{"id":4057,"date":"2014-04-21T09:14:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T13:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=4057"},"modified":"2014-05-20T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T19:54:22","slug":"taking-in-a-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/21\/taking-in-a-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking in a Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been 15 years. \u00a015 years ago, I sat at home, my school closed, trying not to think about it but stuck wondering what it meant and what the future would look like.\u00a0 I was 15 years old, a freshman in high school and the day before was perhaps the scariest of my entire life.<\/p>\n

\"EPSON\u00a0Yesterday was the 15th<\/sup> anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School.\u00a0 The day started like any other.\u00a0 I went to school at 10:30 (yep, that\u2019s when my school day started).\u00a0 And everything was normal until my orchestra class, that is when it happened.\u00a0 The staff quietly locked down my high school and didn\u2019t say much.\u00a0 My teacher tried to carry on, act like it was nothing, but the buzz amongst the students couldn\u2019t be kept down.\u00a0 By the end of class, the school was out of lock down and the majority of the students were sent home.\u00a0 The kids like me who still had one more class begged to go home with the others but we weren\u2019t allowed.\u00a0 I spent my last class sitting under a computer table with a few close friends, speculating, processing, discussing as 15 year olds can.\u00a0 It was my earth science class but my teacher had no interest in teaching.\u00a0 At 4:15 I boarded my school bus and headed home.<\/p>\n

You see, my high school is only a half hour from Columbine and are in the same school district.\u00a0 The entire county, all 17 high schools and feeder middle and elementary schools, were locked down.\u00a0 And all district schools were closed the next day.\u00a0 Columbine was in my backyard.\u00a0 It was in my community.\u00a0 It was people just like me.<\/p>\n

I got home and found my sister curled up in my daddy\u2019s recliner chair, in shock.\u00a0 I was surprised to see her because she was never home after school.\u00a0 She was editor of the school newspaper and a ballerina and always busy with something.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what I did in that moment.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember if I hugged her or told her I loved her or if I just left her (we had a rocky relationship at that time) but I do remember feeling helpless.\u00a0 I remember being confused by the state of my big sister, who was usually so put together and strong (and a little bit sassy). \u00a0Seeing her so vulnerable was shocking to me and I didn\u2019t know how to react or what to do for her (she had been at Columbine covering a sporting event just one week prior and took the events there really hard).<\/p>\n

I feel like Columbine helped give me that first nudge towards growing up.\u00a0 It was all over the news, we couldn\u2019t get away from it for weeks.\u00a0 The pictures of the victims constantly flashed on the TV.\u00a0 The stories of the victims and their families.\u00a0 The stories of the shooters. \u00a0I was only 15 and it was in my face all the time and I had to find a way to deal with it.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t hide from it or ignore it like a child but I also wasn\u2019t yet an adult.\u00a0 I was stuck in the middle, coping with an adult situation as an immature person.<\/p>\n

But then I got to see the miraculous healing, the way the people in my home came together and healed.\u00a0 Columbine taught me that there are selfish and hateful people in the world.\u00a0 But more importantly it taught me compassion, selflessness and the importance of community.<\/p>\n

(The columbine it Colorado\u2019s state flower and has always been my favorite.\u00a0 As a child I used to doodle columbines all over everything!\u00a0 Of course, you can see why I pursued dance instead of fine art!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been 15 years. \u00a015 years ago, I sat at home, my school closed, trying not to think about it but stuck wondering what it meant and what the future would look like.\u00a0 I was 15 years old, a freshman in high school and the day before was perhaps the scariest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[189,191,192,190,193],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-family-life","tag-columbine","tag-community","tag-growing-up","tag-shooting","tag-tragedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4059,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions\/4059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}