"Astrid Tuminez was on her way to Rome, the trip a kind of pilgrimage after months of grief. Her husband, Jeffrey Tolk, had died suddenly earlier in the year, and the loss had left her carrying a weight she couldn't set down. I felt darkness and a rage I'd never known before. It was like a tectonic shift in my reality, she said. Tuminez imagined quiet days walking through old churches, sitting in dim chapels in Rome."
"One sentence, again and again: Charlie has been shot. Tuminez remembers the moment less as a thought than something her body absorbed all at once. Our bodies feel these things. Just utter shock, like my whole body was on fire, she said in her office at Utah Valley University (UVU) in November. And then I had to find my inner quiet, because when something like that happens as a leader, you realize it has real consequences."
"The shock and trauma for everybody else is very real, Tuminez said. There was a wounding that happened to all of us. In the terminal, airport screens looped the same images: flashing lights, federal officers, students trampling one another in panic. People around her stared at their phones, some gasping, some whispering. But nothing cut through her like seeing her own campus the institution she had led since 2018 as its first female president from thousands of miles away, in utter panic."
Astrid Tuminez traveled to Rome seeking spiritual healing after the sudden death of her husband, Jeffrey Tolk. During a layover in Atlanta she received repeated messages that Charlie had been shot and immediately returned to Utah. A livestream captured the shooting and students, faculty, staff and community members witnessed the violence. Tuminez experienced bodily shock and focused on finding inner quiet to lead. She prioritized asking what people needed rather than what she wanted. Airport screens showed images of panic, federal officers and trampling students while the campus, which she had led since 2018 as its first female president, appeared in utter panic from afar.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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