"Trauma is trauma. No matter what you've gone through." Two Parkland shooting survivors spoke to Brut about finding comfort and healing through music — and how they want to help victims of violence.
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00:00The people that we lost, we wanted to make sure that they knew that we would forever
00:03remember them and they will always be an essential like component to our community.
00:07After the shooting at our school on February 14th, Andrea and I both felt a lot of the
00:35same things.
00:36We both felt very lost and very confused and very angry and very sad and we just, we
00:40didn't really know what to do with all these emotions and feelings that we were having.
00:44There have been changes because of everything that we've been doing and everything our community
00:58and other people who have been affected by this epidemic of gun violence.
01:03I think that we're not giving up the fight is such an important line because no matter
01:09how long it takes and no matter how hard it is and all of the people saying, oh you're
01:13just kids, like you can't really make a change, like we're not going to stop because it's
01:17such an important issue.
01:28They can experience like the power of healing through visual arts such as painting, expressive
01:35arts or dramatic arts through drama and then music arts.
01:38We just personally find so much comfort and healing through music and through the arts
01:44in general and I just think it's such a powerful outlet.
02:06I think the media's portrayal of guns, especially gun violence, is very romanticized, especially
02:12in today's society where we have all of these video games, like first shooter video games
02:16and we have all of these violent films.
02:19Oklahoma deals with it in a really good way, I feel like, as opposed to how the media deals
02:23with it.
02:24Whenever they fired a gun, like they let it sit, like they didn't, there wasn't like a
02:27alright, let's move on to the musical, like it takes a second and you realize like wow,
02:32that's what some people have to hear every single day, like that's what I had to hear
02:35on like that day, like that's just like the feeling that I felt.
02:45It's a matter of self-care and it's a matter of knowing what you need to do and knowing
02:50the right ways and the limits that you have to making sure that you're not working too
02:55hard and having activism burnout, which is a phrase that I just learned about this year
02:59because that's something that people can get, they can get burnout from activism because
03:04you do care about this cause but it is so emotionally draining.
03:08Trauma is trauma, no matter like what you've gone through, if it's a school shooting or
03:12if it's that you have experienced like violence in your life or even if you've been bullied
03:17to like a certain extent, like that's still stuff that you have to go through and just
03:22allowing kids to know that there are healthy ways to cope with it.