Sawyer's Winning Essay for our 2023 Scholarship

Sawyer DiCowden is a high school senior from South Florida who survived a shooting just days after the shooting in Parkland. Read below for the essay she wrote that made her a recipient of our 2023 scholarship:

---

Gun violence is having America grow sicker and sicker by the minute. From the founding days of our country, guns have been taken advantage of and instilled terror within many around the country. Since the beginning of this year, 2023, America has reared a whopping 198 school shootings, according to Security.org. It is not an opinion, but a fact that the largest pandemic plaguing America is gun violence. This persistent, aggravated violence has Americans feeling unsafe in public, at home, or frankly, anywhere. Us children are now required to rise higher than the prior generations to end this pandemic once and for all.

February 17, 2018. Three days following one of the deadliest school shootings in

American history at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school. On the seventeenth, my life and its trajectory were forever changed. February the seventeenth began filled with joy and happiness, celebrating my friend’s twelfth birthday at her favorite restaurant. The food was delicious and the company was warm and loving. All of those happy feelings were stolen away in an instant. An aggravated gunman outside the restaurant had shot inside. The ear splitting shatter of the bullet hitting the window will never leave me for as long as I live. I was sent into complete shock. I did not know what to do, except for what I spoke about with my mom earlier in the week, following

the Marjory Stoneman Douglas tragedy. Traumatized by what had happened that week in Parkland, she informed me if I were ever in a similar situation to “run. Run away as fast as you can and do not look back.”

The stern survival skills echoed in my head as I did the exact opposite of her instructions. I was trying to buy myself a few more precious seconds of life by creating barricades with tables and crawling as low as I could to hide and shield myself from the gunman. When the conversation had echoed through my brain for what felt like the millionth time, it was not a mere thought, but now a plan. I scanned the restaurant as fast as I could for the bright crimson exit sign. Finding it and doors a few feet away, I bolted for them as fast as I could and set off the blaring emergency exit alarm that would ring the rest of the night. Then I did what was engraved in my mind: I “ran as fast as I could'' and I “did not look back.” I jumped fences, ran through homeowner’s lawns, and considered swimming through the intercoastal to just get a bit farther

than I was, without looking back. The fear that this event sent through me has stayed with me every day since.

The paralyzing fear from the shooting left me bedridden, mentally sick, and physically sick for what felt like a lifetime. I did not return to school for the next few days due to panic attacks as well as vomiting and crying episodes. When I eventually had to go back to the sixth grade, it was the bravest thing I have ever done to this day. The consequences of the shooting gave me the ability to hold my need for the bathroom for hours since I was petrified to go alone, not flinching at cubbies slamming shut, and even holding back the tears in remembrance of the girl I once was before being exposed to the harsh reality of the country I call home. These feelings infuriated me that action was barely being taken to fix such a large issue across the country. In addition to returning to school, I eventually had to go back to dance as well. The

bangs of our noisy dance shoes pierced my ears, imitating the sounds of the shots I heard just a few days prior. No matter where I turned, I was faced with anxiousness and helplessness as I thought I would never escape the dark feelings from my experience.

Wanting to quit dancing completely due to the similar sounds of the shoes and gunshots, I could not, since I had already been casted in the yearly performance at a local festival. Pretending to be as confident and strong as I possibly could, I pushed through countless rehearsals and prepared for the grueling months of approaching performances. Our first day of performance, my dance teacher handed me two silky, vibrant pieces of ribbon. She explained to us dancers that we were to wear these ribbons in our hair in honor of Jaime Guttenberg and Cara Loughran, two well known dancers in the community who passed away in the Stoneman Douglas shooting. My heart sank. I truly could not run away from gun violence in any aspect. I became enraged with the reality I was living in. The term “gun violence” made me so angry that

someone could even associate with such a term. I knew I had to take action somehow and some way.

Being just twelve and a gun violence survivor definitely had its downsides, since you could only do so much. I vowed in high school to work as hard as I can to make a change. And that's exactly what I did, running head first into this mess of a reality I lived in. While posting gun safety information on social media and informing my friends of petitions to sign to ban assault weapons was important during middle school, I wanted to do more. When classes were back from COVID-19 my sophomore year, I began a project called Project Peace STA (Saint Thomas Aquinas [High School]). With my project, I and my classmates were able to send over 50 cards to the Uvalde Civic Center a few weeks after the third deadliest school shooting in history. While that helped me feel better that I was taking action in a hurting community, I wasn’t

fulfilled since I felt that I could make a larger impact. With this fuel, I began another project, called Ceilis for Community. In my project, I teach children in the South Florida community to dance, the mental health benefits of dancing, and how they can implement the gained benefits into their daily lives. These implementation examples include sitting with someone who is alone at lunch, or sharing their happiness with someone during snack time. By having children simply reach out to others, their peers become less isolated and depressed, which are the most common factors in all school shooters. Additionally, I joined the Making Our Schools Safe Club (MOSS) at my high school and became Vice President this past year. Our big goal for this year is to raise

funds around the school to bring ID lanyards to a low income school the next street over. By myself in the club, I began the Ribbon Remembrance Program in which we make ribbons to show support for large school shootings. I took the most action that I could and made the most change that I could.

In summary, I never planned to ever come out of my plague of anxiety as a gun violence survivor. Thankful for my passion to aid my community, I have become who I am today and plan to continue making gun safety contributions to the world around me for as long as I live. I am forever grateful to my mom for teaching me to run away as fast as I can from danger, which ultimately had me run into the largest and most important part of my life.