Ordinarily, I appreciate when someone tells me they’re thinking about, or praying for, me. Especially when I’m going through a tough time, I’m grateful to know people care about me.

But, when an elected official offers thoughts and prayers — specifically in the aftermath of yet another shooting — I scoff. Not because thoughts and prayers are meaningless, but because they must come with action. And in a city like Baltimore, where gun violence changes, ruins and ends so many lives each year, we are desperate for change.

It’s not just our legislators who make me angry. I’m angry because this is still, seemingly always, happening. I’m angry we can’t learn our lesson. I’m angry at anyone who prioritizes so-called gun rights over human rights or suggests we respond to this ongoing emergency with even more guns: additional law enforcement, arming teachers. I’m angry that police, despite their oath to protect the public, not only fail to respond to shootings but cause them.

It’s only recently that I’ve also been angry at myself.

For far too long, I’ve been a hypocrite, expecting action and change from others with no effort of my own. Gun violence of all types — accidental, domestic, police, school, street — infuriates me, but what have I ever done about it? I cry. Curse. Criticize. Reactions even less meaningful than thoughts and prayers.

This is a failure on my part that I’m trying to understand. Was it that I thought we were only one or two more high-profile shootings away from things finally, somehow, getting better? Or was it that I thought they never would?

Tuesday, May 24, 2022, was a turning point for me. Reading about the children and teachers murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, I cried. Cursed. Criticized.

And, this time, I committed to being a small part of the change. Almost immediately, I made my first donation to Everytown, an organization of experts working to end gun violence.

That same night, I applied to be a Baltimore Peace Movement Ambassador to promote the organization’s work. As piercing as my pain was after Uvalde, one time zone and nearly 2,000 miles away, I also thought about Baltimore: beautiful, bloody Baltimore. My mind, again and always, went to my students, the high schoolers I taught English for over 11 years. My lovelies. The horrors gun violence forces them to experience and dread it makes them carry.

The untimely, incomprehensible deaths it has caused.

Gun violence is an everyday part of Baltimore culture; the effort to heal from it is not — not yet. We must reduce gun violence and minimize access to guns but also grieve, process and honor the ways, sometimes irreparable, that it harms us all. This is the work of the Baltimore Peace Movement, and I wanted to be a part of it.

Hours after Uvalde, I took more action than I ever had before.

Or, unfortunately, since.

Right when it finally clicked, when I took those long-overdue steps toward being a part of the solution, my health interfered. I took medical leave from teaching. For the first time in my life, I had no choice but to make my health my first priority.

As a Baltimore Peace Movement Ambassador, I have participated in only a handful of events. I wrote an essay about gun violence in Baltimore but still mostly sat on the sidelines.

My health issues aren’t my fault, but I’m still angry at myself for taking so long to step up. As someone who has dedicated myself to social action since I was a kid, it baffles me that I didn’t get involved sooner.

Lately, when I catch myself regretting how little I’ve done, I focus on how to do more. Specifically, I plan to attend more events as a Baltimore Peace Movement Ambassador: the sacred space rituals to honor those lives lost to violence. The community events where members of the movement give out flyers. The celebrations of life and peace that make up the quarterly Peace Promise Weekends, one of which I attended this weekend.

Politicians, police officers and prosecutors are credited for Baltimore’s recent drastic decrease in homicides, but the efforts of community-based initiatives like Baltimore Peace Movement help progress, too.

When I express frustration about not doing more, people tell me to show myself grace. What’s easier for me is to show gratitude to those who have already done so much of this work. Survivors and grieving family members who have become activists. Policy experts who advance progressive ideas. Public health researchers who study the impact of gun violence and offer strategies to address it.

They have remained committed to this work despite its heartbreaking nature and painstaking progress. My commitment is new, but I’m glad to now know the value of joining the fight. Playing my part. Thinking, praying and, most importantly, taking action.