Reclaim Foundation Founder’s Story

Content related to: Gun Violence, Vehicle Accidents, Wildfires

By: Megan Bull - President, Director, and Founder of Reclaim Foundation

When I officially began the process of forming Reclaim Foundation, I worried about writing this exact story that you are reading. We often define ourselves by something of prominent importance in our lives; growing up I defined myself as a “gymnast” and now I dreaded the thought of forever being defined as a “trauma victim.” I use the term “victim” because I thought I hadn’t reached some imaginable success point of rehabilitation that switched me from a “victim” to a “survivor.”

As I’ve continued on my journey of trauma recovery, I learned that you do not need to do something extraordinary in the wake of trauma – living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and surviving it is enough. At the beginning of my journey, simply making it through each day was my goal. Yet I wanted to do more than just survive. I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to thrive and reclaim my life. I wanted my life to be defined by what I want it to be, not by the events that happened to me. But to understand how I reached that point, you need to know my story and the time and struggle it took me to get to get where I am now:

 As a self-proclaimed garlic fanatic, the Gilroy Garlic Festival had been on my bucket list for as long as I could remember. I finally had someone I could convince to go with me, my partner, Mason. We were able to buy tickets for the last day of the event – Sunday, July 28th, 2019.

We disregarded the directions on our phone and followed the signs along Highway 101 that led to a parking lot. The makeshift parking lot turned out to actually be a former garlic field. As the smell of garlic radiated from the ground, excitement for the day ahead began to radiate from me. We weren’t entirely sure where we were precisely located within the town of Gilroy. The parking lots were far enough from the festival grounds that there were buses to take festival goers to the entrance from the parking area. As a result, we weren’t entirely sure how far away we parked from the festival entrance. At the entrance gate, security briefly glanced into my purse. Metal detectors and scanners were present, but to my surprise, security motioned us to bypass these safeguards. I didn’t give it a second thought at the moment, and we made it into the event after the brief screening of my purse.

Once we passed the gates, Mason and I completely submerged ourselves into total garlic bliss. We enjoyed every food item, each prepared with an abundant amount of garlic ranging from bread, pasta, shrimp, and calamari. While watching live cooking shows, we sipped on local wines and blended mimosas since Mason turned 21 earlier in the year. We received bags of free garlic and even ate garlic ice cream! In order to recuperate from the decadent food, we sat and listened to bands, singers, and talked to vendors. 

After eating some garlic fries, it was close to 5:30 PM and we felt our perfect day was coming to a close. The festival officially closed at 6:00 PM, so we decided to head back towards the exit, the same location we had entered seamlessly in the morning. We returned to the area closest to the exit and intended to buy some garlic bread for the road. On our way to purchase the bread, I noticed a band was playing at the last theater. I thought we should swing by and enjoy a quick listen before going home. 

On our way over to the area, I spotted some service dogs posing by a Gilroy Garlic Festival sign. Dogs are one of the few things I love more than garlic, so I stopped to take a picture of them. At 5:39 PM, as time stamped on my phone, the dogs posed perfectly while calmly sitting down. I then went to exit my camera app in favor of using Snapchat and as I took a picture, the first shot went off at 5:40 PM (again, per my phone time stamp). It startled the dogs, as seen in the photograph, and they quickly ran to their owners. In the pause after the noise, Mason, myself, and everyone in our proximity thought it was a firecracker or a vendor packing up their items. We initially settled on this form of rationalization.

Then two more shots went off, in what sounded like our direction. That was when the reality of what was happening quickly dawned on me. I yelled to Mason and anyone else in earshot, “guns, gunman!” And we ran. I ran in my sundress and sandals, Mason in his t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. When we had gotten dressed that morning, the thought of wearing clothes suitable to run for our lives never crossed our minds. We kept running. From what I remember, the only things I could hear were the gunshots, hysterical crying and screaming, and Mason yelling at me to “KEEP RUNNING. RUN MEGAN. STAY BY ME!” I thought I had been doing all of those things he was telling me to do, but to this day neither one of us is sure who was right. 

I tried to keep my eyes forward as we ran, but my head turned back towards the direction of the shooting. Many memories from my line of vision at that precise moment are blocked, but I know I saw a man fall and I know there was complete chaos and horror. I quickly turned my head to look forward and saw a man throw his son over a nearly 7 foot tall chain link fence while another man helped the parent get over the fence to be with his son. 

After what felt like a lifetime of running and not truly comprehending what I was living through, we got close enough to the exit gate where a vendor truck who hit a bottleneck in their own fleeing from the shots, had to slow down. The truck driver eventually slowed enough to motion for Mason and I to get inside. As soon as we were in the car, the driver accelerated towards the exit. Those two vendor men in the truck were our saviors.

