<p>Have you ever been so disturbed by a news story that didn’t affect you personally, at all, that you couldn’t get past it?</p>
<p>There was a news story earlier in the week that has given me nightmares ever since and has put me into a state of huge anxiety. I’m not usually like this, but wow. </p>
<p>Anyone else ever had something like this?</p>
<p>Oh yeah, the mom and daughters murdered in their home in CT a few years ago. I still lie awake sometimes thinking about that.</p>
<p>Yes, definitely. Years ago, there was story about a child that can still bring me to tears and give me anxiety.</p>
<p>simpkin, that was the one that immediately jumped to mind for me, too. I still get so very sad when I think of that. The awful tragedy this week of the young couple and their baby killed in NYC has had the same effect on me. If I think about it for too long, it undoes me.</p>
<p>Yes, zm. Beslan and Newtown.</p>
<p>Polly Klaas</p>
<p>Ok. Thank you. I needed to hear that. The horror is that 12 year old boy who was bullied and then beaten almost to death in the schoolyard. He was taken off life support the other day. Last night, the nighmare was so terrible that I dreamed that I was beating my head against the wall. I woke up with such extreme pain in my face that I thought I might have actually done that in my sleep. My jaw still feel bruised and sore. </p>
<p>Worse yet, I’ve been super-clingy to my son and he really doesn’t need that.</p>
<p>I’m sorry,Zoosermom. That really is a horrible story, hard to even begin to accept that it actually happened.</p>
<p>That is why I look for stories like this:</p>
<p>Danny Stewart found a baby in a subway entrance in August, 2000. He first thought it was a doll. The baby was so new he had the umbilical cord attached. His partner, Richard Mercurio, said, </p>
<p>“Danny called me that day, frantic. ‘I found a baby!’ he shouted. ‘I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.’ </p>
<p>In December, 2000, Danny was in court to testify about finding the baby when the judge asked if he wanted to adopt him. Danny, who is a social worker, said yes without talking to Richard. They started the process of being approved but a week later when they appeared before the judge to declare their legal intent to adopt she asked if they wanted the baby for the holiday. She meant that Christmas. They kept him over the next year as the adoption process moved forward. They named the boy Kevin. He was being called Baby ACE because he was found at an A, C and E lines station. At the final hearing, Danny asked why she’d done this and she said, “I had a hunch. Was I wrong?”</p>
<p>Kevin decided that after NY legalized gay marriage his dads should marry and he suggested they find the judge who suggested they adopt him. She conducted the marriage ceremony for his dads in 2011.</p>
<p>The Long Island pharmacy massacre in June 2011. The clerk was D1s age, looked a bit like her and set to graduate HS the same week (maybe even day). I had to change channels whenever the story came on the local news. Still haunts me.</p>
<p>Lergmom, that’s a great story.</p>
<p>And ZM, I know what you mean. There are some stories I purposely stay away from, because there is no need for me to know some things.</p>
<p>Considering I often have anxiety just about " stuff", I have to say not usually about anything that did not affect me directly.I also don’t watch television news, my priority Im embarrassed to say is to focus on ways to move forward, not to stay up to date on the ways humans can be.
It helps me function.</p>
<p>However, when my oldest was a senior in high school, the Capitol Hill massacre took place in the same general neighborhood of her school and where many of her friends lived.
While she wasn’t involved in the raver scene, she was in the same age range as the kids who were.
It was very upsetting & it took me a while to let go of it. Participating in a vigil & donating to the families involved helped.</p>
<p>Even if you arent close to where something physically happened, I have found that making a small shrine, lighting a candle & meditating/ praying helps to find strenght to use the energy from the pain and channel it into something more life affirming.</p>
<p>I also will stay away from certain news stories because I get so upset and haunted.</p>
<p>Just over two years ago there was a young woman who was walking home from a night out with colleagues (not drunk, not late at night, not a bad area) and went directly past my workplace at the time, which was a pub. She was walking back to her house, which was very close to a close relative’s house, where she was murdered by her next door neighbour. Her body was found ten days later, frozen solid and covered with snow on a grass verge several miles away from where she was murdered and 2 minutes up the road from where I grew up 
</p>
<p>I had no personal connection to her, but the whole thing was just far too close to home</p>
<p>The disappearance (ten years later determined to be a murder) of Sarah Pryor in 1985 worried me for many years. [Wayland’s</a> Sarah Pryor murder remains unsolved - Framingham, MA - The MetroWest Daily News](<a href=“http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1850042188/Last-Wayland-murder-remains-unsolved]Wayland’s”>http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1850042188/Last-Wayland-murder-remains-unsolved)</p>
<p>This has happened to me, many of the stories others have mentioned, 9/11 was terrible, as it was for most of the nation but I found myself leaving CNN on all night. I often wonder if it is a mothering instinct because my husband who is caring man, watches these stories but doesn’t connect to them like I do.</p>
<p>The infamous murder trial of a certain Florida young mother of her beautiful little girl. Still haven’t quite got over that one.</p>
<p>Years ago, there was a picture in the paper of a young man whose girlfriend had delivered a baby and they killed it. He was wearing a baseball cap and looked SO young. I can still see his face. Being the mother of sons, it has haunted me for years.</p>
<p>The worst for me has been Newtown . I just had to shut it all down in terms of news and television in general because there was just no escaping it ( unless I tuned into the food network ) Couldn’t bear anything about it online or in print either.
It isn’t that I necessarily feared something like this happening that might affect my loved ones , but that the victims were babies .
I can usually tolerate a lot in , even when it comes to other disasters , but I knew I had to steer clear of any reports. </p>
<p>I felt similar post 9/11 for a very long time…still do when it comes around to the yearly anniversary</p>
<p>Somehow I did not connect with Newtown. </p>
<p>Living in the NYC metro area and working in NYC on 9/11 was beyond stressful and it still lingers. There’s a tree at our train station planted in honor of the town members killed with a plaque under it and I walk by a pizza place every day whose name is the same as the last name of a close friend who was killed.</p>