Today was a fucked-up day. After a delightful meal with friends, Bill, Baby Dumpling, and I literally got swept up in a mall-wide lockdown. For a full fifty-five minutes, the little information we had was what little we had heard: “EVACUATE” and “SHOOTER SHOOTER SHOOTER.”
It was as terrifying as it sounds.
It was technically during the fallout of an attempted robbery at the mall next door, but the entire time that we were locked into the Nordstrom at the Americana, we were under the impression that we were avoiding a mass shooting. It’s the United States! How else would we spend a Saturday with our six-month old?
Editor’s Note: I registered The Hapa Dumpling Gang URL a year ago to keep my options open for ways to chronicle maternity and motherhood. Since then, I’ve found myself wholly fulfilled with Baby Dumpling twenty-four seven, and subsequently let this blog’s potential fall by the wayside. I’m not heartbroken over it. Being in love with non-stop baby care is The Best Case Scenario, is it not? But that means there’s a backlog of dozens of personal reflections that I have not sorted through or organized into words. That’s pretty much the only thing I lament about not taking more active steps toward regular parental blogging…
So anyway, what better reason to dust off a keyboard than traumatic catharsis?
I’m backdating the publish date of this post to the day and time of the lockdown, mainly to preserve the date and the memory. The actual composition of this post spans multiple days immediately following. It is not lost on me, for instance, that as I write this particular sentence, tens of thousands of students are staging a #NationalStudentWalkout on this, the monthversary of the Parkland shooting. This means the tense throughout this post will likely be wishy-washy. Thoughts about that day have flown in and out of my mind at their own will throughout the week, so my writing process has been nonlinear. I will very likely make more additions, edits, and tweaks long after I hit “Publish.” Still, it’s been helpful for me to get it down somewhere else instead of keeping it all in my head.
Play by Play
Parting Ways
Bill, Baby, and I had just finished lunch at Din Tai Fung with some of our oldest friends. I was toying with the idea of joining them at the National History Museum afterward, but was debating if Baby Dumpling – and I – could handle such a last-minute excursion. Anyway, Bill and I headed off in our different directions, which was the plan all along. His afternoon had more specific tasks: check something out at the Apple store and go file our taxes with our CPA. As annoying as it was to be that family driving separately to and from a mall, having valeted both of our cars at least afforded me some freedom in whatever Baby and I ended up doing after lunch.
I took the baby and headed straight to Nordstrom, because I can always depend on their women’s lounges with well-lit changing tables (and stuffed chairs in case Baby needed to nurse). After changing Baby, I checked the time. I still had an hour of free valet (thanks to Din Tai Fung validation), and there was a good chance Bill was still at Apple. For no particular reason other than I like maximizing my time with him, I took the baby for a stroll to the Apple store. The decision reminded me of when he and I were first dating, and how I’d make up excuses to end up at his apartment.
I was correct; he was finishing up his purchase when Baby Dumpling and I arrived. As we left the Apple store and crossed the faux street in the direction of Din Tai Fung, we discussed how I was worried about pushing Baby’s limits by going to the NHM. I looked down at Baby Dumpling, who had fallen asleep on the walk. Looking at her peaceful face, I decided to just head home. Plus, my phone had been acting up all day and I couldn’t even pull up directions to the museum, so the choice made itself. Nordstrom’s eBar coffee shop came into sight, and I thought out loud, “I’m kind of craving a matcha latté, but I’m not sure if I’ve just conditioned myself to getting a matcha latté every time I’m out with the baby in the afternoon…”
Oh what the hell, I decided. Babies take a lot of energy, and I needed a little boost for the drizzly ride home. “Okay, yeah, I’m going to get a latté.”
Bill and I kissed good-bye in front of Nordstrom, and I rolled Baby Dumpling into the coffee shop.
Honey Almond Latté
Nordstrom eBar had something on the menu called “Honey Almond Latté,” and it sounded like some neutral sweetness bliss. I had just ordered one and was pushing the stroller toward the pick-up window, when Bill came rushing into the café and grabbed my arm.
“There’s people outside and they’re telling everyone to evacuate,” he said urgently (I’m paraphrasing).
“…what?” I said to him, with a look of incredulity.
“I don’t know, but some woman just came out of the building saying, ‘Everyone needs to evacuate.'”
In our relationship, Bill is comparatively more anxious than I am. I balance this out by trying to underreact in situations where I think he might be overreacting. I looked out the window, and nobody was running. I looked at the café staff, and nobody was doing anything outside of receiving and preparing orders.
