Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting

This is a gorgeous and moving graphic novel. The shooting itself is not depicted–Kindra was on campus but not in the immediate vicinity of the shooter, so her experience was more of a chaotic “something's happening?” moment followed by the panic of evacuation and the grief of losing friends, followed by PTSD. I hate that so many people will find her experience immediately relatable, but even if you haven't directly survived a mass shooting I feel like just the act of existing in America can make a person feel adjacent to one.

Secondarily I think Kindra's path of going to community college and then arts school is something that older teens will like to read about–you don't HAVE to have it all figured out when you graduate high school! Most people don't!

A graphic memoir by a survivor of a community-college shooting in Oregon, and the years immediately after, when she went to art school, a March For Our Lives Event in D.C., and conceived of this book as she finally got enough distance to recognize that she needed to get help.

Maybe this is ridiculous of me, but I hadn't conceived of the experience of having been on campus during a shooting but not having been in literal sight of the shooter, and how of course being anywhere near an experience such as that would be so hard. This is the experience Neely presents.

There is very little imagery of weapons or death - this is more about the processing of having survived, only to witness the thing that traumatized you repeatedly happening again in other places.

It made me cry, and I flew through it.

CW: mass shootings, suicidal thoughts/attempt, PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks