Have you ever felt like you are different or that other people have judged you unfairly?
Have you ever felt like all you wanted was to be understood and to be accepted for who you are?

We all have skeletons and things that we don’t share with people because we are afraid of being judged. Sometimes those things are choices we made in the past that we are not proud of and sometimes they are things that happened that were beyond our control. Whatever it is, if it makes you feel like you are different, it has potential to cause you to feel ashamed, alienated and alone.

Human beings like to share things in common with other human beings. It is why people with motorcycles and jeeps wave at each other, and why people who love body art are interested in each other’s tattoos. It is why we have groups – thousands of them, in fact – for interests and activities, such as investing or hiking, and groups for social and global issues, such as environmentalism and child protection. As human beings, we advocate and speak out in response to the issues and plights we feel on individual, social, and cultural levels. Groups of all kinds are formed to address injustices, to break free of oppression, to confront the fear of being shamed. Whether it is an official group or an unofficial ‘community’, it creates a space to just be who you are, to be heard, to be seen, to be understood, without judgement. Where you may have felt like you were the only one, it gives you a place to create connections with other people that are mutually supportive.
This is one thing that connects Lean On Me to every other group. It is a space for people, who at one point felt isolated and alone in a situation and a system that keeps them hidden, to connect with others who can empathize, understand, and support them. It has met a huge need in our community and has filled a gap that was missing. It is the first group of its kind in Ontario and it is continuing to transform something so negative into something positive for not only the people who are impacted by homicide but for our entire community.

For the rest of our community who have never experienced homicide directly, the thoughts, feelings and reactions to reading about it or hearing about it are similar:
“It is scary to think that it is a reality and that it happens every day.”
“It is scary that humans are capable of doing that. It is scary that people are resorting to it, that they have lost control of their emotions somehow, and that they came to that brink.”
“It is scary to think that we are not protected the way we should be and that society is not protected.”

“It is scary that there are not services in place that aid people to prevent it from happening.”
“I think that it’s terrible and senseless.”
“I feel disbelief – disbelief that it actually happens in my city. It’s something that’s more for the movies.”
“I think about their families and the loss.”

These sentiments reveal the impact that a violent, sudden death has not only on the families of the person who is murdered but also on the community at large.
When there are tragedies in our communities and our world – whether it is a house that burns down or a tsunami – human beings have shown an incredible ability to pull together to support those in need. In Jewish communities, for instance, when there is a death the neighbours will come together around the family to help them at their time of need. Something is different when there is a homicide, and instead of neighbours and the community coming together around the family there is a sense of fear and people pull away instead of giving outwards. While wondering why this is, one person commented, “It’s like people somehow think that it’s transmittable. You cannot ‘catch’ murder.” Maybe it occurs to people that ‘if it happened to them, then it could happen to me’ or they wonder ‘what did they do to cause it?’…we always want to have a reason to explain and rationalize what is beyond comprehension.

How would you react? Why would you react that way?

What we don’t understand, we fear, and there is nothing we fear more than death. When it is not a choice, the cause of the death is the cause of the fear. Homicide just does not make sense to us. We try to put the pieces together to make sense of it so it is less fearful and we construct reasons, legitimate or not, to rationalize it. “People don’t know what to say so or do and we alienate people sometimes unknowingly.” Our society does not have enough information about it. We hear about the crime – the who, what, where, when and how – but we don’t know the why. We can never know – even when there is a ‘reason’, the act itself goes against human nature and there is no ‘why’ that justifies it. The military puts soldiers through rigorous psychological training to desensitize them so they are capable of killing another person. When a person in our own community does this, we are acutely aware that there is something wrong. Much bigger questions arise concerning our society and the social issues prevalent today but we feel powerless to do anything about it. It seems like a pipe-dream to have a peaceful world. We ask ourselves ‘what is the world coming to?!’, but then we turn the page of the paper or go back to watching our favourite sitcoms. ‘Those people’ – the ones who choose a lifestyle of crime and violence – are not like you. You think to yourself, “I’m glad I don’t live in THAT neighbourhood”. You are separate from ‘them’.

But for the families and friends whose lives have been changed by homicide, they were separate at one time as well. They were not involved with drugs or gangs. They did not live a life of crime. The extent of their involvement with police may have been an occasional traffic ticket. Then they realized that it does not matter what neighbourhood you are in, and it does not matter who you choose to associate with. Somehow the paths of one lifestyle and another crossed and their life, their world, as they knew it was changed forever.
We don’t hear about this. We don’t have the information so the truth is as hidden and as invisible as the people who have lost a loved one to homicide. We also don’t hear about the people who are affected and we don’t have any follow-up to the stories – only a continuous stream of the 5Ws. We only hear about the numbers, the statistics, the labels – a gang or drugs. We hear if someone was caught or not, and if they were sentences or not, and somehow that is supposed to be ‘good enough’ for society to feel safe, and that is supposed to make everything ‘okay’. It’s a false sense of protection and a false sense of justice.

Our concept of justice is not defined thoroughly. We think that ‘jail’ is enough, and we are content to hear that someone was ‘caught’. We do not hear that sometimes a person is not put in jail, even when it is known that they took someone else’s life, simply because there is not enough evidence. We do not hear about how criminals think that ‘jail’ is a better option – a safe-haven – in comparison to the lifestyle that they live. We do not hear that when they are caught, awaiting trial, they are given the best lawyers while the only voice for the victim, the deceased, is an appointed crown attorney who is overstrained with many other cases and no assistance. We don’t hear that there is no one in the court to speak on behalf of the families, to give them a voice, to ask their questions, and give weight to their opinions during a highly emotional process through the system. We don’t hear that the system is over-burdened and at the end of the day, the decision to proceed with a trail is based on money and time, not the pursuit of justice. We do not hear that families cope with years of unanswered questions, being denied access to information, and often no resolution to a case – only to learn that the person who took the life of their husband, son, mother, daughter, brother or sister will only be in jail for 5 years. We don’t hear that families are not allowed to express, from their heart, their feelings and thoughts in their victim impact statements and that they are only accepted in court if they are worded the way the court defines.

We do not hear that family members are told that they are only being informed about the deal the lawyers are making but they have no say in it either way. We don’t hear that there is victim compensation available but that only certain families will receive it – only the ones that can ‘prove how badly it impacted them’ as though there are some families that would not have been impacted. We do not hear how difficult it is to re-live the experience over again, opening wounds that were beginning to heal, in order to describe the whole traumatic story and fill out all the paperwork as required by the victim compensation board – only to be denied any assistance whatsoever. We don’t hear that the people on this board who make these judgements are not even qualified to assess the psychological and emotional states of individuals. We don’t hear that every piece of the justice system – police, lawyers, courts, jails, victim support – will say that they are doing the best they can – but they are doing it under a framework that doesn’t work. It is under an umbrella that does not keep the rain out. We do not hear that our system doesn’t work. We do not hear about it, and we do not address it – until we are personally impacted by the fact that it does not work.

The fact is that we are all personally impacted by it – we pay for it with our tax dollars, we pay for it when our safe communities become places of violence, we pay for it when we have to have more police monitoring our neighbourhoods. A change in the system will take years, if it happens at all, and human beings will continue to be impacted by the fact that homicide is real. In the meantime, Lean On Me addresses the needs in society to give hope after homicide, give a voice to those who cannot speak, and help prepare people and support them along their emotional and tumultuous journey through the system.