I ran with my bestest running buddy this morning. This is always good catch up time (her kids, my kids, her job, my job, life, etc.) and of course the topic turned to the recent tragedy. "Ugh," she said "I told everyone not to talk to me about it, I turned the television off, I'm not reading all the posts, I just can't deal." I think this is not an uncommon reaction. Especially today, as the names of the victims are posted on the front page of the New York Times, and the fact that the kids were all 6 and 7 is unavoidable etched in black and white. You start to think about it, and read the details, and it very quickly gets to be too much, so you just stop thinking about it altogether. Everyone deals in different ways, but I have to wonder if insulating yourself from it is "dealing." Can avoiding be a real form of dealing? I have no idea.
A few weeks ago I was with another friend, who was telling me about her horse, and an issue he's having with his neck. She has a chiropractor who is working with the animal to try to sort it out. Her horse gets horsie-massage to try to loosen the tightness up. She said the the horse really seems to like it and that when the chiropractor really starts digging around in there that the horse leans in to it, as if he knows that it's a helpful kind of a hurt.
My thought (today), is that on some level, we have to lean in to things that hurt in order to work them out. Both individually and as a community. I too, am avoiding the Facebook posts. Gun control, mental health resources, security....everyone has, on some level, a valid opinion. The right answer must be in the sum of the parts somewhere. I don't know what it is.
This woman's blog post, though, about her own challenges with her son who has a mental illness, was both heartbreaking and insightful and worth reading (if you're in the mood for leaning in, that is):
http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html
