People who have lost their mothers know how profoundly painful and life-changing that loss is. Many immigrants and refugees experience that loss through separation from their mothers in the process of migration. Some mothers migrate before their children, and some children before their mothers. Whatever the process, that separation has a devastating impact on mothers and children.

The events in Newtown sparked a lot of discussion on gun control and the media's representation of children following violent events. However, as is the case with most well-covered human tragedies, mental health discourse was decidedly missing from the reporting. "Evil visited this community today," the Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said following the shooting. Such words are not uncommon following acts of violence, but their prominence still made me cringe. I have to ask, whose "evil" are we talking about when we classify this tragedy as such?