Reflections After MSU’s Mass Shooting

This is a long post — turned article — primarily to my fellow Spartan community.

I am writing in an effort to sleep a little clearer tonight.

I want this post — and any comments on it — to serve as a source of restoration and solidarity for those hurting.

We are tired and tender and under-resourced in supporting each other. This is collective pain so we need collective support. This is not a post to generate political discourse (that will come.) This is an ask for deep compassion.

☀️🦋 Part 1 — Witnessing

MSU experienced a mass shooting on Monday night. There are currently 3 students whose lives have been stolen, 5 who have been hospitalized from their injuries and thousands who have been traumatized.

Some considerations for those who were not in proximity: The shooter was on the loose for 4 hours (8:30 pm we got alerts, 12:30 am we got confirmation he was dead.)

During those 4 hours, our city was as connected as it could be via police scanners, alerts and text messages but those hours were also filled with rumors and misinformation that invigorated the terror — rumors such as there being 3–4 shooters and explosives in specified locations. Campus was entirely on lockdown. During the 4 hours we had limited information as to where or how the shooter(s) were moving or the scale of the operation. Most people on campus were barricaded in rooms and halls in waiting/hiding.

I happen to be in town right now. I was 5 minutes from campus and the sound of sirens and helicopters …paired with the misinformation …paired with the updates from people stuck on campus …paired with the sinking grief of being unofficially told our nation’s cancer (which was bound to spread) had finally made its way here, our home — made this an incredibly long 4 hours.

☀️🦋 Part 2 — Supporting

For those who want to support a loved one, consideration: You can ask if they would like to share what these 4 hours were like for them, and if they say yes, give them the room to speak.

Obviously the suffering is in extraordinarily varied degrees depending on if you were in the room or you directly lost a loved one, but no one goes unaffected in a situation like this. Overall, giving someone the room to talk about the visceral details surrounding a traumatic event can (for some) give easy access to reflecting openly on the painful parts that are much easier to put words to than the emotional wounding.

If someone says no to talking, let them know you will still be here to listen if their answer changes.

It’s natural to want to talk after traumatic events but not know how. Receiving a genuine offer for support can make it easier to call when the moment comes.

Accept that your loved one is a victim right now. That does not make them any less strong, beautiful, or victorious. It just means they were at the mercy of someone else’s aggression and violence, and a Weapon’s instantaneous capacity to remove the most precious thing they have — their life. They/I/we may or may not have grappled with thoughts so severe yet. It may take time to hit and the thoughts are so unsettling our bodies may be doing everything we can to block them out.

When/if your loved one does feel ready to share, give them room to reflect — from the moment of the first alerts, to the moment of the final police report, to the moment they slept that night (if able to). For someone in the room or building of the shooting, I can only imagine the weight of every micro-detail. Remember that the greatest emotional/spiritual pain is not in the details alone — it is in the incredibly challenging grappling that comes after (with life itself, with who we are, with what we’re capable of, with our safety, with society and the institutions set to protect us, and of course with the dis-ease held in our own bodies).

(I share this section because it took me 3 years to speak some of the most brutal, grotesque details of my brother’s death. I don’t know if I would have been ready before that but I know true release for me has not come until I did.)

☀️🦋 Part 3— Grappling

Arriving to campus yesterday for the vigil, passing Sparty statue with flowers fanning out all around and the sky a brutal Michigan gray immediately made me sob. MSU made me who I am. It also is now the campus that took away my favorite person 3.5 years ago. This will be a new ache rushing through me on the banks of the irreplaceable red cedar river.

But this ache, rather than isolating me, connects us all.

Pulling up to Erickson … walking over to the rock which was similarly covered in flowers with 3 crosses next to it … crowds of students … those closest to the rock down on one knee … hundreds if not thousands gathered in relative silence … the comfort of Governor Whitmer and Coach Izzo‘s vulnerability … was cathartic

…and also there was a sense of hollowness of hearing words as a young person listening to attempt after attempt at consolation, wondering underneath how to feel okay in a world we know the aged leaders can do little to get us through.

