How Communities Heal After Tragedy: Lessons From Fairfield CA

Grief does not keep a schedule. It shows up at the grocery store, on the drive to work, in the silence of a house that used to feel normal. When tragedy touches a whole community at once, that grief multiplies in ways that are hard to describe and even harder to carry alone.

Fairfield has had its share of hard moments, moments that stopped our city mid-stride and left us asking the questions tragedy always brings. Why did this happen? What do we do now? How do we keep going? Those questions don’t have easy answers, but the way a community responds to them says everything about who it is and what it values.

In each of these moments, Fairfield has chosen to show up, together. That choice doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people decide to make it happen.

When Violence Hit Fairfield, the Community Did Not Retreat

When violence recently shook this city, residents didn’t disappear into silence. They came out.

On June 6th at the Civic Center Pond, hundreds of people showed up with lawn chairs and blankets and a shared willingness to sit with grief together. I co-hosted the Community Healing Circle with Broken by Violence and Tri-City NAACP to create exactly the kind of space communities need after trauma.

Researchers who study collective grief consistently find that recognizing shared trauma is an essential first step in healing. When people understand that their pain is shared by many around them, they can begin to address it together and build resilience as a community. That’s what the Healing Circle made possible.

The evening wasn’t a press conference or a political event. It was a genuine gathering built around seven words.

You don’t have to carry this alone.

What that looked like in practice

• Therapist Rochelle Henderson led the crowd through scream therapy, giving people a physical way to release what they had been holding inside
• Andre Humphrey with Inner City Bliss brought healing through words and sounds, meeting people exactly where they were emotionally
• Ebony led a formal acknowledgment of the victims, their families, and the students who witnessed what no young person should ever have to see
• Speakers including Assemblymember Lori Wilson, Solano County Supervisor Wanda Williams, and 30-year community advocate Gail Byrdsong offered presence and perspective
• Faith leaders including Pastor Brown grounded the gathering in something larger than the moment

Research shows that group affiliations help people re-establish purpose and connection after tragedy, buffering against isolation and fostering collective resilience. That night, our community was building its resilience in real time.

I wrote more about this in The Power of Knowing Your Neighbors: Why Community Connection Matters. The moments that build lasting community bonds are often the hardest ones. Tragedy, handled with intention and care, pulls people together in ways ordinary life rarely does.

The Quieter Tragedies Nobody Talks About Enough

Not every tragedy announces itself with a single event. Some unfold slowly and silently: the family that loses housing and spends months in survival mode, the woman who leaves incarceration with nowhere safe to land, the resident whose mental health crisis goes unaddressed because the right support wasn’t there when they needed it most.

These quieter tragedies don’t generate headlines, but they leave real damage in people’s lives and in the fabric of the community around them.

I’ve spent my career responding to these tragedies too. Not with statements. With infrastructure.

I co-founded Solano Impact Care to provide personalized care and meaningful connection for people navigating their hardest moments. I founded Hazel’s Tranquility Place, named after my mother, because a formerly incarcerated woman trying to rebuild her life needs more than good intentions. She needs a safe home, a structured environment, and a community that’s genuinely rooting for her.

As I wrote in A Proven Strategy to Reduce Homelessness, real healing from these slower tragedies requires the same ingredients as healing from sudden ones:

• Genuine presence from leaders who stay engaged beyond the initial crisis
• Coordinated support between city government, nonprofits, and faith communities
• Resources that reach people before situations become emergencies
• A governing philosophy that treats every resident’s suffering as worthy of a serious, sustained response

What Healing Actually Requires From Local Leaders

Communities don’t need their elected officials to swoop in and take over after tragedy. Research consistently finds that community-led recovery approaches produce better outcomes than top-down interventions. Communities need to be active participants in their own healing, rather than passive recipients of services delivered from the outside.

What they need from leaders is someone who:

• Shows up and stays present long after the initial shock fades
• Helps connect residents to the resources and organizations already doing healing work
• Creates space for community voices rather than talking over them
• Treats community wellbeing as a governing priority not a campaign talking point
• Holds the institutional knowledge of which organizations to call and which gaps still need filling

Empathetic leaders accelerate community healing by conferring meaning on tragedy, focusing on the future, and underscoring collective learning rather than retreating from difficult conversations.

That’s the kind of leadership I’ve worked to practice throughout my first term: showing up at the Healing Circle, then at the next community forum, then at the council meeting where budget decisions affecting support services actually get made.

Building the Infrastructure for Healing Before It Is Needed

The communities that recover best from tragedy are the ones that built the right relationships, organizations, and support systems before anything went wrong, even more than the ones that respond fastest in the moment.

Faith-based organizations, community nonprofits, and local leaders who invest in disaster spiritual care and community gathering create a foundation for recovery that institutional government alone cannot replicate. Rebuilding the fabric of community after a disaster requires intentional, sustained investment in the structures that hold people together.

Fairfield has those structures: organizations like Solano Impact Care and Hazel’s Tranquility Place, faith leaders who showed up at the Healing Circle because they had already been showing up for years, and advocates like Gail Byrdsong, with thirty years of community presence, who didn’t need to be recruited or convinced. They were already there.

The question for November is whether Fairfield keeps the leadership that helped build and sustain those structures.

Why This Matters for November

A second term is about continuing this work, rather than starting over.

I enter this election with four years of relationships with the organizations doing healing work in Fairfield. I know which resources exist and where the gaps are. I’ve sat with residents in their grief and carried what I heard back into chambers. And I’ve built organizations with my own hands that are still serving Solano County right now.

That kind of institutional knowledge and community trust takes years to build. It can’t be handed to a first-time candidate or recreated from scratch after an election.

A vote for me on November 3 is a vote for the kind of sustained, human, community-centered leadership that makes healing possible when tragedy comes.

And in Fairfield, as in every city, tragedy will come again. The question is always whether the community has the leadership and the infrastructure to face it together.

District 1 already has both.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What was the Community Healing Circle and who organized it? 

A community gathering on June 6th at Civic Center Pond that I co-hosted with Broken by Violence and Tri-City NAACP, creating space for collective healing after recent violence in Fairfield.

2. What organizations in Solano County support community healing year round? 

Solano Impact Care and Hazel’s Tranquility Place both provide ongoing support for residents navigating difficult circumstances, alongside organizations like Broken by Violence and Tri-City NAACP.

3. Why does local leadership matter so much during community tragedy? 

Local leaders shape whether resources reach the right people, whether community voices get heard, and whether healing infrastructure exists before it is urgently needed.