When the weather starts getting warmer, Linda Minor finds herself struggling. Her oldest son Christopher Minor died in June 2010 when two men opened fire at the car wash where he was working in Evanston. He wasn't the intended target. The senselessness of his death haunts her, even years later, as does other violence she's seen.
"My life has changed," she says. "I can talk about it without crying now, but I'm still going through something. Usually the month of March — his birthday — and the month of June, when he got killed... I can't get out of it because I've lost so many more people."
On a recent Saturday, Minor joined others dealing with their own losses for food and conversation at the Trauma Recovery Center in the West End.
It's run by social workers who provide trauma-informed group and individual therapy.
The center is just a few blocks from the site of the mass shooting last month that killed 11-year-old Domonic Davis and injured five others.
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His death sparked waves of grief and immediate action. But what happens to those touched by the tragedy once the reporters leave, after a suspect is arrested, or the case goes cold?
Mayor Aftab Pureval last month acknowledged the need to address the long-term psychological scars gun violence leaves.
"So many children knew of and played with the victim," he said at a news conference about the shooting. "The trauma that we are now forced as a community to deal with does not go away. The shooting may be over, but the trauma is still there. Part of that trauma is not feeling safe in their homes. It's going to take some time for us and for the community to do the work necessary to heal the wounds we cannot see."
In the days following the shooting, the city dispatched social workers to visit local schools and go door-to-door through City West, the apartment complex where Davis lived.
City West Residents Council President George Lee says that effort and community meetings about the shooting have been crucial. He says the West End gets a bad rap — it's a great community going through a very hard time.
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"We've got a new social service component here called 'Community Life,' " Lee says of a a program organized by City West developer The Community Builders. "We had some witnesses, some residents, testifying there, and some of them were really terrified. They may need to seek some counseling, because it really messed them up."
Survivors of gun violence and those who witness it often bear the weight of trauma alone. The Trauma Recovery Center is working to change that. It's part of a network created by the state of Ohio in 2017 to provide people with no-cost mental health assessments, individual counseling and group therapy.
The center's director Sheila Nared says clients help devise their own treatment plans to work through pain that might otherwise get worse.
"Data shows that unaddressed trauma is in many cases worse than the trauma itself," she says. "So it's very important to address that trauma so you can begin to build a tool box. Because lots of times, those thoughts, they're not just going to go away."
Nared says the center has seen a spike in calls, telehealth appointments and walk-ins since Davis' shooting. There are plans to expand to a larger space in the future; in the meantime, Nared says the center is taking things a day at a time.
"I got eight calls last night on my crisis line," she says. "We've been overwhelmed with calls and walk-ins from the individuals who are directly impacted."
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Robert Edward Casey also came to the lunch at the recovery center. He lost his only son Ryan to gun violence in September 2021. He says talking to others about it has helped him process his grief.
"It gives me an opportunity to express myself and to understand the other folks around here; they're doing the same thing," he says. "It gives them an opportunity to talk about it. Everybody doesn't want to hear this. But this is what we're here for — to get a better understanding of how these things happen and what we need to do to get closure."