CHAPTER NINE

SANDY HOOK
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Newtown, Connecticut / December 14, 2012

ON THE MORNING of December 14, 2012, one of my twin daughters stayed home from school. Warm from fever, she drifted in and out of sleep as I cleaned around her. The house was still out of sorts from the girls’ sixth birthday party only two days prior. Shortly after ten o’clock, I started receiving texts from my more news-conscious friends alerting me to a school shooting unfolding at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

On the news there were dozens of children with terror on their faces, walking in connected ropes through the parking lot. The adults looked just as horrified. Mary Ann Jacobs, who was working in the library that day, captured that emotion in her story, writing, It became evident very quickly that we were missing two entire classrooms of kids.

As the minutes ticked by, and it became obvious that those “two entire classrooms of kids” were not coming out, I struggled to breathe. Twenty children, between the ages of six and seven were dead, children were the same age as my twin daughters. Twenty. I pressed my spine against the doorframe of my kitchen while I sobbed—praying it would hold my pain. I watched the unfolding coverage in drips, as my sick daughter was waking up, and I remember thinking she should not associate first grade with murder.

By the time my other daughter came home from school, we knew more. Six educators were also killed. We learned it was a lone gunman, twenty-year-old Adam Lanza, responsible for this unthinkable tragedy. Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their shared home, before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, shooting his way into the school, and devastating a community. He then took his own life. At 3:16 p.m. EST, President Obama spoke to a stunned and grieving nation. He fought to hold back tears. In that moment he wasn’t only our president, he was also Sasha and Malia’s dad. I called my mother from the bathroom, out of earshot from my girls, and I cried harder than I ever have in my life.

The shooting happened on a Friday. That following Monday, the usual skeleton crew of parents personally dropping their kids at school had tripled in size. Goodbye hugs lasted longer than usual, and many parents wiped away tears. But I really recognized the magnitude of what had happened when I saw the teachers. Usually cheery and bright-eyed to greet our children, those same faces were now swollen, sad, and far away. I realized in that moment what it meant to love and lose “two classrooms full of children.” I barely contained myself as I ran back to my car. I shook with sobs the whole way home.

As the years ticked by, Sandy Hook never left me. I joined Moms Demand Action and Everytown in the weeks that followed, and made ending gun violence a priority in my life. I moved forward, painfully aware of the twenty-six families who didn’t have that option. Still, I couldn’t get past this. I obsessed over the terror those children must have felt. I obsessed over the parents grieving them. I thought often about those two classrooms, and the others—those nearby and close to.

When we started collecting stories for this book, I knew I had to be the one to work with Sandy Hook. This was the natural progression of something for me, I just didn’t know what. One of the first stories I collected was from Alissa Parker, the mother of six-year-old Emilie Parker, who was murdered that day. As she spoke about Emilie’s “wise beyond her years” approach to life, I saw my girls in her story. As she described Emilie’s love of art, and how she and her husband, Robbie, have pictures Emilie drew documenting family events, I looked at my refrigerator covered in portraits of stick-figured people with triangle dresses and three plump fingers. Every story became my story, every child became my child. And I didn’t know how to separate that. Maybe I still don’t.

Then, my worst fear was realized. Even though I grieved regularly for those who lost children, I often wondered about those who survived the terror of that day. Those kids in the classrooms where it happened, where it occurred. How could they possibly move on? How could they possibly grow up? In Susie Ehren’s story, I found my answers. Susie’s daughter was in Ms. Soto’s classroom and witnessed not only the death of her classmates, but that of her beloved teacher as well. When we spoke, Susie and I both cried. I don’t know if I was crying for her daughter, for my own, for Emilie Parker, or maybe all of the above. Her daughter is growing up now, and her life has been defined not by the tragedy of Sandy Hook, but by the love of the teachers who, despite their own trauma, worked to heal with their students.

As the Sandy Hook chapter began to take shape, light began to creep in. With each week, I was crying less and less in therapy. I met the bravest of women, Abbey Clements, Mary Ann Jacob, and Cindy Clements Carlson, all of whom were in the school, all of whom found the courage and strength to not only navigate their own aftermath, but that of their students. And with each story, the incredible strength of this community became evident and brought comfort to what had been a long-lasting wound.

The shooting at Sandy Hook will always be the turning point for a nation. But what has come to define this event isn’t the action of one troubled young man, rather the inaction of a full legislature. On April 17, 2013, bipartisan legislation requiring background checks and the banning of some military-style automatic weapons failed in the senate. Several more attempts at gun control would also fail. But, where the government has let these children down, the community has stepped up. I have been blessed to have met so many wonderful advocates from Newtown, all of whom were brave and strong enough to stand up when no one else did and to say ENOUGH. They are parents, teachers, and community members who continue to fight every day to make sure this doesn’t happen to you or to me. They are the bearers of light.

AMYE ARCHER, EDITOR

JANUARY 2019

The following students and staff were shot and killed at
Sandy Hook Elementary School:

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Olivia Engel, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeleine Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

Ana Márquez-Greene, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Rachel D’Avino, 29, teacher’s aide

Dawn Hochsprung, 47, principal

Anne Marie Murphy, 52, teacher’s aide

Lauren Rousseau, 30, teacher

Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist

Victoria Leigh Soto, 27, teacher

BEFORE, AFTER.

By Abbey Clements

Abbey Clements was teaching second grade at the time of the shooting. She is now a volunteer leader with Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety.

