This is a guest opinion column

Our kids are afraid of each other. As a result, they’re growing more violent and less trusting as time passes.

My own son, CJ, was fatally shot at a gas station just down the road from where we lived. I was changing out of church clothes when I got the call. I’ll never forget the shock and grief of walking into the room where they’d been trying to save his life, only to discover that they’d failed.

But through that terrible loss, God equipped me to begin helping families in our community recover from the loss of loved ones.

It’s how I began my work with the Woodson Center project Voices of Black Mothers United, which will soon be hosting a youth summit for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

It’s also how I met the other members of the Mothers Consortium here in Birmingham: Sheree Kennon, who leads “What About Us,” and Carolyn Johnson, who leads “Parents Against Violence,” have both changed my life and the community alike.

Together, we are able to cover all the aspects of crime victims’ assistance: their immediate post-tragedy needs and stresses, applications for assistance with the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission, and good long-term outcomes for family survivors of violent crime. Lots of people are losing children and grandchildren repeatedly to violence, and it takes every single one of these mothers to help these families.

The loss of my son made me sensitive to the fear and hurt our children and their families suffer through every day. It made me realize just how much we need each other, and how much we need to work together to help break the cycle of violence, anger, fear and retaliation.

That’s why we’re bringing together members of local law enforcement, neighborhood officials and a therapist at our Alive in 25 Youth Summit this week to help elevate the voices and needs of the youth among us. Our children desperately need our help, attention and support — from every part of the community.

And if we’re going to give them the support they need, we need to start trusting and talking to each other.

We also need to empower and educate parents. They’re the first line of defense against community violence, and they’re the ones who really have the attention of their child.

Parents have the ability to help teach children healthy emotional coping skills, conflict resolution skills and a sense of self-respect that are indispensable when navigating a potentially violent situation.

Parents also have the chance to invest in their kids when others won’t, or don’t want to. I remember one high school student in particular, the attendee of an anti-violence event I had hosted, had been written off by his teachers and counselors.

“Oh, he’s just a clown,” they told me.

But I saw a lot in him. I saw poise, intelligence. I knew he was paying attention. And when I asked about him a year later, they told me he’d joined the Army. He graduated. He even made a difference for the better in his own neighborhood.

He wasn’t a clown at all. He was a tremendous force for good.

All of our kids need us to help them realize their potential as forces for good in our own neighborhoods. All of our kids have the ability to escape the vicious cycle of fear, anger and violence in which so many of them are trapped — but they need our help.

They need us to listen, to take them seriously. Most importantly, they need us to work tirelessly together to help make their present and future safer.

Jessica Barnes is the Alabama State Lead for Voices of Black Mothers United, a project of The Woodson Center.