Krista Hanley got out of Columbine High School quickly. She didn't see the worst of it, and she wasn't close friends with anyone who died. For years, she took that as proof she had no story to tell - of course, that was never the truth. I met Krista during a self-defense class I signed up for, and later I volunteered with her as an assistant instructor for many years. So, I've known her in the space of being both adrenalized and intensely vulnerable. I've known that she was a Columbine survivor for a long time, but we've never talked about it in detail. I waited a long time to read her memoir, How to Survive a Mass Shooting: A Columbine Memoir. I found it to be incredibly powerful, providing insight to the insidious ways trauma takes over the life of a teenage girl - while she struggles with the intensity of survivors' guilt and still being a teen needing to navigate her life and future.
We talk about the writing group that convinced her that her story was important to tell and that she did, indeed, have a book. We also talk about the padded-suit self-defense classes where, she says, she wasn't replaying her trauma but fighting "the silence and the hurt and the guilt and the grief and the shame." Then we get into the harder questions. How does picking up a gun change a person? Why do we keep asking survivors, including the Parkland students, to fix what adults won't? There's so much in this conversation that I haven't finished thinking about it.
","author_name":"Alexis Halkovic"}