As I write, we are days into an unimaginable week in Texas. For as many hurricanes and tropical storms as we have seen in Houston, the lightning-fast flooding of the Guadalupe River on July 4 has perhaps been the most disturbing.
It was not only the swiftness with which the flood took over communities and campgrounds, it was the surprise of it. We all have been shaken, heartbroken by the loss of 27 little girls and counselors at Camp Mystic, a place generations of women and girls considered a safe haven. Right now, it is impossible to think beyond the precious lost lives in the flood – more than 120 reported so far, as of this writing – and the families who loved them. They were our children, our grandchildren, our friends, our friends-of-friends. Where do we go from here?
Dr. John Price, who, with his wife Leila-Scott, founded The Center for Healing Arts & Sciences, says it is in our connectedness that we will find healing. “We need to do this together, in community,” says John, who is a psychotherapist and president of The Jung Center’s board of trustees. John and Leila-Scott, who respectively attended Camp Longhorn and Camp Mystic, picked up their 9-year-old daughter from her first summer at Mystic a week before the floods…