- [Announcer] "Flatland in Focus" is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation, and RSM.

- Good Evening, Kansas City.

Welcome back to "Flatland in Focus."

I'm your host D. Rashaan Gilmore, and tonight we'll be talking about the power of resilient communities and how they can help us to heal from traumatic events.

(lo-fi upbeat music) This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the tragic 2014 shooting at the Jewish Community Center in the Village Shalom Retirement Community in Overland Park, Kansas.

This act of violence inspired by hate and antisemitism claimed the lives of three people that day, William Corporon, Terri Lamanno, and 14-year-old, Reat Underwood.

As part of the Kansas City PBS Special "Healing Hate," we followed the journey of a family member of two of those victims, Mindy Corporon, as she turns the pain of that day into an annual opportunity for all of us to come together to promote kindness in an event series known as Seven Days.

And for this episode, we also spoke to others who experienced some of the trauma of that day and how they are looking towards community support as a means of helping them to heal.

- It's for Terri, Dad and Reat, and that their lives were taken.

They weren't intended to be taken.

It could have been anybody.

I mean, the shooter was aiming for anyone who could have been there, but it was them.

And we're gonna try to carry on their legacies and help other people and then help our community come together.

- Students that age, adolescents, death isn't a part of what they think about on a daily basis.

When the news first hit, I'm thinking in regards of, I've just lost a student.

I'm thinking in regards of our community.

Our high school community is going to go through something horrible.

But I'm also sitting there with a daughter who's sobbing and trying to understand what's just happened to a friend.

You know, I deal with kids in only four-year stints.

Everything is potential to them.

Nothing here is their end marker.

So when it does become an end marker for someone, it's almost a slap in the face to them.

You know, it's a stolen potential.

You know, the only thing we try to do is get through it together.

- So I was at the JCC on April 13th for a board meeting.

The room that we had reserved was locked over by the white theater specifically, so backs up directly to that parking lot.

We ended up relocating upstairs to a different conference room.

And I got a call from my dad and he told me that there had been a shooting.

Some people called their parents to say goodbye.

Other people, you know, just kind of stood and processed outside those walls.

We didn't know if, you know, how many shooters there were, if they had entered the building.

It's hard to put into words what that day, you know, really means to me.

And I was a freshman in high school and that is a really interesting age to go through something so traumatic.

- That night moved so fast and there was a memorial instantly that evening.

And I remember Mindy just giving this incredibly strong speech at that memorial.

A lot of us wanted to follow Mindy's lead.

- And I want you all to know that we're gonna have more life and I want you all to have more life.

And just know that he'll be remembered and my dad will be remembered and love one another.

I got to tell both of them today that I loved them.

I was the last person in the family who saw them.

And I can't tell you how much it helps to see other people.

- That night after the shooting, a handful of my friends, we all gathered at someone's house.

Someone had the idea to do a walk.

And ultimately that is the walk that they do every year that led into Mindy's work with Seven Days.

- I want you to consider, what do you hold most dear?

We cannot change the past.

We can't change what happened five minutes ago.

We cannot change what happened 10 years ago.

But what we can do is each day we go forward, we can make a choice to be kind.

(audience applauding) The themes are love, discover, others, connect, you, go, onward.

Those are the Seven Days themes and the colors and the branding, it's all very fun.

And it's about kindness.

So we are in, right now, 22 school districts in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and we're also in 13 states.

So a lot of kindness resources.

(audience cheering) - Mainstream pediatrics is really leaning into this relational health model.

It's to reframe trauma as, listen, this is not, it happens to be what happened to you, but it's not your destiny.

A lot of times this early childhood stuff and the damage or the way kids are wired in a way that becomes dysfunctional happens within relationships, right?

It happens within a family, it happens within a relationship to community.

And the important part of moving forward, it has to be healed in relationship.

- I really relied on my rabbi at the time, Rabbi (indistinct), really just helped me grasp, you know, what had unfolded.

