This week, I’ll step onto a campus for the first time in over twenty years. It should feel like a return, like a marker of growth and possibility. And in many ways it does. But I can’t shake the truth that for students and teachers, stepping onto campus isn’t ordinary anymore. It’s weighted. It’s anxious. It carries the shadow of what we’ve all learned to live with.
For them, the routine isn’t just books, classes, and schedules. It’s also lockdown drills. It’s doors locked from the inside. It’s the knowledge that safety is no longer assumed, but rehearsed.
I want to come home to my kids at the end of the week. And I know the odds are that I will. But that’s exactly why I carry such deep gratitude—because I don’t have to live with the daily ache of hoping my kids make it home to me. Too many parents, teachers, and children face that unspoken prayer every single morning. That reality isn’t just heavy—it’s unacceptable.
I am gutted. Heart on the floor. Angry and numb all at once.
What I carry is guttural rage for the broken normalcy we’ve allowed to exist. A normalcy where children rehearse for violence before they rehearse for concerts. Where teachers map escape routes before they map lesson plans. Where the ordinary rhythm of school has been fractured and replaced by fear.
I sit sideways in the church pew every Sunday. One eye on the altar. One eye on the door.
It’s not that I understand—I’m not a child, and I cannot fathom how this has become the framework for an entire generation’s formation and education. But I can relate in my own way. My body carries its own guardrails. My posture shifts because I try to keep my eyes wide open to the truth.
I won’t pretend I know what it’s like to walk those halls every day under that pressure. But I do know what it’s like to carry fear that shapes the way you move. And I know that when fear becomes normalized, something inside us begins to fray.
It’s easy to talk about resilience, about pushing forward, about “being strong.” But strength isn’t the same as being numb. Strength is still showing up while refusing to call fear normal. Strength is insisting that every student deserves more than survival practice disguised as education.
Some of us are old enough to remember when campus meant only opportunity, not danger. And some of us are young enough to have never known that reality. That gap alone should break our hearts wide open.
And maybe that’s the piece we can’t lose—our hearts breaking open. Because if we ever let them close, if we ever shrug and say, this is just the world now, then we’ve lost more than safety. We’ve lost our humanity.
I don’t have a perfect answer. I’m not a policymaker. I’m not in the classroom every day. But I do know this: every time we talk about schools, campuses, and safety, we should be talking about lives—sacred, irreplaceable lives. Not just numbers. Not just statistics.
I have two little boys—five and nine. I would die for them without hesitation. But I will also live for them. And right now, living means showing up as a voice.
If we live for these kids—if we risk comfort, if we break our complacency—maybe, just maybe, they won’t have to die for our silence.
Hope doesn’t mean looking away from the pain. It means caring even when the pain isn’t personal—because this is our future, and it has to be personal. Hope here isn’t soft or sentimental. It’s fierce. It’s choosing to carry the weight together instead of leaving kids to carry it alone.
So this week, as I walk across campus, I’ll be thinking of every student who has had to wonder if their classroom might turn into a trap. I’ll be thinking of every teacher who carries both a lesson plan and a silent plan for survival. And I’ll be thinking about how respect—real respect—means refusing to accept this as normal.
Maybe my presence is small. Maybe it won’t change a policy or end the fear. But showing up, eyes open and heart heavy, is still a kind of rebellion. And rebellion with grace is how I choose to walk.
— Rogue Grace
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