My fear growing up was gun violence. But a bigger threat to my body may have come from an invisible villain<\/p>\n
Everyone experiences a moment that shapes who they are \u2013 a moment when childhood innocence is lost, and the burdens and traumas of the world become clearer.<\/p>\n
For me, that moment occurred in elementary school when my friend discovered a gun in Englewood, New Jersey<\/a>\u2019s Denning Park. For days, I worried about what might be lurking behind the trees and in the shadows. This anxiety lingered through high school; I even wrote in my local newspaper that \u201cI couldn\u2019t remember anything more frightening for a young girl in elementary school\u201d.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My fear growing up was gun violence. But a bigger threat to my body may have come from an invisible villain Everyone experiences a moment that shapes who they are \u2013 a moment when childhood innocence is lost, and the burdens and traumas of the world become clearer. For me, that moment occurred in elementary … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}