I bet you remember exactly where you were on September 11th, 2001.
I’ll never forget clutching my 3-month-old infant in my arms as I ran around our Brooklyn Heights apartment closing the windows and turning off the air conditioners, because the smoke and debris from the World Trade Center were blowing across the East River and onto our building, into our windows, onto our little balcony.
New York City, my home since I was 22, was suddenly, literally out of the clear blue sky, under attack – the center of purposeful destruction, Ground Zero. And my baby was in the middle of all of it.
Do you remember too the days and months following? If you, like me, were in New York City, you’ll remember…
. . the burning electrical smell that filled the air for months as Ground Zero continued to burn
. . the constant buzzing of military planes overhead
. . police and National Guard at subway stations and street corners
. . posters of “missing” people taped to every streetlight pole
. . anthrax scares that made it scary to even open your mail
There’s a term about trauma we use in the EFT tapping world: UDIN. It stands for Unexpected, Dramatic, Isolating, and No strategy. If you go through something that could be described with all of those terms, you’ve experienced a traumatic event. And you may have some symptoms of PTSD from it – racing thoughts, insomnia, depression, anxiety, fear, panic attacks, headaches.
That’s your body trying to find a place to store the trauma.
That day, Sep 11th, 2001, brought almost every UDIN symptom to everyone in the country: we all to varying degrees experienced something very unexpected, extremely dramatic, and we had basically no strategy to deal with it. Unless you remembered Pearl Harbor, you’d never felt anything quite like it.
But there’s one adjective in UDIN that doesn’t describe the event for most of us: isolating.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Strangers rallied to help strangers. New Yorkers lined up around the block at every hospital to donate blood. Firefighters and therapists poured in from other states and countries to help in the aftermath at Ground Zero. Possibly for the first time, the United States was held in prayer by millions of people around the world.
There were literally countless stories of heroism and connection. The people on Flight 93 who fought back against the terrorists by crashing their hijacked plane in an empty field instead of allowing it to kill other innocent people. The firefighters who gave their lives saving others. The small Canada towns that opened their homes to thousands of American travelers stranded by the grounding of all US-bound flights. Therapists who helped survivors process trauma. Churches, mosques, and synagogues that held prayer services. People who showed up with full hearts at candlelight vigils.
September 11th, a day meant for purposeful and horrific destruction, did not bring isolation. It cracked us open, and inside we discovered compassion. September 11th brought unity to New York.
I’m not sure that unity lasted very long. Certainly I’m not observing much unity in our world or our country or our families these days.
But I can tell you this: last Friday, the 25th anniversary of 9/11, everyone who was alive in New York City that morning of blue skies and sudden terror in 2001 – that day that seems so long ago and so recent at the very same time – we softened. We remembered. We expanded.
We put down, if only for one day, the invisible little flags we all paste on ourselves of Democrat, Republican, Muslim, Christian, Jew, atheist, Boomer, Gen Z, and on and on.
We forgot our differences and found our oneness. We remembered that underneath the labels we’re all humans, and underneath the human we’re all infinite, powerful, amazing souls.
Let’s carry that oneness and soulness with us, instead of the trauma, the fear, the suspicion, the separation. Let’s allow our compassion to lead us instead of our fear.
I remember 9/11/01 like it was yesterday. But my body isn’t carrying the fear and heartbreak anymore.
If you’d like some support getting through trauma, from 9/11 or anything else your body is still carrying, I’m here for you.
ThetaHealing and EFT tapping are highly effective for releasing the trauma some of us carry around. Please book your session here