One thing that I did to cope in the wake of a lot of these mass shootings was to write down my feelings 'cause I was deeply struggling with survivor's guilt and I didn't know it for years.

Around the five-year anniversary of the shooting, I titled it to Mindy.

I wanted Mindy to know that people were still thinking about what happened in Kansas City all these years later.

And so I sent her this letter.

We met up for coffee on a trip back to Kansas City and we laughed, we cried, we've been friends ever since.

And so, Mindy has been such a light in my life and has been a tremendous source of healing and strength and has really encouraged me to turn a lot of this pain into purpose, which ultimately was what I was struggling with at the time.

- We as creatures have many protective mechanisms, but one of the big ones is the sympathetic nervous system.

The traditional way of thinking about, it's fight or flight or freeze.

We don't talk about something called the affiliate response, and that's this notion that if you are threatened, what you do is you seek anything that's protective by affiliating with some others, with some other strength or creature.

That is a response we're trying to promote, this idea of affiliation as a response to trauma and creating those safe, stable, nurturing relationships, 'cause they matter.

- Ultimately, the act that day was to silence Jewish people.

And if anything, that had the complete opposite reaction.

Seeing the Jewish community come together as a whole, but also the community in Kansas City just rally around these different faith groups has been really, really wonderful.

- The best way to love and be loved and feel peace and hope and joy is to care for ourselves and care for others as they want to be cared for.

- I know Reat would be proud of you.

I know Papa would be proud of you, so thank you for being a great role model for me and being the best mother you possibly can be.

(audience applauding) - Welcome back to the studio for the roundtable discussion.

With me today is Mindy Corporon, Founder of Seven Days and Author of "Healing a Shattered Soul."

Rabbi Doug Alpert, leader of Kol Ami, a Congregation of Radical Inclusion.

And Patty Davis, a Social Worker and Program Manager of Trauma-Informed Care at Children's Mercy Hospital.

And I really wanna start with you, Mindy, and ask you, you know, throughout your journey, and this has not been an easy 10 years, I imagine, right?

But throughout your journey, what would you say gave you the strength to process your own healing from this significant loss?

- My faith was extremely important to me.

I immediately knew that my father and son were in heaven.

I just had that knowledge.

But also I was raised by a physician who was extremely pragmatic and I happened to have that life experience and grow up with that.

So I know that that was part of the catalyst to help me understand that I needed to heal myself to be able to help heal my family.

- Can you take us to the moment where you realized that your life would forever be changed?

What thoughts specifically, if you can recall, were going through your mind?

- Well, I had two very specific moments.

So initially I found my dad deceased in the Jewish Community Center parking lot.

So that was the initial moment of our lives have significantly changed, but you can't comprehend it in the two minutes or 30 seconds that you see it.

And then I found Reat, I knew that he had been, I realized later that he had been shot.

It took a while to understand that and comprehend it, but we lost him within 30 minutes of me finding him.

So he lost his heartbeat in the ambulance and the enormity of that hit, and you know it's enormous, but you have no idea the life altering exponential changes that will happen.

And it has been, it has been life altering and exponential.

And I know what we're gonna get into, I think is really important because we had to heal ourselves, the three of us that were left, and then including my mom and brothers, but my husband, my son Lucas and I, and we all healed differently and Lucas was a 12-year-old boy.

So there was all that nuances that we had to take into consideration.

- And see, I think that's part of the challenge that we often don't really consider, Patty, that sometimes you can be directly influenced by what you see, you experience the trauma, the hurt, the pain, the tragedy, but you may not even be there and you can feel it similarly as well.

And so I wonder what your thoughts might be on how, obviously, Mindy was there and she's watching this happen, but there are others who are even outside of that who are observing from a very different perspective even, how are we meant to process these traumas?

- Well, with each other, I would say is the first answer for that, we don't have to go through these things alone.

So I love in hearing Mindy's story that she did that with her faith, that was the first thing that she shared.

