My thoughts on the Paris Tragedy.  My thoughts don’t really matter to but a few of my closest family members, and that’s okay.  My broken heart, like many others, has once again been ripped open, not yet healed from the other tragedies experienced in 2015.  This will be one of those moments that I will recall vividly….”I was in a bar on Langstrasse with some friends…”

Like September 11, 2001….”I was late to my statistics class because I loved to sleep in and hadn’t brushed my hair….”

My parent’s generation had their own version of this chaos.  It all came to a head in 1968 – the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy seemed like the end of the world for some people.  I asked my mother once if she contemplated not having kids because of this decade, how screwed up everything had become.  “You betcha,” she replied.  I feel the same way now.

With all of this terror, sorrow and fear, people take to the social media channels to share their own thoughts, much like I am doing now.  I had read through many a comment and shared article, a combination of conspiracy theories and words of solace to help process the grief.  Nothing seems to help, which is why I need my own personal version.

For anyone who knows me well, they know “Paris” and “Corie” are often in the same sentence.  My brother once counted 23 different Eiffel Towers in my apartment.  I am sure there are more now.  This is my personal city of love and fashion and angst.  I have felt every emotion in this city and walked the streets like it was my own.  My grief is not stronger or better than someone else’s, but my grief is different.

And my grief does not begin and end with Paris. What about the Beirut attacks, the bombing in Bangkok, the flooding in Mexico?  What about things like poverty and hunger, mental illness and gun control?  Gang violence that runs rampant in my home city of Chicago?

As an expat in Europe, sitting in a country next to the one attacked, one might expect me to be fearful.  To let the terror in.  And forgive me, Mom and Dad, but I won’t let fear dictate my future.

Mom and Dad, don’t fear for me when I do what I love most, and don’t talk yourselves out of doing it as well. Traveling.  Seeing the world.  Exploring.  It is one of the greatest gifts.

There are 3 quotes that I personally find so powerful and feel are exceptionally relevant in such situations and times as these.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi (sort of)

“Look for the helpers…because if you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there’s hope.” – Mr. Rogers

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt