Cultivate Calmness Podcast: Find Your Calm, Cultivate Your Mind
Episode #54 - Grief and Trauma: Lessons from September 11th
In this episode, Kaela Vance reflects on the events of September 11th, 2001, exploring the profound collective grief, trauma, and patriotism that arose from that day. She shares personal memories of where she was on 9/11 and how the tragedy impacted her emotionally, drawing connections between national loss and individual experiences of grief. Kaela also discusses how significant events, even those we don’t witness first-hand, can affect us deeply, and the importance of addressing and processing these feelings. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on remembrance, healing, and shared human experience.
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hello and welcome to the Cultivating Communist Podcast. My name is Kayla Vians. Thank you for joining me today. Today I wanna ask you a question. Where were you on September 11th, 2001? It is exactly 23 years ago today that the events of September 11th happened where many of us my age and slightly younger than me and everybody older than me experienced. It's something that we went through as a country. And when we think about grief and loss and trauma, this is one of those events that stands out in people's minds. It's similar to positive events where you can say where you were, what you were wearing, what you were doing on certain, when certain big things happen in your life, good or bad. This is one of those days for me. September 11th, 2001. I was in eighth grade. And I remember specifically finding out but not finding out, finding out and not exactly knowing what was going on. I was on my way to gym class and walked by a classroom that had the door open and the TV's on and everybody was watching and seeing a building on fire and not really knowing what they were watching. I thought they were watching a movie and then go to gym class where there's no TV's. So it wasn't until after my gym class, I think I had science class next where we were really talking about and finding out those of us who hadn't been able to hear the information prior. We're really learning about what happened and then we spent the rest of the day. The teachers trying to stay home, parents pulling kids out of class, bringing them home. I stayed in school. I did, it was not brought home, but at the time I did get home, it was sitting in front of the TV, watching the news and not really knowing what to do. And I remember my dad at the time. They were still on VHS and so he went out and got some VHS to record the TV. We didn't, it wasn't where you could just hit record on your TV and have something recorded forever. You had to have the equipment to be able to do that. And so he recorded the news. So I don't know if he still has those VHS tapes, but the next day he bought all of us, my siblings and I, the newspaper, more for commemorative and to remember. So I actually, I remembered he did that and I have a memory box and so to share with you today, I did go and try to find those newspapers. So I have two of them here and a magazine from September 11th, 2001. So I'm in Columbus, Ohio. So we had the Columbus Dispatch. This is the Columbus Dispatch for the day after. So this was from September 12th. And so you see here if you're watching, we have the Twin Towers and there's an airplane coming towards the second building. And, you know, just all throughout this paper is... Everything seems to be about September 11th. You know, even the Metro section talking about hospitals and finding comfort in prayer and gas station prices and how people were flocking to the gas stations. I don't remember that. I wasn't driving. Let's see here. You know, this one doesn't seem to be about September 11th on the accent page. If there was sports, OSU won't play on Saturday. So lots of sporting events were canceled. You know, I saw in one of these papers, I think there's an awards ceremony. Those supposed to happen and they were going to delay the awards ceremony. I have the USA Today paper. Again, picture on the front is the Twin Towers being hit. And every section is about that. So Rigley Field talks about canceling their game. The world of sports is on hold. I think that's a picture of Tiger Woods here. Could be a tax on tip the US intercession with a picture of people crossing the Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. So there's a life section of USA Today, the Emmy Awards that talked about rescheduling the Emmy Awards. There's comparison by how it's not like Pearl Harbor. So just pulled this out, haven't read the articles, but it is something that I've had and don't know if there's any use for it, but I do have them. And just thought I would kind of pull those out today since I'm talking about grief and trauma. And to this day, when I think about September 11th and when there are certain songs that are played, it brings tears to my eyes, Lee Greenwood song, God bless America. I think every time it plays and I try to sing it, I tear up the, and I'm not going to remember who sang it. Now that I want to say it out loud, the song "Where Were You When the World Stop Turning" was a big one that came out, obviously not that day, but shortly after there were numerous patriotic