“Well, none of the employees seem to have heard anything…” I said.
We looked out the window again. One woman on the other side of the street was running toward the courtyard of the Americana. Everyone else was in pedestrian still life.
Bill ran outside again to get more information, while I stood waiting for my latté.
When he came back in, I kept asking him qualifying questions, but his expression never wavered from abject worry:
“Is there, like, a fire or something?”
“Was it an employee that came out of the building saying to evacuate?”
“Which building did they come out of, like, which store?”
“Should we ask a manager if they’ve gotten any updates?”
I’ve worked in a couple of malls, and only experienced one evacuation. A Nike store was under construction, and a broken water pipe threatened the very many electrical things in the Apple store next door. Could this be that? And if it was, wouldn’t we all just be fine remaining calm and staying contained in a safe space?
But let’s be real: When you hear the word “EVACUATE” in 2018 twenty-four days after Parkland, you think “mass shooting.”
I kept trying to logic the worry out of Bill, but I ran out of questions to disprove his concern. Finally allowing myself to admit that I was getting scared, too, I touched his arm. I didn’t need to ask this, but I said “Then I would like you to stay with us, please.”
“Yes, of course!” he said, as he had already decided moments ago.
Eventually I got my latté. Still, everyone else in the mall seemed chill. I hadn’t seen anyone running since that single woman earlier. We discussed what we should do based on the very little information we had, and we figured we should just see which car the valet could get first, and get out of the area. While walking back to Din Tai Fung, I took a couple of sips of my latté while pushing the stroller.
Damn, I thought. This latté has actual coffee in it! I don’t drink coffee, so I was worried about being wired when there was already such an adrenaline rush of an event looming in the air. The honey almond combo just sounded like a tea thing! Oh well, it’d become my adult pacifier. Onward to the valet.
“You guys heard about the shooting, right?”
Bill and I were calm. Baby Dumpling was still sleeping. Two women powerwalked on our left side, and asked calmly and clearly, “You guys heard about the shooting, right?”
“No!” we said. We told them how we heard about the evacuation but nobody else seemed to be reacting.
Obviously concerned for us and our baby, they told us there was a shooting at the Glendale Galleria, and they didn’t need to explain further when they told us to get out.
I’ve never felt more glued to Bill and Baby. I wanted to keep us tight. We walked more briskly to the valet, getting our claim tickets ready.
Modern Family
We got in line for the valet. Small groups of people seemed to be in a more rushed mood now. The air was electrifying. Lots of folks standing by had more purposeful looks in their eyes. In a moment like this, your ears just go into absorption mode. (Indeed, all senses go into hyperactive data collection.) Eavesdropping, we had heard the murmurs that everyone was trying to get their cars all at once, so there was a backup at the valet.
A man driving along Caruso yelled out the side of his pickup, “There’s a shooting at the Glendale Galleria! Somebody call the cops!” The crowd of people on the sidewalk talked amongst itself, “Yeah, pretty sure we’re already aware… Somebody’s already on it…”
Hard to say if this man’s terrified yells were helpful. It was a tightly wound moment where the public was trying to feign calm and collectedness when the news whirling around us held the potential for chaos.
I got in line for the valet podium, and held my ticket inside my pocket. In front of us was Joe Mande, who plays Alex’s boyfriend on Modern Family. I looked at his face and thought, “Life is weird. Let this be a footnote.”
Soon I was next, holding my ticket and phone in my hand, when the valet attendant turned to me and said, “It’s gonna take a minute.”
“No worries,” I said. “We understand! You’re calm, just do what you gotta do,…” And then she ducked.
That’s when the hysteria hit. People started sweeping past us into the Caruso entrance of Din Tai Fung. “Shooter! Shooter! Everybody run!” I turned to get a hold of Baby’s stroller and get it out of the way, but everything and everyone was so rushed that by then it just made more sense to join the crowd. Bill got in front, I pushed the stroller from behind. First we pushed our way as much as we could, clumsily maneuvering past table legs and human legs. But it was a stampede. There wasn’t enough time or sense to communicate about how we should maneuver with the stroller or what our ultimate goal was. We were being jostled left and right while trying to move forward, forward. I couldn’t curb the instinct of shielding my baby as much as possible. I tried to expand my torso width-wise to cover the stroller, but doing so isn’t conducive to a rampaging crowd. It just creates more touchpoints for you to obstruct other people rushing past.
