NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) The Minnesota school shooting hits very close to home for some people in Connecticut. One of the worst school shootings in history happened in Newtown in 2012.

Geneva Cunningham, a survivor of the Sandy Hook shooting, spoke to local affiliate WTNH about what the Annunciation Catholic School survivors in Minneapolis are going through.

Amid Wednesday’s mass shooting in Minneapolis, police swarmed the school and parents anxiously waited outside for news. It all feels very familiar to Cunningham.

“Those children and their families have no idea how long of a journey this is, and I’m still on it,” Cunningham said.

Thirteen years ago, Cunningham was in the library of Sandy Hook Elementary when the shooting started. Her fourth-grade class huddled in a closet with the librarian.

“She gave us these notebooks where we could write something,” Cunningham said. “People were writing letters to their parents.”

Cunningham, now a writer and a student at Quinnipiac University, was 9 in 2012. The years after the Sandy Hook shooting were hard.

“I spent a lot of years not being able to feel,” said Cunningham, who also recently interned for WTNH. “It was too painful. I was stuck. And that’s where those kids are.”

She said she and her fellow Sandy Hook survivors are all working through it differently. Some can speak out, some can’t. The violence still haunts all of them.

“When someone drops a book, when someone slams a door, even when someone raises their voice, you remember,” she said.

Her advice to the victims and their families? Listen to the professionals. Her advice to everyone else? The victims are not the ones with the answers.

“We’re surviving this; we can’t solve it,” Cunningham said. “We need people who are equipped to solve it to listen, to show up.”

When Cunningham was younger, she said she felt sure the government had some big solution in mind because of Sandy Hook. That feeling is going away.

“I lose hope every time something like this happens,” Cunningham said. “They don’t tell you how hopeless it is. They don’t tell you that a part of your heart is missing, and you’re searching for it all your life.”

And for so many in Minneapolis, that search has just begun.