BEFORE

I’d been to a handful of marches and rallies—mostly in college—and always voted. I signed petitions and was aware of injustices with class and race in America. I knew about the school-to-prison pipeline, and that we had a problem with gun violence. I was aware of current events but didn’t get actively involved. I was busy raising my children and writing lesson plans. I’d been a teacher for twenty years.

DECEMBER 14, 2012

I walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School to start my day teaching second-graders. I stopped at the office and had a brief conversation with Principal Hochsprung about the importance of rapport between teachers and students. The two of us headed down the hall together—I walked into my classroom to prepare for the day and she continued to a meeting in the conference room on the other side of the building.

There was a lot going on that time of year, being that it was almost winter break and the holidays. I’d heard that Mrs. Hochsprung was going to be popping into classrooms, so before the official start of math, I wanted to squeeze in time to make snowflakes for our PTA holiday luncheon. I got everyone quiet, and that’s when we heard a loud crash I initially thought were folding chairs falling. We just had a holiday program, so that would make sense. What wouldn’t make sense was what really happened: Someone who shouldn’t have had access to a semi-automatic rifle killed his mother, then came to my beautiful school, in my beautiful town, and shot through the front door with several lethal weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

My classroom was on the right when he entered the school. He turned left, and murdered six of my colleagues and friends, and twenty beautiful children. Some children and educators witnessed the carnage firsthand, others ran for their lives or went into lockdown. The latter was true for myself and my students of only seven and eight years old. We stayed put, waiting to be rescued from what I thought was surely a gang. We huddled, tried to sing, I tried to read books. We listened. My students cried, were terrified, they laughed—confused, they scooched, snuggled into coats. We were so thirsty that we shared a water bottle. I didn’t consciously think: We might die, don’t worry about spreading germs. There was no time for thoughts like that. There were people on the roof—heavy footsteps. They’re here to help us, I told my students, though I doubt I was convincing. The police banged on the door and yelled for us to get out. How was I to believe them? The kids told me to open the door. You’re shaking, they said. I opened the door. We were rushed out, running. I don’t remember the route we took out. I had kids in my outstretched arms. We passed state police with knees bent, guns in hand, in ready position, yelling: Go, get out, run! We were led out a door. It was cold. I had no coat. I watched my feet run. My chest hurt from breathing in the cold air.

There was nothing I did out of the ordinary that day. Even pulling two kids from the hallway, when I first heard the shots. No active drill, no lockdown drill allowed us to escape. He turned left and we were on the right.

AFTER

A few months after the tragedy, I started getting involved in the gun violence prevention movement and I haven’t looked back. Gun violence destroys people, families, neighborhoods, communities, schools, districts, towns, friendships, marriages, livelihoods, and so much more. And the aftermath of such tragedy is larger and darker than you might imagine. I had to do something to be part of the solution.

Now I’m a volunteer leader with Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety fighting to chip away at our deplorable statistics. Americans are afraid to go to school, the movies, the mall, concerts, work, church, parking lots. We’re a traumatized nation.

But I work two full-time jobs to try to change that. I continue to teach at another school in Newtown, trying to build a generation of empathetic problem solvers. Educators teach peace and nonviolence. We teach conflict resolution by talking out problems. This is gun violence prevention, too.

What I do know after teaching for over twenty-six years is that guns don’t belong slung around educators’ shoulders, strapped across our thighs, or locked in desks ready to be used in a Hollywood-style “save the day” way. Guns don’t belong in the places where our children play and learn. The presence of guns in schools is antithetical to the basic tenets of school. I don’t want to live in a country where everyone has to be armed everywhere, all the time. This is the National Rifle Association’s agenda. It’s not mine.

THE ROAD BACK

By Susie Ehrens

Susie Ehrens’s two children were students at Sandy Hook Elementary School at the time of the shooting. Her daughter was in Ms. Soto’s classroom, where the shooting occurred.

The morning of December 14, 2012, was a bright, sunny winter morning. My third- and first-graders were on the bus to school and the baby at day care. I was due into the school for an afternoon gingerbread house decorating project in Ms. Soto’s classroom with my six-year-old daughter’s first grade class.

I remember getting calls first on my home phone, which I didn’t answer as I was on a work call, then my work phone rang, which I still didn’t answer, when finally my cell phone rang. I could see it was my day-care provider and remember thinking the baby must be sick or need something. When I answered, I immediately knew something was wrong. Through sobs she said something like, “Susie, there was a shooting. Your daughter’s at the police station.”

I don’t remember the ride to the police station, but somehow managed to call my husband. Panicked, I screamed at him, telling him to go to Sandy Hook Elementary School and find our son, a third-grader, because there was a shooting. I told him our daughter was somehow at the police station and I would go there.

We had no idea what “there was a shooting” actually meant at that time.

As I pulled into the police station, I had to slam on the brakes to not hit the building. My entire body shook with fear as I ran, banging into the police station looking for my child.

I was directed to a small quiet room off the main entrance of the station where one of our good friends sat with five children—my daughter and four boys from her class. As I charged into the room, my little girl burst out crying and ran to me. I did what I could to soothe her, not knowing what had happened. When I asked, the children said, he killed our teacher and our friends and we had to run. The gun was really big, they said.

It’s hard to explain the disconnect I felt in that moment, how the words felt alien in the air. Gun, shooter, dead, teacher, these are words that should never come from a six-year-old child’s mouth. It didn’t, and still doesn’t make sense that there was a man with a very big gun in a first grade classroom. And that this happened before 10 a.m. on a regular Friday.

