*
This is the sound of peace...
[resonating high frequencies tone]
the sound of healing...
[pleasant, resounding vibrations]
...and the sound of wellness.
[bowl hums]
- Camille Mays: It helps to relax you.
It's a calming thing, just like listening to water.
- It's also a calm and peaceful afternoon
in this northside Milwaukee neighborhood.
- We can walk through the neighborhood today.
A neighbor will wave.
I love my neighbors.
- But Camille Mays will also tell you
Sherman Park needs more love.
- Within the last week, we had gunshots.
They were, like, literally on our block.
And I think it's traumatizing.
It's real triggering.
It's scary when you hear 'em so close.
[police sirens]
I can't even look at the news.
It was just story after story after story,
and really, it's a city-wide problem.
You drive to a neighborhood,
and you see memorials all over the place.
Who wants to invest in the neighborhood?
[dog barking]
- Those memorials planted an idea for change.
- I started it in 2015. [police sirens]
It was around the time that the homicides had shot up.
- To counter bullets with blossoms.
- I wanted to bring life to our community.
Hope...
a little bit 'cause we are hopeless.
- In what she calls Peace Garden Project Milwaukee.
- It was thought to offer flowers
and to plant them at the site of a memorial,
and that's just a kind gesture
I wanted to do for the families.
- Turning temporary memorials
into permanent gardens.
- Oh, it's so beautiful.
This was one of my first peace gardens.
No farewell words were spoken;
No time to say goodbye;
You were gone before we knew it, and only God knows why.
Mm.
That is sad.
- The Peace Garden Project
made Camille a well-known community activist.
In 2017, shots rang out
just a few blocks from Camille's home.
- As you can see, some perennials here, here, here.
This is one near and dear to my heart.
- Sixteen-year-old Emani Robinson,
a neighborhood teen caught in the crossfire.
- Even the people who did not know Emani,
we all felt the pain
of a child being killed in the community.
At the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Just being a kid at the store one summer day.
It's unfortunate.
And it's been so many more since him.
That's what's sad.
- At that time, Camille said, her activism was a fight
to keep the violence from touching her family.
- You see it happening all around you.
I would always tell the mothers, "I don't understand,"
and "I'm sorry that this happened,
and I hope I don't ever understand."
- Prayers and Peace Gardens
couldn't keep the repercussions of gun violence
from Camille's front door.
- I always would be worried about my son,
so I will always call them to see if they were okay.
But he didn't answer the phone.
I remember it was like seven-something in the morning,
and somebody was at our door.
And it was the police.
And I know when the police come to your house,
it's not good.
It's almost like mentally,
I feel like if I didn't let them in the house,
like, I could stop whatever they were gonna say
or whatever had happened.
- Once again, Camille buried her pain in plants.
This time in her own front yard.
- It's like a healing ritual, in a sense.
- A memorial garden for her 21-year-old son,
Darnell.
- We call him "Booka."
He was killed by some of his friends.
The truth of the matter is
he knew them from elementary school,
and they murdered him.
Everybody always says, "What's gonna make it stop?"
I don't know!
But I know the city need a lot of love.
- Gardens instead of guns.
Flowers instead of fear.
Camille is determined to sow seeds of hope.
- A while back, when everything happened with me,
it was very hard for me to continue doing peace gardens.
It just triggers me
because it reminds me of why I started to do it,
and it hurts that it still happened to me.
- She believes something good will grow from this tragedy.
- People are like,
"How could something positive happen out of that?"
[bowl resonates]
I just transmute my anger and pain
into the healing work that I do.
I put it into my bowls.
I put it into talking to people about the gun violence.
- Today, Camille uses her singing bowls
to bring comfort and peace
to others facing trauma and distress.
- As I've been through my own trauma now with gun violence,
I understand the healing part a little bit more.
[bowl resonates soothing tone]
When the bowls had the effect that they did on me,
which at first wasn't good, I cried.
I said, "This not what it said it was going to do for me.
Why am I crying like this?"
But that was the release;
that was all of that trauma,
that pain, that tension,
just all of that sadness in me
that I had been holding inside.
Because that was my experience,
I wanted to share that with other people.
- She dreams of getting a bus to travel
and offer sounds that soothe the soul.
Camille's saving grace
is finding power in her purpose.
- I just hope that
my story inspires people.
That's what motivates me.
I'm not the only one,
but this is my story.
I just don't want to be just another person.
I wanted to leave my mark in the world.
And for it to mean something; that's all.