September 11, 25 Years Later: What I Carry With Me

Day 255 of a 365-day commitment to show up and write my truth

Twenty-five years ago today, the world changed. September 11 is one of those days where, if you were old enough to remember it, you probably remember exactly where you were when you found out. I do — I was in Boston. I remember the airport closing, cell phones that wouldn't connect, people desperately trying to reach each other, and the confusion of those first hours, when nobody really understood what was happening. Then we did. Or we began to. Because I don't think any of us could fully understand, in that moment, just how many lives had changed forever. There was shock, fear, disbelief, grief — and twenty-five years later, there are parts of that day that still don't feel entirely like history.

I spent most of my adult life living in New York City, and over the years I've heard so many firsthand September 11 stories — shared across dinner tables and in living rooms by people who were actually there. People who lost someone. People who survived because one ordinary decision placed them somewhere else that morning. People who carried memories they never asked to have. Three of those stories have stayed with me.

The Stories I Still Carry

One of my friends once told me about a man she encountered that day. He had witnessed people jumping from the towers — even writing that sentence is difficult. Trauma doesn't always arrive as something that can be understood or put into words right away. Sometimes the only thing a person can do is survive the next minute, and then the one after that.

He was covered in debris, and my friend could see how much danger he was in, right there in that moment — she was afraid he might not be safe with himself. She didn't know how to fix any of it. She just knew she couldn't leave. So she stayed with him, held a stranger on a day when everything familiar had suddenly become unsafe.

Later, he sent her a simple message: Thank you. You saved my life.

I've thought about that story many times — not because it makes what happened that day any easier to understand, because it doesn't, but because of what she did. She couldn't change what he'd seen, and she couldn't take the memory away. All she could do was stay. And she did.

Another friend carries a very different story. Before the attacks, he'd applied for a job he desperately wanted and didn't get it. At the time, he was heartbroken — another man got the position, and that man died on September 11. Every year, my friend remembers him. He honors him, and he prays for his family.

I can't imagine what it feels like to carry those two truths together — grief for another person's life, and knowing that your own circumstances could so easily have been different. Sometimes life leaves us with questions that aren't meant to be resolved. We just learn to carry them.

Then there's another story a friend shared with me that has never left me. A friend and client of his had a business near the World Trade Center. He survived the immediate danger, but his son worked in the towers, so he went out looking for him. His son had survived too, and made his way back to the business looking for his father. But his father was already gone, out looking for him. He never came back.

There's so much love in that story, and so much heartbreak. I don't know how to separate them. Maybe we're not supposed to.

25 Years Later, September 11 Is Still About the People

This is one of the few years I haven't been in New York City on September 11. Most years, I watch the reading of the names, and after enough years of watching, you start to understand something that isn't always obvious when we talk about September 11 as a moment in history: the families kept living. Children who lost a parent grew up. Parents grew older without their children. Brothers and sisters lived another year, and then another, without the sibling who should have been there. People married, babies were born, birthdays came, graduations happened — ordinary life kept moving around a grief that doesn't obey anniversaries. It changes over time, but love doesn't disappear just because years have passed.

For years I lived close enough to the memorial that I passed those fountains many, many times, and they never became just another part of the city to me. There were always the names — sometimes a flower tucked into one, a hand resting against the bronze, someone standing still while the rest of New York moved around them. I'd look at the names and think about the person behind each one: someone who laughed with them, who called them with good news, who knew their coffee order, who expected them home, who still misses them. To me, that's what gets lost when we speak about tragedy in numbers. Every number was a person. Every name was a life.

What I Carry With Me

I don't think there's one correct way to remember September 11, 25 years later. For some people, today brings grief. For others, anger, fear, gratitude, survivor's guilt, memories they'd rather not revisit, or feelings they may not even know how to name. Some families have carried this loss every single day for twenty-five years, and I hope they have space for their grief, and for the immense sadness this day can still bring. I can only share what I find myself thinking about now.

I think about the people who died, and the people who survived. The ones who spent hours, days, months, and years searching, rescuing, recovering, grieving, and trying to understand how life could continue after something so incomprehensible. The firefighters, police officers, and first responders who went toward danger instead of away from it. The coworkers who helped each other down stairwells, and the strangers who reached for strangers. The people who stayed with someone who was afraid, who called home, who searched for the people they loved — and the families who have carried those stories ever since.

I think about my friend, holding that stranger. She couldn't undo what he'd witnessed, couldn't make that day different, couldn't promise him the feeling would pass. All she could do was recognize that another human being was suffering and refuse to leave him alone in it. To me, it's just a reminder that even in unimaginable suffering, people can still reach for one another. Maybe that's what I want to hold closest today. Not an explanation, not a lesson — just the people. The ones whose lives ended that morning, the ones who loved them and are still loving them twenty-five years later, the ones who rushed in to help, and the ones who stayed beside strangers so no one had to be alone in it.

Today I keep coming back to the fountains and the names, the families who've grown and changed around an absence that remains, New York, Boston, the Pentagon, that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the confusion of that morning a quarter-century ago — and the stories people have trusted me enough to tell. And I pray — for those who died, for those who survived, for the people who still carry what they saw, and for the families who still carry who they lost. And for all of us — that we don't forget the people behind it.

Twenty-five years later, that's what I carry. The people.

About the Author | Day 255 of 365

I'm a coach, a writer, an entrepreneur, and a mom — and a longtime New Yorker who still carries September 11 with her, twenty-five years later.

For 255 days, I've been writing about what a real life actually looks like: motherhood, grief, healing, faith, love, business, starting over. Today, that means writing about the day the world changed, and the people I still think about because of it. Some things just need to be witnessed, remembered, and held with compassion.

So today isn't about a takeaway. It's about the people — the ones we lost, the ones who survived, and the ones still carrying it, all these years later.

Day 255 of 365. Remembering those we lost, those who survived, those who helped, and all of us who carry September 11 with us. 🐧