Ten years after Pulse shooting, survivors continue turning unimaginable grief into action

Many of the hundreds touched by the then-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub, where an extremist gunman killed 49 people and left 58 others injured ten years ago Friday, still seek solace. Even survivors who left the Florida venue uninjured suffered emotional anguish and guilt, while loved ones of those who didn’t make it navigated immeasurable loss.“There’s no handbook on how to survive after surviving,” says Christopher Hansen, who crawled his way out of the crime scene to help others. It was his first visit to the club since he was new in town.But in the intervening decade since what remains the deadliest attack on mostly LGBTQ+ victims, many of those navigating pain and darkness in the aftermath of the shooting found their way along healing paths toward justice, reflection, and positive action. Survivors turned into national spokespeople for LGBTQ+ rights or advocates for survivors of other mass tragedies. Some found ways to help save their own lives.These are a few people who suffered through the massacre and helped make a difference over the past 10 years.Related: Orlando tears down ‘horrific’ Pulse sign. Survivor Brandon Wolf says it once meant safetyLife-saving organsFor Orlando Torres, a promoter who worked years in the Orlando LGBTQ+ nightclub scene, June 12, 2016, was a night at work that ended in upheaval. He helped launch Latin Night at Pulse, the event that drew a disproportionately Hispanic crowd to the club that evening, and ended up on the floor of a bathroom in Pulse playing dead during an hours-long standoff.Today, he considers himself lucky in many ways, and not just for living through the tragedy. Locked away from much of the worst violence, he lost friends but did not watch them die.“I can talk about it because I have no nightmares. I have no visuals,” he says. “I was in the four walls of a stall all night long.”God gave me that path and let me stay on Earth. - Orlando TorresTorres alrea