So right away she wasn't alone.

And then she knew that her family was around her and I know that she also had community connections as well.

So we can process this, we need to talk about it.

We need to talk about things that are upsetting and scary, maybe uncomfortable for others.

We need to find the folks that we can talk about that with that will be okay hearing our story and hearing our hurt.

And when someone goes through a tragedy, others are affected as well.

And so finding those that want to connect with us and to keep that healing process going together can be really helpful.

I loved Mindy's story just in the three persons she mentioned left in their family, they all healed differently.

They all had a different process.

And that's part of the human experience.

So we won't expect that everyone will have the same experience from the same event and they're gonna process that differently.

And I think having that respect for each other and what they need and helping them get what they need when they need it is important.

In 2018, you helped to facilitate the vigil that occurred after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

What's the direct effect of holding that space for a community to come together and what did it mean for you to be a part of that?

And if I may add on, how does that impact, or how did it impact your work here?

- Well, there's the very personal side of that experience, and then the very massively communal side of that experience.

And on the personal side, my wife was Pittsburgh born and raised.

Much of her extended family still lives in Pittsburgh, very active in the Jewish community in Pittsburgh.

So there was that connection.

But on a more communal level, I think it's both, as Patty talked about coming together as community and sharing pain and sharing the trauma, even though we are all wired differently and we process grief in very differently ways, so there is that part.

And I think Mindy, what you've done, which is what I think is just extraordinary and so much benefit to the community, is as you process your own pain and try and work through it, you also are reaching out to recognize the pain of others.

And I think about this because Passover is coming up and we talk about our own experience being enslaved and in bondage, but the main message is about not oppressing the stranger in our midst because we know the experience.

- I mean, you said the people, much of what Mindy, her point, that people experience it differently.

How do we process that trauma differently and how do we tap into our own individual resilience?

- I think that's a good question.

I think it's something that we're really trying to continue to figure out today in the world of media being 24/7.

- [D. Rashaan] And is that part the problem?

- I'm gonna throw out there that the exposure to trauma we know is a problem.

The higher your exposure and the closer your proximity to trauma, we know scientifically tells us that's not helpful.

And in today's world, when our children have these little TVs in their hands, so to speak, and they can see traumatic things so closely and oftentimes without their parent present.

So I do think there's an exposure to trauma that's higher than it used to be.

And we're trying to figure that piece out.

- So it's really an issue of both perhaps volume and frequency.

- [Patty] Absolutely.

- Rabbi Alpert, of course, Mindy mentioned the role that faith played in her ability to accept what had happened and to begin to process it.

What would you say to the viewer of this program who is struggling to, as this tenure anniversary is upon us, whether they were there or not, they knew someone or just knowing that it even happened, how does faith fit in with processing through trauma like Patty was just describing?

- I think one, it absolutely connects us as a community and we immediately, if we are part of a faith community, we are part of a community.

How Jews, how Jewish tradition, how Jewish law works through the grief process, it's a pretty specific kind of timeline.

So no matter how you're feeling and it makes room for however you feel, it's the first thing I tell a family going through a grief process is you get to feel however you feel, and nobody should tell you that you need to feel this way or that way, but it does give you a process by which to work through it.

First, the community comes to you for seven days and then you are really compelled to go out into the community to say a specific prayer, to mourn loss, and all that leads you kind of in, I think in a more healthy direction.

- Well, and you actually teed that up for me just perfectly because I want to ask Mindy about the Seven Days and how the process of healing manifested for you and the work that you do now in Seven Days and the strategies that you hope to bring to leaders in the workplace.

How are you able to kind of help leaders to prepare much less to cope after the fact?

- So Seven Days, the foundation, we focus on training young leaders.

So youth, we focus on our Kindness Youth Leadership Team and helping them become kindness influencers.

So we have two channels specifically with Seven Days, the foundation.

