I can’t keep from blogging about it. September 11 is a significant day. Around here it’s my wedding anniversary. And that glorious memory was forever altered six years ago. I’m sure each of us has clear memories of that day, also a Tuesday.

As is now typical in our stressful lives here, September 11, 2001 was just one more piece of a high level of stress in our personal lives. On July 31 of that same year my father had died of a massive stroke. Still reeling from that, I sat dumbfounded in front of the TV and computer like many Americans. I had an appointment in downtown Atlanta at 11 am in a large high rise building. Jammed phone lines didn’t allow me to reach the people I was supposed to meet there, so I felt the need to go downtown to be with the people I had sent there. Just as I was leaving the Pentagon attack was reported. When I arrived downtown, I met my colleagues on the street in front of the building, which was being evacuated, because no one knew what was next.

Six years later, we’ve had plenty of time to assess what 9/11 has meant. From my perspective one of the ultimate positives that can come from such a profound national tragedy is a more universal understanding of trauma and of what I would call “the truths of trauma.” What are the “truths of trauma”? I’m glad you asked…

1. When a traumatizing event occurs, it is important to face it, head on. On 9/11, as incredibly overwhelming as the truth was about what was happening…we faced it. As a nation we faced that fact that we had been attacked clearly and without trying to minimize it, downplay it, blame it on ourselves or sweep it under the rug. Yet, there are many people abused everyday (especially children) who are asked by the grown ups I their lives to do just that.
2. Each person reacts in his/her own way to trauma. We definitely saw that on 9/11. Some people attended memorial services or watched them on TV. Some ran out to give blood. Some opened their wallets. Some drove to New York. Some took a vacation, wrote books, adopted children (read that on MNBC today). This is a universal truth of trauma. There is no one prescribed way to respond to it. Each person behaves differently and works through stages of healing at different paces. Telling a traumatized child that they should be feeling or acting a certain way is useless at best, and often very counterproductive.
3. Trauma is real. One thing is for sure, the people who were near ground zero on 9/11 were traumatized. Just watching the footage from those first few days, you could see it. The whole country was traumatized to a certain degree. There was no denying it. To say that a child who is abused or neglected by parents, abandoned to an orphanage or yanked from loving caregiver’s arms to move to another home isn’t traumatized is ridiculous when you look at the same expression on their faces as the 9/11 victims.
4. Trauma changes everything. Let’s face it, everyone reading this blog has a distinct memory of where you were on September 11, 2001. I’ll bet you can tell your story with as much clarity and detail as I did above. I didn’t elaborate on the images I remember, the concern I had when cell phone lines were jammed, or what we had for dinner and did the rest of the day. I remember so much from that day and so do my children. Why? Because the tragedy heightened our senses, making us hypervigilant to the whole situation. And most of us were far removed from that tragedy. While we may have known someone affected, few of us were actually THERE. If we’ve been changed this much (I was moved to emotion listening to an interview today), think of how much more profoundly changed you are when something traumatic happens directly TO YOU. To not understand that our children who have been traumatized are forever changed is to truly not understand the nature of trauma.


Photo Credit