in mind. You survived and that's OK! Over the next few days, weeks, months, you will be scared. Sometimes you may not know what you are exactly scared of.
Whether you hear a song, pass an old classmate at the grocery store or another shooting happens, you will never forget. My name is Isabelle Laymance. I am 19 years old and I survived the Santa Fe High School shooting in May 2018. PHOTO: Isabelle Laymance is a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas.
What I would like to say to future families is to put your child before your own feelings, because I believe if they expressed to me how they were feeling during my healing process, I would have shut down and stopped sharing my problems to protect them. I am very grateful they gave me the space to process my own emotions, while I wish I could have helped them too.
You can choose whether or not to share your story. I chose to share my story, as I needed to get the truth out there and to be able to help others in the future. It is perfectly all right to keep your story private and share with only family and friends. Your growth and healing are the most important thing in the world right now.
I hope that put a smile on your face. While this brief anecdote may seem trivial, sometimes the mundane things in life are among the most important. She was one of the smartest, most clever individuals I have ever known. One year later, Carmen was killed in the mass shooting at my high school.Brandon Abzug, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor
PHOTO: Shari Unger, Melissa Goldsmith and Giulianna Cerbono hug each other as they visit a makeshift memorial setup in front of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 18, 2018 in Parkland, Fl. In the days and weeks after Columbine, I was 14 years old sleeping in between my parents with my shoes on. I felt like I always needed to be ready for the"what if'' scenarios because I never thought something like this could ever happen to me.
Another thing that was hard to cope with, in the beginning, was hugging my parents. Survivor's guilt can come in many different forms. Lastly, be resourceful. Being a survivor will be with you through your entire life and possibly your children's lives. It was a normal Friday and my class was getting ready to make snowflakes when bullets fired through the glass in the lobby and I hid with my class in lockdown, terrified, until the police evacuated us to the firehouse nearby. We then began to process the magnitude of that day and endured the aftermath that followed.
Having our town in the headlines years after the tragedy can feel isolating. Being a survivor of gun violence is hard, but there is an amazingly strong and powerful network of survivors all across the country who are fighting for a safer future, and have been in the same shoes that you are in now. Many years after is when I really started to mentally grasp it. I began working with others to use past tragedy and turn it into our motivation and everyday purpose for change. I believe we can have a future with fewer guns. As a country, we have experienced such frequent gun violence that we have become numb. We see another shooting in the headlines and look away. But we must not be numb.
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