What were you doing when the planes hit the towers?
I was in the middle of a bustling morning. I had a 10:00 flight to La Guardia, an unusual schedule for me. I had recently moved further from the airport and the usual 15 minute drive is now an hour. I always take the 6:30 flight out, but decided to pamper myself and not leave the house until 8:30, instead of my usual 5:00 or so. I was cruising down the highway deciding where to go first once I got to New York City. When I’m there I spend a lot of time in Midtown but this day I was going to my EAP office Downtown (immediately across the street from the the World Trade Center). I was thinking about starting there and having lunch on the plaza of the World Trade Center (as I had done on my most recent trip), then spending the rest of the day at my Midtown office.
The car phone jolted me out of this fantasy, the ring of it literally reminding me I was driving on an Interstate! My Wife, Ann, was calling to tell me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I really had no picture of this in my mind and didn’t think to inquire about it. She was asking me to reconsider the trip. I said I was going to go ahead and go. I had an image of a small aircraft hitting the towers. My immediate response was frustration! Air traffic would back-up the already unpredictable schedules into La Guardia. I probably wouldn’t be able to get to the Downtown location and, basically, the entire day would probably be spent just trying to arrive in New York City.
I was pulling into the airport in Indianapolis when a colleague in New York City called me. She was frantic and clear: “DON’T COME TO NEW YORK CITY!” By the time she called, Lower Manhattan was in a panic. Her office is at the Downtown location and she was trying to get there from Brooklyn. She never made it and was thoughtful enough to call me. She told me another plane had hit the World Trade Center and that we might be under an attack. I decided to turn around and asked her to call me when I returned to my office. I was listening to the radio on my return trip and discovering what had actually happened. Then the Pentagon was hit. And the plane went down in Pennsylvania.
How did you get involved doing the trauma debriefing? Who called you?
Before I reached my office (which is in my home) I received a call from the customer service center that took the mobile calls form the planes that had crashed. The Director told me that after the operators discerned that the calls they were on terminated because the planes crashed, they were very upset and pulling together to meet and discuss what was happening and what they should do. Before they were through with this, the FBI had secured the premises and the employees became totally panicked. My first call when I returned to my office was to get several therapists ready to go to this location. Next, I received a call from one of the operators and she was clearly stunned. Not making sense and asking me,“What happened?” I never did figure out what she was saying to me! I connected her with one of her co-workers to calm her down and also connected her with a clinician over the phone. You know, it’s odd that I still really didn’t “get it!” I was thinking on and off that this horrible tragedy wasn’t going to affect me personally that much, even though I could see that it obviously would for a very long time.
I had a lot of difficulty staying away from the TV on 9-11. When I got home, I walked in and Ann was standing about 3 feet from the TV watching CNN. Silently, I stood beside her and watched for quite a while as the towers burned and reports of the other suicide crashes came in. Then she turned to me with tears in her eyes, repeating, “This is horrible!” That might have been my last moment of real connection with her for the next two months.
For the rest of the day I watched CNN and made a number of telephone calls to New York City. It was very difficult to get through as the telephone service in New York City was very disrupted. I remember that it wasn’t as busy for me as I might have imagined. In fact, I was not that aware of my responsibilities at work as I was glued to the TV. All day and all night!
The next morning was a completely different story. My office phone started ringing at 5:00 a.m. and didn’t stop. I would answer a call and get 3 more on my voice mail while on the phone - an absolute deluge of people looking for direction. These were people whose lives had been so violently torn apart, managers who wanted to help employees and connect them swith the EAP, and Human Resource people coordinating the Crises Response. I thought I should probably be in New York and started discussing it with my team. This team consisted of the clinicians reporting directly to me and two groups of clinical and administrative staff from the large managed care organizations contracted for EAP services - a total of about 15 people. On 9-12 it was almost impossible to keep everybody connected on the call, planning being continually disrupted with disconnects or team members unable to connect to the bridge we were using. We were trying to identify where to set up operations in New York, what we were going to need at the Pentagon, and what the impact had been across the country.
Some things we did find out on 9-12: that we had maybe 3,000 employees at ground zero, that we had a hundred or so employees in the towers, and that our clinical office for NY EAP services was totally destroyed along with all the records. From the TV we gathered that air travel wasn’t a possibility so we made a decision that I would coordinate the clinical team for emergency response from Indianapolis. I had the technological capability from my home office (high speed data, etc.) and there was much less chance of the communication lines being disrupted in Indianapolis than in New York City. One senior member of my team was stranded in Las Vegas and another in Chicago. That we were able to plan or coordinate anything at all was miraculous. September 12th and the following days are a blur. I was working non-stop from 5 a.m. until midnight every day.
