Remember.

I was old enough to be terrified on September 11, 2001. It's hard to believe that it's been 12 years.

For the first time in 12 years, I did not watch even one second of TV on September the 11th. I know what happened.  I had nightmares about it for years. When my 11th grade Economics teacher turned on the television in our second period class on September 11, 2001, she no more than had stepped aside from the television set when along with Peter Jennings, ABC News, and any other American watching at the same moment, 25 teenagers watched as the second plane careened into the World Trade Center on live television.  I remember feeling as if I heard and felt the collective gasp of disbelieving horror across the country. I felt it in Peter Jennings' voice as it cracked on live TV. I swallowed tears for people I never met. Until that day, I had honestly say I didn't even know what or where the Pentagon or the World Trade Center were. I vividly remember leaving school that afternoon.  I stepped out into a warm, cloudless September afternoon, and looking up into the sky as I walked to the parking lot.  Nothing was there. No clouds, no planes, and no answers, I thought.

Every year, I've watched memorials, tributes, and remembrances on TV. Every year, watching footage takes me back to the day I first saw it, and feeling the profound grief and shame as I wonder how humans have this horrific capacity to carry out such hatred and harm to each other. Every year I feel the urgency to change the hearts of my fellow humans. And every year, I am reminded of the peers of mine who joined the military in the post 9-11 surge of patriotism, (I was 17) and have died fighting the elusive war on terrorism, or come back so badly wounded emotionally and/or physically that goes seemingly unnoticed. This thirteenth year since the attacks begins today. I didn't begin it this year with the images of hate, but instead with a yoga practice, a Nia class, and a beautiful conversation about change and transformation with a dear, heart- friend. It isn't hopeless. Don't think, "who am I, I cannot change 'the way things are?'" It may be small, and it may be only in my own heart somedays, but love and healing exist, even in the midst of our confusion.