In the car, no one said much except for the occasional “I can’t believe this is happening.” All emotions were on a complete pause as our minds raced. I texted my family that Mason and I were safe, I didn’t want them to worry if they saw the events on the news without hearing from us. We were some of the first ones out of the festival. Based on timestamps from my earlier photos, from the moment we began fleeing until we made it safely into the vendors’ truck, only 4 minutes had passed. Our entire lives changed in a shorter time frame than it takes to make a quick snack, for a small child to tie their shoe, listen to a song… It was 4 minutes of literally running for our lives.

Despite being safe in the car, we were in shock and kept repeatedly thanking the vendors without ever asking their names. At this point, Mason and I didn’t even know where our car was parked since the bus had taken us to the event and we had originally anticipated taking it back afterwards. Despite this, we repeatedly told the vendors to “drop us off wherever you want. You already did enough to help us.”

The vendor driving mentioned that the car seat I was lodged in, among their miscellaneous business equipment (we didn’t think to ask what their business was) belonged to his young daughter and that if she was in our situation, he would want her safely seen back to her car. We searched the area for our car, as hundreds of police cars drove going the opposite way from us, and eventually found the parking lot and Mason’s car. As soon as we approached our car, the bus to return people to and from the festival, arrived at the exact same time. That was the final bus to leave the festival right before the shooting began. The people exiting the bus laughed and giggled as they headed to their own cars, not knowing the horrors they barely avoided. 

The vendors, Mason, and I were among the first to get out of the festival once the shooting began, and the last to leave the festival grounds immediately since police blockades arrived later. From what we later read, everyone who was not lucky enough to get back to their cars quickly, were forced to stay into the night for security purposes. 

The two vendors who picked us up did not leave us in the parking lot until Mason and I were safely in the car and moving towards the exit. Once in Mason’s car and moving, the magnitude of everything began to sink in. I cried the hardest I have ever cried. I continued to shake and feel constantly unsafe, even though we were now in a moving, locked vehicle on the highway. Every wave of police cars with their sirens blaring brought back the hysteria of what I experienced. Police originating throughout the state of California continued to drive with haste towards Gilroy through the length of our return journey.

Guilt crept in since I survived, physically unharmed, knowing that many others would not be able to say the same. The guilt continued since I realized I didn’t attempt to help anyone along the way out. In the aftermath of tragedy, you hear all of the heroic stories of people who stepped in, making you think you would be that person if you were in similar circumstances. It took a year to realize that when you are thrown into a situation such as this, you aren’t thinking at all during it, so you have no way to act on those heroic thoughts.

On top of all of this, I also felt embarrassed for not recognizing the first shot and acting sooner. Even when the next two shots were fired and I began to process what was happening, I was uncertain telling Mason to run because other people weren’t running yet. I wasn’t completely certain of the situation until the rapid succession of shots happened. I felt useless, alone, and at the mercy of the unseen gunman.

I received many messages from friends that had started hearing the news of the shooting and saw that Mason and I had posted online earlier that we were at the event. The messages were so overwhelming, I thought it would simplify telling everyone individually I was safe, by writing a social media post. I ended the brief story of what happened with: “We are lucky and we will be ok. Not now or tomorrow, but we will be”. I never would have known then, but my closing words could not have been more true. A sense of relief was not the next day or even the next month after the shooting. It was and still is a continual process to navigate experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

In the immediate aftermath, I tried to keep a constant eye on the news. I felt like if I knew all of the facts about what happened, I could either realize I was safer than I had thought (I was not) or I could feel more in control of my current life because I could learn how to avoid it happening to me again (there is no way to ensure this). Both of those fictitious reasonings were the start of my struggle with PTSD. 

The more I looked at the news, the more I felt guilty for being alive and physically unharmed because Stephen Romero, Keyla Salazar, and Trevor Deon would not be going home to their families. I was frustrated since the news repeatedly focused on the shooter, calling him by his name and outlining the “reasons'' he chose to become a murderer. When news coverage focused on him, it only gave him the notoriety he wanted in the first place.

Many of the news broadcasts highlighting what the “officials'' were saying, directly clashed with what Mason and I had witnessed firsthand. There were even false claims that there were two shooters. Then, to make watching the constant news stream worse, the same week of the Gilroy shooting there were additional massacres in Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas. You couldn’t turn on the TV or go online without receiving an update on the shootings, one of which I had just survived. 

My PTSD was developing as a generalized fear of people, flashbacks, and noise sensitivity. I was constantly crying. I couldn’t sleep at night. I had difficulty leaving my car to cross a single street to get to work. When I went to work, I couldn’t make it through a workday without having to go to the bathroom to cry. I was fearful of leaving my apartment. I was living in a constant heightened fight-or-flight state. I constantly considered if the clothes I was wearing would allow me to run easily if there was an emergency. On the other hand, Mason, who had been in the exact same situation, was experiencing a less extreme response. 

