Long Lost Cousins with Horror Stories

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I recently discovered a message in that weird section of Facebook where mail goes to die when someone writes to you that you have not befriended.  

It was a letter from a woman named Kathleen, who claimed to be my long lost cousin.  Kathleen lives in Chicago.  I live in Denver.  There’s no reason our paths should have crossed beyond a few messages online.

A few months later, due to unusual circumstances, I found myself down the road from Kathleen’s home.  Covid was beginning to rear its ugly head, which meant we had particularly poor timing to schedule an introduction.  That didn’t stop Kathleen from finding me in a park with her husband and two little girls.  

Over wine in dixie cups, six feet apart, I told Kathleen about my dream of releasing an audio drama podcast.  Her little girls ran around in the grass behind us.  “They look so much like I did when I was their age,” I told her.

Since we met, Kathleen has been my cheerleader, and she even acted in Episode 3 of Foreward as the 9-1-1 dispatcher.  We’ve gotten to know each other, and she helped me realize something interesting.  Many tragedies that I take personally are not unique to me.  

Kathleen is a teacher, which means she has to think about the idea of what she would do if a shooting were to occur in her classroom.  “I have to help my students see their coffee and pens as defense weapons every term.”

Kathleen is also a parent, which means she’s also had to think about what would happen if her children went into lockdown.  This became a reality for Kathleen when her own daughters survived an active shooting situation.  She forwarded me the text her little girl’s teacher sent her during lockdown assuring Kathleen that her daughter loves her.    

She sent me a picture of the handwritten note her little girl wrote to her during the lockdown.  It said:

Dear Mommy, 

I miss you so much.  I want to go home.  I think Abbie is safe.  

Love,

Kaelyn (and Abbie)


As any person with a beating heart would do, I fell apart.  I cried for Kathleen.  I cried for her children.  I cried for me.  I cried for any person who has ever had to question whether or not their child, their sister, their brother, their grandchild, or their student would make it home alive today.  

She describes that day at “the most terrifying hours of her life.”  She told me, she “still feels nauseated thinking about it.”

This shouldn’t be our reality, but it’s the reality we’re living in.  Many of my actors have been students or teachers in buildings where there were school shooting drills or real lockdowns. Violence in schools isn't foreign to them. ⁠⠀ 

All of my actors have encountered their own tragedies, and they know how to channel big emotions - fear, anger, sadness, anxiety…  Foreward is the universal story of anyone who has ever been through something difficult and had to find their way without a road map.

Kathleen and her community gifted their children’s teacher a spa day after the lockdown.  Although that makes Kathleen and the other parents in their children’s class exceptional human beings, it is not reasonable that we are living in a time where we need to trade our teachers' spa days for protecting our children from gun violence.  

I don’t know how we fix this problem, but I do know that it does not occur the same way in other countries.  This is an American issue.  An issue we must prioritize.  We must find a better way FOREWARD.

Subscribe to hear Kathleen and the rest of the Foreward cast on New Years Day.







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A Letter to My Hometown

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Airing their dirty laundry…