April 23 is Delaware County’s seventh annual Balloon Release, hosted by the Victim Advocate Program in conjunction with National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.
Families who have lost a loved one due to violent crime in Delaware County gather every year to remember their family members and release a balloon in their honor.
Barbara Young, a Muncie citizen who will speak during Delaware County's seventh annual Balloon Release on April 23, is no stranger to losing family members to violent crime.
Two of her children were killed by gun violence—first, her 22-year-old son and then three years later, her 19-year-old daughter. Both fathers of her two sons were also killed when she was young, but she said she didn’t understand pain until she lost her two children.
“Losing [my kids] was so devastating. It was way harder than losing my kids’ fathers ... I knew one day I would be able to love again," she said. "The hardest thing [about losing their fathers] was raising my boys alone.”
Muncie Victim Advocate Jacki Clamme said the families that have this kind of loss in common understand each other’s grief in a way no one else can. She brings slips of paper to the event so they can exchange phone numbers and email addresses.
When someone loses a family member to violent crime she tells them, “You belong to a club now. A club you didn’t ask to belong to. [Other people] don't know what it’s like to lose a brother to murder.”
Young’s daughter Tanisha—who was 19 when she was shot as an innocent bystander—held a very special place in her heart. Tanisha was shot in 2009 by a stray bullet in the parking lot of a teen nightclub in Muncie when two gangs exchanged fire.
Within a year of her daughter’s death, she fell into a deep depression, unable to eat or sleep.
“I couldn’t even look at young people her age because they had life and she didn’t,” Young said. “I didn’t want to be like that because I’m not a bitter person. It was days I would wake up and I didn’t even want to be with my other two daughters because they had life and she didn’t.”
Young said that on one of her darkest days she was alone in her bathroom and felt someone touching her head, massaging her scalp, comforting her. She said it was God reaching out to her.
“I could just feel the pressure lifting up off of me,” she said. "[I was] still crying ... still hurting. Just didn’t want to live, couldn't make it like this. I was hurting so bad 'till I was almost gonna be a serial killer or kill myself, and I didn’t want either one because it wasn’t 'Barbara Young.' I wasn't that type of person.”
Since then, Young said she has dealt with her pain by letting go. The Balloon Release on April 23 will be one of the first times she has shared her story publicly, but she is trying to write a book about her experiences.
She said it is her calling to help people who are hurting—and that holding onto hurt is the reason violence is in the world.
“The worse we get hurt, we have to let go,” Young said. “This violence that’s going on in the world is caused by hurting people.”
Clamme said the Balloon Release is important to the families of those who have experienced similar loss because it’s their chance to remember.
“People will tend maybe not to bring up that person’s name or talk about them because they think it brings up bad memories," Clamme said. "It does bring up memories and the person may cry and stuff. They want to talk about them, they want to remember them.”
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