Tasha Turner learned how to change her mom's wound dressings and give her medication when she was in second grade.

Turner's parents divorced when she was 2 years old, and a year later, her mom, Tannette Hunter, got sick. Doctors diagnosed her with cardiomyopathy and other heart afflictions.

Turner was an only child and stepped up as a caregiver. By the age of 7, she could cook a full meal, clean the house and take care of her mom's daily needs.

Hunter, knowing her time was limited, tried to make as many memories with her daughter as possible. "She loved to laugh," Turner said. "She loved to dance, when she could."

When Hunter was too sick to get out of bed, Turner would lie next to her and play with her hair to help her fall asleep.

Hunter died when she was 29 and Turner was 11.

"I remember her being very loving. She was an all-around fun mom," she said.

There's no official count of how many children in America lose a parent before the age of 18. A 2020 study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry estimated that about 4% of U.S. kids under age 18 -- roughly 2.9 million children -- had already experienced the death of a parent or sibling, and projected that about 1 out of 14 would lose a parent or sibling by the time they turned 18. The COVID-19 pandemic escalated child bereavement, with more than 200,000 children losing a parent or primary caregiver to the virus.

Turner, now 35, says she didn't allow herself to really grieve after her mom died. She was sent from her home of Overland, Missouri, to California to live with her father and his family. She struggled to adjust. Halfway through her junior year of high school, she came back to live with her mom's sister in St. Ann, Missouri. Her aunt nurtured her during those turbulent teenage years.

Experts say that having a strong support system is critical to helping children heal from the loss of a parent. Having a ritual or memorial to honor the deceased parent also can be helpful for healing. Turner made a point to visit her mother's gravesite every Mother's Day and lay roses on her grave.

Turner graduated from high school, and a year later, met the man who would become her husband. Richard Turner, then 25, saw her in a car when she was stopped at a light near her church. He followed her to the church and asked if she wanted to hang out. They met up with some friends later and went on a few dates.

"It was almost like a 'love at first sight' type of thing," she said. He was working as a carpenter at the time. A few weeks after they met, he was in a serious accident that nearly severed four of his fingers. Turner moved in with him to help take care of him.

"It's always been a natural role for me," she said. In fact, she went on to become a nurse, until the COVID-19 pandemic burned her out.

She and Richard have now been together 16 years and are raising three daughters. Back when she first moved in, she met her future mother-in-law, Debbie Grafeman.

"I don't know what to call you," Turner said to her.

"You can just call me Mom," Grafeman said. From that point on, Grafeman treated her like a daughter. Turner describes her as "funny and wild and amazing at everything."

Grafeman was in a car accident in September 2018. While she was in the hospital and then in rehab, Turner helped take care of her.

"She didn't trust anyone else to dye her hair but me," Turner said. Grafeman had been recovering, but suddenly passed away in April 2019 from a blood clot.

"Losing her was like losing my own mother all over again," Turner said.

Over the years, she's come to terms with grieving. Despite losing her mom at a young age, she focuses on being grateful for all the love she gave her.

But holidays, especially Mother's Day, are still tough.

That day, she visits two cemeteries. First, she goes to talk to her mom. She tells her about her daughters, how much she misses her and that she loves her. Whenever she can, she takes her daughters with her because she wants them to know about their grandmother.

Turner's eldest, Tiffany McMahon, 17, said she loves the tradition.

"I never met my grandma, but it still makes me emotional," she said.

Turner tells her mom that she can't wait to see her again, and then she drives 10 minutes to where her mother-in-law is buried.

She remembers the first Mother's Day without Grafeman. She cried while she spoke to her.

"Thank you for loving me like a daughter," she said. "I miss you. I'll take care of everyone the best I can."

Then, she heads back home to tend to her family.

Ever since February, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared its survey data on teen girls' skyrocketing anxiety, sadness and suicidal thoughts, the focus has been on what might be causing this level of suffering. But there's an answer in the data, staring us right in the face.

According to the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data, nearly 3 in 5 U.S. teen girls (57%) felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021. That's the highest level reported over the past decade and nearly twice what boys reported. Thirty percent of teen girls said they have seriously considered dying by suicide -- a percentage that's risen by nearly 60% over the past 10 years.

It's useful to note that this survey was taken while there were still significant disruptions in teens' lives from the pandemic. But let's explore some of the other factors involved.

To find out what might be driving this rise in mental health troubles, especially for teenage girls, I turned to two experts on the St. Louis Regional Suicide Prevention Coalition. Liz Sale, research associate professor for the Missouri Institute of Mental Health at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, studies and tracks suicide data in the state. Elizabeth Makulec is the executive director for Kids Under Twenty One, a nonprofit that works to improve the emotional well-being of young people.

Research has documented that frequent social media use has a detrimental effect on teen mental health, particularly for girls. Makulec pointed out that while social media also offers some positive aspects, like exposure to new ideas and connection with others, it carries risks like deteriorating self-esteem and bullying.

"I can't tell you the number of times that social media comes up as an issue," Sale said in agreement. Parents often don't even realize that their young children can access sites without their knowledge.

Other factors that Makulec and Sale agree have made adolescence more challenging: increased competitiveness, pressure and schedule demands on high school students; stress and anxiety among caregivers, parents and teachers; and awareness of bleak social and political realities, such as school shootings and climate change.

