The Duncan’s then moved to Springfield area and have recently opened three businesses in the Bushnell building in downtown Springfield. The three businesses - Revive Events, All-In Nutritionals, and Tattoos of My Soul - all focus on the relationship between the mind, spirit and body in terms of health. All-In Nutritionals sells natural supplements and health products. Tattoos of My Soul is Molly’s life-coaching business. Revive Events is going to offer seminars and advice for clients who have dealt with trauma.
“We feel like we’re fulfilling our purpose,” Molly Duncan said Thursday.
Lindsey Duncan told the News-Sun Thursday that the only thing racing through his mind as he shot at his attackers was keeping his wife alive. He said he accepted that he himself may not make it out of the shootout. He recalls his entire body tensing up, bracing for whatever may happen.
“When the tragedy happened, it shook us to the core,” Lindsey said. “It doesn’t shake up one part of your mind, one part of your being… it shakes up everything. You start to ask yourself really deep questions.”
He and Molly sold their Yellow Springs home shortly after the shooting. They have lived in Springfield for nearly a year and a half now, choosing the Springfield area as home to be closer to Molly’s family in Clark County.
The Duncans say they had different approaches to handling the trauma following the shooting that left both experiencing PTSD. The couple met with therapists but said neither found a good fit. Molly said that for her, therapy was very frustrating, as revisiting the tragic day was difficult. She found herself taking on any and all projects as a way to distract herself.
“We denied what happened to us,” she said. “Looking back, we were basically doing anything we could to avoid dealing with it.”
Molly said she felt a sense of shame or embarrassment following the shooting.
“I felt like people looked at our life and said, ‘what a mess,” she said. “It’s very interesting how your mind perceives things when you go through something like this, and you kind of go through this self-preservation mode.”
Molly told the News-Sun that she experienced many severe panic attacks following the event, but she began to find healing through writing about her experiences and sharing her experiences with others. Her blog, Tattoos of My Soul, details the permanence of trauma people carry and how people overcome their tragedies.
She recently received her certification as a life coach. Although both had decided years ago that neither wanted to work as part of a large corporation, Molly said she felt called to give back to the community through business: particularly, the couple wanted to teach others how to heal the body and mind following trauma.
“Everybody is a survivor of something,” she said. “Every time I talk to somebody, I feel like I heal a little bit more.”
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Molly’s (literal) tattoos all carry spiritual significance -- one simply says “Jeremiah 29:11” -- as her faith is a component she said was necessary for her to get through tragedy.
Lindsey said that he hit “rock bottom” before he was able to reflect upon what had happened that day, using self-medication as a way to “numb” himself, he said. He later began trauma therapy, and said he felt that physically, he was holding a lot of his pain within himself.
“We hold these things in our body,” he said. “I was holding a lot of this trauma, this fear, this rage, in my solar plexus, the base of my skull and my mind as well… and I had to purge it out.”
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