During that first week I spent my time locating clinicians for the New York Tri-state area, providing feedback on employee mental health and fitness for duty, taking emergency calls from employees and loved ones and trying to open emergency clinics in mid- and lower Manhattan. Regarding the latter, it proved impossible to open anything in Manhattan that week. I was working with one EAP vendor to open an emergency walk-in clinic in the Chrysler building, but we abandoned plans in sheer frustration as the building was repeatedly being emptied as a result of multiple, daily, bomb threats. We did manage to open a clinic the following week in a small elementary school, adjacent to ground-zero, in conjunction with the Red Cross.
When my Downtown office had been evacuated, one administrator and one clinician had left the building. It was a few hours before we knew they had survived. (I started to write “before we knew they were okay, ” but I’m not sure if they will ever be “okay.”) One clinician left the building and left Manhattan and did not return. We couldn’t find her for a long time, then got word that she was in Brooklyn. After two weeks of no contact, I discovered that she had bought a condo in Brooklyn without her husband or children’s knowledge, that she was quitting her practice in Manhattan, and had invited her family to join her in Brooklyn. She was not open to discussing her actions as a possible PTSD response. I haven’t heard from her since.
The administrative staff member I’ll call Doris. She might be the most wounded person I saw during this experience. She came into the job with enthusiasm and had only been working for a few months, with hopes of moving into progressively more important responsibilities (from a clerical/receptionist role into an office manager type of position). She was struggling with numerous personal problems. We had offered her help and were debating what to do next to keep the office functioning and growing. She knew this and she was trying, and improving! When she evacuated the office she was met with the flaming towers and people jumping from the windows. The crowds carried her away down the street and she carried with her an image of horror: people on fire and leaping to their deaths.
I talked with her on the phone three or four times until I got to New York. She sounded like a zombie. Emotionless, unable to make a complete sentence, apologizing for not coming to work (even though I told her there wasn’t an office to come to). Like many others I spoke with over the next months, she demonstrated an eerie paucity of speech which was very much unlike her (Doris had a reputation of “talking your ear off”). She desperately wanted my help. For some reason she decided that I could heal her from this, and since she didn’t report to me directly I agreed to meet with her when I got to the city.
In that first week I had a number of clinical contacts. I spoke to a man who had walked out of Tower One, across the Brooklyn Bridge, then as far as he could walk until he, rather aimlessly, happened upon a train. He took the train upstate and would not disclose where he was (I gathered he had shelter and a telephone, though he stated there was no one around him. I fantasized that he was at a friends retreat or something like that). When he first called I almost hung-up on him as he could not speak and I couldn’t tell if he had remained on the line. I finally realized that he was trying to speak but couldn’t find words. By reassuring him I would stay on the line with him and he didn’t have to talk until he wanted to or could, he told me the first story I heard of people melting and jumping. That took several calls and several hours. All he could say initially was that he couldn’t go back to Manhattan because of the air - something in the air (this was long before air quality even became a consideration). I began to think of this as metaphor, the something in the air being burning and melting bodies. After a week he agreed to let me connect him with people who knew him and would care for him.
By Friday of the first week we had exhausted all of our resources for clinicians in New York and I was negotiating with several counseling firms for more therapists trained in critical incident debriefing. All toll, we provided 600 group debriefing sessions and 1500 individual debriefing sessions. 500 of the group sessions and all of the individual sessions were held in the New York City area. That’s why we needed more counselors!
How did you get to New York and what was it like for you when you got there?
I had been pushing my travel plans ahead a day at a time, until all aircraft were grounded. When air travel resumed, I caught a flight to New York. I have never been superstitious, and I have never been afraid to fly. It usually doesn’t enter my mind. But this time I was worried about it. Somebody had told me an off-color joke about Arab terrorists: that they would not commit a suicide bombing if they were in the presence of a pig and that I should carry a pet pig onto the plane, making sure to introduce it to everyone. I laughed at the joke, and ironically, found this little ceramic pig in my toiletry drawer while I was packing. I had not seen that ceramic pig for many years. We had picked it up while driving through the Ozarks on vacation. Well, the pig is still in my shaving kit and I take it with me every time I fly to this day! I think of it before I leave! I have decided that I will take it with me as long as I think of it before hand. I suppose, superstition aside, it does provide me with some kind of support. And, the flight was remarkably uneventful!