As the day unfolded more details emerged. My husband, following my call, sped to the school and got close enough to the school entrance to have witnessed some of the aftermath of first responders exiting. He never said it aloud, but I imagine that was traumatic to witness their reactions. We kept in touch via texting. The panic was growing as he hadn’t yet seen our son exit the school. At some point he made his way to the firehouse and finally found our son, scared, but alive.

The mayhem, panic, and fear my husband described to me is unfathomable. At some point, when it likely began to sink in for him, was when the father of one of our daughter’s friends asked if my husband had seen his daughter. She was one of the children, who, we would later learn, didn’t make it out of the classroom.

That evening, the five of us gathered in our new home. We had lived in Newtown for many years, but had just moved to a new home a month earlier to accommodate our growing family. Ironically, although each child had their own bedroom, for weeks after the shooting, maybe even months, we all slept in the master bedroom. My parents, my sister and her husband, my aunt, everyone just came to Newtown. I remember being surprised that my brother-in-law left his work early (over an hour away) to come to our house. It’s not unusual that he’d be at a family event, but the fact that it was during the day, and he never left work early unless it was previously planned, was an indication of the enormity of what had happened. In the days that followed, our phones were never quiet—the house phone, our cell phones all buzzed nonstop. Calls from family, friends, even news outlets, all wanting to know if our children survived, how were they doing, and from the news outlets, would we give them an interview.

I held my tiny, six-year-old daughter on my lap while she told her version of the chaos to the investigating officer that day at the police station. She told us with as many words and details as she could, who was standing where, who was never coming out of the school, what he was wearing, what his hair and hat looked like, how big the gun was. And yet, even in that interview, just a few hours following the shooting, some of the details had already been locked away in her brain to protect to her, blocked from being able to speak the words, if she even had the words to describe what she had witnessed. Where her teacher was or what had happened to her was never spoken. It would be two years of trauma-focused, cognitive behavioral therapy sessions before she would acknowledge that she saw her beloved Ms. Soto shot and killed and where she was standing and where she fell and how my daughter wished for and dreamed about having been able to help her.

In the days and weeks that followed, my daughter was terrified to be in a room alone, scared of everything that made noise, scared to go to sleep, afraid to move to a room that was unoccupied. Pure, shocking, all-out fear. We attended six or seven funerals. We had to split up because the timing overlapped. We had to explain what a funeral was, and she insisted on coming to a select few. Her best friend’s, and Miss Soto’s.

I was in a fog for weeks. We knew very little about trauma and what to do or how to care for the kids and their fears. We heard from the therapists who were brought in to “keep the routine.” “Keep the schedule.” Under normal circumstances, children like structure and it would be more important now than ever. Time seemed to stand still. There were no words that made a difference, nothing that seemed to make anything better, nothing that stopped the fear from taking over.

At one point, a few of the mothers from our class suggested we bring the surviving children together. I don’t remember who contacted whom, or how we found each other, but we did. Soon we realized so many people wanted to help our survivors. I can tell you there wasn’t a parent among us who knew what to do with that sentiment. Our children were here. They lived. So many didn’t. I felt an enormous amount of guilt, grief, and relief in equal measure. I remember thinking, how do you live a life big enough to fulfill the fate you were handed?

Our daughter has always been a happy child. A preemie by nine weeks who survived and thrived. She was strong. Whatever it was that kept her going in those early days after the shooting, kept us going. She was scared, but wanted to go back to school. Routine. Structure. We sent her back several weeks later when the school reopened in an unused school building a town away. I went with her on the first day and for many days thereafter. I remember sitting in little first-grade seats watching them learn. They were filled with nervous energy. Every noise was like an alarm. They’d jump at the slightest sound and run for the door or the nearest adult seeking safety.

The year after the shooting, we needed to be sure each child was placed with the “right” second-grade teacher. I remember talking to the interim principal about teacher placement and how our little girl was sensitive and loving and needed someone that would hold her when she got scared. Abbey Clements was the exact right person for her at that time. We didn’t know Mrs. Clements before sitting with her at Vicki Soto’s funeral, and that may have been the beginning of their connection. That connection deepended throughout the year. On some days, the constant battling of fear and anxiety left my baby girl exhausted, and she often fell asleep in school, and often in the arms of Mrs. Clements. And when she cried and told Abbey she missed Miss Soto—Mrs. Clements simply held her and said, “I do, too.”

That year, learning became secondary to keeping the childrens’ trauma in check and finding a sense of order and peace. The only way to find a place for learning, was to find a way to clear their minds and find the peace. The kids may not have understood this, and truthfully, maybe the teachers didn’t at that point in time, either, but together, they made it through and began to fight their way back. Mrs. Clements and her fellow teachers showed our children that they too, were afraid, but together, they could be strong and learn the new normal.

At home, we signed up for every event offered for our children’s well-being. It felt like we tried every therapy: Trauma-focused CBT, play therapy, grief therapy, talk therapy, equine therapy, tapping, aromatherapy, MNR, and art and music therapy. Ultimately, music therapy would prove to be the most effective. Until quite recently, music was a biweekly therapy. While each of the other therapies had benefits, many had unintended consequences. And because our children were so young, it was usually well into the therapy before we saw the impact—negative or positive. For example, they didn’t even have words to describe the immense grief and guilt, yet we thought they could sustain talk therapy. And there were many experts. Many experts who all told us they knew the solution. In hindsight, no one knew our children better than us. We did what we thought was right and what we hoped would cause the least amount of additional trauma. In the end, beyond family, it was the love of Mrs. Clements, a teacher, that softened my daughter’s heart and opened her mind. In so many ways, Mrs. Clements brought Emma back to us. And for that, there are no words to truly describe the gratitude in my heart.