So I came home filled with anger and I have felt sad all day.

This is what it feels like right now:

The veil is very thin…

…the walls between the material and spiritual dimensions of life, translucent…

…The emotional wound is fleshy and unhealed and doesn’t know what it needs.

Emotional wounds take consciousness to heal, and with that, tender and safe containers to experience those immense emotions. How do we create those when the fabric of society is embedded with profiting from violence?

The un-concealable vulnerability in all this is uncomfortable and scary and for me results in shortness of speech, edginess, anger, and the desire to withdraw.

And I know now there are other ways, that’s why I’m choosing to write.

🙏🦋 Part 4 — Opening

I’m in a trauma-healing coaching program right now and there’s something I’ve learned in just my elementary beginnings that I would like to share here.

With trauma, it’s not just about the event that happened but about how we were treated after the fact.

Two people can get hit by a car but whether or not the injury kills you depends on the aftercare.

Emotional aftercare is trickier and more nuanced than physical (and we know how tricky physical care is.) Try to imagine the mental world paralleling the physical world in its complexity.

It’s okay that we can’t always reach each other on the first (or second, or third) try. But don’t give up. Keeping checking in. Don’t give up on people who are hurting. Don’t assume someone’s experience.

☀️🦋 Part 5— Reaching Out

Imagine the complexity of one persons mental world then zoom out and pair it to our collective consciousness and you get two things:

1) Something infinitely more complex and
2) Something infinitely more …capable …

So I’m making this post to try to start connecting our collective mind, and our collective heart. Pain shouldn’t be the only time we sense that but it’s here now.

We at MSU are collectively hurting right now. And I don’t know exactly what will help, I just want to say:

We need tenderness, we need connection, we need vulnerability.

We need space to be terrified, angry, and sad.

We need a village.

🙏 Please, be our village.

We won’t be able to stop mass shootings without changes in policy but that road is going to take time and labor. As a start, we will need to regain energy to put in that time and labor — we will need the energy across parties. Addressing gun violence is not a single party issue no matter how polarized it may seem. (Meaning this issue doesn’t begin or end with politics though fundamental change needs to happen there— it also is a question of the fundamentals of our society — how we relate, what we build, what we fund, what we think we’re protecting and defending and how, what it requires to do so, who that takes, and how… as a start).

But as I said, this is not the post for discussing gun policy — this is the post for acknowledging that building a less violent society will take time and energy and investment.

And right now, we’re just witnessing that pitfall of what is.

🙏 Please remind us we are not alone and you see us. Please help us preserve dignity and strength in the midst of feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

☀️🦋 Part 6— Looking Ahead

I have been anticipating a mass shooting here for years, not because I want to but because when you leave the US and look in, its cancers become more evident.

And if there is one quality of cancer unaddressed it’s how territorial it can be.

Cancer unaddressed spreads.

I’m not a nationalist in any way, but if there’s one thing I know about this nation it is, for better or worse — we are relentless.

So here is a challenge now:

Let’s be relentless in tenderly and deeply loving on the communities where unchecked violence and aggression met with easy access to lethal weapons has led to terrorism and the destruction of innocent life.

Let’s be relentless in loving on these communities so we can better sit with this complex pain and start to learn from each other, grow in understanding and preparedness, and ultimately build networks of support informed and active in creating a different reality for our children.

☀️🙏 Part 7— Buffering

A pastor at the vigil quoted the biblical passage “There’s a time for everything.“ I think that was an incredibly bold choice of passage at a gun violence vigil.

There is never, ever, in my humble opinion a time for the unnecessary, immediate destruction of human life at the hands of a single sick, trigger-happy individual. I understand that’s not exactly what he was implying — but why are we comfortable with slogans, performance and blind traditions at times like this?