"There's an overwhelming uncertainty of what the world is going to look like when (a young person) becomes an adult," Makulec said. "There's a lot of uncertainty, ugliness and hatefulness going on, and there's only so much that people can tolerate."

Teaching children at all ages how to cope with difficult feelings and challenging circumstances has to be a fundamental part of education. Learning coping skills should start at the youngest possible ages, building on that knowledge and training as children grow, they said. Young people have become more comfortable talking about mental health and can learn strategies that become a part of their everyday wellness.

There were two other statistics in the survey data that immediately jumped out at me:

-- Nearly 1 in 5 teen girls (18%) said they had experienced sexual violence in the past year -- up 20% since 2017, when the CDC started monitoring this.

-- About 1 in 7 teen girls (14%) reported having been forced to have sex -- up 27% since 2019, when the CDC began monitoring this.

Some of these increases may be attributable to a growing willingness to talk about sexual violence, but these are unacceptably high levels, regardless. Consider that in a classroom of 20 girls, two have reported being raped.

It makes sense that a population experiencing rising levels of violence and trauma would report higher levels of anxiety and sadness.

"Any time you don't feel safe, feel you may be victimized, it causes you to be on edge and fearful," Makulec explained. Remaining hyperattentive or hypervigilant in an effort to keep oneself safe from sexual violence feeds a cycle of anxiety.

The solutions to address this issue go beyond teaching coping skills.

Unlike the internal work required by girls to build resilience, reducing their exposure to sexual violence demands external work -- from parents, educators, school administrators and law enforcement. From boys and men.

If parents and schools fail to educate boys about what consent looks like, boys will instead pick up cues from a toxic culture: politicians who brag about grabbing women's crotches, YouTube influencers who spout a hatred of women, and porn that fetishizes violence and degradation.

Too many parents are in denial about these messages their sons are constantly given. And too many educators are dismissive of the threats, harassment and violence girls say they've experienced.

If we are truly concerned about girls' mental health, we have to look outside their internal emotional world and also fix the broken real world.

A longtime conservative reader sent me an intriguing question recently.

He asked: Is it safe to take your kids to a Cardinals ballgame?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what places are safe. Recently, my husband and I were trying to find a restaurant in St. Charles County that we had never visited before. The GPS directions led us down a wrong street, and my husband pulled into a driveway to turn the car around.

"This is what got that girl killed in New York," I told him. Twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot to death on April 15 for pulling into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. There have been times when I've turned around in an unknown driveway, but I'll think twice about doing that now.

The shooting in New York happened within days of a teenage cheerleader in Texas landing in an ICU: She and a friend were both shot when the friend accidentally tried to enter the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot. That news followed the headlines about Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old in Kansas City, who was shot in the head for ringing the doorbell at the wrong house.

That same week, 6-year-old Kinsley White and her parents were shot by a North Carolina neighbor who was upset that a basketball rolled into his yard, and a man from Springfield, Missouri, held a gun to a grocery store worker's throat because the meat department was closed and he wanted steak.

It's undeniable that we live in a culture of fear. But I don't think these were the incidents the reader who wrote to me was thinking of.

There's been a steady increase in gun violence in the downtown St. Louis area during the past 15 years, according to University of Missouri-St. Louis researcher Bobby Boxerman. And while the number of homicides in the city has been lower the past two years than it was in 2020, a man was shot and killed at Seventh and Market streets just a couple of weeks ago.

So many of us are afraid of becoming victims of violence in this country -- albeit for different reasons. My reader is afraid of the people he might encounter going to the ballpark in the city; I'm afraid of getting lost in the ultra-conservative part of St. Charles County he lives in. He's an older white man; I'm a middle-aged brown woman.

The through line is that we all know, regardless of political beliefs, that America is a particularly violent place. We disagree on why that is, and the media content we consume reinforces what we already believe.

Missouri Republicans have passed legislation making it easier for anyone to obtain a firearm at any time and bypass a background check. We're one of 27 states that now allow people to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public without a mandatory background check or safety training. Now, Republican lawmakers want to let people carry guns into churches and on public transportation.

Missouri is among the states with the highest rates of gun violence. And let's be honest: Is anyone surprised?

State Rep. Peter Merideth has repeatedly pointed out the hypocrisy of Republicans who rail about crime in St. Louis but keep rejecting efforts to actually address the issue. They've voted against: allowing St. Louis police to take away a person's guns if they have been deemed a high risk to themselves or others; allowing local police to work with federal law enforcement to reduce gun violence; and allowing municipalities to prohibit minors from carrying loaded guns in public.

Merideth proposed that last measure just two weeks ago, and every Republican representative rejected it. Makes you question how real their fear of attending baseball games is.

Our country has let guns become the No. 1 cause of death for kids and teens -- despite knowing there are laws that could prevent many of those deaths.

But it's our perceptions that shape our fears.

I asked a friend who lives in the city if she felt it was safe to take her children to a ballgame.

"I'm going to keep living my life," she said. "I'm not hiding in a cul-de-sac in fear."

I think this is the approach most American parents have taken. We have no choice but to send our children to school, where the chances of getting shot are higher than at Busch Stadium.

We take them to ballgames; we let them visit their friends and participate in school activities.

And we pray they don't get shot for knocking on the wrong door.