In one night, one person with a gun changed everything. Maine is reeling after the shooter opened fire at a bowling alley, and then a bar and grill, killing at least 18 people. The suspect, an Army reservist, reportedly had been treated in a mental health facility for two weeks this summer.
After the Wednesday attack, gun rights advocates will focus on mental illness. Gun-control advocates will focus on guns. What the country should focus on is supporting the survivors. To do this, we need to understand the empty spaces that gun violence creates.
People go missing from homes and schools and friendships. A sense of safety and security vanishes. In the void, fear, grief and rage can take their place. All too often, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder move in.
I learned the phrase “empty space” from Jessica Abell, a pastor in the Denver area. We met when I was covering a sit-in to ban guns in June at the Colorado Capitol. As part of her ministry, she has comforted folks dying from chronic illness and has described their deaths as “tragic but beautiful.”
Shooting deaths are different.
Seeing them happen again and again in Colorado, Abell has learned that gun violence is so quick and impossible to prepare for that it radically and rapidly changes the lives not only of the victims’ loved ones but also of the people “on the fringe.” The school administrators, doctors and chaplains. The men and women working at the restaurant and bowling alley in Lewiston that night.
“We don’t really know how to address the empty spaces, so we pretend they aren’t there and hope they’re going to scar over,” she told me.
These scars look different for different people. Some cover their anger, heartbreak and even guilt by arming up with weapons or emotional defenses. They might withdraw from activities because they’re too overwhelmed to explain what they’re feeling, or don’t want to hear what others are experiencing.
Gun violence survivors have told me they’ve become isolated and alienated because they wanted to talk about the trauma, while their friends just wanted to move on.
People grieve and heal in different ways on different timelines. There isn’t a simple solution to fix us all at once. But there is something that can keep us individually and collectively from falling further apart.
Community. It fills the space.
None of us should endure tragedy on our own. Funerals and memorial services allow us to come together to grieve. When they’re over, though, friendship, civic engagement — realizing you’re not alone — stock the empty space with humanity in the months and years ahead.
This doesn’t mean that everyone affected needs to join a sharing circle. It means that the community, our bullet-ridden country, needs to acknowledge the terror that gun violence sows.
This allows survivors to understand why they might jump at loud noises, have a short temper or feel hopeless. A community that allows room for suffering allows room for healing.
Lewiston will not be the same after this shooting. But it will, slowly, recover and write a new chapter that, sadly, reflects a little more of the American story.
Resilience defines Mainers, the old and the new. We have endured economic depression — and the addiction and poor health that come with it. Resilience drives the asylum seekers who are helping revive the economy in Lewiston, a city that didn’t welcome them at first.
Resilience will grow from this trauma — if community fills the spaces it leaves.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. Current or former military service members can call 988 and press 1.
Credit: Source link
