Friday marks the first anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting in Maine’s history, a day that will invariably bring reflection, commemoration and remembrance. It is a time for community and a time to look back; it is also a time to stay focused on what is in front of us.

“People often say the state of Maine is one big small town,” this editorial board wrote in the devastating aftermath. “The reaction to the shootings in Lewiston leaves no doubt that characterization is true. Wherever we were when we heard the news, it felt as though the horror was unfolding just down the road. We are all in shock and mourning. We are all sad and scared.”

It doesn’t take much to bring those feelings back; indeed, for those directly affected by the events of Oct. 25, 2023, there is nothing to bring back – life was forever changed that night. 

What Lewiston is still in the process of doing, what Maine is in the process of doing, is healing. For 12 months, people have been finding ways to make sense of what happened in Lewiston that evening, to figure out how to keep going. This process looks different for everybody.

Consider the bravery and sheer grit of Arthur Barnard, who lost his son Artie Strout; Artie was playing pool with his son at Schemengees Bar & Grille on the night of the shooting. To pull from our journalism, part of a tenderly reported and very evocative series, “Life After Artie,” 

“Within days (of Oct. 25), Arthur started talking about changing gun laws. He was certain even then that advocating for reform was the only place to pour his endless grief and anger over his son’s violent murder. But he didn’t know much about which laws had been passed in which states or what federal legislation politicians had already tried to push through. In the 10 months since, he has tried to get organized in the time he can find between work and taking care of his grandkids.”

Consider what it meant for Maine U.S. Rep. Jared Golden to reverse a years-old position on an assault weapons ban, in what we hailed at the time as a “rare display of moral courage.” 

Consider the energy and time poured into the final report of the expert commission tasked with investigating the shooting; nine months of “tense and tearful closed-door interviews” for findings that will be used to inform critical changes to public health and safety for the benefit of all of us.

Consider the agreeable legislative progress made in the arenas of gun safety and mental health crisis services after Lewiston – and after years of little consensus or none at all.

Consider the very existence of the Maine Resiliency Center and the support for survivors, victims’ families and the wider community that has sprung up around it.

None of this momentum, none of this valuable work, would be possible without choosing to look forward together.

As we prepare to mark the first anniversary of the shooting, perhaps some comfort can be had in reflecting on how far we have come. All available signs indicate we are carrying slowly but surely along what Gov. Janet Mills called “the long road to healing.”

As reporter John Terhune reports extensively in Sunday’s paper, granular, courageous conversations about precise steps needed to prevent tragedies like Lewiston’s are continuing to develop and unfold. None of us should be scared of the changes this dialogue may accomplish. 

The interrogation of the progressive treatment program, specifically, and how the poisonous legacy of heavy-handed institutionalization has kept this mechanism out of the public consciousness, seems likely to require recovery of another kind. There is no doubt that all possible avenues for the treatment of serious mental illness are deserving of our cautious exploration. 

“We have a wall in Maine between law enforcement and the mental health community,” former legislator John Nutting, the sponsor of Maine’s progressive treatment program bill, told Terhune. While the resulting assisted outpatient treatment legislation has seldom been used, people intimately familiar with the Lewiston case, and cases like it, say they feel it could have been helpful were it used appropriately.

Over the past 12 months in Maine, many walls have come down. People have reached out and across to one another in remarkable and unexpected ways. We’re moved by the certainty we feel that this collective show of strength will only continue.