And I still had that fucking latté in my hand. I fell forward a bit, pushing on my baby’s warm blanket. (SHE WAS SOUND ASLEEP.) The latté bubbled out. Thinking a clusterfuck of WTF/Really??/This is ridiculous/Baby, you’re amazing!, I forcefully tossed the latté straight into the corner of Din Tai Fung. Maybe a spill will trip up the shooter, I thought. But I also worried a spill would trip up innocent people. There was no time to look back; Bill and I kept running with the stroller between us.
I ran over a fluorescent pink leather purse and wondered how the owner would get it back. We sandwiched a woman into a space between two tables, but the stroller was blocking the way for the oncoming crowd. Baby Dumpling was still asleep. A woman pushed into me from behind, backed off when she saw the stroller, and said, “Get the baby out of here!” We jammed into the flow and exited Din Tai Fung, continuing into Nordstrom.
Once inside Nordstrom, I told Bill, “Let’s go to the women’s restroom. We’ve got to get into the restroom.” Not knowing how much time we had before a shooter arrived, I was envisioning the women’s lounge I just left: individual toilet stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors, water in case we needed it, furniture we could barricade against a door. But we couldn’t get there fast enough. Although Nordstrom had more space to spread out than Din Tai Fung, we were still the more cumbersome group pushing through with a stroller. “Shh, it’s going to be okay,” Bill said. We noticed people running to the escalators, which were still running. We pulled off to the side, and Bill smartly detached the baby’s car seat from her stroller base, and we fell in line for the escalator to the second floor.
[Baby Gear Tip: If you are shopping for a baby and are thinking of emergency preparedness, consider a stroller that converts and detaches. Excellent design saved our sanity. Our baby kept sleeping as we ascended the escalator, and we didn’t have to pull her out, unprotected, from her cushioned car seat. We had her drape pulled down the entire time, partially shielding her from the chaos.]
Hunger Games
On the second floor, I led us to the women’s lounge, again thinking of all the protective amenities that might benefit us. There were so many people crowding into the restrooms that ended up squeezing into the utility closet across the way.
Inside the closet, it was the three of us and three other people: one older White man and two Chicana friends. We were in the deepest inner corner. I pushed the janitorial staff’s cart around to block the door. To cover the opening more, I asked one of the Chicana women to come in more. “I would love to be overreacting,” I said, and we squarely blocked the opening with the cart.
I slumped down against the back wall.
“So, what’s going on?” asked the older White man.
Bill told him how there was a shooting at the Glendale Galleria. Naturally, he asked more questions, but nobody in the closet had much more detail beyond that.
“Cell phones on silent,” the other Chicana girl said.
I like you, I thought. “Good call,” I said.
Around that time, a cleaning lady jostled open the door to put something back in her cart. The first Chicana girl spoke to her in Spanish. “Does she want to come in?” I asked, trying to make more space in the closet. “Nope, she’s just going back to work,” the girl shrugged. Business as usual…?
The baby stirred. The second Chicana girl peeked into her car seat. “Eyes closed,” she said. All we could do was smile at each other. At least she’s asleep.
It’s an odd feeling to think, on one hand, I don’t want this baby to absorb what’s going on, and What if our baby gives us away? simultaneously on the other.
Then White Man FaceTimed his friend. “You won’t believe this… So apparently there’s a shooting next door at the Glendale Galleria… I’m inside a utility closet… In Nordstrom… No, at the Americana…” And then he panned his phone with the screen out so that his friend could see the people he was trapped with (and so that I could see his bald head and blue shirt randomly staring at us through the screen).
“Do you really need to be making that call right now, sir?” I asked. We urged him to end the video chat, and after unnecessary back and forth with his friend he finally hung up.
…was I supposed to feel proud that my baby was more quiet than this dude in the corner? If the shooter came into our hallway looking to pick off victims, I would have pushed the White man out of the closet first.
Inside the closet, I’m sure we all took mental inventory of what surrounded us. Bill and I compared notes afterward: Oh, good! There’s an eye wash station if we need water. And there’s chemicals we could throw at someone.
Mind over matter. Minds in survival mode.
“I love you.” Bill said.
That Facebook status update became our manifest.
