THIS COLUMN WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN WRITER’S BLOCK IN THE OCTOBER 24, 2018 EDITION OF THE CHRONOTYPE, RICE LAKE, WISCONSIN.
As I triple-checked the locks on our home’s front and back doors the other night, I was thinking about another door, another home not too far from any of us, where safety and peace was violently disrupted last week Monday. I thought of a 13-year-old girl missing, and prayed for the thousandth time that she would be found, safe and alive, knowing that even so, she would be traumatically altered.
I ascended the stairs, looked in again on my own sleeping 11- and 9-year-olds, safe and snug, and thanked God for their health and safety, imploring Him to keep them that way always.
That afternoon, in the car on the way home, my kids and I had talked a little about Jayme Closs, the missing girl. My daughters’ social network involves children of those county employees and law enforcement who are pouring in overtime hours to help find answers. One child told a friend of my girls, “I haven’t seen my dad much this week.”
The horror of this most recent tragedy is processed differently for kids at every age. But across the board, how adults express their emotions will influence the reactions of children and youth. That’s according to National Association of School Psychologists informational pamphlets which were handed out at a vigil for Jayme Closs on Monday. The information included tips for talking to children about violence, tips for caregivers to make sure they are caring for themselves during crisis and tips for managing strong emotional reactions to traumatic events.
If you’ve been on social media at all in the last week, you can see several examples of people who may benefit from the latter of that information. Posts and responses dripping with anger over the lack of information or speculations in the Closs case have erupted everywhere. There are many unanswered questions. Everyone is feeling some pretty intense emotions, including grief—grief for the Closs family, but also our own losses of a sense of peace and safety in our community, loss of privacy with the onslaught of national news media descending on Barron County, and just an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
Anger is a natural extension of other emotions like fear and grief because it is a defense mechanism that makes us feel more in control. This is what the shadow side of a trauma such as this looks like.
On the other side, however, there is the light of this community—thousands of people taking their vacation time from work to help the search for answers, people spending their time and money to make sure up to 200 law enforcement individuals are fed and watered every day for as long at it takes, caretakers putting in extra time to watch kiddos, neighbors checking on neighbors to make sure they’re okay. This community rises up each and every time tragedy strikes, without complaint or hesitation and I’m knocked speechless by the generosity every time.
I should be used to it; from plane crashes, tornadoes and murder-suicides, our little pocket here in Northwestern Wisconsin is no stranger to tragedy lately. But Barron has been launched into the international spotlight twice in the last 2 weeks—in elation for hometown singing star Chris Kroeze and now missing Jayme Closs. The sun rises and sets on all of us. It’s the stories of what human beings can do for each other in good that will always transcend the tragedies that set them in motion.
Let’s choose to recognize our grief and anger and channel it to doing better for each other every day. We’re full of hope and help. Our job is to make this journey a little easier for each other, not just in tragic times, but all of the time.
For more information on coping with trauma, visit www.nasponline.org. For up-to-date information on ways to help the search for Jayme Closs, follow the Barron County Sheriff’s department on Facebook.
Gently Rise, Softly Call 