Sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touches can all trigger flashbacks that shut down the brain like an overloaded circuit breaker. It\u2019s a survival response, Behrman said; the brain is a friend.<\/p>\n
The key to recovery is to help survivors find healthy ways to manage those triggers \u2014 when they are ready.<\/p>\n
Survivors thaw at their own pace. Regaining control after a life-threatening event is a process that can take weeks, months, or years.<\/p>\n
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It can be hard not to feel forgotten when life carries on around them. As fans rallied around the Chiefs this season, survivors found it hard to watch the games. The Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl. Philadelphia will hold its own parade on Friday, exactly one year after the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sucks because everybody else went on,\u201d Jason Barton said. He performed CPR on a man he now thinks was one of the alleged shooters, his wife found a bullet slug in her backpack, and his stepdaughter was burned by sparks from a ricocheted bullet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were on the other side of that place, we would too,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have affected us.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Trip Back to Union Station<\/strong><\/p>\n Tavis isn\u2019t the only survivor to have found herself unintentionally back at Union Station in the year since the shooting. Kids had field trips to Science City, located inside the station. Follow-up doctor visits were often on nearby Hospital Hill. An October dinner organized for survivors by a local faith-based group was less than a mile away, prompting one young survivor to decline the invitation.<\/p>\n Tavis had planned to return to Union Station as part of her healing process. She thought she would go on the one-year mark to have a moment alone to feel whatever emotions swept over her there.<\/p>\n Maybe God was showing her she was ready by placing her back there unexpectedly, her therapist told her. Maybe. But she didn\u2019t feel ready in that moment.<\/p>\n Tavis wanted to see a therapist right after the shooting. But she didn\u2019t seek one out until July, after the local United Way distributed financial assistance<\/a> to survivors and relieved the months-long financial strain of lost work and medical bills incurred by many. Tavis and her partner at the time had taken out<\/a> an extra credit card to cover expenses while they waited for the promised help.<\/p>\n After two months of visits, her therapist started prepping Tavis for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a technique to help trauma survivors. She now spends every other session making her way through a spreadsheet of memories from the parade, visualizing and reprocessing them one by one.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t She\u2019s nervous as the one-year mark approaches. It\u2019s on Valentine\u2019s Day, and she worries it\u2019ll be depressing.<\/p>\n She decided to invite Gooch, her former partner, to come to Union Station with her that day. Despite everything, he\u2019s the one who understands. They were at the parade together with their son and Jacob\u2019s two older kids. Both Gooch Sr. and his older son, Jacob Gooch Jr., were also shot.<\/p>\n Trauma Changes Who We Are<\/strong><\/p>\n Gooch Sr. hasn\u2019t worked since the parade. His job required standing for 10-hour shifts four days a week, but he couldn\u2019t walk for months after a bullet shattered a bone in his foot and it slowly fused back together. He hoped to go back to work in July. But his foot didn\u2019t heal correctly and he had surgery in August, followed by weeks of recovery.<\/p>\n His short-term disability ran out, as did his health insurance through work. His employer held his job for a while before releasing him in August. He\u2019s applied for other jobs in and around Leavenworth: production, staffing agencies, auto repair. Nothing\u2019s come through.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve all gone through problems, not just me,\u201d Gooch Sr. said. \u201cI got shot in my foot and haven\u2019t worked for a year. There are people that have been through much worse stuff over the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n He feels good walking now and can run short distances without pain. But he doesn\u2019t know if he\u2019ll ever play football again, a mainstay of his life since he can remember. He played safety for the semiprofessional Kansas City Reapers<\/a> and, before the parade, the 38-year-old was considering making the 2024 season his last as a player.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot more than football has been stolen from me in this last year. Like my whole life has been stolen from me,\u201d Gooch Sr. said. \u201cI really hate that part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n And those emotions are painfully real. Trauma threatens our beliefs about ourselves, said Behrman, the therapist. Every person brings their own history to a traumatic event, a different identity that risks being shattered. The healing work that comes later often involves letting go and building something new.<\/p>\n Recently Gooch Sr. started going to a new church<\/a>, led by the husband of someone he sang with in a children\u2019s choir growing up. At a Sunday service this month, the pastor spoke about finding a path when you\u2019re lost.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m looking for the path. I\u2019m in the grass right now,\u201d Gooch Sr. said at his home later that evening.