During a time when most other mourners take space to grieve, survivors who’ve lost a loved one to gun violence are thrown into a world of paperwork, bureaucracy, and law enforcement interactions they never expected.
In 2017, Corniki Bornds’s 19-year-old son, Fontaine Sanders, was shot and killed. While Bornds experienced the pain of her loss, she struggled to find a space to reflect on her grief. “The killings were so frequent that I feel like people didn’t care,” she said. “They didn’t care if we got the help we needed and some families didn’t know what they should have gotten.”
For this year’s Chicago Survivor Storytelling Network, seven participants from across the city emphasized how often government leaders, through words and policy actions, overlook the well-being of survivors who have lost loved ones to gun violence. Officials need to do more outreach, they said, to make sure the programs that do exist reach those who need them. And when creating new policies and services, legislators and others should invite survivors to the table.
In the following four stories, survivors shed light on specific resources that they say would have helped them, provide insight into services currently available, and talk about services that are still missing. Survivors touch on issues related to mental health, special care for young people, time for grieving, and help navigating bureaucratic systems.
While local, state, and federal governments have invested more money in intervention efforts, there continues to be an epidemic of gun violence. Over 2,500 people were shot in Chicago this year, as of mid-November. Four hundred and sixty-three of them died, and hundreds of their family members and friends were left to cope with their sudden deaths. “Everybody that’s been affected needs to be helped,” Bornds said of the necessity for increased access to government services. “If you leave that one person unaddressed, that’s one too many.”
Addressing survivors’ needs, participants said, can help stop the cycle of violence. “Hurting people hurt people,” Bornds said. “If you don’t address this, then this person is angry, they are going to go out and get triggered, and it’s a possibility that they could hurt somebody.” If they don’t hurt others, she added, they could also hurt themselves. That, too, must be prevented.
Survivors are creating their own solutions even as they wait for other systems to improve. Participants keep the memory of their loved ones alive with their stories — and their advocacy and support work helps future survivors have a better chance of getting through their most painful days.
”For my kids, I’m their voice — I speak on their behalf,” said participant Delphine Cherry, who lost two children to gun violence and now advocates for gun reform.
Others, like participant Estela Díaz, have helped themselves heal by helping other moms.
“When a son dies, you feel like you don’t belong in this life, in this world. Reality as it used to be is no longer the same,” Díaz said in Spanish. “It’s very important to not leave them alone, even if their attitudes show they want to be alone, the reality is they don’t. In my mind, I already lost my son, but I can’t lose myself.”
