The Healing Day of Remembrance 1

*An article from Boulder County School District

Student-created event provides remembrance and healing for youth, adults

It has been more than a year since the tranquilness of Spring Break was broken by unimaginable news that 10 people had died in a mass shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers. The memories, however, are still exceptionally vivid for Boulder Valley School District students.

Photo credit: Mayamotion Healing

“I was at school. I had poms practice when it happened,” remembered Fairview junior Greyson DeMarco. “It was just crazy. I remember, somebody with the team got a notification that there was a shooting at King Soopers. It was just shocking. You never think that it is going to happen right next to you.”

Before leaving the school a short time later, the school was a hectic place, already bustling with emergency responders.

“The helicopters were landing in the parking lot and the fire trucks were all over. It was crazy,” DeMarco recalled. “We didn’t know where [the suspect] was or anything.”

New Vista High School senior Amairani Contreras was at home, but was also shaken by the news.

“I didn’t know what to do. I contacted my friends to see if they’re okay. You didn’t know who was there,” Contreras said.

“We can’t just forget it,” added Fairview freshman Kelly Yang. “It is a tragic event and it hits close to home. It happened very close and yet at the same time, we want to heal from it.”

Ultimately, that is why each of the students pitched in to create an event on April 2, aimed at supporting kids in the community.

“This is an event in honor of those lost in the Table Mesa Shooting, but it has been a tough time for a lot of people,” Yang said, referring to the layers of crisis that have impacted Boulder Valley over the past year, including the pandemic and Marshall Fire.

“This event is a healing day, a relaxing day where people can enjoy and do different activities, where they can find peace in it and not necessarily remember it as something tragic, but also something beautiful,” Yang added.

“This event has felt amazing. I think it has the feel the youth were hoping to cultivate,” said Mara Mintzer, founder of Growing Up Boulder, which helped to organize the event. “People were engaged and even playful, but they were also able to express hard emotions. We are making space for everyone to do that. It was very important for the community and youth to come together.”

The entire event was designed by students, from the altar where participants could remember loved ones to the poetry wall to the drawing table.

“It is youth-led, with the support of caring adults who are mentoring them and shepherding them forward,” explained Mintzer. Growing Up Boulder helped to bring in trauma and healing experts, such as Maya Sol Dansie of Mayamotion Healing, to inform and guide the students.

“It was really cool. At the beginning we learned about trauma and how to deal with it,” said DeMarco. “We then came together for a workday. Everyone spouted out ideas about what we wanted. We didn’t really know what it was going to be at the beginning. We decided that we wanted people to be able to create art, write about stuff and come here and feel comfortable and enjoy their experience.”

The Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, which is evaluating the efforts, also helped refine the students’ ideas.

“They created a ‘design sprint,’ where they worked with young people to funnel their ideas from broad concepts down to categories of activity; GUB and Mayamotion Healing took the baton from there to help the youth turn these categories into the healing stations that you see today.”

More than 200 people of all ages stopped by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and participated in the event. It, however, was focused on the students.

“The Community Foundation of Boulder County realized that there were lots of events for adults to heal, but people were not addressing the children’s and youth’s needs, and they too are a part of our community. Young people have experienced as much loss as we adults have. We need to support their well-being in response to the King Soopers tragedy, but in a way that is age appropriate,” Mintzer said.

“I thought it was really nice that they thought about letting the youth create this themselves, because it offers a new point of view that creates something they might not have thought about,” DeMarco said.

He said that one of the suggestions he and the other organizers made was for kids to greet and interact with the kids who came to the event, rather than adults.

“As much as adults want to connect with teenagers, it is much easier for teenagers to connect to other teenagers, because they feel more comfortable,” DeMarco said.

Melanie Eschiveste Jara was one of the teens welcoming kids and encouraging them to take a moment to express their feelings through drawing. She lives in Aurora and heard about the event from her cousin and wanted to help.

“I don’t live here, but it happened in Colorado. You feel bad for the families and those impacted,” Jara said. “Everyone in this community is helping each other and that was really uplifting. It was great to be able to help out too.”

The students believe they have started something important for the kids in our community. The work will continue through the rest of the year, thanks to continuing funding from the Boulder Community Foundation.

“We will continue to address child and youth healing from this tragedy for the rest of the year.”

Mintzer says it will naturally lead into new projects that kids will once again co-create.

“Growing Up Boulder is going to launch Boulder as an official UNICEF USA Child-Friendly City Initiative,” Mintzer said.

She said one of the key elements of the Child-Friendly Cities work will likely be youth mental health.

“[The focus] will be determined by the community and youth, but based on my reading of what is happening now, mental health will probably rise to the top of areas to address,” Mintzer said.

You can keep tabs on this initiative and the other fantastic things that Growing Up Boulder is working on at their website at: https://www.growingupboulder.org/

*This article is credited to Boulder Valley School District