Back to phones. Other than White Man, each one of us was the picture of calm. My family was my team. The Chicana women, too. We stayed silent, but alert. I was making zero headway on my phone. Cellular only, Nordstrom Wi-Fi, airplane mode…I couldn’t pull up anything. I was just draining an already partial battery.
[Mobile Battery Tip: Get a mobile charger. Don’t save it just for travel. Keep it in your everyday bag.]
The irony about being safely tucked in the far reaches of a department store back room is how poor connectivity is in case you want to reach the outside world.
[Emergency Contact Tip: Think local and long-distance for emergency contacts. Local support has its obvious advantages. But in situations where crowds of people are all trying to call outside at the same time from the same area, out-of-state contacts can be easier to reach. Of course, this is all presuming that you have signal at all…]
I turned to Bill and asked him to post on Facebook about where we were. If something happened, I wanted people to know where to find my baby. If I had to hide my baby, I wanted multiple friends to know where to tell the police to look.
I love Nordstrom.
Ever since being a little girl, I’ve always remembered Nordstrom’s PA system. It seems like every store has the same calm-sounding woman. Being in Nordstrom during a potential mass shooting didn’t just mean restrooms and back rooms, it also meant a PA system that enabled storewide communication, multiple levels for escape, and often entrances that could be blocked off from the rest of a mall or building.
[Emergency Shelter Tips: If you have time to do it, get into the safest store possible.]
The PA announcer gave just enough information: “There is an emergency outside of the building. The building is on lockdown until it is safe.”
Key Points: The emergency was outside the building. Nordstrom and its inhabitants were locked inside within our own hopeful shelter.
Someone knocked on the restroom door across the way. Nobody answered. “Hello?” We heard a woman say. “I’m a Nordstrom employee. We’re moving everyone up to the third floor.” Murmurs and shuffling. She knocked on our closet door, guiding us upstairs. I picked up our diaper bag. Bill carried our still-sleeping baby in her car seat.
Alterations
The stream of people on the escalator was led into a back room on the third floor. I took in the irony of walking through a stock room full of high-end convertible strollers (Again: THE MODULARITY IS WORTH EVERY PENNY IN AN EMERGENCY.), and we continued into the alterations room with rows of sewing machines and clothing racks. We sat down near the back. Our Chicana Closet Friends hid behind a filing cabinet next to us. We lost White Man, which was a big relief.
The alterations staff were watching over us from the very back of the deep room. One Chicano staffer brought me a chair when he saw me checking on the baby. Eventually I just wanted to be on the same level as her, so I sat down on the ground. From my vantage point under a sewing station, I spotted a cube of space under a steaming table where Baby’s car seat would fit. If we needed to hide her, as long as she kept sleeping I could drape my coat over her and she’d hopefully blend in with the shadows of an otherwise well-lit room.
Speaking of the baby – I finally lifted her drape. She was awake! Awake but silent. How did we luck out with this child?? I rocked her for a little bit and she fixed hers eyes on me in her still-waking-up way. Though there was a white fluffy dog sniffing us and our neighbors, I needed the comfort and soothing of my own baby. I took her out of the car seat, and just held her and rocked.
Bill, always mindful of how tiring mothering can be, asked if I’d like him to hold the baby so I could get a break.
“I need her,” I said, with a sappy smile. How was it that the most emotionally stable person in the room was our six-month old? I know it’s all luck, what our kid’s personality is and her temperament in that moment, but I needed to believe that whatever faux confidence Bill and I were projecting on the outside was sending the right amount of security to our daughter. Her warm pudgy body kept me centered. In this strange episode of an afternoon, the only thing I could really ask for was that my family be together, and we were.
I thanked Bill for coming back for us. Of course.
The Nordstrom team gave everyone water. The Nordstrom PA repeated there was an emergency outside. I didn’t look up to verify, but I’m sure everyone was trying to find sense in concrete updates from their phones.
Realizing I’d hogged our baby, I held Baby Dumpling up to Bill and said, “Would you like a baby?” He held her and rocked her. When she caught eyes with a neighboring group, they cooed and she smiled. We don’t deserve her.
Few people were getting signal or communication from the outside world. We were all too deep into the store. But eventually, one White woman in the center of the room got an update: “Someone robbed a jewelry store. The police have them in custody.” Yaaay!
“It’s really weird to be happy that there was ‘just an armed robbery.'” Bill said.
What’s the dullest, most drained-sounding version of “thrilled” you can think of? That’s how I imagine we all felt.
