Of Little Children and Guns.

It's been a difficult weekend and today, the media is full of the outpouring of grief over a loss which seems incomprehensible in terms of the magnitude of evil required to facilitate such actions.

There must be a sickness in our society, that it would breed a tragedy like this.

Immediately, I identify strongly with the parents, having lost my seven year old daughter under tragic circumstances. Something like this is like hitting a raw nerve in me, it provokes a pain which is at once familiar, yet unbearable, and runs to the core of my being. The awful dawning realisation that your little one has died. That they are gone. That there is nothing you can do. It's a grief beyond grief, a pain beyond pain.

Twenty children's parents are faced with no other option than to try and cope with this bleak, blank wall of pain today. They will wake to the flat, immovable reality of what has occurred and will continue to wake to it every day for the rest of their lives. Some will shriek, and fight, and bloody their fists against it. Some might go mad, searching for a way through it. But it will never go away. And they must ultimately learn to live with it's presence.

We must come together in our shared empathy and grief and reach out to these people. We must shoulder the grief and stand in solidarity with the inhabitants of Newtown so that they do not feel alone, and so that they know that whatever portion of their sadness we can bear to ease their load we will shoulder gladly.