songs that were written, inspired by the events of September 11th and just the patriotism that came out and you have it in America and then seeing around the world different countries that honored America and what happened to us on that day. And that just for me goes to show some of that, like the honor and respect, but also some of that collective grief that we all experience. We didn't have to be there to experience grief or trauma from those incidents. It was very scary for kids not really knowing what this meant and seeing our parents kind of freak out and be scared and worried for our safety. I had teachers that were distraught that felt like they needed to do something and they wanted to go to New York and help in some way, but they just weren't sure what they were meant to be doing. I don't personally know anybody who was down there that I'm aware of, but hearing stories and learning about the events and learning different pieces and parts as I got older over the last 23 years. Some are inspiring, many are tragic, but it brought a nation together. You know, these we all were affected by the same event we all saw the events transpire on television and for most of us on television, for those people in New York, New Jersey, surrounding areas, you obviously experienced more of that firsthand. And when we think about how grief and trauma work, we often think that it's something that you have to go through to really understand. And this incidents like this proved to us and show the world that you don't have to have been somewhere to experience a reaction to something, to be traumatized or affected by something. So the same thing goes for any type of incident. You know, if that is learning about a death of a loved one or a friend from somebody else, you didn't have to witness the death to be traumatized by it. I see this in my clients, you know, just because they didn't see their person hit by the car, doesn't mean that they weren't imagining what that accident looks like. Doesn't mean that they didn't imagine what their person looks like after being hit or being injured. We could be traumatized by our imagination sometimes. And it is like that here, in that we saw these things happen over and over and over. They're kind of ingrained in our memory. I can't exactly tell you what I was wearing when I found out. Like I said, I was in gym class. So I think we had like gym uniforms we were wearing if I recall. But I do remember walking by that one classroom and that image, you know, sticks with me. That's the piece that I remember. My husband was in college and he was in his dorm room and that was just something that they all, you know, experienced together. And he is able to recall that experience and to share about what that was like hearing about it on a college campus, you know, shortly after, you know, just starting college. You have saved for most everybody else. You know, September 11th, we all started school near the end of August. So you're only in school two or three weeks and then this happens, you know, and then all the events that happen afterwards. So just like when, you know, if a family member dies of cancer, there are a lot of walks, races, events, things that raise money for that type of cancer. And you, you know, you kind of commemorate your person, whether it's through a donation or a t-shirt or a walk or, you know, maybe you create a foundation in their honor. You know, lots of those types of things have popped up for September 11th victims and, you know, for education and then even things that happen, you know, down the line, we've learned that, you know, the first responders who were helping pool, you know, bodies and getting people out of the rubble are experiencing many toxic results, you know, cancers and health problems because of all the toxic fumes and things that they were breathing in and exposed to because of all that wreckage. You know, there's awareness about that. You know, people who went in to save people to help come out of it, maybe not immediately. Some maybe had more immediate effects, but, you know, 10, 20 years down the road, they're dying and having, you know, help extreme health problems because of their wanting and needing to help people because of a very tragic, you know, act of terror. And, you know, there's some grief and loss experience in that and that trauma. You know, if you've done something nice to help somebody and then you're suffering consequences because of that, you have to grapple with all of those feelings and those thoughts that come with it. You know, so when we experience this collective grief, it brings people together. You know, we saw all those images and that's hard to see. You know, they're in the newspaper, they're there, they're, you know, there forever and they're kind of stuck in our brains forever. I don't have to see a picture to remember what that looked like and to remember how I felt on that day. Like I said, listening to certain songs, talking about certain things can bring up tears and emotions and, you know, why is that? You know, why do events like this, whether big ones, you know, terrorist attacks or even small ones that are more just personal to us, you know, 23 years later, how is it that those events can bring such an emotional