The physical scars beneath my blouse no longer pained me; they were simply proof, now, that I had survived the blade.

The emotional ache of the children I had lost so violently would never entirely disappear, and I did not want it to; some griefs are meant to be carried.

But funding a foundation that would save thousands of other lives meant that their memory would not be only a wound.

It would bloom, in the world, into something beautiful, and enduring, and good.

I stepped out of my office and walked down the long carpeted hallway toward the private executive elevator, and as its doors slid open, I caught my reflection in the polished brass of its walls.