A year ago on this day, I wrote that I would be back to give reviews of other books I had been reading. However, that evening changed my whole world. The campus on which I work, my alma mater, my home, was shaken apart by a horrible school shooting. 3 students (Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner, and Arielle Anderson) were killed, and 5 more more seriously injured. Our community was in shambles. How could something so horrific happen here? It shouldn’t have been here, in our safe space. Shootings aren’t supposed to be this close. Just months before, there was a shooting at Oxford High School, just a mile down the road from my stepson. The week before the MSU shooting, a swatting call threatening a shooting, was made at my son’s high school. I was already on high alert and anxiety…then to have this happen, here, at my alma mater, my home? It was unthinkable. I couldn’t even begin to process the horror. Listening to the police scanner, the unknowns about how many assailants (there was just one) and how many injuries or deaths…it was too much. I shut down. The weeks to come, there was nothing but sadness and unending pain. In order to come to work, I had to drive by the building where two students died…then another where one died and others injured. One of the injured was a student I saw almost everyday in my own building. I found out later that a colleague was here, hunkered down in our basement with other students, waiting…but didn’t know if he might be waiting to die or waiting to come out from hiding. To say that this past year has been hard would be putting it mildly. I still have a hard time thinking about it, thinking that those 3 precious souls are gone. That my school is now on the one list I never thought it would ever end up on: school shootings. There is a lot still to process, a lot still to do. My belief that gun ownership has more stringent laws was only solidified through all this. There must be stricter gun laws. There just has to be. We have to stop being afraid to send our kids to school.

I had other personal trauma last year too. My best friends mom, who was like a second mom to me, passed away from complications during heart surgery. Devastation isn’t even enough to describe that pain. Her birthday was yesterday. It was hard. I almost text her, only to remember that I couldn’t.

So I apologize for not being here. I will try to again this year, to be better about making posts. But for today: I am Spartan Strong.