While I can’t speak for him, what he conveyed to me was that he also had difficulty comprehending the reality we lived through and had a difficult time sleeping in the immediate days thereafter. But that was the end of our coping similarities. He was able to associate it more with a “one-time” event and it manifested more as a locational sensitivity for him. He felt fine as long as he wasn’t in Gilroy. He still thought about the events and considered it in more “high risk” situations like concerts, but overall, it wasn’t impeding his daily life like it was my own. 

While there is no singular way to react, the difference between our two mindsets caused me to spiral further. I felt even more isolated in my feelings and fears because the one person I knew that experienced the same event as me, was responding entirely different. 

I didn’t know what to do or where to go, or that it was ok that he and I did not feel the same way. It felt like living after Gilroy was impossible and that I would never be “normal again.” I realized my only chance of pulling myself out of the darkness was to try therapy. 

I was immediately discouraged when I began looking for a therapist. It was a difficult process to navigate for the first time and my energy to continue searching would occasionally dwindle. I eventually found a therapist that had an opening, but they did not take my insurance. I figured that given my mental state, making a quick appointment was better than trying to find someone else. I was mistaken. The expensive appointment, more than $100, was less than helpful. The therapist was not a great fit for me and clearly had very little trauma experience. Many of the things they had said to me were the exact opposite of what an experienced therapist or friend/family member should say: “Shootings are just happening all the time nowadays,” “You lived everyone’s worst nightmare,” “I want you to try and think about what happened a lot.” 

After my first experience trying therapy, I called my mother crying, thinking either I was a lost cause and that is why therapy didn’t work for me or that therapy would never help. My mother quickly assured me that wasn’t true and she sensed how run-down I was from the experience. She spent the next several days searching for a therapist that accepted my insurance, had availability for new patients, and had experience with trauma recovery. This new therapist she found made a world of a difference. After just the first session, I had felt like my emotions were confirmed as being “an appropriate response” and I knew there were tangible steps forward, I would just have to put in the work to get there.

The “work” I had to put in was a constant effort. I had to reframe my thoughts, push myself to behave as if I normally would “before Gilroy” (a phrase I used to depict myself prior to trauma). The most interesting recovery tool I used was signing myself up for local workout classes. By signing up for these classes, it was combining multiple recovery tasks into one: I had to leave the house (there is a fee for a canceled or no-show to the class). I had to be in a part of San Francisco for the class that I was not always used to (As a ClassPass user, I often signed up for classes in various locations). I was working out with “strangers” that I had to trust wouldn’t harm me. I was reassociating adrenaline and a high heart rate with exercise and activity, rather than the fight-or-flight response resulting from a traumatic event. It took a while to even feel comfortable trying my first class, so at times of heightened emotional distress, I would opt to do at home-workouts using Youtube videos or going on short walks around my neighborhood. Using these mechanisms, plus more, I was able to negate a lot of the physical responses from my PTSD. 

The mental reframing is still a continual process, but I also made slow and consistent strides. However, I continued to struggle with noise sensitivity. A single firework would set my progress back greatly and immediately send me into a flashback. While eating brunch with friends, the sound of a motorcycle backfiring caused me to burst into panic and tears, resulting in me needing to run to the bathroom to calm down. While many aspects were becoming easier, noise is one that I was and am still struggling with. It goes to show how “recovering” from PTSD is a continual process and not something that, at least originally, was going to disappear without a lot of work.  

Despite the progress I slowly made, my recovery strategy didn’t include talking to others that experienced a similar situation. I longed to talk to others who could relate but my therapist and I were unable to find options for me. Gilroy, at the time, had not developed a resource center (now known as the Gilroy Resiliency Center). I also didn’t have the ability to go to Gilroy to take advantage of their programs while working a full time job and living over 2 hours away from Gilroy. I also couldn’t find common social media pages, nonprofits, or other resources for any gun violence survivors to communicate and share their journeys. Most of the existing resources were individualized for each shooting, politically charged, or geographically tied to the location in which the event took place. 

This is what initially sparked the idea of starting my own nonprofit. The more I talked in therapy about the lack of resources, both my therapist and I couldn’t find, I also expressed that I wish someone would create a place to connect with other trauma survivors. My therapist then asked, “Why don’t you? Have you ever thought about starting a charity?” It was something I had considered, but I honestly never felt like “enough” of a survivor or that I had “enough of a background” in nonprofit work. In general, I just did not feel “enough.” Yet, after one particular session, I drove home and realized this was the exact reason that deters people from creating their own organizations. No one felt enough or perhaps they talk themselves out of it. As a result, there is underrepresentation. So when I got home, I told my roommates my plan for a nonprofit. We grabbed the nearest form of paper (last night's pizza box), and began brainstorming names. The early ideas of Reclaim Foundation were written on a pizza box, late at night, with the hope that this organization name could one day transform into something more. 