The Nordstrom PA chimed in again, letting us know the Glendale Police Department apprehended the suspect. We would be released when the outside was deemed absolutely safe. We cheered. And probably also all collapsed a bit inside.
When everyone got the clear to go, Bill went into the main body of the mall to update our parents. I stayed behind in the alterations room to feed the baby, ending up being the last of the civilian, non-employees to leave. When Bill came back, I turned to the alterations team and thanked them.
“Any time,” Chicano Chair Guy said.
I knew what he meant, but I couldn’t help myself from saying “Don’t say that. This is not normal. We shouldn’t have to get used to this (gestures widely) as a thing.”
The rest of the team laughed, and he pressed on, insisting that if we shoppers need anything, the staff would be there. Really, though, I LOVE NORDSTROM.
Bill and I gathered our stuff and our baby, and walked out into the store. Employees were clustered at every landing of the escalators, forced to process the event on the clock as shoppers immediately got back into shopping. One woman was already trying on designer sunglasses as we retrieved the base of our stroller on the first floor.
“What a surreal day,” I said to a redheaded associate.
“It was, wasn’t it?” he said, as earnestly upbeat as possible.
You know you’ve been through some shit when you look forward to filing your taxes.
Back through Din Tai Fung, again. For the valet, again. Handwritten “CLOSED FOR THE DAY” signs did not deter hopeful diners from trying to get a good spot in line. Bill went outside to give them our tickets. Because it would be a wait for our car (whichever car they could get to first – we didn’t care), I stayed inside Din Tai Fung rolling Baby’s stroller back and forth. The soothing motion was more for me than it was for her. She was totally chill. Coincidentally, I was waiting in the corner where I threw my stupid coffee. Honey-almond-coffee smell filled the air. This will forever be one of the stranger olfactory memories stored in my brain.
Our next step was to decide what to do, where to go. Of course we wanted to keep our family together, but I also wanted to get back into “normalcy” as much as possible. To just go through the motions instead of diving straight into wallowing or ruminating. We decided to take the family to the CPA’s office, a long, drippy commute, but one with the promise of logical numbers, order, and objective predictability. We clicked the baby’s carseat in with the seatbelt and left. On the way to our tax appointment, Baby Dumpling fell asleep again with my finger clutched in her hand. When her grip eased up, I commented on Bill’s Facebook status to update on our situation. We were all okay.
Fifty-Five Minutes
Being on lockdown wasn’t a near-death experience. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. Instead, the memory has become an opposite-of-dull sensation looming over the top of my head, not in the back. It feels like a web. And like a distracting, ever-present, inaudible tinnitus.
I have a lot of thoughts…Why didn’t my phone work? Would it have been better to have no mobile phone at all? ‘Shouldn’t have procrastinated on finding an estate planner. We need to pick godparents. I guess we’re grateful for this dry run?…
*
Man, people like to split hairs. Read a story about an armed robbery, and the hundreds of people who were on lockdown quickly become a subplot. I’ve been careful with my social media intake since Saturday, but couldn’t avoid happening upon friends’ of friends’ comments minimizing the situation. “It was not an active shooter.” But for the better part of fifty-five minutes, everyone inside thought it was.
*
If arming teachers is the solution to safety for children in schools, should we also arm retail employees? Having just seen what happens when a security guard fires “up to three rounds” – and also having read multiple reports of educators (both gun-trained and not) firing off “by accident” on-campus – the answer should write itself. Make itself clear. If not, let me be clear: The solution is not more guns. The solution is reformed control.
I urge you to read “Please Don’t Get Murdered at School Today,” by Kimberly Harrington. It’s much shorter than my meandering lockdown recap, I promise!
*
I’ve always had a decent awareness about my surroundings: where the exits are, the setup of a room, sometimes even cardinal direction and orientation. Now, I feel like I’ve acquired a new level of scanning power. Which way to higher ground? Who’s got a PA? Which store is most likely to have a big back room?
*
Between the Moves geotracking app, timestamped photos, and messaging attempts, I have a virtual paper trail of what we did, when we learned different news, and where we were that day. You would think taking selfies would seem vapid and superficial in a time of crisis like this, but once I could function, taking the two pictures actually seemed quite reasonable. One is of my husband holding my baby. They’re soothing each other, the perfect father-daughter pair, and I never want to forget how protective Bill was to Baby Dumpling and me that day. The other is of the three of us. I’m sitting on the floor holding Baby, and Bill is holding a plastic cup of water sitting in the chair next to us. Whatever happened, I wanted to capture us then. If this was the end and even my phone didn’t make it, I wanted our last moment to be in virtual memory somewhere as one family unit, just actively supporting each other. Maybe the photo could live in the cloud after us. As it turned out, the best possible outcome came true, it just became a picture of us getting through a very weird day as one family unit.