I want to build a picture of what it was like at “ground-zero,, the epicenter of the destruction in New York. This is what I wrote shortly after my experience of it: “It is hard to imagine. The rubble is unbelievably bleak, 6 or 7 stories high, and interspersed with personal belongings. The belongings are the only things that are colorful. It’s like a music video shot in black and white, but the purse, or the shoe or the piece of cloth is bright red or green or blue. The television does not capture it. Everything is kept wet. The streets are continuously swept. Everything that goes inside the perimeter is hosed down upon exiting. I had to hose off my shoes when entering the Red Cross headquarters. This bustling capitol of commerce for the world is reduced to a military zone. This must be what Beirut was like. Nothing on the streets but trucks and hummers and soldiers and construction equipment. And, nobody smiles. I can sort out how long somebody has been inside the perimeter by the pallor of their skin, the sunken look of their eyes and the far away presence they exude. This is the smell of death. It is pungent but not grossly repugnant. It is fowl and pervasive. Indescribable. I am sure I will recognize it again whenever and wherever I come across it. I want to take the hose and hose my whole self down, not just my shoes. Maybe I am breathing in evil. Maybe that’s why the man said he couldn’t come back to Manhattan - “it’s the air.”
The first group I did after setting up shop in midtown Manhattan was a group for those people working the phones and helping the EAP effort. Doris was in that group. She had talked with me privately before the group and had hopes of participating in a “debriefing” and feeling miraculously better as a result. She had called me at my hotel late at night on two occasions. Sleepless and rambling at 3 or 4 in the morning, unable to get the image of people flying through the air on fire out of her head. So she joined the group and was more interactive than most. I was stunned at how she and others could recall events and what they saw that day with such clarity. Even more stunning was the setting. We could not find a conference room in the building as Manhattan had no office space available anywhere. We had the use of the “executive” conference room on the 40th floor. Executive conference rooms have glass walls with panoramic views. I was looking at and listening to Doris tell her story against a backdrop of smoke, trucks and chaos which I could see clearly in lower Manhattan. That is an image I don’t think I will ever forget. Doris was lucid and spontaneous while recalling the story of escaping from ground zero. When she finished, she slumped back into her chair and assumed her “zombie-like” posture. The best descriptor is a term used in mental hospitals years ago to describe a particular frame and posture: “waxy catatonia.”
This state of being did not change for Doris. I would see her in the foyer and outside the building in the smoking areas each day and she looked so broken! This waxy, eerie look. Like every minute muscle movement had to be considered, debated, checked for safety, and then executed very slowly. Her eyes so distant - gazing back in time to when she first exited the building into a landscape of horror. Doris tried working for the next month or so, then abruptly quit. She didn’t want any more help. She just wanted out. I offered to get her any psychiatric or psychotherapeutic help available, at no cost to her, and she simply stared straight ahead and mumbled that she didn’t need it. In 20 years , Doris might be the first person I have engaged in therapeutic work about whom I have clearly thought, “God will have to intervene to save her life or restore her to some meaningful existence.” That is a pretty remarkable thought for me and clearly out of my usual belief system.
A middle-aged woman was working across the street when someone ran through the hall screaming for everyone to get out and run. She didn’t know what it was and assumed it was a fire drill. She started running out when she saw others fleeing in the panic. The exit faced the World Trade Center and she saw the flames and a few people jumping from the buildings. She told herself not to look at this and to run as hard as she could to get away. She ran about a block and then stopped herself dead in her tracks. Something inside of her told her she HAD to turn around for the sake of those jumping. She believed that they needed a witness. A devout Catholic, she dropped to her knees to say a “Hail, Mary” for each person that jumped. When I saw her, she was wracked with guilt, because people started jumping so fast - some hand in hand - that she had to shorten the “Hail, Mary” to a simple, “Jesus”.
Several people, a man and a woman in particular, had come down the stairs before the towers collapsed and attempted to assist others in the escape. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful. They told heart-wrenching stories of the moment they made the decision to go on. Both were plagued with self-doubt. What if they would have persisted, pushed through the pain, and carried them out of the towers? Both felt they would never be the same, and they felt they had committed some sort of sin. They weren’t able to grasp that the decision was organismic (not a thought process but a “whole” person response) and relational (the injured insisted they be left behind). Both the man and woman were resigned to carrying this burden for the rest of their lives. The biggest burden being an awareness of a capability, a survival capability, that they never before knew they possessed. Neither were interested in the possibility that psychotherapy could ease their burden.