In the years since, I’ve become a gun violence prevention advocate, a member of Moms Demand Action, and have done what I can in the way of fighting and at least speaking out against politicians who turn a blind eye to the senseless gun violence in this country. I have rallied and Marched For Our Lives with my fourteen-year-old son in March 2018 in Washington, D.C. There is nothing more powerful, heartening, and pride-inducing than to see your fourteen-year-old son, the survivor of a mass shooting himself, hold up a sign for hours, while marching in the streets of Washington D.C. His sign read I AM A SANDY HOOK SURVIVOR on one side and WE CAN END GUN VIOLENCE on the other. The overwhelming fear and joy and pride is indescribable. He is finding his voice, and I can only hope that voice wants to fight for commonsense gun laws in this country. I believe my son feels no one, no child, should ever feel as helpless and scared as he did that day.

Today my daughter, who witnessed the unspeakable, who lives with that memory every day of her life, and who fights the triggers and knows how to calm her body when it begins to tense up out of fear, struggles with the daily balance to be a “normal” twelve-year-old. To not be the one that’s different. And on the inside, for the most part, that is all true. Except every night she goes to bed, and says good night to the picture of her and her best friend from kindergarten on her nightstand. And her best friend isn’t here anymore. She is painfully aware what death is and when evil visited here. But we try very hard to instill hope and joy and overcome the trauma with love and kindness.

My daughter has many years to decide what she wants to “do” with her life. But this year, she has decided she wants to be a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I can’t imagine the courage it will take for her to walk in that school and teach and breathe life into children. The joy of her conquering her greatest fear is beyond my adult comprehension. Perhaps because my daughter knows firsthand what the love of a good teacher can do for a child. I don’t know what path she’ll ultimately decide to follow. What I do know, is that Mrs. Clements loved her, and that my daughter felt that love. That her teacher didn’t always have the words to make things less scary. But that teacher showed up. Every day. And taught her children, taught my child, what it was to be brave and kind.

Looking back, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. Trauma is cruel and relentless and painful to everyone it touches. The cycle is not a straight line. It is messy and it hurts and it’s relentless in its grasp. And our children survived. Our children survived. I have no comprehension of the sadness of those families who lost loved ones. I am still not sure I understand the depths of my own trauma or the guilt of having not one, but both children survive. It has forever altered the trajectory of our lives on a daily basis. It changes the way you look at the world, how you interact, how you engage, and how you withdraw. The reasons may change over time, but the end result, is that trauma changes you at the very core of who you are.

It also doesn’t help to run away from the trauma. Hold it when you need to and let it go when you can. It is a monumental task to remember that no one else can define who you are. I work on these things every day. I work on teaching and sharing these beliefs with my children. I fail more often than I succeed, but I choose to not let this tragedy define an entire generation of my family. We are not the same as we were before. Some days we are broken, some we are closer to being healed, and some we are somewhere in between. But I desperately try to find the good and instill a sense of goodness and kindness in my children. I want them to know that their hearts are good and they can do so much good in the world.

Maybe that’s what the senseless violence and thousands of deaths caused by guns every year are doing—building an army of kindness. There is no good reason to believe any of it is meant to be, or it happened for a reason, but these things happened to us. They happened in Newtown and far too many other places to count. So, at least in my house, I have a few soldiers that know love and kindness and compassion. Hopefully, we are close to finding the masses that will rise up and say enough.

AFTERMATH

By Cindy Clement Carlson

Cindy Clement Carlson worked in the Sandy Hook Elementary School Library Media Center from March 2011 to July 2017. She and her daughter were present at the time of the shooting.

I don’t remember making any decisions. A colleague heard what we thought was odd, staticky laughing over the intercom so we called the office and a secretary, whose bravery we would only fully understand later, told us there was a shooter in the building. I had my cell phone on my desk and later found it in my pocket. Without thinking, I began to cover the doorway’s windows with our emergency shades. I called 911. I helped shepherd our library students into the narrow space previously determined not visible from the hallway.

After evacuation by state troopers came the hurried walk across the school yard to the fire station. It was clear to me the shooter was a lone, violent domestic abuser looking for his wife. Or a deranged father with a grudge against the principal. Those images came automatically. Then at the station I overheard someone say “worse than Columbine.” That fragment of conversation defined the next few hours as the catastrophic waves of information—so many known victims, so many still missing—broke over us. Worse than Columbine.

At the fire station we all wanted gum. Our mouths were dry. The pieces someone came up with were broken in two to make them go around further. Later, we put a package of gum in our new emergency kit, remembering how we craved it. Water too. The firehouse was equipped with a kitchen and desperate to do something, anything, I passed a tray of plastic cups filled with water.

In the days ahead my body made the choices my mind could not. I couldn’t eat. I remember taking a few bites of chicken and feeling as if I’d gorged myself. Then an unexpected period and a cold sore from the stress. We had fled the school without our bags or coats. The next day I called my doctor’s office for a refill of the cold sore prescription left behind in the bag under my desk. The weekend answering service gave me a hard time until my voice broke explaining why I needed a refill.

Normally a two-cup-a-day coffee drinker, all I wanted was weak tea. The colleagues who talked of the wine they went home to? I was crackling with grief and horror and felt as if the stimulus of caffeine and alcohol would blow me apart me like a firecracker in a glass jar.

