Thanks for writing! I finished the transcription for your post.

As you can probably tell, I'm stalking you through all your blog posts now. haha. I'm writing from Australia so hearing about the shooting here, I would have thought it is a little easier to distance ourselves from the horror, to a degree. We still feel the tragedy as our own though I think, we have similar cultures & identify with the U.S. on many levels and we feel the heartbreak of all those involved, it does still touch us all in some way. I still hear the voice of a mother that I heard on the radio when I was in the car as the news was breaking, she was distraught, crying & saying she didn't know where her 2 year old baby was - that goes straight to a mother's heart & the pain stays there. I never heard any update on her.

I had actually planned to take my 2 boys to watch the movie on the weekend following the shooting & had decided it was silly to not follow through with our plans because they were excited about going. I must admit though... sitting there with my 2 children beside me & staring at the screen, I found myself thinking about what those poor people had gone through in the same circumstances. I'd even gone so far as to make a little escape plan in my mind in the off chance that there was any possibility it could happen again & that's a reaction from the other side of the world, from an emotionally stable person. I'm also a psychology student so I found myself processing the tragedy from many angles (how it has, and will continue to effect the shooters loved ones, the loved ones of the victims, the survivors and even people not directly connected to the incident and of course, what was going on in the mind of the shooter himself - what any of us could have done to prevent it). It's a tragedy; a far reaching one. Something else I'd like to say to you about those around you, sometimes making jokes is a way for people to cope, we all have our own ways of dealing with things so I hope you didn't take their reactions too much to heart. Take care of you.

Nicki