I’ve always loved my birthday, Dec. 13. I love its quirky prime numbers sitting in the gloomy weeks near the darkest part of the year. I love that in numerology, it’s a “master number,” signifying transformation and rebirth. I was born on a Friday, and claiming 13 as my lucky number was an early act of defiance against baseless Western superstition. I share the birthday with Taylor Swift, and she, too, bucks convention to claim it as her power number, scrawling the digits on the back of her hand when she performs. We were born under a bad sign and we’re better for it. 

So I was mad—no, livid—when a gunman chose my special day to commit violence at Brown. I was at my birthday dinner when the alerts of an active shooter hit my phone. Far from campus, I was safe, but spent the rest of my night watching the news, scared and sad. My birthday will always be tinged with sadness now, a day to mark the anniversary, to remember Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, and to undoubtedly revisit those terrible feelings. 

It felt a little selfish and petty at first to be mad about my silly day. But the more I spoke to colleagues and alumni, and read the reflections Sarah Baldwin captures in her story in this issue, I came to understand my feelings as another valid manifestation of loss. All of us connected to Brown in any way are grieving. Someone stole something we love. And there are as many ways to experience that loss as there are Brunonians. As a community, we are nurturing tender shoots of hope and healing, trying to find ways we can move forward with our work and our education while holding on to the memory of what we lost. I suspect, in time, I’ll learn to do the same on my birthday. Someday I’ll be able to hold both truths in my heart at the same time, to feel the loss and the joy that I got another trip around the sun.