While I was growing up, I had a great many theoretical conversations about capital punishment. It always seemed like a good idea, and I didn’t consider my stance hypocritical when I started teaching youth gang members that killing is never a solution. Then in 1994, my grandmother was murdered. She was in her eighties, and I had imagined that once you made it past 70 you didn’t have to worry about dying violently. When Nana was killed, I forgot what I told my students every day, that all killing, all revenge is wrong; I just wanted the person who killed her to die. I lived with that poison in my soul for a while, and then I had to stop thinking about it because it was getting in the way of my own life.

Had I been there when they caught my grandmother’s murderer, I would have wanted to kill her myself. I feel differently now. After the heat of the moment, you have time to think. You realize that killing the killer won’t bring back the loved one. You realize that for most criminals the death penalty is not a consideration when they’re committing their crimes, or if it is, it only inspires them to “go for broke.”

I realized that the solution was to be pro-active rather than reactive. If you have the time and the energy, you do something positive to change things. You work with at-risk kids. You work with the media and try to make them be more sensitive to the families of murder victims. You work to dispel the idea that all families want or need revenge. You work to stop the killing.

Robyn is a teacher in Northern California.