*
What kind of world do we live in, that…? With everything that’s going on right now in the United States… When Baby Dumpling was born, I was determined to not fall off the face of the planet. She’s become my little buddy in every day’s social calendar. While I’ve certainly had to make adjustments running to and from lunches and errands with her, life hasn’t stopped because I have a daughter now. Quite the opposite. I’m lucky that she’s such a social baby, agreeable to outings with her parents or with just me, sometimes at a moment’s notice.
We thought nothing of going out as a family on Saturday, and we are not letting it stop our lives. The following Sunday, we visited with family as planned in Santa Monica. On Monday, I took the baby to our Infant Parenting class per usual, and then gave a friend a tour of Rodeo Drive. The rest of the week we attended Story Time, picked up some groceries, and caught up with friends over lunch like normal.
Living in fear, holding back on life is not an option. I didn’t hold back when I was pregnant, and I refuse to over-shelter Baby Dumpling. We’re going to continue being a family that goes out and does things. My mantra to Baby has always been “happy healthy safe.” I have never broken that promise to her.
How Not to Comfort Friends Who Have Experienced Trauma
Coping with a trauma is an odd beast. The shock of Saturday is wearing off for me, but I’m still not planning to go the rest of it alone. I’ve been through a few traumas before, but nothing as frightening as this, and at such a hot-topic, grandiose scale. No matter what the size of the trauma, though, you really learn who your friends are!
People always mean well. But people aren’t well-trained in how to talk about trauma. It’s because it’s trauma. You don’t get a warning. Hell, you’ve probably never had to practice interpersonal crisis communications. One moment you’re scrolling through Facebook, the next second your friend is describing where she’s hiding her baby. It’s not normal. The threats alone are not normal. The sheer potential for something catastrophic to occur is overwhelming, and often cripples people’s ability to process and cope.
Having spent the week caring for Baby and keeping up our social calendar, there’s still been a lot of time for me to process from the lockdown. In keeping myself sane, I’ve identified what’s been helpful to read and hear, and what hasn’t been helpful to read or hear. I don’t see this list as a how-to on soothing your friend who lived through the threat of a mass shooting (in part because I don’t believe we should have to normalize shooting threats). I see it as reminders of how to express empathy when we are at a loss for our friends.
Listed, without judgment toward the remarks they were inspired by:
- Don’t be cute. I understand being upbeat and positive, but reading “I’m glad you got a lovely tour of the back of the mall” made me wince.
- Don’t be cavalier. Actual conversation:
A: The Baby was amazing, though. She slept through the entire chase and never made a peep!
B: Well of course she did, when you’re on lockdown everyone has to be quiet. - Don’t be hyperbolic with your superficially no good, terrible, very bad day. Multiple people have lamented to me about what a pain in the ass their day/week has been since Saturday, and I just want to ask, “Oh, were you in a lockdown, too?”
- Don’t say nothing when the survivor makes a concerted effort to tell you about their experience. Ouch.
- Don’t fast forward to the finish line and start philosophizing about the societal and political and cultural conditions the incident exemplifies. For the person in the lockdown, this is a personal event. Keep the short condolences micro. Some of us need time before we become your handy anecdote.
- Don’t make it about you. Remember when that deck collapsed in Berkeley, killing six people in 2015? Someone responded to a news article linked on Facebook with something to the effect of: “I was so worried someone I knew was on that deck, but I checked the list and none of them was involved.” – WRONG reaction. WRONG response. (I’ve ignored this person ever since.)
- Just say: I’m glad you’re okay. Maybe we just got out alive, and we just want your acknowledgement that we got out alive.
- Just say: I don’t have the words.
- Then, listen. We just appreciate your time. We don’t need you to solve anything for us. We don’t think you’re our therapist, we just came to you because you’re a friend. We need the practice of not being on edge and interacting without fear. We need friends.
In the end,
I spilled my coffee.
I broke a nail.
My husband came back.
My baby slept.
I hope to never forget this experience, because honestly, I learned a lot. One day, I want all of this to be just a story we tell our daughter, and nothing more.
The Maykazine 