Interacting with survivors of many different types and levels of trauma has brought enormous appreciation of how far I’ve come since the shooting. While it has been affirming and healing to interact with all survivors, especially those of gun violence, it is perhaps the survivors of tornadoes with whom I most identify. I did not lose my dwelling or belongings in the vortex of the storm that hit my home, but in many ways the devastation left in its wake feels similar.

There were warnings everywhere of the pending storm. I took prudent precautions but I couldn’t imagine it actually hitting me. When it did hit it felt like everything I’d known was leveled. There was so much loss that day, so much unrecoverable. We are a species of roots. Pulled up and tossed around by forces beyond our control, separated from those roots and that which make us who we are, we’re left disoriented; feeling groundless and unanchored, grasping for meaning.

My storm erased a life I’d built, and in some ways my identity of who I was. Attachments to ideals, dreams, outcomes, were ripped away from me. I’ve had to pick through the fragments of what was left of my former life and figure out a way to somehow move forward to create a stable foundation for a new kind of home for the children and me, creating something sustainable out of the destruction.

There is no going home again to the career I once felt passionate about or the security I once enjoyed of people and places. It was hard to see at the time that out of the ashes rises the Phoenix. Knowing how or where to begin is daunting. Yet we do. We all start with the first thing and the rest comes.

My role as an advocate, a coach of sorts, is one that was never remotely on my radar. Now I can’t imagine not following the calling of working with trauma survivors and those who have survived the forces of violence in their lives. I know the road to recovery can feel very frightening and lonely. If I can be of encouragement and companion a small fraction of those on that road, however briefly, in their journey forward I am content I have done enough.

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”