Recently I gave a talk on the power of first person narratives in understanding trauma—particularly the trauma of losing someone to homicide. The room was filled with professionals drawn across the country who support crime victims: clinicians, advocates, counselors, first responders and personnel from departments of corrections in various institutional settings. People who’ve heard it all. People not easily shaken.
I was trying to get them to feel how we homicide survivors feel in the first few seconds after the news of the death.
I asked the audience a simple question:
“How many of you remember where you were on 9/11?”
Most hands went up.
Then I said:
“Go back there. Think about your first moments. Not the headlines that came later.
Remember your feelings.
What did you feel in those first few minutes, long before you had a chance to get clarity or discuss it with anyone?
Recall the confusion. The dread. The fear. The not knowing.
The phone ringing.
The rejection of what it was you were seeing and hearing.
The moment the world shifted.”
I paused.
I let it settle.
The room went silent.
And then I said this:
“We were all homicide survivors that day.
That is how it feels.”
The room changed and grew silent.
There were no slides in that moment. No graphs. Just a shared emotional reality that cut across roles and professions and geography. Because homicide isn’t only about crime scenes and courtrooms. It’s about the thunderclap of grief. The disorientation. The feeling that the world has split into a before and after. That is the world we survivors live in every day.
Later in my talk, I shared the story of Shelly Edwards Jorgensen, who had to live with her father for three years (knowing he murdered her mother) before he was charged. She was then called to testify as a teenager about her father’s repeated threats to kill her mother—and how the courtroom nearly broke her.
I then introduced a sketch of a little girl drawn by trauma therapist Jenna Simon: silenced, eyes wide, fear and confusion radiating off the page. Both moments, 9/11 and this haunting drawing, bring people into contact with the truth that trauma isn’t just something that happens to “other people.” It lives close. It is visceral. It is long remembered.
I reminded the experienced people in the room “If we want to truly support crime victims—we have to meet them with presence, with genuine and informed understanding.
And sometimes, that starts with a single story that reminds us:
“We’ve felt a version of this too and we wouldn’t wish it on anyone.“
