When gun violence touched my life, it shattered more than one person’s body — it broke the sense of safety in our whole community. Healing meant learning to grieve out loud, to turn fear into connection instead of isolation. I began to see how survival wasn’t just personal; it was collective, built in circles of mothers, neighbors, and survivors holding one another up. From that pain grew a kind of grassroots strength — the understanding that community care is the only real antidote to violence.