It’s Been A Year - Uvalde, Texas

Note: This has been taken from my quarterly newsletter which was published last year. Seeing as it’s been a year, and from where I’m sitting policies haven’t changed, I am sharing this on here as a reminder of the pain these preventable catastrophes cause. It’s important for me to share that I’m often told, “Why do you care? You don’t even live here anymore.” The truth is that while I don’t physically reside in Texas, my family do, my community do, and therefore a part of me will always have an interest in what’s going on in my home state. After all, “you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl”.

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Hello friend!

Happy First Day of Summer!  I am so glad you’re here! And I am incredibly grateful for your support. I’ve recently taken an online class for creatives who want to level up their online business and I look forward to sharing with you all of the wonderful things I’ve learned over the coming months. But for now, I'm afraid I must talk about the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

It really shook me. It took me about two weeks to process this feeling. At first I thought I’d express this in a video for my YouTube channel, but it didn’t feel right. Then I thought I’d share it on my blog, but it still didn’t feel right. I realised that the safest place for me to share what I discovered during this process was with you.

I have listened to Mr. Arnulfo Reyes’s interview; Lexi’s parents, Mr & Mrs Rubio’s testimonial; Matthew McConaughey’s White House press speech; and looked at the photos of the children who were brutally murdered in this heinous act, and every time felt it hit differently. I then realised why- 

I see myself. 

I see my family. I see my friends. I see my community. I see the campers I spent four summers overseeing as a camp counsellor. I hear them. The way they speak. The way they share their pain. I feel like I know them because apart of me is them. 

My parents are educators. My brothers are educators. Their wives are educators. My cousins, my friends, the list goes on. I am a former teacher myself. 

I can almost feel the moment before: the rooms filled with laughter and joy and the talk of summer. What they were looking forward to. If they were going to summer camp- which one. The teachers clearing their classrooms, or realising they were really behind as I’m sure there were a few who still had posters on the wall. 

But the real gut puncher is Maite Rodriguez’s green converse. I loved my converse. I had them in blue, green, & purple. Anyone I had ever gone to school with or worked with commented on them. To imagine the possibility that they would be the only piece left that would identify my body leaves me in tears. 

Growing up I knew school to be the safest place in the world. That was until Columbine. I would have liked to have hoped the system has changed since then, but the truth is it’s getting worse. My next concern now becomes- what about everyone else in that school who survived? What happens to their lives? To their dreams? Shootings in American schools is a crisis.

As much as I would like to close this letter with good news and happy thoughts I feel would deny the reality of so many families who will be grieving the loss of their loved ones this summer.  So I leave you with the words of Lexi’s mom, Mrs. Rubio - “Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain’ not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act now.”

xoxo, Kat