FORT WORTH, Texas — You didn't have to be in Uvalde to experience the trauma and grief from the deadly school mass shooting. On May 24, 2022, a gunman fatally shot 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary.
It's the type of trauma Janet Johnston believes every parent may need help with explaining to their children. Johnston is the clinical director for Christian Works for Children in Fort Worth and at the location in Dallas.
"You do need to address it. Whether or not you have to have a lengthy conversation that may depend on your child," said Johnston.
Christian Works for Children specializes in helping people manage grief, especially kids. Both the Fort Worth and Dallas locations have counseling and activity rooms for different age groups.
The faith-based organization also tries to keep counseling services affordable by offering a variety of services for the entire family, children, women and men.
After their annual event in 2022, which touched on grief, the organization received great feedback and decided the 2023 event would focus on the conversations around mass trauma and children.
"It is a community event for families who have experienced a traumatic event by witnessing or having their kids witness a shooting or some type of mass violence," Johnston said. "So, it's going to be an opportunity for the parents to come and listen to a speaker who has helped people."
Johnston recruited licensed grief counselor Ashley Jesse for a free workshop called "How to talk to children about mass violence."
Jesse is the program manager of grief education at the Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas in San Antonio. She specializes in working with children and teenagers who are dealing with anxiety, grief, depression and trauma that is connected to a tragedy.
"If those things are not dealt with, it can manifest into problems like depression and anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder," said Jesse.
Jesse has trained the counselors helping Uvalde residents after their mass violence incident. Just like many parents across Texas, she has faced questions from her daughter about mass violence.
"I remember picking my daughter up from school that day and telling myself, you know, how do I talk to her about this and how do I talk to any child about this?" Johnston recalled. "She's eight, seven at the time. I told her there was a really bad thing that happened today."
Jesse then shared the conversation she had with her daughter.
"'Did you hear about it at school?' She said, 'No, What happened?' I said there was a shooting and this man shot and killed two teachers and multiple children. And she said, 'Did they die?' I said, 'Yeah, there were a lot that died, but there were some kids that survived.' And she said, 'I don't want to go back to school,'" said Jesse.
As a mother, Jesse assured her daughter that she would keep her safe.
Although it happened last year, Jesse explained the impact remains.
When asked, "Does trauma have an expiration date?"
Jesse said, "No, it doesn't."
"There's no expiration date. Trauma stays with a person really and truly for their entire lives," Jesse continued.
The free grief workshop will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 1 at Southside Church of Christ on Hemphill Street in Fort Worth.
Johnston and Jesse always welcome parents to their organization who would like to talk about how to handle mass trauma conversations outside of the event.
"I think every parent needs to be prepared to respond because of what we've seen, because of what we've witnessed across America," said Johnston.
The services offered by Christian Works at both the Fort Worth and Dallas locations can be found at https://www.christian-works.org/. You can learn more about The Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas at https://cbcst.org/.