09/11/2026
Today, September 11th, I wanted to share something a little more personal than what I normally post here.
I was living in Aroostook County, Maine, and was in elementary school when our teacher turned on the television. The first plane had already hit the World Trade Center. Some of us didn’t really understand what we were seeing. I remember kids thinking maybe it was some kind of small plane accident.
Then the second plane hit.
The room got quiet. Even as kids, we knew something was very wrong.
I went home that afternoon and back to foster care. I didn’t have parents to sit down with and help me make sense of what had happened. My foster parents and I talked about it, but I still couldn’t really comprehend it. It was something I had seen on television, happening somewhere far away.
A few months later, I was on my first airplane, traveling between Maine and New York through Boston. I was scared to fly and didn’t understand the world I was suddenly being asked to navigate.
Eventually, I was adopted and moved to Manhattan.
I went from the cornfields of Maine to the literal center of where the tragedy had happened.
I remember seeing the debris downtown. The missing-person posters. The flowers. And for years afterward, reminders of the people who never made it home.
Then I started school in New York.
The perspective changed completely.
I met kids my own age who had lost family members. I heard their stories. And when they talked about September 11th, you could see the trauma in their eyes.
It wasn’t something they had watched on television.
It had happened on their doorstep.
That contrast has always stayed with me. My roots in Maine are something I’ll never forget, but moving to New York changed my understanding of the world in ways I couldn’t have imagined back then.
Now, as a parent of two young children around the same age I was then, I find myself thinking about that day differently. I think about how little I understood, how much the adults around me were carrying, and how many children lost a parent, a family member, or the sense of safety they had known.
September 11th changed millions of lives. In a strange way, it also happened during a period when my own life was changing completely.
Today, I don’t want to focus on the politics or the images of destruction. I just want to remember the people.
The parents. The children. The spouses. The firefighters. The police officers. The first responders. The people who went to work that morning and never made it home.
And I hope we don’t let September 11th become just another piece of history that we scroll past.
It wasn’t just an Instagram reel.
It was real.
Remember the victims. Remember their stories. Remember that behind every number was a person who was loved and missed.
Never forget. 🇺🇸
