World Trade Center
Lessons with 9/11: How to live without regret
I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. Every year I say to myself that this will be the last post I write about 9/11. And then every year I write another post. So, now I have a whole archive of posts about my story: I was so close to death, from suffocation, that …
Read More...Surviving 9/11: Ten years later
During the year after 9/11 I went to counseling for post-traumatic stress. I went to a group that met weekly. The counselors explained that if we told our story over and over again, the story would have less power over us.
So I have been telling my story for ten years. I am lucky to have …
9/11: Flashbacks from behaving poorly at the World Trade Center
It's 9/11 again. And for the last seven years, I've written on this day about how I have grown since the World Trade Center. I was standing next to the first tower when it fell.
Mostly, I don't think about 9/11 anymore. Well, not on a daily basis at least. But, for example, I so seldom …
9/11 didn’t change me overnight, even though I wish it had
The slowest moment in my whole life was the time between when the World Trade Center fell next to me, and when someone broke a window and I climbed in to get air. In my memory this time span is about fifteen minutes. But from the historical record, I know it was about one minute.
I …
My 9/11 day. My husband. The meaning of my to-do list.
I was standing at the bottom of the Word Trade Center when it fell. I was standing so close that I didn’t know it fell. I thought earthquake, until I couldn’t breathe. Then I thought nuclear bomb.
Now, when I let my head go back to that day, there are two moments I most easily go …
9/11: Digging myself out of the debris
I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. At each anniversary that passes I write my story, and each year it changes a little. This year, I have been thinking about that moment when I accepted death.
I was at the corner of Liberty and Broadway when the first tower fell. I was too …
A lesson from the 9/11 memorial, which still does not exist
The most conflicted memorial just got more conflicted. The New York Times reports that the relatives of those killed on 9/11 will not endorse the World Trade Center memorial plan unless the names of the dead are categorized by where they were working. Relatives don’t just want the company name, though. They want the tower …
Read More...Lessons from New Orleans
The footage from New Orleans reminds me of my own experience at the World Trade Center. The first couple of weeks after the hurricane are just the beginning. So much of the rest of the story is about asking for help, and it 's one of the hardest things in the world to do; at …
Read More...9/11 two years later
For most people, September 11 has come and gone, but the anniversary will always be important to me because I was a block away when the first building fell. The people I have met who were at the World Trade Center that day never stopped associating the event with their work, and I am no …
Read More...Why your work matters during a war
There's nothing like forty bombs on a Middle-East metropolis to make you feel like your weekly widget report is meaningless. But we can't bring the economy to a screeching halt. If nothing else, we need to eat, we have to get paid. So we find ourselves making judgments each day about what is in poor …
Read More...Wall Street after 9/11: The support groups start at 5pm sharp
In New York, a town where one third of the workers worked downtown, and more than one third were affected by the twin tower attacks, one of the best places to network is at trauma groups.
You have to interview to get in a group. Not because they're exclusive, but because peoples' experiences are so different …
Two months after 9/11: Trying to make work normal again
My husband takes the subway to work every morning and gets off right in front of the NBC building in Manhattan. That subway stop — Rockefeller Center — is huge and very busy in rush hour, and I'm sure the stop has come up in conversation among insane but unfortunately still-crafty terrorists.
I have asked my …
Yom Kippur provides a welcome break from work
My earliest memory of Yom Kippur is one of my dad writing a note for me to give to my second grade teacher: “Please excuse Penelope from school tomorrow. She is Jewish.”
Maybe if there had been other Jews at my school, the note would have had more context. But my dad was apoplectic about the …
First-hand account of 9/11
At the Wall St. train stop people were covered with papers. A plane crash. That’s what everyone said. Then a boom. Everyone ran. I ran to my office and called my brother in the Midwest.
I wanted to be closer. At the corner of Church and Broadway, I angled my way through a large, packed crowd …

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