My sister-in-law sent us a care package including chocolate chip cookie bars. I lost them for two days. I figured I’d accidentally thrown them out. Then on the third day, I found them in the desk drawer with the rulers and scrap paper.

On the way to a funeral in Katonah, we stopped at a Starbucks in Danbury. My eyes filled with tears as I realized they’d chosen to wear our school colors, green and white, in honor of Sandy Hook Elementary School. It took me half a day to realize those were the regular uniforms.

I felt neon. As if to walk past me you’d read on my skin WAS IN BUILDING WAS IN BUILDING WAS IN BUILDING. I felt a bodily need to rid myself of my story, to hear it told aloud, to bear witness, but I held back. I walked through the Sandy Hook town center as so many did, visiting the homemade memorials, watching the media trucks. I saw people three or four times removed from the event being interviewed and I judged them for their quick willingness to characterize our situation. And yet even as I did, I felt others who had been injured or lost family members could judge me as involved only tangentially, to have been unaffected, to have had a happy ending. My family and my body were intact.

I made a new Gmail account and emailed myself thoughts because my mind couldn’t hold them. Even now when I look through the hundreds of emails I sent myself I read some as if for the first time.

I developed a habit of counting off twenty-six people wherever I went. In church, at a store, even at the funerals. I needed to see twenty-six. The destruction and loss was unfathomable. My mind could not take it in so my eyes needed to see it, to size it up, to make visual and tangible the horrible enormity.

I went to a yoga class at a studio in Sandy Hook and saw myself holding a pose in the mirror. I remember the startle of realizing that—yes—my body could do this too. I wasn’t just a channel for sorrow and guilt, I could move in a calm and beautiful way. I remember feeling the hope that I could feel whole again.

What else did we need to feel whole? Did we need the union’s grocery gift certificate? The two extra personal days? The tokens and trinkets from all over the world left nearly daily in our school mailboxes? In time, many realized it was therapy, career changes, massage, prayer, transfers within the district, EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), medication, and connecting with staff from Columbine, but in the meantime we watched Powerpoints about the importance of sleep, dabbed ourselves with essential oils when offered, shared gallows humor over well-meaning cut-and-paste school district wellness emails, and sat in school assemblies as authors and actors offered their time and talent intending to help us and our students heal.

Slowly, the mind and body came back together. Only years later would I fully come to understand how the traumatized brain and body work. Or don’t work. Later, learning of research and writing by Steven Marans, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, Bessel van der Kolk, Carolyn Lunsford Mears, and Bruce D. Perry I understood the dry mouth, the cookies in the pencil drawer, the inability to recognize a Starbucks uniform.

And so gradually the mind kicks back in and then decisions and realities came one after another. These subsequent months and years are the more difficult phase, the fraught part two. There’s training for a wild animal in the school, for high wind, for an active shooter. There’s no training for navigating the aftermath of a shooting.

So, attend every funeral for every child, but attend to your own child who was with her fourth grade class that day. Go back to school right away, but don’t go back too soon. Describe forgiveness, but don’t prescribe forgiveness. Put this sticker on your car, but not that one. Support grief this way, but not that way. Greet victims’ families in the grocery store, but please leave them alone. Catalog this book for the school library, but not that one. Arm teachers, but get guns out of schools. Tear down the old school, but keep a school in Sandy Hook. Slowly the mind grasps that the dead can never be brought back, yet you can’t stop that mind from churning out ways you could make it better and it’s all made worse by a town full of opinions.

When there was complaining at a PTA meeting about how donated goods were being distributed, one mom called out, “If you have your kids shut up!” And that’s the crux of it. When to shut up and when to speak up.

As a staff and individually, we navigated the push and pull of how to honor the dead, where to spend your time, how to volunteer, when to make your donations, how to manage your emotional capacity, when to care for yourself. It was easier when the horrified mind took control of the body. It was easier not to have any decisions to make.

The Newtown Bee, the local newspaper, in a front-page editorial on the five-year anniversary, pointed out that “What we have learned is that not all good intentions came across as they were meant.” It was an upsetting characterization of a community that has turned political points of view, hearts, schedules, and philanthropic priorities inside out to support whomever needed it in the aftermath. How difficult the aftermath and the decisions it entails hasn’t been easily understood.

Nevertheless, individually and collectively survivors keep trying. We are grateful that our bodies and the bodies of our children are whole and we strive to support those who are not. So many are willing to share their stories with those who have and will suffer as we have. I’m grateful to those who listen.

A CONVERSATION WITH
ALISSA PARKER

Alissa and Robbie Parker are the parents of Emilie Parker, who was murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting on December 14, 2012. Alissa, alongside Michelle Gay, whose daughter Josephine was also killed that day, is the cofounder of Safe and Sound Schools. Alissa is also the author of An Unseen Angel: A Mother’s Story of Faith, Hope, and Healing after Sandy Hook. The following is an excerpt of the interview between Alissa and editor Amye Archer.

ON EMILIE

From the very beginning, Emilie was a very different baby. She was very well behaved. She was easy. I thought I was just this amazing mother, but it turns out, she was just really easy and pleasant to be around. She slept through the night at six weeks. She could speak in full sentences by eighteen months. Because she was so highly verbal, and could communicate so well, she never felt misunderstood. Because of that, we could not remember a time that she had a temper tantrum at all.

