'I felt helpless': Mothers who've lost kids to gun violence find refuge at monthly session

Reverend Sky Starr begins her monthly grief counselling sessions by lighting a candle and asking each of the women gathered in Monsignor Fraser College's auditorium to talk about how they're feeling.

Most of the women, from the Jane-Finch neighbourhood and Rexdale, have lost relatives to gun violence. The latest shooting of a 35-year-old pregnant mother, Candice Rochelle Bobb, whose funeral takes place Friday, only renews their sense of loss — a pattern Starr knows well after years of counselling grieving mothers.

"It brings you right back to the exact moment, where you get the smells, you get the sounds, you get the feelings, you get all the emotions," Starr told the group. "But it's a trigger that will pass."

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Starr, a minister, therapist and community advocate, is also founder of G-social ('G' for Getting A Grip on Grief), funded by Women's College Hospital, to understand the needs of women in neighbourhoods devastated by the loss of young black men.

Many women suffer from grief-related trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.  G-Social helps them build better coping strategies and promotes healing.

Starr teaches simple strategies to help them manage grief. They include standing in front of their mirrors each morning and hugging themselves and recognizing the triggers for their sense of loss.

"There's a huge wave coming," Starr told the women, "but as huge as the wave is to you, it can't stay up there very long.  At some point, it's going to recede." 

The women are silent at first, sombre during a week that has seen not only Bobb's death, but another shooting near Stephanie Whyte's townhouse in Jane-Finch.  

Whyte breaks the silence first. It's almost three years since her 16-year-old son, O'She Doyles-Whyte, was killed.

Whyte said Bobb's shooting leaves her feeling crippled.

"I felt helpless," said Whyte, adding that the shooting near her home "brings back a lot of memories. I told myself I'm not going to talk about it, I just don't want to get into it."

Starr reminded Whyte that even though the feelings of loss won't go away, simple coping strategies can help her move past the feeling of being crippled by grief.

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Rhonda Adonis calls Starr her "guiding angel" for helping her learn to cope with the loss of her brother, Marlon Lennox Mason. Mason, 33, was killed last year at a birthday celebration at Lansdowne and Bloor.

Adonis, mother of four children, two with special needs, says she could barely function after her brother's death.  

"I thought no one could help me," says Adonis. She said she began smoking and drinking "like there was no tomorrow, like the liquor store was mine, because at that moment, I was not Rhonda." She said if it hadn't been for therapy sessions with Sky and the monthly G-social meetings she might have lost custody of her children.

Adonis lives in a townhouse just behind Jamestown Crescent, where Bobb was killed.

"It's very hard at a time like this," said Adonis, "because it feels like the wave won't come down."

But over the long term, peer support can be a low-cost strategy to support women survivors of gun violence in marginalized communities where finances are often precarious, researchers at Women's College say.

Thursday's gathering included Norma Newland, who wore a picture of her 22-year-old daughter, Marcieline, on her baseball cap. Newland's daughter was found dead in her home in Brampton in November of 2013. A former boyfriend has been arrested and charged, but the case is still before the courts.

Comfort Mireku's 15-year-old son, Kwame Duodu, was killed in the same shooting incident as Whyte's son, O'She. 

 

Rita Opoku is another regular. Her son, Malcolm Marfo, 22, was shot as he stepped out of an elevator last year, a shooting followed by the arrest of six members of a notorious gang in Etobicoke.  

Garcia Bartley, a young accountant from Jane-Finch, lost a friend at Westview Secondary to gun violence.

Osayu Omoruyi, whose month-old-baby died prematurely, joins these mothers who've lost older sons and daughters to violence because they share a sense of loss and trauma that often seems overwhelming.

The women come to G-Social, not just to support each other, but to laugh, as Starr alternates between cajoling and counselling, suggesting everything from bubble baths to taking a friend to visit their children's graves to trying retail therapy to lift their spirits.

When Whyte admits her weakness for online retail therapy, Starr reprimands her and tells to do her shopping outside, instead.

"You need to get dressed up," says Starr, "go to the mall, not online."

But Adonis and Whyte told Starr "you get better stuff online" and besides, said Adonis, buying a pretty dress is part of recovery too.

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By the end of the group counselling, the debate about whether online or mall shopping is better therapy dissolved into laughter.

Starr suddenly became serious.  

"You see what happened," she asked the women. "Did you notice that shift? Everybody's laughing right now. So the emotions will come, the wave will get up there. But look at that — the wave came down. And we were laughing."

Starr reminded the women to check in with each other through the month until they meet again. They've all been assigned a partner, someone to check in with every two days.  He also suggests they make the time to stand in front of a mirror and hug themselves.  The meeting finished with the women responding, this time with one-word answers, about how they're feeling at the end of the session.

Three women answer, "blessed," four women say "happy" and two, "great."