The dynamics of this holiday season...

Between the shopping, the wrapping, the decorating and the planning, I am trying as  hard as I can to hold onto the wonderment of the holiday season. Christmas, for me, has always been a highlight of any year. This Christmas, however, is hanging in the balance of my wanting to celebrate with the exuberance I feel every year and the deep sadness I'm still feeling over the tragic shooting in Newton, CT. For every joyful step I take my inner child weeps for those children and their families.

Through this underlying sadness there is a thinly veiled barrage of anger too. I am angry that this happened. How dare someone take the young lives of the future - OUR future - in such a callous, senseless way. My anger is fed by reading the complete crap some people are starting to post on social media sites about guns in this country. Every ass hat has an opinion. Not everyone has a solution. I get that. I really do. People are compelled to do or say something and everyone seems to understand that "something" must be done but no one really knows what that might be.

Then I start thinking about the shooter. Having worked with people living with mental illness for some time now I can only imagine the anguish, turmoil and terror he was feeling too. It's called empathy and sometimes it's hard to have. I want to condemn him as does everyone else but I can't. I can hate his actions to the core of my being but I cannot hate the person. What I can hate is a society that makes it very easy to have access to guns. NRA be damned. I cannot fathom why, this mother who clearly from all reports was dealing with a very ill young man for a very long time, would have free access to gun in their home. What I can also hate is a society and a government that keeps cutting funding for mental health services making my job and the jobs of every other human service worker all that much harder. When the best we can do is not good enough then we need to take a hard look at ourselves. What does this country value most when programs that benefit the good of the whole - like education, mental health, aging and disability resources - get trimmed so much that they become "token" resources that can do little to address the needs of someone like this shooter. We cannot "lock them all up", folks. They are us! And we need to have meaningful dialogue and serious actions to address the need. We cannot continue to marginalize the ill, elderly or disabled. We cannot expect them to live below the poverty level, unable to afford treatment and then cut funding to public services that might help them. Shame on us! Years from now, long after you and I are gone, historians and archaeologists will look back and wonder why we treated our needy so  poorly.

Then I get really angry thinking how the NRA and their lobbyists are holding this country captive by squelching any restraints and gagging any dialogue. It's time for the rest of us to tell them, in no uncertain terms, NO MORE! Can we stop all gun violence? Probably not. But not one more child, who should be safe in their school, should be killed. Not one more. We have to make a change. It's easier for us to say "Oh, he was mentally ill." than to speak to the real issue. The real issue is this - he was someones child too. Just like the 20 angels who were killed. All children, all lost. And we can hold our own children close and give thanks that it wasn't us but it was us! These were all our children - even the one who pulled the trigger.

So, I will celebrate Christmas this year and usher in a New Year, hopeful that if anything good can come of this horrible, terrible event, it will be that we can join together to make a real change in this world. That we can see each other as family and we can be kind to one another. That's really all it takes. Be kind. Love is all you need.

The Innocents...

I'm stunned, sitting here tonight, in the wake of yet another gun related mass shooting in the US. Oh, and I'm tired too. I cannot feel the shock that the news media wants us to feel about this shooting. I can't tell you how sad that makes me feel. The idea that we have had so many of these horrific incidents that I can no longer feel the mind numbing shock when it happens.

While my heart aches thinking of those families who cannot and never will again tuck their children into bed on this night, what I feel most of all, is anger. An intense, deep, burning anger.

Yes, I am angry at the young disillusioned man who killed his father and then went to the school where his mother worked to kill her and her kindergarten class. I am so angry at his actions. We can look at his actions and those of others who've gone on shooting rampages and soothe ourselves by saying, "Surely, he was mentally ill." One in four people in the US have a mental health diagnosis. So, look around kiddos...that might be the person standing next to you. Now I work with people who have severe and persistent mental illness and, to be honest, none of them illicit fear in me. Not a one. So while the shooter or shooters in these cases may have a mental  health diagnosis, let's be real here...that unto itself is not the reason those innocent children or those movie goers or those high school kids or those shoppers at the mall or those worshippers at the temple are dead now. I would bet good money that the reason those people are dead now is that at some point those who pulled the trigger all were made to feel insignificant, isolated, ridiculed, strange, and unloved.

I am angry tonight at this grand country of ours. The USA - the land of opportunity for so many - has, over the course of several years now, become a land of fear. We fear getting our "stuff" stolen. We fear someone "attacking" us, breaking in, blowing us up, harming us or our loved ones. And we fear this because we are fed an almost constant stream of news about how horrible it is outside our own four walls and how there are very, very bad people out there who will absolutely hurt us. Neighbors do not even bother to get to know neighbors anymore because, after all, you can never be sure who that neighbor might be. We have been told to identify the strangers and to not tolerate them in any way. Our children learn this from us and so, from a young age, those who are not popular, not "in" or who are different in any way are made to feel that difference in no uncertain terms. We like to point them out and keep them at bay just in case they might really be who we think they are. Never mind we never actually take the time to hear their stories or understand what they are all about. How did we allow ourselves to become so marginalized that we now live in a self imposed environment of fear and hared that has stopped us from even looking one another in the eye! And this phenomenon goes beyond our neighborhoods! It's stretches to our complete lack of global understanding. It is easier to hate what's different than to try to understand it.

I'm also really angry that we live in a country that allows anyone to own and carry a gun. The NRA and gun lobbyists will tell us that if guns are regulated in stricter ways the criminals win. BULLSHIT! I'm so sick of their argument that this is a 2nd amendment right. The second amendment - the right to bear arms - was a statement for the creation of a militia in a volatile time when a tyrannical king was seeking to subdue a budding nation. It was not a call for every chucklehead to arm himself and to use those arms whenever he has a bad day. I'm angry that our government allows the NRA to walk all over the rights of innocent, gunless people who simply want to be able to send their 5 year old to school without worrying that this is the day he or she will get his brains blown out. My niece today called her 6 year old daughter's school to inquire about their security and evacuation procedures. You have no idea how sad that makes me. That she had to even ask.

Shame on us for letting this happen. And shame on us for being so scared of one another that we feel the need to kill each other. Shame on us for losing our ability to reach out and embrace each other across the boundaries of race, religion, socio-economic class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. We are all each other's parents. We are all each other's children. We are all family. We have to stop fearing each other and start healing each other.  Maybe if someone had reached out a long time ago there would never have been a shooting in Norcross, GA. or Jackson, TN. or Chardon, OH. or Pittsburgh, PA. or North Miami, FL. or Oakland, CA. or Tulsa, OK. or Seattle, WA. or Wilmington, DE. or Boulder, CO. or Milwaukee, WI. or Minneapolis, MN. or Brookfield, WI. or Portland, OR. or Newton, CT.  Maybe tonight parents wouldn't be mourning their children and the world wouldn't be wondering why we cannot get together to realize that love is all you need.