Friday, December 14, 2012

Friday, December 14, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2007. One of our December traditions was to visit the US Botanical Gardens. I loved going on a cold day to the Gardens because it was like walking into a hot house. It felt like Florida in the summer time, which on a cold winter day was glorious! Mattie was posed in front of a replica of the Capitol building. The beauty of this structure was it was made entirely of plant material!


Quote of the day: Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go. ~ Katharine Weber


I was going to elaborate on my day today, which was very full, and started with my monthly licensure board meeting. However, in light of the school massacre that occurred today in Connecticut, the tone of my message tonight is gravely different. I am sure within the next few days we will be hearing more about Adam Lanza, the 20 year old gunman who shot his mother in the head and then killed the 20 kindergartners in her classroom, as well as six educators at his mother's school. I am not sure what I could possibly hear, even as a mental health professional, about Adam's life or mental illness that would allow me to justify his actions. Murdering his mother was sinister enough, but why enter her classroom and kill innocent children? Killing a child to me is a direct message that he wanted to leave on the world, and the message was that he was in control and wanted other parents and families to suffer. To feel pain, a pain that would last a lifetime. In that sense he was very successful.

We live in a very troubling world where sending one's children to school can be dangerous. I have no doubt that these parents who sent their children to Sandy Hook Elementary School this morning never imagined how their lives would be permanently altered within minutes. When our schools aren't safe, how can learning, development, and growth occur? The answer is they can't! In the midst of this terrible tragedy, a tragedy in which I have some insight on (the loss of a child), I reflect on the courage, bravery, and heroism of the teachers. Teachers who risked their own lives to protect their young students. These  individuals are trained to educate, not to protect, and yet when chaos ensued, the safety of their students was the priority.

My thoughts are with the families who lost their children and loved ones, with the families whose children witnessed this horror, and for the community of Newtown, CT. Such a tragedy impacts not only that community, but our Nation as a whole.