How has it been 20 years... #NeverForget

It seems only fitting that today be the day that I take a moment to write my thoughts down. To reflect upon the last couple of weeks, months and decades. I am surprised to find myself feeling a bit anxious as I sit down to write this blog. My heart is a little racy and my head feels a little funny. Maybe it's because this is my first time I'm remembering "out loud," sharing my thoughts and feelings with more then just a few people. Not just about what happened on September 11, 2001, but what has and is happening before it and since. Maybe it's the act of opening myself up to feel too much. Or that for some reason, I am still here and others are not. I'm not quite sure, but I have been having a lot of feelings leading to this day and this post.

I have to take a short dive into the more recent past. For the last 2+ weeks I have been avoiding social media, writing, sharing my thoughts...If I'm honest, I've been avoiding people in general. I have been reflecting on the why and what started it. This behavior isn't abnormal for me. My tendency to "hermit up" is usually emotional trauma related. It took me a moment to realize that the cause was doing my "World check in". I try to stay off of the news, but I always check in on World news every week or two. My ex-husband, and best friend used to roll their eyes at me when I didn't know the recent drama in the news, or some terrible story of the week, but what I have grown to understand is that my emotional and mental health rely on that bubble I mostly live in. Any other empathic, highly sensitive people out there will understand this.

The problem with my bubble is that I genuinely care about and love people. I want to be a contributing factor to the solutions, not the problems, and there lies finding a balance of being informed and not wanting to curl up in a hole. One thing that makes finding this balance difficult, is our highly sensitive, empathic, curious, caring 3 year old daughter. She is only 3. Emotions in general are big for her. She is no where near learning how to create boundaries to insulate her from other people's energy and feelings, which means I have been working super hard on reinforcing mine. Which sometimes leads to detachment, because it's the last tool I have. So last weekend when we walked through Easton, PA. during a Never Forget event, there were firetrucks, fireman, police officers, a traveling museum...She had a lot of questions. We were doing a lot that day, there was enough distraction for our conversation to end on her accepting that there was an accident where planes crashed into buildings. Our daughter, however is incredibly thoughtful, and way beyond her years. For the last two days she has been asking me to, "...talk about the planes that had an accident with the buildings." I struggled. Chris and I have always said that we would not lie to her about things and would try to explain them to her in the best way possible with out veering away from the truth. I struggled to find the right words to explain terrorism, why anyone would try to hurt another person, and take their life. I struggled because I don't have the answers, I don't know why, it is beyond my mind and hearts ability to comprehend, we don't even kill bugs in our house, but I also knew it was important that I not glaze over what happened. What still happens. Some people choose hate and hurt over love and healing. These are things I don't want to explain to my 3 year old whose heart is so filled with love, but I have been trying to for 3 days. It's an incredibly fine line, it upsets her to hear about someone being hurt. She has an uncanny positive acceptance of death. It's unsettling, and beautiful, and untainted and I hope she retains it through life, but sadness and pain...they hurt her.

I have been meditating on this, staying awake at night thinking about it, and honestly for the last few weeks that I regrettably dove back into the news, I've tried to form the words to share. As it got closer and closer to approaching this heart wrenching day in history, it also brought memories of how humanity came together, our country came together, the whole world did. It dropped boundaries, and judgments, and isolated perceptions to be replaced with a beautiful kind of unity. Which led me to remembering the beginning of the pandemic and how that did the same. People got out of the comfort zones to do new things, to help people. States passed on supplies when they didn't have as much of a need and sent it to states that did, nurses and doctors travelled the country and World supporting areas with the most need. Scientist dropped their strong attachment to intellectual property to work together and find solutions