The first time I was consciously aware of a child dying was as a young adult and the child of family from church died of illness. Though I didn't know the child nor even the adults very well, I cried. As a new parent myself, the thought of losing a child was incomprehensible, children buried their parents, not parents burying a child.
Over the years as a school counselor, I was faced with entirely too many incidents of a child dying in a car accident, by suicide or illness, dealing with the grief of a few or huge groups of adults and students who had taught or been friends with the young person lost.
Living and then working near Blackburg, I was part of the grief support team after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, then shortly after a murder of one of our students and her mother by an acquaintance of them.
None of these experiences has made it any easier to deal with Connecticut's tragedy, for a community of families to have lost so many children makes my heart ache. I have cried for them and my heart goes out to the community and the families who lost a child or have a child that was fortunate enough to survive yesterday's tragedy and will have to learn to live with the trauma that they experienced.
I hope the media will quickly leave them alone and let them heal.
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