I was 17 when the school shooting at Columbine High School happened. A junior, just a year away from graduating in my hometown in NY. A school shooting? Those words don’t even make sense together. How can children even cope with such a concept? My mind processed the events with use of the arts. Pen to paper, I wrote down my feelings. I eventually added an illustration to the words I had penned. Today, I remembered that painting, one of the few items I still have after graduating 22 years ago. I pulled apart my storage room to get to it. I wanted to see it. I wanted to read those words. I wanted to run my fingers over the canvas. I wanted to see how my 17 year old self processed that day. I have grown up since then. This concept of a perfect world, well, I know it doesn’t exist here on earth, it never will. But those thoughts and those feelings, that desire for comfort, for safety, for love… Back then, I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for my fellow high schoolers, to have gone through the unimaginable. Today, as a mom, I can’t imagine what it is like for those parents, who lost their babies, in the senselessness of it all. What is this life, but a whisper. Hug your people, let them know you love them, think before you speak, don’t make a big deal out of small things, because we just never know what tomorrow brings. Where do we go from here?

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