Healing ceremony held in Austin to help community process grief after Uvalde school shooting

AUSTIN, Texas - Sunday morning was a time of healing for those who came out to the Mexican American Cultural Center in Downtown Austin. A place for people to share their grief weeks after the deadly mass shooting at a Texas elementary school.

"There's a part of my heart that was really wounded with the news of Uvalde. When we have tragedy and our hearts are broken, it's important to find ourselves in community," said Marissa Munoz, a Texas educator.

The healing ceremony was led by Academia Cuauhtli, a cultural enrichment program for fourth and fifth graders in Austin.

"It was important to be here, to be in community, because that's how we know to process some of the grief that we're all experiencing, not only from Uvalde, but the triggering of multiple other massive shootings that have happened," said Munoz.

Munoz believes the event provided an outlet for community members to process their grief together and talk about what can be done to prevent this from happening again.

"As a teacher, educator, as a person who was a sixth grade teacher for years, I'm in classrooms. Those are kids. Those are our teachers. There has to be a part of the conversation where we hear from our kids and our teachers," she said.

She believes this type of pain will truly never go away until something is done.

"Life can never be the same after something like this. That school could never be the same. It's never going to function the same way. And so how do we pay attention to what they specifically need?" she said.