00:00So now we're going to do the September 11th, 2001, where was I?
00:08Typically when people in my age range, you know, mid to early, even possibly mid 40s,
00:17like 35 to 45 or so, um, they usually talk about what happened and where they were on
00:23September 11th, 2001 from a classroom perspective.
00:29That means, that means it usually involves conversations centering around teachers and
00:36assemblies and like lockdowns in their homeroom classes and TVs being turned on, which I can
00:42attest that everywhere you went, even if you weren't in school, that is exactly how it was.
00:49A little background about me.
00:50I got married very young, um, there's a lot of different reasons that I can unpack.
00:55I could probably do like a whole really long documentary on just why that was, but we'll
01:01just call it me looking for escape from a narcissistic family and a lot of really bad abuse and trauma
01:08and not being believed when I told the truth about my stepfather, um, actually abusing me
01:16and a bunch of stuff around that.
01:20So I ended up getting married March of 2001 and that was three months before my 17th birthday.
01:29A month later in April, I found myself pregnant with my first pregnancy and my first child,
01:36which consequently my only daughter, I have four children, but she's my only daughter and
01:42I have my other children are all sons, um, will be 25 at the end of the year.
01:46Now in the days leading up to 9-11, I, because I was young and my body was not used
01:55to carrying,
01:55you know, the kidney functionality for myself and a growing fetus, um, I suffered a really
02:02bad kidney infection that hospitalized me.
02:04And on that particular Tuesday, I had gotten up early and gotten myself ready and I was in the living
02:12room
02:12and I turned the TV on while my daughter's father was, which was my husband at the time,
02:18was in the shower to get ready to go to a doctor's appointment because we had an emergency sonogram that
02:24was
02:25ordered by my OBGYN to check the baby and everything after the kidney infection and see how everything
02:32was going and to see if I was overcoming the infection. So while my husband worked, I was
02:39basically a stay-at-home wife and I was studying to get my GED. Um, and you know, I was
02:45going to
02:46basically just do my own thing, get prepared to be a stay-at-home mom and take care of my
02:52baby.
02:52I was already stepping into adult responsibilities early as a wife and an expectant mother and,
02:59you know, going to doctor's appointments and, um, having to go deposit his checks and pay bills and
03:07do all the things that I had to do in order to run the household while he worked a 12
03:12-hour shift,
03:12four days on, four days off. And then when he had time off, you know, we would go do things
03:18and buy
03:18things for the nursery and the baby and all those things until it got to the point where, um, I
03:25had
03:25that kidney infection. So he happened to be off that day with that doctor's appointment and he was going
03:32to take me and I was waiting for him to get out of the shower when I turned on the
03:36TV to CNN and saw
03:38that the first plane had just hit Tower One. So on that Tuesday, I was absorbing the news alone in
03:46my living room and as a young wife and an expectant mother, seeing that happen was like
03:54bewildering. I was kind of like, what the hell is going on? Because in all reality, up until that
04:02moment, there was like a specific promise that we had been fed growing up, a baseline sense of security
04:11about adulthood in America and what that was going to look like for our generation. Watching the planes
04:21hit the towers and seeing them collapse broke that promise in an instant.
04:30The illusion of safety that we thought that we had here, it was gone, replaced by sudden,
04:37violent, global uncertainty. But that heaviest weight to me, as I was holding my pregnant belly and
04:45realizing what it all meant, this is the world my baby is coming into.
04:54And in the days and the weeks that followed, the country transformed. Fear took over and almost
05:04immediately, a wave of intense hatred and hostility erupted and Islamophobia swept over the nation.
05:14But I want you guys to understand that even as a teenager then, sitting there with new life growing
05:21inside of me, I rejected that impulse completely. I knew instinctively then that terror could not be
05:33answered with bigotry. Broadening hate to target an entire group of people who are innocent wouldn't
05:42make my child or anyone else's any safer. It was only going to make the world a much more darker
05:48grim place.
05:49And carrying a baby forced me to see humanity through a lens of empathy rather than suspicion
05:56to value life in the wake of us losing so much. And like I said, that baby turns 25 at
06:05the end of
06:05this year. And her entire life represented the hope I had in the exact span of time that has passed
06:18since
06:19that world flip happened to us all. Since that complete shattering of everything we believed
06:31didn't happen in one single day. But it also cemented a core belief that I've carried for 25 years of
06:39parenting. No matter how much the world shakes, we cannot let it rob us of our compassion.
06:49It will always give me peace of mind knowing that even at the tender age of 17 and a half
06:55years old
06:55was the intentional choice that I made. We didn't have to give into Islamophobia, into paranoia,
07:02or any of the hatred that swept through this country. We didn't have to do it then and we
07:07should not be doing it now. If there's one thing I hope that people take away looking back at that
07:15day
07:1525 years later, it's that the truth always comes out in the end.
07:21And there are those of us who were still alive, who formed core memories that day,
07:25who know exactly what happened, who spent hours and hours for months on end after it,
07:32watching the news and every update that happened as they drew more and more people into the wars in
07:39the Middle East and their rationale behind them. So the reality is the only thing I can truly say to
07:50end this. These things only change who we are and they only win when we allow them to.
07:59The Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked that day.
08:06A plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field that day and the world irrevocably shifted forever.
08:15But we still have a choice every single day in how we treat each other, how we view our neighbors
08:23both here and globally, and the kind of legacies that we want to leave behind to pass on to our
08:31children and whatever future that we might have left in this world. Because the next 25 years is sure
08:38to go by really fast. And if people like us don't tell the truth, document it, and step forward to
08:46remind everyone what exactly it felt like to be the generation that saw that live, not live streaming,
08:54on live TV, on every single channel, every single place you went, with the hope that it would be
09:02seared into your mind and elicited a response that would divide and conquer the people in a country
09:10that spouted United We Stand.
09:15Never forget, right?
09:18Where were you on September 11, 2001?
09:22How do you feel 25 years later with everything that we see happening right now?
09:28Now, what are you doing to make sure that we never forget all of the things that happened
09:36that day and the truths that have come out since?
09:40What are you doing to make a difference, to make the United States better than it was then
09:47and how it has continued to be since?
09:52Never forget, September 11, 2001, one Tuesday morning.
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