Looking Beyond 9/11

Anyone who has followed me over the last ten years (yes, I have been online for 10 years) knows that I have written of my September 11th experiences more than once. For those new to the joint, here's the Reader's Digest version. My husband and I lived in Queens, NY and I was actively pursuing an acting career. That morning I was in midtown Manhattan when the planes hit and the Towers fell.. It was an incredibly traumatic day as we were separated and I could not get across the river to get home. The next day, my husband chose to join the military and our lives changed dramatically.

It was an awful day. Enough said. Whenever the anniversary comes up, the sadness, fear, anger, all of that bubble up and I usually write about what was lost that day.

I'm tired of looking back at the rubble and the phone calls to my husband and my father and my best friend, all of which wondered if more was to come. Or if this would be the last call between us.

I am tired of the what if game. What if I had stayed in New York? Would I be acting? And so on, so forth. I want to look forward, I want to think about what I became and therefore, what I gained.

I am who I am because of what happened that day. It's that simple. And who I am has a husband of 25 years and two beautiful healthy children. I have a house at the coast which was always a dream. I have a lot. Not despite but because.

I am not glad it happened, of course. I am just glad for the person I am now. Like the Freedom Tower rising taller and stronger from the ashes of the former twins, I am uniquely different in every way but definitively stronger.

What events have shaped your life? How did they affect who you became?