One way is to try to feel less alone. As soon as we became victims of this hate crime, we thought of those who had had similar experiences. The Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., had been attacked in June 2015 and lost nine members; a mosque in Quebec had six members killed in a January 2017 attack; and six people were fatally shot at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., in August 2012.

The way to connect with someone is to meet them, which is how we decided to go to Charleston to visit Mother Emanuel Church. We saw it as a way of taking control of the narrative, to say that both New Light and Mother Emanuel Church were harmed by hate but that we in turn were sending a message of unity and of love.