We laugh about the fact that she would talk nonstop every day and all day, which was one of my favorite things about her. You always knew where you stood and what was on her mind. You knew what she was thinking. My dad once commented that, “It’s like she thinks out loud.” That was a really good description of her. She never missed a moment to talk to someone next to her. If we were at the grocery store, she would see someone and be like, “Hi, my name’s Emilie, what’s your name?”

In a lot of ways, she reminded me of better manners. It reminded me what it meant to think of other people and to be very selfless. I always appreciated that tenderness that she had toward other people.

Emilie loved to create art. Everywhere we went, she had art with her. Paper, pens, crayons, markers. She’d have oil pastels, which she loved to use. Any time we got in our van, she’d sit in the very back with this portable tray that had all of her art supplies, and she’d stick it on her lap, and that is what she would do for our drive. She would sit and do artwork. She could go through an entire notebook in a day, easily. Filling the whole thing up with pictures. But what I loved about it, was it was like a journal into her life. We look back now at the pictures, and we see a picture of our family at Chuck E. Cheese, for a birthday, or whatever it was we were doing that day. In a lot of ways, that was really sweet.

To be able to see her inner thoughts, expressed through her artwork. When she passed away, inspired us to start a nonprofit organization (The Emilie Parker Art Connection) where almost 100 percent of the donations go toward funding art programs for kids, and more recently we’ve begun to focus on art therapy for kids, because art was her way of coping with struggles. And that was her way of communicating her emotions and so we decided to specifically focus on those therapies.

ON FAITH AND FORGIVENESS

After Emilie died, I remember going out to our car to say a prayer with my husband, and as we started the prayer the words came to my mind, that everything was going to be okay, and that Emilie was okay. It wasn’t as if I immediately knew that everything was going to work out. I found that moment in the darkest time. That promise that everything was going to be okay. But at the same time, it felt almost impossible for that to actually happen.

I felt very overwhelmed and very confused by the fact that something so evil had so much power over the world, and I always had believed that things were fairly balanced, if not that the light was winning in the world. The shooting really challenged that idea, and made me question the world that I lived in and how to live in such an evil place where such darkness could exist. I know this all sounds very heavy, but I mean it was a real moral dilemma for me.

ON SCHOOL SAFETY

After the shooting, I was filled with so much guilt, because I had seen the things that were wrong with Emilie’s school beforehand. I had verbalized them to my husband, and we had multiple conversations about how if someone tried to get into the school, Emilie would be very vulnerable. I had mentioned that the doors didn’t lock to him. The classroom doors could not be locked from the inside. So if someone’s inside the school, and wanted to do harm, the teachers would have to come out into the hallway, where the shooter would be, and was in our case, to lock their doors. I had mentioned how easy it would be to get into the school. I had said all of these things prior to the shooting.

I saw those things, and I did nothing. I dismissed them because I was one of those people who would go into their kid’s school and think that’s never going to happen here. I thought I never have to worry about it. We live in a safe community. You’re just being paranoid. And I dismissed it, ignored my feelings. After the shooting happened, I did not want to let my voice go unheard. So a lot of the community was buzzing at that point with all these different pop-up nonprofits. We’re all talking about coming together and creating change. I wanted to know if anyone was going to handle school safety. I’d seen these basic standards in schools as completely insufficient for what needed to happen, basic things. And this kept me up at night.

But when I went to the meetings, everything had to do with legislation and I thought, There’s so much we can do without lawmakers, without waiting for anyone else to tell us what to do, we could do it ourselves. We could prevent someone from coming into our school and creating this harm without anyone else giving us permission to do it. We could do it as a community.

I came to Michelle [Gay] one day and said, “I have this idea. I would like to take our platform, whatever platform it is we have, and use it to help people learn from what happened at our school.” Because we had learned so much at this point, and I wanted my hindsight to be others’ foresight, so they could learn from our story. I wanted to do whatever I could to help protect kids in their schools.

For a while, a lot of people said, “Why are you even going to consider putting your child back in a public school?” And I thought really hard about that for a long time.

My answer came from my mom. When I was in elementary school, my mom was involved in PTA. She was the PTA president at one point, and I remember her coming to the school constantly, and she was busy and she was involved. I would see how she was stressed, and ask, “Why is it you continue to do this? Why are you so involved at this school?” Her response was, “I believe in the public school system, and I believe in being part of the solution.” And when this happened and I was thinking about what I was not only going to do with my life, what I was going to do with my voice, what I was going to do with my children, I remembered those words.

I can’t run from this. I want to be a part of the solution.

Our goal was to change the conversation. Now, we’re hearing people talking about locking the doors in a different way. We’re hearing people use our language and to me, that is the most rewarding part. They don’t even know necessarily that it came from Michelle and me. That people are changing their attitudes and their perceptions about school safety, and taking it very serious. That is the best reward for me.

ON LEARNING TO HEAL

I guess for me, it was to have patience with myself. To forgive myself and to realize that you don’t owe anyone else anything. I’m talking about family, and friends, and loved ones. Your energy should go toward you and your family and your healing and that it’s okay to tell people no.

For me, I could see that people were deeply affected by what happened, and they were looking to me to make them feel better. So I was doing that part. I was staying strong. And I realized that I didn’t need to do that. That I was okay to be in a bad place for a while. I’m okay to not be able to do my dishes for a while. I’m okay to lay in bed and sleep every once in a while. A little longer. To allow myself to grieve. That to me, was a very powerful moment, where I realized, I didn’t owe anyone else anything. I owed myself the time to heal, and that even though I was a different person completely, and that I was never going to be that same person, that taking that time to discover who I was going to be, was my right. And I could take as much time as I needed to find that person again.

