Another school shooting. This time, it was at a Catholic school.
And now I have to sit down with my seven-year-old and explain why it’s still safe to go to school, and to church.
It feels overwhelming.
I hate that this is a conversation I even have to have with a child. I’m already an anxious person — I don’t want my son to inherit that same anxiety. But what choice do I have? Every time it happens, it feels like the same cycle is repeating itself, and nothing ever changes.
I keep asking myself: do the people in power care about us at all?
I know there are policies that could make a difference. But instead of action, we get silence, thoughts and prayers, or worse — arguments about why we can’t possibly change.
Even the strongest local laws feel fragile. Cities pass strict regulations, but what does it matter when a short drive across a state border erases them? I’ve lived in places where this is a daily reality: Chicago and Indiana, side by side, with two completely different approaches to guns. It feels like a patchwork quilt with holes big enough for tragedy to slip through.
I’ve already lived through one school shooting. In 2008, I was at Northern Illinois University, working on my teaching certificate after being medically discharged from the Army. I remember the fear, the chaos, the way it all shattered the sense of safety I thought school was supposed to represent. I finished that semester and I was never able to return to school. I never wanted to know what that felt like. And I don’t want my son to know either. The thought of sharing that experience with him makes me ache in ways I can’t even put into words.
Most days, I don’t know what to do. From home, I feel powerless. Some days I convince myself to push through. Other days, I just feel hopeless.
But I do know this: I can’t stop talking about it. Even when it hurts. Even when it feels like shouting into the void.
Because silence has never protected anyone.
