In the Face of Heartbreak, a Sandy Hook Action Path

The following was submitted by Scarsdale resident Sharon Dizenhuz a former reporter and anchor on New York 1 News and a mother of children in the Scarsdale schools: Like so many of you, I cannot stop thinking about this devastating horror in Connecticut. As a mother, my heart returns again and again to the excruciating agony we all feel for the tiny little lives snuffed out, the milestones missed, and the searing pain of the parents who have lost their beloved babies. But as a journalist, my head keeps asking...what is the "Week in Review" story here? what is the "Takeaway"?

Certainly, it is not the tragic shipwreck of HE WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS. With his murderous rampage, he forfeited his right to our attention. He does not deserve the repugnant sort of de facto glorification attendant to being among the worst kind of "biggest losers". The lead, the real story here, is much bigger than one sad genius with a screw loose. It is all the steps along the way from pubescent pocket-protector geek, to executioner during which we as a society might have interceded, during which we let him down, and by default, during which we laid bare our cherished children and the cherished children of our neighbors.

There are so many factors that we need to take into account as we try to absorb the shock of this horror, move forward, and attempt to make sense of the senseless. And the answers are not any one of the many pat, reflexive, reactive responses being spewed all around the blogosphere.

It seems to me that we need to take a step back and do some work to rejigger our national culture (which glorifies violence and celebrity, and then accords a twisted kind of dark fame to those who perpetrate epically destructive violent acts).

We need to revisit our childrearing values (which currently tacitly embrace texting-- shorthand Morse code of sorts on digital devices as the primary form of human contact for so many young developing minds and hearts. How many young people are even comfortable having a conversation from the heart with another person while actually looking them in the eye these days? Precious few. But heart to heart and face to face is how we connect as human beings. This is how we stave off loneliness and isolation, and a sense of hopelessness that can spin out of control in the non-resilient. We need to get back to talking face to face to our fellow humans on meaningful topics. Voice to voice. Person to person. We need to get back to talking.....AND listening. And yes, you should pardon the expression for any koom-ba-ya associations it might have for you.....hugging. Text messages, aims, bbms, etc have nothing on the good old healing touch as a salve for the splintered soul.

We need to reconsider our sense of community (sorely lacking in our winner-take-all individualist society) and to teach our children the importance of collaboration, coping with frustration, building resilience, encouraging the willingness to take good risks and try new ways of learning without giving in to crippling fear of failure. Independent thinking and the capacity for collaboration are strong paths to success, and a track record of success builds the kind of confidence an unemployed 20 year-old dropout living with Mom doesn't tend to have.

We need to seriously revamp our regulations of gun control (where an affluent, affable, mah-johng-playing garden-loving single mom in the exurbs with a mentally ill adult son in residence can still buy a cache of semi-automatic weapons and not be required to keep them off-premises and under lock and key.) If it did not occur to this ostensibly bright and well-educated woman that having an arsenal within reach of her irate and irrational tinderbox of a son was a bad idea, then perhaps it shouldn't have been up to her to decide if she needed all that firepower.

And finally, we need to create a true community, a VILLAGE (to turn a phrase....), where a family with a child who is smart but at-risk, angry, and in desperate need of a diagnosis and an action plan can seek or, if need be, be encouraged to seek the kind of help that keeps a future serial killer from slipping through the cracks. We need to work to remove the stigma of mental illness so that treating it can be regarded as simply and directly as treating any other disorder, so simmering cauldrons don't overflow. We need to educate parents and teachers to recognize warning signs, and create a culture where both are comfortable taking steps to address them before a warning sign becomes obvious only in retrospect.

This is way, way, bigger than simple gun control.

I heard a report today that, at most, half of the guns that are sold in this country are sold through the "proper" and conventional legal channels. This means that even if the regulations were to change, it would be virtually irrelevant to the firearms market unless the whole gun show and black market pieces of the equation were somehow reduced to irrelevance. That means a culture change. Regulations can't fix that alone. Before we even think about that, we need to step back and figure out how to shift that whole firearms economic model, so the black market's market share becomes negligible. I do not know the answer to that one. Still, I couldn't help but feel grateful today to those two churches in New York that opened their doors to the city's "200 dollars back/no questions asked" program for the return of guns. I know their efforts are a drop in the bucket. But it is a start.

We need to educate parents and educators about spotting mental illness, and how and when to take steps to move toward helping and healing those who are struggling with it. We need to set up a legal system to address this before laws are broken and lives are cut short. We need to do all these things and more.... because we can no longer afford to put anyone's beloved children at risk. Because we owe it to the shattered families in Sandy Hook to help make SOMETHING positive come out of this crippling loss. I am reminded of the blog making the rounds on the internet today, written by Liza Long, (originally published in The ANARCHIST SOCCER MOM ) the brave, clear-eyed mother of a brilliant, violent, mentally ill son who is at a loss for how to help him and protect those around her. "When I asked my son's social worker for help, she said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. "If he's back in the system, they'll create a paper trail," he said. "That's the only way you're ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you've got charges... I don't believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael's sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn't deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population. With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation's largest treatment centers in 2011. No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options."

This is our mission. We need to work together to create options for our society. We need to make MENTAL health care just as much a priority as physical health.

We cannot take away the bottomless pain of the families in Sandy Hook, no matter how much we want to. But, in addition to keeping these families in our hearts and minds this season, we owe it to them to take action, to do our level best to see that no one else need ever endure the agony that faces them in the long cold winter ahead.