19 years later

I have been running a group for young adults with depression, anxiety, and/or PTSD since the start of the quarantine. Initially it was going to be for the month of April only, but these eight young people connected in a beautiful way and we have continued weekly group meetings through the summer and into the fall.

During the week leading up to the 19th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, I realized something crucial. Most of my clients are between the ages of 19 and 26, which would have put them in the category of being as young as a baby and as old as a 1st/2nd grader during the 9/11 attacks. I then tied in the experience that I myself had that day - in a middle school in the Boston area, worried about my mother flying to DC (because I was always worried about her travel for work), I knew nothing about what was going on. Around 9am, I was called down to the office (this was before cell-phones were a wide-spread thing), and was given the simple message, "Your mom's friend Sara called and wanted to give you the message that your mom did not fly today." Confused and slightly relieved, I went back to my classroom. Throughout the day, teachers were crying and hugging one another, but no one told us anything. Because we were in the Boston area, there was no way of knowing whose parents (including my mom) were meant to fly that day, or whose parents might have been on those BOS-LAX flights. I remember feeling confused, and like something was wrong. Side note: I think about this situation in current times, where middle schoolers have much more independent access to information -- that if I had had an iPhone, I could have looked up what was happening. Is that better? Worse? So the end of this day for me culminated in coming home from school, taking my dog for a walk with my mom while she told me what happened.

Now, I go back to the young people with whom I work and the ages that they were during this time, during a time when the country changed. In group yesterday, one person mentioned the presence of a "before and after time" that she herself never knew. I think of those young children at the time, and how trauma is remembered in the body. The discomfort felt knowing that other people knew something bad was happening, but not knowing what it was, lasted one school day for me. For these individuals, it was much, much longer. Even if their parents did tell them, the likelihood that they understood the depths of it is very low, and therefore the same bodily trauma+uncertainty remains.

So now I am thinking of current times -- there is SO much uncertainty, so much pain, so much suffering. There is less of an absence of knowledge, but just as much hopelessness. I am curious about how this trauma+uncertainty has been awakened in a lot of people in this age group and how it is presenting now. "My caregivers have fallen apart or are scared." - "Many people in power are falling apart or are scared." - "The world is unsafe." - "We are so small." - "I don't know what to do." - "I don't understand." -- all of these thoughts, potentially lying dormant in our bodies over time, or perhaps present in the forefront of our every move. Of course, people of all generations have experienced significant trauma, but what I am getting at here is the experience of young children during a national/international crisis.

This cohort of young adults in the US at that time are a very unique group because of this. I try to remember back to formable years for myself, and the closest thing I can think of that has to do with a national/international trauma was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. This is nowhere near the level of 9/11 in the way that it shook the nation and the extended period of grief - and I think prior to that there hadn't been something to that magnitude many decades. So I really do wonder what impact inhaling all of that fear, loss, uncertainty, without having the language or context for it, might have had for this age group in particular.

In closing, I also would like to bring in an idea that perhaps one of the reasons why this is, why this age group is also so motivated to DO something, is because they remember how it feels to be helpless on a global scale. I think of the children now who are living through a pandemic, or children living through natural disasters that have rocked this country and many countries across the world. How can we start to explore and understand that impact, both on the children and on the adults they become?