How did all the talking with other people affect you? What have you done to take care of yourself since being in New York?
Taking care of myself has never been my forte, but I realized I was really being impacted from day one. In the months since the disaster I have realized, too, that for those early days when I was still working in Indianapolis, Ann had been doing her best to support me. She respected my position and need to work so many hours. She brought meals to my office, reminded me to take breaks, served as a receptionist, and assumed total responsibility for our children and our household. More than anything she listened. When I took a break (which was when I was so full of emotion, or frustrated, or when the phones went down) I would pour out a stream of consciousness and emotion and she would listen. I really gave her no credit for all that she did. I wasn’t present and had left her. That is very unlike me. Like I said, that moment of crying in each others arms in front of the TV while the buildings crumbled to the ground was probably the last moment of real contact we had for months.
By the time I could catch a flight to New York I realized I would need some help. My therapist lives in Manhattan, so I gave him a call thinking I would set several appointments for my own support and “debriefing.” After a cursory exchange and checking our schedules, I shared what I was experiencing in this work. He shared that for many years he started his day with a walk by the local fire station on his way into the office. I believe he said there were 13 firemen missing from that station. He broke down and sobbed, me right along with him. We are very close and this wouldn't normally strike me as unusual, but for some reason I cancelled the appointments. In retrospect that wasn't the best thing for me to do. At the time, I was feeling like this was another piece of pain I would need to bear, but I believe now that this was symptomatic of post traumatic stress and the alienation that I was already beginning to experience.
The most relaxing and enjoyable thing I do in New York City is walk. I walk and walk and people-watch. My usual routine is to return to my hotel after work, rest a bit and put on my walking shoes, then leave around 6:00 pm and walk until around 8:00 pm. I find a restaurant for dinner, seldom relying upon recommendations and trusting my immediate experience of the place. Although this is usually wonderfully supportive, in the aftermath of 9-11 it only added to the disruption I was in the midst of experiencing. It is tempting to categorize New Yorkers as vastly different during those days immediately post-attack and I believe there is some merit in that. But what stood out for me was not so much the people but the "landmarks" that would catch my eye.
There was a very large bronze statue around 40th and Broadway that had been donated to they city. It is a bronze of a firefighter kneeling and holding the hard-hat of a fallen colleague. I stood there and cried, unaware for a long time that others around me were also mesmerized by the piece and also crying. Heading towards lower Manhattan, the handbills that so bawdily announce what's playing (and add an ambiance almost unique to New York) were slowly replaced with missing person notices. Posters announcing theaters, galleries and concerts gave way to row upon row of pictures of people and text pleading for help in finding them or prayers for their safe return. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
I stopped walking downtown. Instead I walked uptown, and I did notice the difference. In the months following the attacks I have realized that the experience dissipates the further from the epicenter of the attacks you get. The exceptions seem to be people like me, who are still carrying a piece of the experience with them. Not yet assimilated or assimilable. One evening I walked uptown in my usual stance and settled on a Brazilian grill for dinner. I was aware of what seemed to me to be the difference in going away from the rubble and destruction. I was also aware of how much I was craving red meat, eating it almost every night. Across the street was a fire house. I was struck with how unaware I had been throughout my meal as I was sitting at a table by the front window looking towards the station for about an hour before I noticed that it was a fire station. Even then it took one of the fire trucks leaving in a blaze of commotion and noise to catch my attention.
I walked across the intersection, already struck by the mass of flowers adorning the station. They were everywhere! Spilling out into the street, climbing the walls of the building and on makeshift tables. Amidst the flowers were hundreds of burning candles and other items arranged in such a way as to create a sort of out-door sanctuary. On the outside walls of the station were ten or fifteen pictures of fire fighters lost and missing. I deliberately looked at each picture and read all the letters surrounding them. So very sad. I still feel this experience as I write and tears are in my eyes. These fine young men, many of them with large Irish Catholic families, obviously perished yet surrounded with so many hopeful letters and mementos. I was standing in a line waiting to sign the "guest book" which was some hybrid of the book you would sign in a funeral parlor while paying your respects and a place for expressing gratitude and support of a job well done. My gaze fixed upon a note pinned to one of the pictures. Written by a young boy in crayon, it read "I'm holding on to my new football until you can come home and play with me Daddy."
