I don’t want to be afraid.

I don’t want to fear for the lives of my children. It’s taken me this long to be able to even think about writing this. Since I heard about the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre, I haven’t wanted to take my babies anywhere. This is a busy time of year for my family so I have had to have them in public. It scares me.

My husband and I both went to public schools, preschool all way through our senior years, we had some scary moments but nothing came out of any of them, the worst was when experienced was maybe 10 bomb threats on test Fridays. All of them were hoaxes in order to get out of the test the callers didn’t study for. My mom (before I could drive) was always at the school as soon as we were released or if a family friend was closer she was there to get me and her children, I always wondered what scared my mom so much, then I became a parent.

When I heard what happened at Sandy Hook, I cried, held my babies (maybe against Lime’s will, he wanted to play) and I was glued to the TV. Later I talked to friends to make sure they knew what was happening and we talked about homeschooling our children for life. I don’t want to be afraid to send my children to school. A place where they should be safe and secure, a place where they should be able to go and learn, meet new people, and build the skills they need to survive in the world. It shouldn’t be a place where they are targets for a mental ill person.

We as parents, grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, soon to be parents, or the maybe will become a parent later in life, need to make mental illness a real thing, not something we sweep under the rug.  We shouldn’t have to worry about someone coming into our children’s classrooms and do the unthinkable. If the man (I know his name, I am trying to forget and I don’t want his name to be out in the world more than it is) had the access to the doctors, medication, or treatments that he so clearly needed, the sentence that started with “20 children and 7 adults” would have ended so differently. Maybe it would have ended with “Had a great bake sale and raised 500 dollars for Make a Wish” a friend of mine said it best, it should NEVER end the way it did.

I know someone is thinking, “That’s great, let’s get mental illness out there, but what about gun laws?” Well to that I say, let’s make it harder to get guns, I don’t think every Jo Shomo should have access to semi-automatic- guns, but by making a few new laws to get a gun, won’t stop someone once they get a thought like that in their head. They will find other ways to get their point across.

 This nation needs to change a lot of things, we need to let go of the angry that everyone seems to be holding on to (even if you don’t realize you are) about the stupid little things, we need to be open and talk about mental illness, we need have better back ground checks for gun purchases and most importantly we need to forget the man’s name and keep those precious children who lost their lives in our hearts.

Now go hug your babies.