And that is we pull youth in, they're high school students, freshmen through senior in high school.

They're from all over the metropolitan area.

And right now we're reaching 22 school districts, including- - Which is amazing.

- Thank you.

Including private and public and homeschooled.

So we have a lot of variety of students that we're reaching and so we pour into them and we, go ahead, we're offering them resources.

- Well, I'm just curious, what is the response from students?

Do they feel like it fits for them?

Do they feel like it's applicable to their lives?

And does it run counter, do you think, to some of the things that Patty was talking about that you see on social media?

So much of this- - Well the Kindness Youth Leadership Team that I'm speaking of specifically, they apply to be part of the Seven Days Kindness Youth Leadership Team.

So for some whatever reason, their personal reason is, they have decided to apply.

So that's our KYLT.

And then we have a mentoring program for them from September through May.

So that's how we work with those students.

And we teach philanthropy, volunteerism, project management.

We give them life skills and regarding social media, we work with them on being kindness influencers.

So a play on social media that we actually have had professionals come in and talk to them about what antisemitism in particular, what anti-Black in particular will look like on social media so that they start to understand it at a young age instead of just going on with something, liking something, you know, hearting something, sharing something that they really don't understand.

And we work to give them confidence in what they say and do on social media.

- You lost your son... - [Mindy] 14, he was 14.

- Reat was 14.

- And a freshman in high school.

- And now you're taking that tragedy and your loss, your family's loss, your community's loss and sharing that with students to help them be better.

What is that like for you?

- It's healing for me.

It is a process of healing.

I wanted something good to come from the tragedy.

I knew my dad, you know, personally and intimately, and I knew Reat personally and intimately.

I didn't know Terri Lamanno until later and who she was.

But all three people who lost their lives were extremely good humans.

They were already doing good things in the world and they were all three going to continue.

And so I felt immediately a responsibility and gratitude for what they had offered me in my life.

And I wanted to be able to exponentially help other people feel that as well.

So I will also tell you selfishly, when my heart hurts, I know I need to be giving more and that is what I do.

- It makes me feel like there is healing for ourselves in healing others.

Is that what resiliency is, Patty?

I mean, because what I want to get at is what are the ways in which we can begin to process, even identify the factors that really are impacting the trauma that we're feeling or have experienced and how we work through it.

- It is absolutely a part of it.

So just like we have a ton of science to explain traumatic stress and traumatic exposure and what happens, we have a ton of science to talk about resilience factors and how we can get there and how we can build that up.

One of the things that I talk a lot with parents when I'm meeting with them and their children is that in the medical world and other teaching facilities, they talk about see one, do one, teach one.

And I feel like that's part of what Mindy is describing is she went through her process, and I don't wanna speak for her, but kids that I work with go through their process, we teach them the skill sets and then they start to practice the skill sets and then they wanna teach others those skill sets because they wanna give back to others that could be in pain from a different type of event.

And that also heals them.

There was a study many years ago where kids that were really scared from different things that had happened, maybe it was following a natural disaster in that town, maybe it was just different things that occurred, they did a study where they gave the kids little teddy bears or some type of stuffy and said, "Hey, little teddy bear," whatever the name is, "is really scared and needs lots of hugs and comfort."

And that four and five-year-old hugged the little teddy bear and gave that little teddy bear that support and those kids that had that did better sleeping at night and returning to their baseline.

So I think the fact of giving out to others is absolutely healing and is proven in some of those studies that we have.

- Having support systems, caring adults, trainings, tools that help is a big part of that too.

But so is the giving piece.

And so now I turn to you, Rabbi Alpert, and I say, you know, we live in a time where if even if we think about the shooting in 2014, it came from a place of hate obviously and antisemitism.

How do you talk about the realities of this kind of prejudice with your kids as you try to be a support for them?

How do we explain to the folks in broader community, not only in your own family or own congregation, like how does that work?

What should that be in terms of a frame that we have as parents, as community, understanding what our role is in healing from this kind of hate.