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m obviously on a path, but I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m headed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I Did the Best I Could\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Every day before Jason Barton goes to work, he asks his wife, Bridget, if he should stay home with her.<\/p>\n She\u2019s said yes enough that he\u2019s out of paid time off. Jason, who\u2019s survived cancer and a heart attack, had to take unpaid leave in January when a bad case of the flu put him in the hospital. That\u2019s real love, Bridget said with tearful eyes, sitting with Jason and her 14-year-old daughter, Gabriella, in their home in Osawatomie, Kansas.<\/p>\n Bridget has connected with the mother of another girl injured in the shooting. They\u2019ve exchanged texts and voicemails throughout the year. It\u2019s nice to have someone to talk to who gets it, Bridget said. They\u2019re hoping to get the girls together to build a connection as well.<\/p>\n Except for a trip to therapy once a week, Bridget doesn\u2019t leave the house much anymore. It can feel like a prison, she said, but she\u2019s too scared to leave. \u201cIt\u2019s my own internal hell,\u201d she said. She keeps thinking about that bullet slug that lodged in her backpack. What if she\u2019d been standing differently? What if they\u2019d left 10 seconds earlier? Would things be different?<\/p>\n A Post-it note in her kitchen reminds her: \u201cI\u2019m safe. Gabriella is safe. I did the best I could.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n She carries a lot of guilt. About Jason staying home. About not leaving the house, even to see her grandkids. About wanting the family to go to the parade in the first place. At the same time, she knows she kind of thrived in the chaos after the shooting, taking charge of her daughter, talking to the police. It\u2019s confusing.<\/p>\n The family has carried the trauma differently. In the six months after the parade, Jason watched reality TV shows that kept him out of his head \u2014 23 seasons of \u201cDeadliest Catch\u201d and 21 seasons of \u201cGold Rush,\u201d including spinoffs, he estimated. Lately he\u2019s kept his mind occupied with a new hobby: building model cars and planes. He just finished a black 1968 Shelby Mustang, and next is an F4U-4 Corsair plane that Bridget got him.<\/p>\n Gabriella was unfazed about returning to Union Station for a class field trip to Science City, but she was startled when she saw a group of police officers inside the station. Her mom watched her location on her phone and texted her all day.<\/p>\n Gabriella took up boxing after the parade, then switched to wrestling. It had been going well, even felt empowering. But she\u2019s stopped going, and Bridget thinks it\u2019s partly due to the emotion of the anniversary \u2014 the first is always the hardest, her therapist said. Gabriella insisted that wrestling was just exhausting her.<\/p>\n Because they weren\u2019t shot, the family didn\u2019t benefit from resources available to other survivors. They understand that other families are recovering from bullet wounds or even mourning a death.<\/p>\n Still, it would be nice to have some acknowledgment of their emotional trauma. Their names have been in the news. You\u2019d think the Chiefs would have at least sent a letter saying, \u201cWe\u2019re sorry this happened to you,\u201d Jason said.<\/p>\n Jason proposed to Bridget at a Chiefs game. Now watching games on TV triggers flashbacks.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to be a part of Chiefs Kingdom again,\u201d Bridget said, \u201cbut I just can\u2019t. And that is a huge, really lonely feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018There Is a Word Called \u201cResilience\u201d\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n One evening last October, survivors gathered with their families at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Kansas City.<\/p>\n Some came dressed in their Sunday best, some in red football jerseys. All ages, toddlers to 70-somethings, some from Missouri, some from Kansas. Some spoke only Spanish, some only English. Most of the two dozen people had never met before. But as they talked, they discovered the shooting that binds them also gave them a common language.<\/p>\n Two young boys realized they\u2019d tossed a football during the jubilation before the violence erupted. A woman in her early 70s named Sarai Holguin remembered watching them play on that warm February day. After a blessing and dinner, Holguin, who was shot in the knee and has had four surgeries, stood to address the room.<\/p>\n \u201cI was the first victim taken to the medical tent,\u201d she said in Spanish, her words translated by a relative of another survivor. She saw everything, she explained, as, one by one, more survivors were brought to the tent for treatment, including Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a 43-year-old mother who was killed that day.<\/p>\n Yet in that tragedy, Holguin saw the beauty of people helping one another.<\/p>\n \u201cThis showed us that humanity is still alive, that love is still alive. There is a word called \u2018resilience,\u2019\u201d Holguin said, the translator stumbling to understand the last word, as people in the audience caught it and shouted it out. \u201cResilience.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis word helps us overcome the problems we face,\u201d Holguin said. \u201cTo try to put the tragic moment we all lived behind us and move on, we must remember the beautiful moments.\u201d<\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/fctuckerbatesville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/The-Injured-One-Year-Later-Tavis-02-3840-scaled.jpg\")
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