KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bishop Frank Douglas Jr. and Theresa Nunally both lost their children to violence.
Two very different people have two different stories with one shared outcome: their children are no longer here.
“That first two months I thought I was just going to stop preaching,” said Douglas, the pastor at Beth-Judah Ministries C.O.G.I.C.
"Losing my baby boy has been the most trying test of my faith in my life,” Nunally said.
Douglas lost his son Cameron and Nunally lost her son Anthony. Both experienced unimaginable grief and significant stress on their mental health.
“I talked to him 30 minutes before he died but I just started praying like I’ve never prayed before. When I got the call I knew, I just felt like the soul was ripped out of my body I felt it,” Nunally said.
Nunally and Douglas experienced grief and trauma that adult psychiatrist Dr. Sasha Hamdani says our entire community could be feeling whether we've been affected personally or not.
“Like I’m going to avoid these areas, I’m not going to go out at these certain times so things like that it might be impacting you more than you think,” Hamdani explained.
“I know I was just overwhelmed seeing people constantly killed just dying every day. It took a toll on me even before I lost my son,” Nunally said.
Rosilyn Temple, who lost her son Antonio back in 2011, is bringing other mothers, bonded by the pain of homicide, together to talk it out.
“It basically destroyed me,” said Temple, the founder and program director of Kansas City Mothers in Charge.
Each of the three parents found solace in seeking professional help, and ask for the community to come together to tackle violent crime.
“When we’re addressing the number of homicides in our community as small as Kansas City is, that’s a problem, that's a mental health problem,” Temple said.
