Missing 7-year-old North Texas girl found dead; FedEx driver arrested (msn.com)
This story was one of the ones that popped up when I opened my computer. As the story reads, the child was at home, a package was delivered, and the child disappeared. Her lifeless body was found later, and it was reported that she died within one hour of the package being delivered.
There are no words to describe this, which is difficult to digest and accept. People should be free to be at home doing whatever they must or want to do. This includes children. I know that I have adolescent and young children clients that tell me they are not allowed to go for walks or ride their bikes without their parents, and their parents are either at work or doing chores so the children and teens stay home either doing homework, playing with their phones or on computer games. Those online computer games merit their own blog entry, as I have had clients who have had disturbing experiences online.
I, again, will tell you that I do not have the answers. It's not FedEx's fault; how could they have known? I always say that background checks have their limits, as known offenders are known because they were caught at some point. You can almost argue that the most dangerous perpetrators have no record because they have not been caught. The step-parent/parent is not at fault. Who worries that the delivery person will kidnap and kill your child?
There seems to be a lot of discussion on mental health, but if we think about it, it's getting more difficult these days to remain mentally healthy. Covid has taught us that our friends with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder were on to something. We started following their lead with handwashing. We initially started getting more anxious and fearful of contracting COVID as we were afraid to die. We now live with plexiglass dividers everywhere, the one's banks started using when they were robbed at gunpoint several decades ago.
We are spending much energy keeping ourselves functioning in an uncertain COVID world with changes in how we deal with people and how we work. We are all learning to spend more time in isolation. In isolation, we have to deal with whatever demons we carry. In a pre-COVID world, we could run literally and figuratively from these demons but not during COVID. We have to deal with ourselves and our emotions.
In this quest to keep ourselves emotionally and mentally healthy, we must balance the fact that people are doing bad things while also maintaining a healthy lifestyle where we are not isolated and hermetically sealed at home.
We are social creatures, and we need community for survival. It takes time to get to know people and to trust them. In our current society, we think nothing about moving away for college, moving away for work, or moving away for retirement. Each time we move, we rip at our roots and are replanted somewhere else. With each move, it could be argued that you weaken the core of yourself and become less centered and less grounded. It used to be when we moved into a community, there were others there that had lived there for many years and had a history. In today's world, we move into a newly constructed development; everyone is new, and no one trusts anyone, especially those with children. Maybe we can work at staying longer in one place, keeping lifelong friends, breaking up and divorcing less, and just build community. While building community is not a definite solution to this, there will be more connection, more trust, less isolation, and more help to reduce the stressors that are hurting us today. Less fighting, more connection. Bad things will always happen, but we must maintain a healthy lifestyle, emotionally and physically. We all need to go outside and take in the sun and breeze. We must find ways to feel safe and free while also being aware of our surroundings. We need to maintain a balance.
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