From me to you.

There is a very specific, visceral reaction I have to reading the death toll of a mass shooting. It feels a bit like nausea. It feels like my heart, lungs, and upper digestive tract are cringing. It causes me to double over in discomfort and makes my arms tingle. It becomes unavoidable to recall a bright, cold day 14 years ago now, when snow flurries mingled with Callery pear blossoms in the air. And all I can do is hope that someday fewer people will know what this feels like. Fewer people will know what it feels like to fold over onto yourself in an effort to hold in the pain and keep out the rest of the world. Fewer people will know what it's like to feel a hollowness begin in your middle and radiate out to your limbs, just because of a headline you read.

But that means we'll have to actually make a change. It has never been too soon to discuss ways to fix our problem with guns, with racism, with mental illness, and with misogyny in this country. It has, in fact, always been a little too late.