I never want to hear that sound in my daughter's voice again.

When a recurring nightmare turns into reality...

“I had to leave…”
”There were shots….so many of them”
”I couldn’t go back for Zubin (her brother)….I’m so sorry”

Even in the first moment a nightmare turns into real life, the panic you hear in a voice feels primal and familiar. That was how my daughter sounded on the phone. Breathless, panicked, sputtering words in between tears. What she said might have been uttered for the first time in her life, but there’s a familiarity it brings out in your heart. Terror.

They were at school. At lunchtime. Many students were eating outside, some inside. They heard dozens of gun shots. She said it took a second to register because it was out of context. But the sound was unmistakeable. It couldn’t be anything else.

“Hop the fence!”
”Run!”

They dropped bags, everything, ran across the field, away from the school. As far as they could. She did the right and only thing she could. The thing you never want to have to do.

But her brother was in the school. In a wheelchair. No running possible.

And now she felt not only terror for herself, but for her brother, and for us. She thought about hopping the fence again, to go back. But her friends told her she couldn’t and to run instead.

You did the right thing, we told her. You are safe. That is what matters.

And then we dropped everything. And raced to school. What we found was the beginning of police lines. A football field with so many backpacks strewn over it. Laptops clearly fallen and left. Lunches in progress, thrown.

It was eerie, bone chilling.

And then we waited.

The end of the story is a happy one for us, we were reunited with both of our children. But for one family, it will never be happy. Their son is dead.

And for all of us, it should and does feel chilling. The students are shaken to their core. For the loss, for the fear, for the sheer sense that no one can feel safe.

This is not a new problem, unfortunately. It is a way of life, you could say, in America. And in fact, it is the third shooting there this school year. One with no casualties but a broken window, another hitting a student in her leg at the bus stop.

My husband and daughter were in the exact spot, ten minutes prior to the shooting. He was dropping her off from a medical appointment. We don’t want to think about how that might have played out differently.

But the sad truth is in America you have to think about that. And yet, I cannot understand why.

Why is someones’ individual freedom (that’s an argument I hear often) more a priority than the collective safety of a nation?

Why would we allow such easy access to weapons of destruction and war?

I have not been able to fathom the answers for decades now. And truth be told, when a country was unwilling to make profound choices in legislation after we lost kindergartners to a mass shooting, even my eternal hopeful self doubts there will ever be change.

And so today, I write not to debate which or what legislation is necessary but instead to wonder how we can continue to debate if something, anything, is necessary?

►When I grew up, seatbelts were not enforced. But the data became clear. Lives were saved when they were used. And so legislation ensued. And yet with clear data of the public health epidemic of gun violence, we do nothing.

► When I was of the regulated age to drive, I first needed training and then a license to know I could operate a vehicle that could cause harm, and then insurance to regulate its use. Yet, you can buy a gun with absolutely no regulation in this country.

► Data from other countries shows that regulation of weapons makes change, profound change. And yet, we ignore that as if it doesn’t apply to us.

I have no explanations for any of this logic, or lack thereof.

What I have is a heart full of dread for the emphasis of the individual over the collective. Plain and simple.

No matter whether you believe in the individual freedom to own a gun or not, there has to be a point where the logic is so in-your-face-glaring, that every person must admit the way we are living does not work.

I personally think that point came 25 years ago with the mass shooting at Columbine High School. Yet here we are. A report in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022 counted 4011 mass shootings in that shorter time period alone. It happens so often that I miss some.

Ironically, I just learned that today, Friday, June 7th is National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The fact we have that kind of national day speaks volumes itself, I will add no more.

I don’t want to debate every broken systems that has caused these issues, there are MANY. But none of them negates the need to limit access to a deadly weapon that only exacerbates each and every one of them.

As a physician activist, a mother, and a human, I am left with the sense that we may never care enough for one another to make change.

Even writing that makes my heart break in places I didn’t know cracks could appear.

As a trauma and mental health expert, I can tell you one of the most primal foundations to well-being is a sense of safety.

When we don’t feel safe, or even imagine we aren’t safe, our nervous systems go on high alert. This is for good reason, so we can look around and protect ourselves and then try to survive.

But other things happen when we go on this alert for survival in the deep recesses of our midbrain.

► We lose our capacity to make clear, thoughtful decisions in our prefrontal cortex.

► We lose motivation to make change.

► Every moment of suffering, injustice, or lack of safety strips us of part of our humanity. It makes us feel less human, and in the process, less like we belong to this world.

Every time we shrink into the spaces of our nervous system that tell us we are not safe, we disconnect from those around us and ourselves.

This is not a recipe for well-being or even the capacity to make space for some sense of well-being. This is a recipe for hopelessness, lack of power and feeling alone.

We need to look around at this world and think about more than ourselves. We need to heal as a collective. As we were always meant to.

I for one, am resetting and soothing my nervous system and those of my family right now. Yes, so that I can feel better. But it’s more than that. So that I can seize some moments of safety before going out into this unsafe world once again.

No, it will not solve the bigger issue. But nothing is solved unless we tend to our wounded bodies.

Today, I am grateful for the teachers who texted me and made sure my son was safe. He’s not like a typical student who has a phone or can run away. They were my lifeline and I will never forget that.

Today, I breathed in fresh air from the trees around me and imagined a sense of safety that isn’t present in my heart yet.

Today, I am connecting to those I love to remind myself I am not alone.

I leave you with the nugget today that I have talked about so very often in this community. Tending to your nervous system is at the heart of all self-care.

Yes, traumatic memories and experiences live in our bodies but that is also where they heal.

Every time you tend to your nervous system, you gift your body, through the vagus nerve, a moment of ease and safety that the world or your life was unable to give you. You not only need this, you deserve this. As a human right.

I cried this morning so hard. For that child. For my children. For all of us. Every time one of us feels unsafe, we are all less safe. In our bodies, and in the world.

I wish for you any moment of ease this weekend that you can gift yourself. And let’s all think about ways we could tend to ourselves and the collective more. And by all means, I invite you to tend to this collective community in the comments by sharing your thoughts there. Please be generous, kind and gentle there.

What are ways you either are tending to the collective (whether that’s the world as a whole or your collective family or community) or want to do more? Or maybe you have the realization that you need to tend to yourself first before you can do that? Let’s tend to each other by learning together. May you feel safe today…