YOUR NAME DOESN’T HURT ME

By Geneva Cunningham

Geneva Cunningham was in fourth grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. The following is an excerpt of a speech she delivered to her school, Hopkins, on April 20, 2018. She was fifteen at the time of this speech. Inspired by the March For Our Lives movement, this was one of the first time Geneva spoke about the shooting in her elementary school.

My name is Geneva. I’ve been asked to speak today because I had a horrible thing happen to me. I didn’t choose it, I had no control over it, and it wasn’t about politics. This assembly is about remembering, about learning about the legislation, and about what we can do about gun violence, gun control, and horrible things we can’t control. I don’t know if this assembly is a good place for me to talk to you. There are so many things that so many people want to say about this issue. I have been coached to include as much about my experience as possible. But, I don’t know what about my experience is important. I have been coached to keep it short, to not go on and on. I have been coached to tell every little detail so it burns in your minds. I don’t think I’m going to satisfy either of these coaches today.

I wasn’t pressured into doing this, but I felt I had to, because I was never able to be proactive about things when I was nine. I wanted change, but I didn’t know what to do back then. I really didn’t understand the whole context of the shooting. The school and parents tried to shield us from the truth, because it was horrifying and they didn’t want us to be traumatized. Because of this, the surviving children of Sandy Hook didn’t get anything proactive done. And I’m still traumatized, so who can say what the result of their efforts really was.

Now that I’m older, and I want people to hear about my experience, I chose this opportunity. When I see the Parkland kids doing their thing this year, I admire it. They’re so much older than I was then. Now I’m at the age when people can share their experiences and demand a response. Now, I’m here.

I don’t know exactly what to say to you. But that’s not an apology.

When I think about that day, it is still a nightmare. The effects of that day, including the PTSD, have followed me my entire life. I don’t even know if reading this speech in front of everyone is going to be an emotional disaster for me. It’s risky. I don’t want to have an emotional reaction in front of people who are questioning my experience.

And if I say the name, Adam Lanza, probably some of you don’t know who that is. And some of you will sigh, because you know who it is because it’s just a name. You don’t see a face, a key to unlock all these memories I work so hard to master. And I want you to see me struggle up here, mastering them, as a way for you to appreciate not that I’m weak, but that pain is real.

I want to say something to Adam Lanza too. I want to say, “You took so much from my life, and I’m not giving you any more. Your name doesn’t hurt me.” But it’s not true yet. And I don’t want people who weren’t there to try and control my story.

Do I want to make a difference? Maybe my story can help some of you feel a little differently. Not so much feel as if you were there, but feel as if you can be in a room with people who were there and that you can let me talk about this thing that happened to me, and you won’t think it’s the only thing that defines my life. Maybe this is about seeing me as less of a symbol and more of a human being, so we can move forward with a little more empathy and productive legislation down the road.

When I was nine and ten, I tried to forget it all. People wanted to help me forget, because a loud noise would go off and I’d get so upset that I couldn’t breathe, or even think. I also struggled to learn, make friends, or trust my own sense of reality. Now I want to remember, because I am at the age of action and responsibility. But I have these lapses, where for some reason I can’t remember everything like the well-edited movie people seem to require in order to understand or care about me or about the issues around that one bad day.

I have learned that people will seize on these memory lapses to justify their own questioning or doubt about that day, and about me. That used to make me furious, and I’m learning that part of my journey forward is to deal with those people. But today isn’t about fighting doubters. Being uncertain is okay at school, even for me.

I’ve heard from the people in the room where the shots were fired, and they say the trauma is way worse than for people in the halls. I was in the halls. And there’s a stigma in Newtown that I have to be fine, because I didn’t lose a sibling. But my mother was teaching in a kindergarten room down the hall that day. She was almost killed.

And I’ve come to this new school, and everyone tells me, it’s okay to feel this way. They’re supportive, and they’re also curious. They don’t all have a good sense of boundaries.

But I feel I have to justify myself every time I have a response that other people notice, that I have to tell my life story so it’s okay for me to feel upset. That’s somehow part of why I am here.

WOMEN IN THE FACE OF GUN VIOLENCE

By Mary Ann Jacob

Mary Ann Jacob was working in the library at Sandy Hook Elementary School at the time of the shooting.

While the epidemic of school shootings in this country causes a ripple effect through families and communities, this particular form of gun violence affects the staff and faculty of these schools particularly hard. Often parents ourselves, we are faced with the monumental task of trying to heal and recover within our own families, while wearing a brave face and comforting our returning and often traumatized students.

I know this personally, because on December 14, 2012, a gunman shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School while I was working in the library. He blasted his way through the hallway killing our principal, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, and our school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, and injuring two other staff members. He then went into two classrooms where he killed twenty first-graders and four more educators, while the rest of the staff was frantically hiding and protecting the children in their care.

From the library, I heard noise over the loudspeaker and thought it was Dance Party Friday, a tradition Dawn had started in our school to celebrate the coming of the weekend. I left my desk and walked over to the phone and called the office to let them know the intercom was on. The secretary, answered from under her desk and yelled—“There’s a shooter in the building!” At that moment, I realized what I was hearing was gunfire. I yelled, “lockdown” to the librarian and ran across the hallway and did the same to the classrooms across from us, slamming their doors shut. When I ran back into the library, the librarian was calmly lining the kids up in the designated spot we had learned from our training.