If there is ever time to rethink our words, philosophies and foundations for truth it is in the wake of crisis.

And I am going to work toward that and I’m going to reject and say no to a lot of bullshit along the way. If we are cold, angry or un-receiving, know we may be internally trying to buffer ourselves in the wake of feeling deeply untrustworthy of others.

For those of us who want to work toward a more just, liberated, unhateful, non-violent world we have to relentlessly work through self-deception and delusion to change. That work will not end, nor get less tricky.

To see the transformation of this current time in US history — we will need to be courageous enough to feel this pain. We will have to be truthful. And we will have to listen to ourselves and to the moment as it speaks.

☀️🙏 Part 8— Witnessing

If you have read this far, please fill this post with your loving embrace, your encouragement, and your wisdom about the power and potentiality of facing pain and truth — two thing different friends empowered me in today.

Encourage us, empower us. We don’t need your sympathy — this is our social reality as a country and it is not changing any time soon.

We need your humble and brave witnessing of us, and your encouragement as we evolve out of this suffering. Because it is on us, as young people, to go on to make a world the gun and law makers today will not live to see.

I am going to speak for myself only now and say: I am writing this post because I also need support. I feel sad. I feel scared of feeling out of control. I feel dizzy at the little power I have to protect myself against lethal weapons. I feel tired.

I also feel scared we as Spartans will think this is only about us or we as Americans will think this is only about us.

Mass shootings are a uniquely American problem but being alive in the world at a time humankind’s greatest potential and greatest capacity for self-destruction — are both blossoming — is a uniquely 21st-century experience.

I feel deep anticipation, for what could be possible if we’re brave enough to find love and truth in the midst of this — not this single mass shooting, but through this era of regular self-inflicted massacre across the nation. How can we not grow desensitized along the way?

☀️🦋 Part 9— Remembering

Lastly, this is a short ode to the Union, one of two buildings the shooter opened fire at.

Last week I went to the MSU Union study lounge (formerly the Women’s Lounge) — a place that has served me in times of solitude, solace and reflection during many different challenging times at MSU.

It was a heavy day and I just needed to be alone.

I stayed in the lounge from 2 pm until midnight when the Union closes processing some fresh family issues — I wrote, I slept, I cried. I went to Spartys and stocked up on food and was asked, “Combo?“ “Nope.” Sadly, no student ID to swipe, I’ll have to pay with good old cash money.

It felt reminiscent and homey. I have had dates and dance parties, homework sessions, group projects, and staff celebrations at this building. I’ve gotten lost on computers designing for hours in the basement and second floor computer lab. I taught yoga at the engagement center. I’ve re-organized the Mosaic office. I used to host MRULE round table discussions in the multipurpose room every Monday night my senior year. I have wept on phone calls. I read on couches. I’ve listened to friends play piano. I’ve eaten too much Dairy Store ice cream (when it was still there) and just last week I spent over an hour just talking to the desk-person at the MSUFCU inside.

One building, many purposes. Many years of memories as a student and worker when I return home and work with the Mosaic Multicultural Unity Center.

By the time I left the Union last week — I’d written over 40 pages in my journal. Sitting in the desk light hearing the clock tower chime and writing filled me with memories of processing there in past. I felt so at ease and so grateful that there was a quiet place to be, a place I almost purely loved.

This past Monday, I conducted two interviews on the second floor, in the exact same room I originally had my own ICA interview in in 2015. I had no idea when I walked out of there that day I would no longer get to come back to it untainted by senseless terror. That this building would be a crime scene.

I don’t know how much of the US will have to be touched by gun violence before we make changes to our culture and laws.

I know this is a long-haul fight so for today at least….

🙏 Please love on those of us who have been in closest proximity that we might get to feel our pain as fully as we need. I hope my words offer some window into the complexity of what we are going through.

Tiredly, in process, and with love,

Libby Hoffman
February 17, 2023 4:40 am