Sniffling and pushing back tears, my turn at the register had come. I felt hurried as there were a number of people in line, but I couldn't think of anything to write. There aren't many occasions in my life when I feel dumbstruck and speechless. I was feeling anxiety and pressure while at the same time aware that I could write nothing, step away, write something trite or canned - but I didn't. I looked up from the page directly into the eyes of a fire man about 10 feet away. Misty eyed, he was awe struck with the scene outside his door: the outpouring of support and the omnipresent reminder of such immense human tragedy. I felt a strong connection as our eyes met and expressed ourselves, as words cannot. That brief moment of contact left us both with tears streaming. I signed the book "You have my love and I will pray for you". That was very unusual for me and something that I have noticed a lot since 9-11. I say to people things like, "I'll say a prayer for you" and I sign notes and cards similarly. I never used to do that!
As I push through these stories and my experiences I am noticing that I keep going back over the paragraphs and changing the phrase “I was struck”, or “what struck me.” In the last few paragraphs I wrote that eight times. My experience of this tragedy is like being struck. By a fist. Maybe a fist of awareness. Or of pain and suffering. Perhaps a wake-up call that this kind of suffering and trauma is present in the world all the time. Maybe an awareness of how much I hurt.
A man I very much respect and admire also happens to be my boss. We have worked together for a year and have grown close, more collegial and respectful of each other than a hierarchical relationship. His goal and dream is to be in the ministry and I think his influence has had an impact on my newfound spirituality. On a number of occasions post 9-11 we would walk together or grab a bite to eat together. Although never pushing his brand of spirituality, I would notice the sense he could make of this tragedy by acknowledging his belief in a higher power. I suspect that my admiration and fondness for him enabled me to assimilate some of my own spiritual beliefs into a system that I can use to support myself in integrating such a senseless tragedy. Of course, the companionship, a long walk, and a good cigar also contributed to what sense of well being and support I could muster during such terrible times as well!
Did you talk to anyone who'd had a pretty blessed life at the towers?
A senior executive opened a meeting of his New York team with the comment, "Two of the biggest decisions I have ever made in my career were to evacuate the building [1 World Trade] and then not to return to it." He had to force his people to leave the building because they had no conception of what was happening. Most people were aware there was a fire somewhere, and they were in no hurry to leave. Finishing important phone calls, e-mails and conversations took precedent over evacuating the building until the boss demanded it. The scene they encountered in the lobby defies reality in retrospect! Many people were gathered around the elevators waiting to go back up into the building. The Port Authority was announcing that it was safe to return. This man made his "second most important decision" at that time: to reconvene his group several blocks away and not return to the trade center offices. There were tears in his eyes as he shared this with about 70 of his reports in a large conference room. Reciprocally, there were few dry eyes in the crowd. Needless to say, this direct display of emotion is seldom witnessed in the business world but was very welcome on this day.
This man went on to describe what I heard from a number of people at the site of the towers. There was a beautiful golden snowfall. More brilliant than anything that has ever fallen from the sky. Glittering, shiny, and everywhere. And there were also "big black things" falling out of the sky. Another man and woman also reported there were big objects falling that were on fire. At least five people reported these similar perceptions. Several things struck me about these reports in addition to their similarity. One was the clarity of the perception of the golden snow. This was obviously the pulverized glass falling after the explosion had scattered it through the atmosphere on a very clear, beautifully sunny day. The other was the very unclear perceptions of the bodies falling - the big black things and the objects on fire. I believe this highlights the protective function of repression! As one woman got clearer by sharing her story in a group session the "fiery objects falling out of the sky" became people with faces, arms and legs. One man was almost relieved to understand how the flaming body parts ended up on the mezzanine. This very intelligent man had not considered that the bodies fell from the sky and flew apart upon impact.
Two managers whom I interviewed were both blessed and heroic. They had elected to leave the bee hive of activity that was inhibiting them from completing a project and go have coffee across the street where they could think and talk without interruption. They witnessed the first plane hit the tower. After initial panic they decided to go in and get their people out of the building. They were successful, dazed and quite unaware that their efforts were “heroic.”
How did you know what to say to these people? Did it come from your gut spontaneously, did you fall back on your Gestalt training, did you use some special critical incidents training you'd gotten (if so, when and where did you get that training and what did it tell you to do?)
