No attempt, a poem, May 20, 2018

No attempt was made to save her life.

Everyone knew he was troubled.
Wearing a trench coat for a year
Hiding his shame before his guns,
His self-loathing and rage after being
Bullied, beaten up far too often.

She had befriended him, trying
To be an open, caring person,
Until he misread her signals and cues.
She had broken his heart without
Even knowing it.

Until he shot her dead inside the school.

There she learned all there is to know
About life and death, love and sacrifice.
He on the other hand didn’t have the courage
To kill himself after murdering so many others.
No courage at all to turn the gun on himself.

No one tried to stop him, they all thought
It was just a fire drill, staying glued to their phones
As they wandered outside the school building
Only to learn later of the havoc, the horror
10 people dead, 10 wounded.

It is time to talk about guns. It has been time for so long.

How many more children, how many people need to die
Before we say,

STOP.

We will not allow our children
To go to school scared that the next shooter will be
One of them, when that kid has just had enough
And goes out with a bang and no whimper.

When will we protect the children,
Who are slain so damn often, cut off at the knees
Before they have a chance to live?
Who will stop the shooters if we don’t do something
Really drastic to keep guns out of these shooters’ hands?

No real attempt has been made to save any of their lives.

Loneliness: a need for Connection and Community

Loneliness can be deadly. Loneliness is a looming problem in our highly technological American society. If people don’t die from loneliness, they sometimes appear to walking around dead inside, or silently starving for connection and community. Sometimes, lonely people hurt others.

Loneliness has probably been around for as long as people have but it may be getting worse, more prevalent and more pervasive.

Why does loneliness occur? For as many reasons as there are people. Some suffer from traumatic backgrounds, families sometimes acting more dysfunctional than a Gothic horror movie. As a psychotherapist, I see many lonely people even from good families, some who suffer with anxiety and depression, crippling them at times. The stigma of mental illness often keeps people at home, unable or unwilling to attempt to deal with their distress.  But worse is the lack of available and affordable services, making getting help nearly impossible for some.

What are the answers to solving the loneliness crisis in our nation? Not only funding expert mental health services for all people in our society but even when services are found, loneliness is not just an individual problem with an individual solution.  It is a problem with connection and community as well.

I propose that all healthcare providers not only screen their patients for cancer, STI’s and other medical issues, but screen them also for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and loneliness. Health care systems need to help patients find access to services instead of just starting them on psychiatric medications without offering or recommending counseling, 12 step programs, or psychotherapy as options as well.  Although many health care providers strongly support counseling for their patients, oftentimes follow through is difficult.

Many other problems in our country and around the world can be better managed when people have access to counseling for individuals, couples, families and organizations. Excellent counseling targets a wealth of problems like obesity, alcohol and drug dependence, gambling, compulsive porn behaviors, violence, and how badly some people treat each other. Issues like sexism, genderism, ageism, racism, and religious bias are rampant.

People are not flocking to churches these days and many human needs are not being met in our mobile world where nuclear families are geographically and emotionally distant from their extended families, long term friends and often from financial security. We Americans have many needs for connecting with each other and within ourselves in all sorts of ways, including spiritually, emotionally, physically, intellectually, vocationally, and more.  The time to work on this problem is now and we are the ones to do it.

Please reach out to anyone you know who seems alone, lonely, or distressed and help them explore possible services available to them. Let’s also create more affordable and available services so that we can support human, family and community growth, becoming a society full of connected, committed and healthy individuals working together to create more peace and harmony in our world.