We stayed there, listening while 154 gunshots ripped through our beloved school. We were scared to death but tried to remain calm for the eighteen children we were responsible for, most of them only nine years old. This same sheltering was happening across the building in twenty more classrooms, where more than eighty staff members were frantically trying to protect their students in the same way, while wondering if we would ever see our own children again. With us in the library was the child of a teacher from another classroom, and a staff member whose own child was in the gym.

After a few minutes one of our doors, which we thought was locked, opened and the barrel of a shotgun appeared, followed by the face of a Newtown Police officer. After quickly seeing we were okay, he signaled for us to stay put and left the room. That made it clear we were not safe and we crawled on our hands and knees through the library into a storage room where there were file cabinets, computer servers, and school supplies. We shoved a filing cabinet in front of the door and waited.

At this point, the kids began to get scared. This was clearly out of the ordinary for a drill and I’m sure, despite our best efforts, they could see our fear. We handed out some paper and crayons to try and distract them. Some were asking what was going on and we answered honestly that we didn’t know, but our job in that moment was to remain quiet and wait for instructions.

Meanwhile, at schools across town, other staff members and students were in lockdown, hearing bits and pieces of what was happening in our school. My two sons were in the high school just a mile away watching what was unfolding on their phones. They were frantically texting me, but my phone was on my desk going unanswered.

After about an hour, the police finally found us. We had them identify themselves and I opened the door a crack. What greeted me was a roomful of men with rifles in bulletproof vests. They instructed us to have the kids come out in pairs so an adult could escort two kids each. I remember taking a moment before I turned back around to face the students in order to compose my face, as the fear was beginning to become overwhelming. As we ran out of the building we were being covered by police in the hallways with guns, we didn’t know what was happening exactly, we just felt terrified. When we emerged from the building there was bedlam. Police, parents frantically looking for their children, helicopters flying overhead and more ambulances than I had ever seen. Someone took the children from me and I was face-to-face with the First Selectman, Pat Llodra. I asked her what was going on and she replied, “It’s the worst thing this country has ever seen, worse than Columbine.”

I went into the firehouse in a daze and began assisting staff organizing students by classroom so we could release them to their parents. It became evident very quickly that we were missing two entire classrooms of kids. We wouldn’t learn until later that some had run and survived, but in the end, twenty children and six adults had been murdered.

When those of us who survived went home later that day, the first thing we had to do was be strong for our own children, several of whom also survived the shooting that day, and many of whom were school-aged children in other community schools. I can remember walking up to my front door, putting my hand on the doorknob, and thinking, “Pull yourself together, you are about to see your kids,” before I turned the handle. Within hours of surviving one of the worst mass shootings this country has ever seen, we had no choice but to put aside our own grief and trauma to take care of those around us.

When the time came to return to school a few weeks later, the staff and the teachers were once again faced with the choice of whether to take care of ourselves or others. The school district floated the idea of bringing in substitute teachers if we were not up to returning, but not one staff member thought the kids should return to a school full of strangers. Without exception, the staff at Sandy Hook chose to be there to greet the surviving children as they returned to an unfamiliar school in a neighboring town. We held each other up as the days and weeks wore on so we could be there day in and day out for the students.

The staff was largely left to fend for themselves in those early months, with little or no mental health support. Some of us were able to connect with support while others were not. Some of the earliest help offered was from surviving staff members from Columbine who wanted to come and support us. The school system refused to support the visit so we met offsite on a cold weekend in January. We learned then that other mass shooting survivors would offer us the best glimpse of how to navigate the path we were on. We subsequently also met with members of the Amish community who had suffered their own tragedy about five years earlier. Those bonds remain strong today.

As time progressed and we grew stronger, many of us chose to add our voices to those calling for an end to the gun violence that was continuing to assault our schools, churches, offices, and homes. We could no longer stand by while more children died day after day. Eighteen months after the shooting at our school, I had reached my own personal tipping point. I watched on TV as the horror unfolded after the shooting in Isla Vista, California. I was shaken to my core as I watched Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was killed in that shooting, plead that “Not One More” person be taken by gun violence. And I knew then it was my time to stand up and speak out.

I joined Everytown for Gun Safety and learned about the many issues surrounding gun violence in our country today. I learned ninety-six Americans are killed by guns every day. I learned black men are thirteen times more likely to be shot and killed with a gun than white men. I learned that women are disproportionately affected by gun violence and that more than fifty women are shot to death by an intimate partner each month. That last fact resonated with me. Women, like the women at my school, are often forced into the dual role of survivor and savior. When these tragedies occur, who most often picks up the pieces of these families? Women.

So it’s no surprise that the effort to end gun violence has galvanized women across the country into action. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting millions of people—many of whom are women—have joined Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, an organization started by Shannon Watts in her kitchen following the shooting. We have almost as many members as the NRA, and they’ve been around for over a hundred years longer than we have.

In the years since the shooting at Sandy Hook, I have become a Fellow for Everytown for Gun Safety. As such, I use my experiences to teach others about the effect gun violence has on children and communities in an effort to drive change. I speak to civic organizations, churches, and medical students. I participate in panel discussions about the causes and potential solutions we need to consider. Being a survivor is difficult, and in our community we have had our own challenges. How do you possibly talk about your experience when others have lost so much? How do you protect the stories of the children while speaking about your own experience? There are no easy answers. However, there is action. We can all act to make sure these tragedies end. And that’s what I have chosen to do.