However, Reclaim Foundation was temporarily put on pause because I was slowly rebuilding my life and becoming comfortable with my new normal. At this point, we were all amidst a pandemic, and a new unthinkable event occurred. When driving to my essential job on May 4, 2020, I was severely hit from behind and the driver responsible frantically drove away. I was left alone with my injury. After a doctor visit that very day, it was determined I had experienced a concussion, whiplash, some extreme damage to my back that needed to be evaluated by a neurosurgeon, and more. After my visit with a neurosurgeon, they explained that I would need to have spinal fusion surgery which involved inserting four screws and two rods into my vertebrae. I was stunned about the necessity and severity of the surgery and my mental health further diminished as I encountered my second traumatic event in less than a year. Plus, being physically injured this time meant that all of my previous coping skills involving physical exercise were now removed from the equation.

As I awaited my surgery date and continued therapy to help soothe many of my new symptoms, a fire began in the countryside of my hometown. Despite the proximity, I went to sleep without worrying too much about the fire. My partner had lost his family’s home in wildfires a few years prior, but the conditions were very different than the fires near me. To my surprise, early in the morning I awoke to a call from my neighbor who explained I needed to get my family awake and prepare to evacuate. The fire that was originally very far from us was now directly behind our home. I tried my best to assist my family in packing important documents, photos, and our pets, but my injured back (as I hadn’t undergone surgery yet at this point following the accident) really limited my abilities. The police came shortly after and informed my neighborhood that we had to leave immediately. I got into the car with my brother, fully expecting to never see our house again. 

My family was one of the lucky ones, while many in my community were not. We did not lose any of our belongings, property, or lives. We were miraculously spared. I was once again thwarted with the guilt of having had things “easy” when others had a completely opposite experience. I had wanted to help my community with any recovery needs, but my surgery quickly followed and the recovery was much more difficult than I anticipated. 

Two nights in the hospital turned into four, with multiple IV pokes, an allergic reaction to the pain medication, being undermedicated for pain, and fainting when trying to walk. I have always been an active and athletic person. I had gone from preparing to hike half dome, being a former competitive gymnast, and NCAA Division 1 cheerleader, to no longer being able to walk. I had to walk indoors with a walker for over a month. I eventually transitioned to walking slightly farther outdoors with a walker. Shortly after that, I slowly began walking again without it. My left leg tended to drag and couldn’t move like it once had since the surgery had tightened all of my hamstrings. I could not shower, put on shoes, get in and out of bed, or change clothes without assistance. 

It was in this most vulnerable position that I realized how imperative it was to use my experiences to support those that have gone through their own traumatic events. Through each of these traumatic events, I was vocal to people about what I was experiencing and tried to leverage my social media to raise awareness. As I did so, many people came forward to share their related experiences. There was a shared commonality among us: these events felt isolating and in their isolation, they felt insurmountable. I realized in this that a lack of resources, community, and support were not limited merely to those affected by gun violence, but all that have experienced any type of traumatic event. 

I remembered the night I excitedly wrote nonprofit ideas on the pizza box. I decided to use my back-surgery recovery time, where I was limited to bed rest and relearning how to walk, to bring Reclaim Foundation to life. As I wrote, planned, and sealed all of the envelopes to submit to the Secretary of State, either Mason or my parents would take them to the mailbox below our driveway, since I wasn’t able to walk enough to do it myself. With this support of friends and family, I drafted and submitted all of the initial foundational documents to form Reclaim Foundation as a 501(c)(3) California based public charity, while I was still in the process of recovering from back surgery. With three traumatic events in one year, I felt the urgency to no longer put off my goals or wait for life to “feel right” because trauma wasn’t scheduling itself to accommodate me. I couldn’t wait any longer to form an organization to help all those who need it. 

Reclaim Foundation was formed so that each trauma recovery journey isn’t as isolating because you can engage with others who are coping from similar situations. You can find someone that has the same recovery goals as you, and you can find someone that may have comparable experiences as you. You can find motivation to keep moving and you can find support to grieve too when the thought of moving forward feels especially daunting. Along the way, you can provide all of these various forms of support to someone else. While your trauma may be specific to you, many of those emotions are similar to others enduring their own. Understanding someone else's resilience and how they are able to persevere, creates a foundation for others to build their own resilience.

It is all too easy to define your life based on your trauma, but the real strength comes from what you do despite it. Life is about having the resiliency to keep moving forward, because while no one should go through a traumatic event, let alone multiple, you should easily have the resources and community to help you navigate your survivorship. Even when you feel devastated, overwhelmed, or exhausted, your resilience is still present. Reclaim Foundation can help you facilitate that growth. None of these traumatic events were the end of my story, they were just a reset to try again and build my life the way I want it to be. I’m looking forward to helping others do the same. Thank you for being here and reading my story, welcome to Reclaim Foundation.