There are so many different narratives that have been disseminated in the period following the tragedy in Orlando and Turkey that we found ourselves questioning which narratives represented us as Americans. Because collectively as Americans, we strongly believe that the majority of us want our families to thrive, we are thankful for our freedoms, and we want to understand more than we want to hate.

In our nation, and many around the world, it is difficult to find "news" that isn't engineered and pre-packaged in order to increase ratings to sell advertisements, or isn’t intended to serve narrow sectarian political agendas. 

When we thought about all of the swirling secular and engineered narratives, we wanted to help find some perspective about tragedies like the one in Orlando that didn’t cause division or additional collateral damage. So many of these contrived narratives have the goal of either making us hate or making us fearful, or both. There had to be a way of thinking and acting that didn't impede others' freedoms AND still helped ease the pain and fear that results from these egregious acts. While thinking this over a dozen times, we realized that hate and fear are the real dangers we are all facing.

The forefathers of this country prescribed concrete ideologies that were intended to guide us through confusing, painful, and difficult times, such as these. When grossly summarized those concrete ideologies equate to:  "United we stand, divided we fall." This to us, and we hope you too, resonates as what should be in American hearts and minds following acts such as those in Orlando and Turkey.

It is important to keep this in mind when we hear words like, "terrorist" or "gay nightclub" or even "Islamic" or "Muslim."  Because in reality, ONE lunatic went into a nightclub and senselessly murdered 49 of us, injuring 53 more. The other details really only serve narratives that we have a difficult time accepting, especially as "American" narratives.

"United We Stand" doesn't mean much if we don't STAND UNITED.

So in terms of perspective, no matter how powerful the urge is to hate, no matter how intense the fear seems...we must remember we are better and we are stronger when we are United.  This is the action we must take, this is the perspective we must keep.  We must be United, and we must keep an American Heart and Mind.