Thoughts & Prayers & Bears

Content warning: mass shooting with child victims

A mass school shooting is too much to hold in my mind or my heart. So I focused on the bear.

There it is, on the right.

What would it be like to be this bear?

“I understand it: People want to do something. But a lot of people think that because they bought a teddy bear, they did something. I look back on it and I say, ‘You’re really not helping.”
-- Chris Kelsey, 65,000 Teddy Bears for Newtown, and One Man to Sort the World’s Grief

You're made to be held by a loving child. Instead you sit in the cold grass, witnessing grieving adults.

That juxtaposition tumbled in my head until it clicked with Chris's Tiny Keepsake Jam. I knew I had to make this game.

“It is a burden. I have talked to people at Virginia Tech who have said family members (of shooting victims) were overwhelmed with stuff that was given to them, and what are they supposed to do with it?”
-- Sylvia Grider, Burdens of grief: The rise of spontaneous memorial sites

To play this game, you cut the paper. If you keep cutting, you can make the teddy bear into a postcard. You can write something on that card, and you can put a stamp on it and mail it to someone. Maybe that someone can do something about this problem. Until then, at least you can bear witness.