- It's difficult because we're prone to go to the negative.

We're prone to say, here's what we are against.

So we're against white supremacists, we're against neo-Nazis.

That's easy in a way.

And we can all kind of come together, good people can all kind of come together over that.

But if we're not about what we're for, if we're only about what we're against, then I don't think we ultimately make progress.

So I think part of the way you teach kids, teach other adults in my community anyway, is to kind of live what you're teaching.

It's getting outside of not diminishing our own pain, but getting outside of enough to feel the pain of others.

Then I think that's when we start to make progress and live by example, whether it's the Muslim community, the Black community, the queer community, whatever community is marginalized, and say, "I'm here for you, regardless."

- Patty, do you think that that goes to our sense of identity as individuals?

Because some of what Rabbi Alpert was just saying to me really speaks to someone having a good sense of who they are, being able to tap in, like you said, Mindy, about your own faith.

What is the role of identity in tapping into your own resilience?

- Well, that's a huge part.

I will say I work mainly with children and they're still figuring that piece out, right?

So the earlier we can help our kids have those resilience factors and teach them up with that love and that support and that comfort, it's gonna be part of who they are.

Even if they haven't determined it yet, they're gonna know when something difficult happens, they're gonna be able to talk to their classmates in school, to their teacher.

They're gonna be able to go home and talk to their neighbors and they're gonna be able to have those conversations if that's how they've grown up and they've had those resilience factors around them.

I think also people can alter and change when big things happen.

So I've also seen a lot of great resilience factors built when someone maybe didn't think they had it in 'em and they start to recognize, "Oh wait, I can build up on this and I can help others and I don't want anyone else to experience what I've experienced."

- That actually brings me back to you, Mindy, because you have a great deal of experience in this area of helping folks to tap into resilience and you've been showing others how to do it because you've done it.

Earlier in the episode, we heard from Berkley Selvin and you helped her put purpose to her pain as she put it.

How did you react to Berkley reaching out and what has that friendship meant to you over these ensuing years?

- It's meaningful and I'm very thankful that as a young woman, she reached out to me.

So she was in college at the time when she reached out to me.

And so she held that pain and that survivor's guilt without really experience or sharing it with anyone outside of her immediate circle and not understanding it.

I immediately knew, maybe I can help release some of that pain with her.

And she was very open and we sat and had coffee and we cried together, and I said, you know, "You are going to have a life and you have purpose and turn it around.

If you were gone and you could look back at us, what would you say to us?"

And she said, "I would say go have a life and have purpose."

And I said, "Well, I'm just, I'm forcing you to do that.

I want you to find your onward, Berkley."

And so, and so she's working, and it's been really great.

It's been amazing.

She's just recently allowed herself to do any interviewing and I'm really thankful that I thought of her as an option because I wanted to help her continue to find stair steps to her own healing.

- And as we close the episode, I'm struck by what you said.

It's really about how we treat the stranger.

And to know that you opened yourself up to Berkley in that way and aided in her healing process and that of many others is absolutely profound to me.

That's where we wrap up today's episode for "Flatland in Focus."

You've been hearing from Mindy Corporon, Founder of Seven Days, Rabbi Doug Alpert, Congregation Leader of Kol Ami, and Patty Davis, Program Manager of Trauma-Informed Care at Children's Mercy Hospital.

As we wrap tonight's episode, we remember not just a day of tragedy, but a decade of courage, of unity, and healing.

As we reflect on the past, let us also look to the future, but a commitment to peace, understanding, and resilience.

It's all up to us.

So be sure to watch our special "Healing Hate" episode at kansascitypbs.org and find the rest of our reporting on this very topic at flatlandshow.org.

I'm D. Rashaan Gilmore, this has been "Flatland in Focus."

And as always, thank you for the pleasure of your time.

- [Announcer] "Flatland in Focus" is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation, and RSM.

(light upbeat music)