Change starts with all of us

This has been a hard week in our area; a hard week for the world. As a kid, tragedies happened, and despite having a mother who believed in discussing everything with her children, I put those in a compartment that I locked with a key and forgot. It was too far away, too alien for me to comprehend. I was a child. I worried more about having time to play. When the disaster of Three Mile Island, the nuclear accident in Pennsylvania that released radioactive gases into the surrounding area, happened it was discussed at length in our house. The thing that I remember? The possibility that our friends in Pennsylvania would have to come and stay with us. That was exciting, and a disappointment when they didn't. The rest of it I didn't spend any time on.

As I got older, I worried more about the Russians causing a war. I thought about what I would do if I were somewhere during an attack. I decided lying down and playing dead was my best hope of escape. I worried about bogey men that would break into our house. I spent quite a bit of time working out scenarios in my head of what I would do if that happened and where I would go to hide. But all of that was intermittent. I didn't think about it daily.

Today our children worry. Today our children have to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for people carrying automatic weapons coming into a restaurant, a school, the movies, a sporting event. Today it is just a reality we all live with. We have to discuss what is happening around the world with our children. What is happening right here in our own country, in our own area. 911 made us. We can't shield our children from the horrors because they are happening right outside our doors. Yesterday my eldest was in the bathroom at the mall. Unbeknownst to her, a small child outside the bathroom popped several balloons. My daughter thought they were gun shots. That is our kid's reality.

The shooting of The Voice singer was terrible, but it was just another day in life. I read every morning in the paper about someone getting shot and killed. I've taken to not wanting to read the paper, to try to go back to my childhood when I hid those types of things in the dark recesses of my brain. Her death was terrible and so unnecessary. The shooter was from down the road in the next city from ours. We didn't have time to process any of that before the shooting in the Orlando night club Pulse happened. I was asleep. I read about it on the Internet the next morning while sitting down to plan my vacation.

Fifty people killed. Fifty people injured. A gunman who hated gays. A possible terrorist who walked unseen into a business with automatic weapons and a hand gun. People did what I always envisioned I would do; play dead. He shot them anyway to make sure. He didn't hesitate. He just shot, and shot, and shot. He walked from one end of the club to the other coldly shooting. He didn't care who died. He wanted them all dead. His hatred was that intense. Kill. Kill. Kill. 

I've vowed to stay off of Facebook for the summer. I can't take the hatred that is spewed there from people I know, once knew, family. There are many that have the same hatred, who write quotes from the bible as if to say this is why, the hatred is okay. My daughters are reading this. My youngest knew someone who was at the club. Her wife was shot twice in the back and is in critical condition. There is nothing that makes that right. Nothing. There just isn't. To believe otherwise makes me physically sick.

We are all human beings, whether we love a woman or a man. When did love become wrong? Poems, songs, art, and even the Bible can be interpreted in different ways. Nothing interpreted justifies what happened in Orlando this week. My youngest daughter wanted to know why all of the people she knew on Facebook weren't talking about it like they did the tragedy in Sandy Hook and Colorado. Where were the prayers? The prayer hand emojis? This country was built by those who were different, who wanted to be able to express those differences, who wanted to live out their lives being accepted for their differences. I think America has forgotten that. Today it is all me, me, me. Listen to my beliefs, believe what I believe. We are going backwards instead of forwards.

This life and the horror in it now belong to our children. There is no escaping it, no ignoring it, no hiding it. How we as adults teach our children, to be kind, to be respectful, to accept those who are different from us, that is how the future changes. That is how violence is stopped. I chose to raise both my children to have open hearts and open minds. Won't you please do the same? Read the names of those who lost their lives in that Orlando night club. Read their names, their stories, and then teach your children that differences are okay. I'm not asking you to understand, or change your beliefs, but to accept the differences in others. Open your heart and your mind, and then open your children's. Please. It starts with us. That tragedy is all of ours no matter anyone's beliefs. It can happen to any of us, in any place, in any time. Read the names, and then start the change. For all of our sake,