I have so many thoughts swirling around my head from this weekend along with a myriad of emotions that continue to formulate as the days go on and as I watch the news, read the newspaper and read all of the posts on Facebook and Twitter. As a parent, a person and a marketer, these are my thoughts:
As a parent, I am still so distraught over this past weekend’s events. Just like so many of you. It happened to children. Who are my kid’s age. In a school. It happened to teachers who were to protect their. I cried in bed Saturday morning while my husband had the girls. I cried and cried and cried. As I write this, I am tearing up. I find myself tearing up on the subway, on the way to work. Crying and I can’t even imagine the pain those parents must feel. I look at the pictures posted on Facebook, and they look like my girls. All of them. They all look like our children.
As a parent, I feel for those parents who have children who have mental health issues. Making sure that they have the adequate care from the beginning is the start and our government needs to figure out how we can provide the adequate health care from the onset of diagnosis. An extremely emotional and eye-opening blog post comes from The Anarchist Soccer Mom who is a mom of four kids, one named Michael (not his real name) has special needs named. It is children like Michael who we have to provide, care and monitor and “create a paper trail” (you’ll understand once you read the blog post). And we have to start doing this now.
Gun Control. Two scary words. But I’ll dive right in even though I don’t have a political bone in my body. There has to be tighter control as we all agree on. Gosh, I hope whomever is reading this does. In conjunction with proper mental health care we need. In today’s New York Times article by Mark Landler and Peter Baker, they quoted Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute who said, “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness. An early detection regime might indeed be the basis for selective gun access restrictions that even the N.R.A. would support.” I have to fully support what he said. Early detection, early intervention and creating this “paper trail” from the beginning could truly, truly help us in the future and prevent these horrific events from happening.
As a social media and marketing consultant with two clients who I create editorial content for Facebook and Twitter, I had made the decision early Saturday morning to go silent on all of my client’s channels and hold all social media communication for the weekend out of respect for those families who have lost so much. I couldn’t think of anything else but those children, those moms and dads, and for all of us who were feeling sad, angry and emotional. How could I possibly be posting and tweeting about the latest holiday styles or the tastiest healthy cookies to serve during a holiday party?!? I was appalled by how many brands and bloggers continued to tweet and post as if nothing happened. Please, turn off your automated posts PRDaily.com wrote an article on how brands communicate amidst tragedy and I’m sure this event will be looked at as a do’s and dont’s of social media marketing.
I know that we are feeling all or some of the same things. I’d love to know what you are thinking and feeling. It still hurts and as the Christmas holidays approach and we gather as a family, it will be bittersweet. I’ll be so happy to be able to hug my girls during this time. But I’ll be thinking of those families who cannot.