"Tell Them We're Okay"

Love, Hallie, Evelyn, and William

Hi, and welcome. I record my own voiceovers. It gives you my voice delivering the words I write. At the end, I always play a snippet of a song that spoke to me while writing the piece. The song is linked at the end of every post.

xo - Jeannie

It was Monday morning in Nashville, soon to be afternoon, March 27, 2023.

I didn’t know yet.

My husband Dominick plays drums in a band with his blood brother and chosen brother. They had a show the night before on Sunday. Across the street from the venue where they played, they discovered a Mexican restaurant, Los Toritos, which Dominick claimed had the “best enchiladas he may have ever had” in a text message to me. Other than street tacos from our favorite food trucks, we’ve had trouble finding solid sit-down Mexican restaurants in Nashville. I thought his text was only because he hadn’t had decent Mexican food in a while.

Dominick decided to let me experience it for myself the very next day. I came to a stopping point with work. We drove up and parked a block away for free parallel parking. I looped my arm around his as we walked by the venue where they played just the night before. Now the sun was high in the sky.

I still didn’t know what happened in Nashville that morning.

We walked into the restaurant and they sat us in a nice big booth. I sent off one more work email. I browsed the menu. The second the waiter set down the chips and salsa, I took one look at them and knew right away this place was legitimate. I decided to test them at the highest level and order the chiles rellenos. He took our menus, and I wiggled with delight over the flavor of the fresh salsa and the warm, crispy, salty tortilla chips. I washed them down with my bubbly coke.

Then, I looked up and saw it.

I looked up and saw the red banner at the bottom of the TV mounted above and behind our booth.

SHOOTING….

NASHVILLE…..

THE COVENANT SCHOOL….

I stopped breathing and my eyes welled up with tears uncontrollably, the same way they do when I’m listening to, watching, or telling a horror story. My eye gaze moved from the TV to Dominick. He already knew. I could tell in his eyes. With his voice he said: “Yeah.” I looked back up at the TV, and then down at my phone. I picked it up to look up The Covenant School. I didn’t know what else to do with the information I just learned while sitting in this booth of a Mexican restaurant. The results came up on my phone.

Preschool through sixth grade.

My stomach gripped itself. The welled tears in my eyes became overflowing pools that streamed down my face.

“Again?…Again?…. AGAIN? Why?” I asked Dominick. “How can someone become so far gone? How is it possible for people to become so possessed to do this?”

“KIDS.”

“I know.” Dominick said.

We thought of our nieces and nephews. We thought of our brothers and sisters. We thought of the mothers and fathers of the kids who were shot. We thought of their brothers and sisters. We thought of their aunts and uncles. We thought of their grandparents, their cousins, their friends, their community.

Our community.

I have grieved for my community this week. I felt the grief and sadness in the air. I physically felt the rage in my bones on Thursday only to find out later there were rightful protests happening downtown. I have felt the pounding, raging heart of the Nashville community this week.

I actually came to my writing desk on Friday night with the intention of starting Sunday’s post. I didn’t know what it would be. When I don’t already have a prompt, I’ll often meditate and open myself up to possibility. I opened myself up and the wave of grief came over me again.

My thoughts raced: How could I write about anything else? How I could I write about anything but the crushed hearts of the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends? It might as well have been their own spirit ripped out of them. Who they loved with their whole being was just pulled from their orbit. Gone. How could I write about anything else?

Evelyn, Hallie, William, Katherine, Mike, Cynthia

Those are their names Those are the names of the three 9-year-olds and three school administrators who were shot and killed. Those are their names.

As I contemplated what I would write on Friday night, I was extremely hesitant to write a piece on this event. Quite frankly, I’ve never planned on writing anything about current events, let alone something like this. The more I tried to think of another idea, the more blocked and paralyzed I became. The name of this publication, Seeing Upside Down, is very true to its name in many ways. Something I often do in the writing process is to literally get upside down on the carpet behind my desk chair. There again, on Friday night, I got into a headstand and breathed in ten deep breaths. I closed my eyes.

“Tell them we’re okay.”

I sensed the weightlessness and the stillness. The darkness didn’t scare me away. Quite the contrary, it invited me further in. I took another deep breath. The voice of three kids.

“Tell them we’re okay.”

I opened my eyes. I brought my floating feet back down to the floor. I sat back on my ankles. I knew in that moment what I was to write, and I had no idea how I could do that when I don’t even know them, nor do I know anyone they knew, as far as I’m aware.

They are okay. They are in another dimension now. They are in bliss we could never imagine. Why did they want me to write this?

Maybe they wanted me to write this because they know we are not okay. Maybe they know their dear, loved ones are grieving. They see how many countless others have grieved this same tragedy. In the 13 weeks that have passed so far in 2023, there have been 19 shootings at a school or university in the U.S.

We are not okay.

Throughout my life, I’ve heard many people ask: Why does God allow this to happen?

I was so tired of responses that weren’t answers like: “Well, we live in a fallen world.” That’s not an answer.

I don’t care if you believe in God, Jesus, Buddha, Energy, Mother Nature, Spirit, Universe, Angels, Science, the Self, a Higher Power, or Love itself. Let’s pick one. Let’s pick Love.

It is not Love if it does not give us a choice. It is not Love if we are not free to choose. Love creates us with the same exact powers to create. Love gives us the gift of life. The essence of that life is discovery. From that discovery comes knowledge. True knowledge comes from experience. There is no experience without making choices, CAUSE, and realizing the consequences of those choices, EFFECT. When someone continues to make choices in the same direction, despite the consequences, the associated effect grows, and grows, and grows.

Photo by Tom Wilson on Unsplash

The ones who have passed are okay now.

We are not okay.

What will we choose now? What will our experience be now? What will we create now?

They can see us clearly now from the Cosmos, from Heaven, from El Dorado. Who will we show them we are? Who do we want to be for them?

Who do we want to be?

What kind of person do we want to be? What kind of family do we want to be? What kind of neighborhood do we want to be? What kind of school system do we want to be? What kind of Nashville do we want to be? What kind of country do we want to live in?

When do we realize the lines we’ve drawn on a map don’t keep us from each other? When do we wake up and realize the domino affect, the spiral never ends? We drive the direction it goes.

We drive what we want to create.

Evelyn, Hallie, William, Katherine, Mike, Cynthia were not okay in the last minutes of their life. An uncontrollable wave of millions of deadly dominos going in the same direction came crashing down on them. They were not okay. The fatal wave took them from their human body.

Now, they’re okay. They are no longer in harm’s way. We are.

We are the creators of our life.

Don’t we want to send a message back to the Spirit of our dear loved ones?

Don’t we want to be able to tell them we’re okay too?

What can we do so we can tell them we’re okay?

One person is two people are three people are the collective who must work together to re-create this Earth as long as it ours to keep.

As long as we are human, there is always pain in tragedy. The pain can be so great that is blinds us to the message in tragedy. In the midst of pain this week, I discovered this message. I discovered a call to action in the message. I was called to my first practical action that I was willing to take. I wrote this. I wrote this for the ones we have lost to the stacked dominos, the dominos we ourselves have watched getting stacked, slowly, one in front of the other, ignoring our gut feeling sometimes that it wasn’t going in a direction that leads to life, freedom, and love.

We create the next stack of dominos.

One, by one, by one, by one.

The next action, followed by the next action, followed by the next action.

That sends a message. That sends a message to the ones we love. That sends a message that tells them we’re okay.