I have provided critical incident debriefing for the thirteen years that I have been an EAP. I have been trained in the "right" way to conduct a debriefing and I am familiar with the cautions and limitations of the approach. For the most part I think all of that is bullshit. Yes, the work comes from my gut spontaneously, and, yes, I fall back on my Gestalt training. After all, these are inseparable, right? Many years ago I discovered what was, for me, the most advantageous structure for conducting critical incidents. Reminiscent of Fritz's statements in Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, all I really need is a group, some privacy, and lots of Kleenex. I usually say that we will make the rounds and I expect everyone to say something, even if it is merely "pass." That's the only expectation I have. I generally start with some sort of overview of the tragedy or a eulogy of some sort to "prime the pump." I may make a mini-intervention as we go around the room or make a suggestion as to how or where an individual can find support as they comment. Usually the group is marvelous at supporting each other and allowing someone to sort through intense thoughts and feelings.
What is different in a debriefing situation is the value of helping people identify where to get more help and how to know if they need it. While the APA cautioned about suggestibility post 9-11, when debriefing received unprecedented lay press, I have found that people don't introject this sort of information if you don't present it in an easily introjectable fashion (such as presenting yourself as the end-all expert on the topic or making claims that you know this-or-that is bound to happen). Letting people know that there are limits to how much repetitive insomnia one can suffer or that there is help available for night terrors and depression is providing a valuable service.
I have a good understanding of why debriefing groups work. I received feedback on roughly 600 critical incident debriefing groups and I debriefed perhaps 30 clinicians myself. Additionally, I have participated in data collection for a survey developed at the University of Maryland and held daily conversations with Clinical Managers at the largest behavioral healthcare organizations in the nation during the 9-11 recovery. Without a doubt there are three things that participants repeatedly cite as helpful:
- First, people feel significant relief from spending time sharing stories with others with similar feelings and experiences.
- Second, people relish the opportunity to rest and reflect.
- Finally, people value getting information that normalizes their personal responses to the trauma (e.g., sleeplessness, nightmares, anxiety, phobias).
I was in need of significant debriefing myself when the dust finally settled post-9-11. It was Thanksgiving before I returned "home." Not that I was physically gone the entire time. I would spend a week in New York and a week in Indianapolis, then travel to other cities to present the debriefing process and results to the vendor companies on the debriefing team. We had developed an impressive system of tracking debriefing activity and had begun tracking outcome as well. So, even though the grueling work of the immediate trauma subsided, there was a lot of busy work. And as is the case in the business world, there was much fanfare and hoopla over the courageous and wonderful job we had done. Some of it was nice, some of it I supported as a reward for my team, and some of it was sheer politics (a necessary evil in this segment of the field). I did have several opportunities to participate in debriefing groups. They didn't help much and left me cynical and wanting. I never did contact my therapist but I did participate in several therapeutic groups, affording me some relief.
Relief from what is a viable question! I was aware of some of the classical symptoms of PTSD. Exaggerated startle response. Nightmares about people dying. A vague sense of anhedonia, although I was prone to bouts of crying and temper tantrums. My sleep patterns were all over the place and I have had extreme difficulty concentrating on major tasks and seeing them to completion. I didn't want to talk to anybody and I needed lots of alone time. I was aware of isolating myself, and true to the process of becoming a "trauma-junkie,"s nothing much excited me or seemed worthy of attention. All I wanted was my family around me and to know that they were okay. When Ann and my children are with me (all five of them, two of their spouses and my granddaughter) I feel very content and "cocooned." This wasn't as supportive an experience as I typically feel.
My world is different now. I walked back into a new relationship with Ann (she had changed in many ways and I had not even been aware of it). She came alive after 9-11. She didn't need me as much. She was discovering art and music and dancing - without me. My kids seemed so grown up. No little ones to coddle (my youngest is 12 years old). My first experiences with my closest friends left me feeling empty, like nobody understood me anymore. It seemed to me like everyone had his or her own mini-satori or mini-crises going. Very different than what I was used to experiencing.
I went back to ground-zero in February. At first I was disgusted with people visiting the site like tourists and I just walked away. The next morning I went up on the platform (I’ve got clearance to go inside the site, but I wanted to see it from the public viewing stage). I wasn’t stunned. I cried but I didn’t feel debilitated, and I stayed present. All good stuff. Not that the trauma of it all has left me, but I can feel I’m healing and my life’s coming back.
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