Jessica Brown was a 19-year-old college student when her siblings, Juanita Johnson and Rodney Brown, were shot and killed in their Chicago apartment. Twenty-eight years later, she feels stuck at that age.
In college, after returning to campus following her siblings’ funeral, Brown isolated and shut down. “I know now it stunted my growth,” she said. “All of the decisions I made were in service of: What can I do to be safe and not worry my mother?”
She delved into books, and tried to cope on her own. “At that age, if you don’t know how to engage, you retreat,” she said. “You don’t know what you can ask for, and if no one suggests something to you, it’s not going to cross your mind.”
She thinks her success as a student masked her personal struggles — but still wishes someone at school would have checked in on her regularly.
Brown and other participants in The Trace’s second Chicago Survivor Storytelling Workshop say that neither schools nor the city met their needs when they were younger. They’re concerned that officials still aren’t doing enough to help children and young adults who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence.
Young people, they said, are uniquely vulnerable because they have an especially difficult time processing their emotions and tend to be more impulsive. The survivors said schools need to be proactive about checking in with students, and that the city needs to give young people more tools for processing their grief.
“We grow up our young people very quickly,” Brown said. “The world needs to understand that teenagers are still children.”
Schools need to help traumatized students
When Tamika Howard was 11, her older sister, Tyesa Abney, died after a gang-related shooting that was not connected to her. Her mom was lost in her own grief, and Howard felt she was alone.
Schools, Howard said, should collaborate with parents to focus on kids’ well-being. Stepping in early, she added, can help prevent young people from pursuing a destructive path.
In 2015, Corniki Bornds saw how the fatal shooting of her cousin affected her 17-year-old son, Fontaine Sanders. “He tried to go back to school,” she said, “but every little thing aggravated him.”
She now realizes that Fontaine was just trying to process his grief. Instead of helping, she said, the school labeled him as having “anger issues,” and enrolled him in a behavior modification program.
Two years later, Fontaine was fatally shot while playing in a North Lawndale park. “He suffered a lot before his death because he didn’t have access [to help],” she said.
In 2021, Chicago Public Schools received a $24 million investment to expand mental health services for students over three years. A representative of CPS did not respond to questions about how many behavioral health teams are now available. During moments of communal loss, the schools bring in licensed clinicians through the CPS Crisis Management Unit. Last year, the schools and the Illinois State Board of Education received $14.4 million to expand trauma-informed care and bring more mental health staffers into schools. CPS did not comment on how this money has been used.
“We don’t talk a lot about the different ways that grief shows up in our lives,” Brown said. “You can mistake it for something else.” Many surviving teens like her, she explained, either act out to get attention, or behave as well as they can for the sake of their parents.
More youth-focused advocates and youth programming needed
After losing a family member, kids can feel overlooked because their parents are dealing with their own grief. Survivors said there should be specific advocates and support groups for these children and teens. Howard said kids need advocates to help them communicate their needs and connect them with youth-specific resources.
Juan Rendon, who lost his best friend when he was 20, suggested creating intergenerational survivor support groups, through which adults who lost someone at an early age can mentor young people.
In recent years, the city has invested in youth programming. Chicago offers the One Summer Chicago program, which helps more than 20,000 young people find work and internships every summer. Survivors said more programming should be available year-round. Some offerings, like “Light in the Night” events convened by Metropolitan Peace Initiatives and Communities Partnering 4 Peace, have expanded their services to do just that.
No matter how, Howard said, it’s crucial to make sure that tragedies don’t end kids’ childhoods prematurely, “Kids need to be able to be kids.”