reaction? Well, because our bodies are affected by the things that we experience, even if we just are viewing them and watching them and we didn't actually like have anything happen to us, we were still part of a collective. We still saw and witnessed something. They're at best go through the same thing. You know, it's called vicarious trauma. So we vicariously experienced trauma through our clients. So if they come to us, telling us about some really terrible event that they experienced, we are hearing that from them. We are experiencing, you know, and holding onto those emotions that our clients have. And then we can carry that with us. Some therapists do a really good job of being able to kind of offload and let go of some of those experiences. Some, it's harder to let go of than others. I know I've been privy to many conversations that in the moment it's been very hard to resist crying or to, you know, be there for the client because when I'm hearing is really tragic. And I feel for my client that they had to go through what they went through and other times, you know, hearing stories isn't as difficult to hear. And so different stories have a different emotional pull on you as a person and we all experience that. We all react differently to different stimuli. So not everybody reacts in the same way to September 11th. Some may be reacting to anger, some reactant sadness, some may be don't appear to have any reaction at all. There's no wrong answer or wrong way to respond when it comes to grief. It's what is important to you and what you need to get out. If you are experiencing something, I want you to share that. I want you to talk about it. I don't want you to push that down and try to bury it because when we bury all those things, it is hard to, it can cause problems down the road for you. Could, maybe not always. The way I like to say it is if you bury something, it's going to come out eventually. We just don't know how it's going to come out, right? It could be like a volcano. It all comes out the top and it comes spewing out. It could be like, I don't know, like I think like a flood or something where something's like seeping through the cracks. Sometimes the way things come out is like that. It just starts to seep through our pores. It kind of comes out in situations when you least expect it when you don't want it to. So if you haven't, if you were witness to September 11th and you haven't expressed or talked about those experiences, I encourage you to do so. I encourage you to talk to your therapist about it. Yeah, I know it was 23 years ago. Yeah, I know that you weren't, maybe you weren't there. That doesn't matter. It still has an effect on you. And it's important to just address that. Sometimes just saying those things out loud is enough to work through and process something. Sometimes it is digging a little deeper and finding out what else is there. What is that connected to? For me, I lost my mom six years before that. So there was a connection there. Yeah, six years before that. So I had that loss and that experience before. And so it was not necessarily compounding, but knowing that loss and knowing that tragedy maybe makes that a harder thing to process, or maybe for me, it's just sad too. Like you're allowed to be sad. I wouldn't say like I can't talk about September 11th. I definitely can. But when there are certain songs that come on, they definitely pull at those heartstrings and those emotions. And sometimes I don't even know if it's a sadness or it's a profound like patriotism even. It's just that those songs pull on who we are as people and who we are as a nation. And that we all came together and that we were, you know, holding space for you, this tragedy. And those songs bring up those emotions, both good and bad. And those kind of all come up when certain songs come on the radio for me or when I think about them or listen to them. So, you know, to think about how are you honoring and remembering September 11th today? If you are too young to have been alive at that point, you know, a lot of the teenagers, any of the teenagers out there would not have experienced in the witness of September 11th, but your parents did. So you maybe have heard about it from your parents. You know, maybe if they have these old newspapers, ask to go through them, ask to read them, look at them. It'll tell you something about what was going on in our nation in the days following September 11th. You haven't, I mean, we've had different attacks. We've had different, you know, bad events happen here in the United States since then, but nothing to that magnitude. So, you know, today you're gonna see, you know, some news posts and videos probably from September 11th back then. And you recap some things of that nature. So it's always an opportunity to learn and experience so that we don't repeat bad things that have happened. And we can repeat the good things that happen. And I know I remember today and I think about it often. And it's just, you know, wanted to take the opportunity to talk about it today. Share with me your experience. Where were you? What were you doing? How has it affected you? Thank you for joining me today. I look forward to speaking with you again next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Music]