Trauma always carries grief. Left untended, grief can harden, grow into hate, and for some, break into violence.
On 9/10, our country experienced two tragedies that shook us to our core. In Evergreen, Colorado, a student opened fire at Evergreen High School, injuring two fellow students before turning the gun on himself. At the time of this writing, one victim remains in critical condition. A friend of ours was there when it happened. At the same time, in Utah, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was speaking in front of a crowd of thousands when he was shot and killed. His wife and two young children witnessed this. And that is not all, as we look at the headlines, violence is happening everywhere. Our BIPOC friends and our LGBTQIA+ friends are constantly experiencing grief and trauma. These events arrive amid a continuing atmosphere of division, grief, and outrage. They are more than headlines; they reverberate in our bodies, in our communities, and in our very nervous systems.
This morning, I hugged my older kids as they walked out the front door to high school. As I lingered in that embrace, I felt the weight of yesterday. A chilling thought rose again of the possibility that this could be the last hug. Later, I placed my arm gently on my youngest’s shoulder as we walked to school together. The grief of parenting in our country right now is heavy: the awareness that safety at school is never guaranteed, that we send our children out each morning with both hope and dread in our chests. As we walked, I let the rhythm of bilateral movement—left, right, left—steady me. My eyes scanned the world more closely than usual, as if grief sharpens vision. That’s when I noticed a sign, boldly declaring:
…All people have value.
Love always wins.
Kindness is free.
Beliefs are personal.
Rights are universal.
Freedom only exists if it applies to everyone.
Choose to be curious, not judgmental.
The world is full of friends we have yet to meet…
We can all strive to be good humans.
Maybe this is also our world. Maybe this is what’s possible.
Whenever violence rips through what we thought was safe, whether a school or a public gathering, it awakens grief. Grief for lives changed; grief for innocence lost; grief for no longer feeling safe; grief for what feels unfixable. There is always grief in trauma. Untended, it hardens into anger, for some into hate, and for a few into violence. This trajectory is not inevitable. But unless we actively tend to our grief, together, it is the road we risk walking. Trauma always carries grief. When tended, that grief softens anger, dissolves hate, and builds connection, healing, and peace.
In Navigating Crisis Grief Through the Window of Tolerance, I wrote about how Polyvagal Theory helps us understand these responses. When tragedy hits, our nervous systems often pull us out of balance: into sympathetic fight-or-flight, where panic, fear, and anger take over, or into dorsal vagal shutdown, where hopelessness, numbness, and despair set in. It is only when we return to the Window of Tolerance (Seigel, 1999), what I call the Window of Peace, that we can grieve without collapsing, and act without destructiveness. The sign I saw on my walk was a reminder: the world we long for is one where love, kindness, freedom, and curiosity guide us. But to build that world, we must notice when our nervous systems are flooded, when our thinking brains cannot make rational decisions. We must then choose tools of breathing, movement, connection, that bring us back into balance.
So how do we do this? We lean into each other. We remind ourselves that no one can carry this grief alone. We cultivate compassion for ourselves, for our children, for those we see as “other.” We notice when we are out of balance and help one another return to the Window of Peace. Fred Rogers once said that in times of crisis, his mother told him to “look for the helpers.” Yesterday, they were there—the teachers who shielded their students, the neighbors who flung open their doors to children running for safety, the first responders who rushed in while others fled. Heroes are not only those in uniform; they are also the ones who show up in small but life-saving ways, the ones who refuse to let fear have the final word.
“Our grief can either close us down or open us up. May we choose to open.”
The grief of yesterday is immense. But as I hugged my older kids this morning, as I placed my arm on my youngest’s shoulder, as I paused to take in the words of that sign, I remembered: our grief can either close us down or open us up. May we choose to open. May we choose to remember that love always wins, kindness is free, and our differences make us beautiful. May we hold each other close in hugs at the door, in steady shoulders on the walk, and may we be the helpers, the neighbors, the ones who open the doors.