Even if your children weren’t born yet, they have been affected by the changes in you.

Fear, increased sense of vulnerability, hypervigilance, heightened security, suspicion, anger, loss of control, loss of freedom…

Those are just some of the responses we had on that fateful day. And they have remained with us for 22 years. Those responses didn’t just go away the next day.

I had a very minor similar experience in the town i was living in back in the 90s. It used to be a relatively rural place (relative to DC) and people lived that way too. No one locked their doors; everyone watched out for their neighbors, people opened their doors freely. That all changed one day. Two young girls were abducted by a slimy serial child murderer. They found the little girls’ bodies a few weeks later. After that day, though, no one in this rustic town left their kids alone anywhere. Parents lined up at the bus stops to meet their kids; they kept great vigilance wherever they were playing. “Talks” were given to all children about not talking to or going anywhere with strangers. They had to check in frequently and no parent rested at night until little Johnny was home and in bed. Nothing was ever the same…..

And what do you think little Johnny learned from all this hovering and lecturing? Certainly not that it’s a safe world. Quite the contrary. Kids model their parents and in these cases, it’s no different.

Now picture this on a much grander scale. The massive trauma caused by the events on 9/11 extend way past those onsite in New York, DC and Pennsylvania. The media and 24 hour coverage fed the images of the crashes, the monstrous holes and bodies jumping from buildings over and over again. If you don’t think your brain was affected by this, think again. Remember that your brain’s sole purpose is survival. Talk about high alert. Even if you were glued to the TV, not because you like blood and gore, but because you didn’t know what was going to happen next, your brain cells have those images and the fear concretely embedded in your neural circuits.

Take the parental responses in my little town and multiply that throughout our country (and probably the world). Face it, our lives were markedly changed. As a result so were the lives of those around us, especially our children. This is human behavior and although tragic is not a surprise.

Think about how you interact with people now? How is your experience at airports different (then add the pandemic mess to that)? Do you travel less still? Do you lock your doors more? Do you have more security cameras? Are you more suspicious? Perhaps that’s because there’s more “crime” in your area. But how much of the changes in the crime in your area have been as a long term result of 9/11. People think that the crime in San Antonio definitely increased after Hurricane Katrina and hasn’t really died down any. It sure seemed that way to me. But how much of that is because of the internet and social media. In the olden days (which i remember) word didn’t spread as fast and although there were rumors, they weren’t as easily adopted as they are now.

How often do you show your family and friends how much you care now? How do you do it? Do you have talks with your family about vulnerability and the need for feeling safe even in a perceived unsafe world? Do you help your kids understand the long term effects of things. There is such fear around school shootings that the experience a youth has now is totally different. Not saying this is wrong. I’m just asking you to take some positives out of it so that fear and chronic stress aren’t going to adversely impact you or your family in physical dimensions. We should look beyond our noses to see what the possible consequences of any changes are. That’s something i believe we don’t do very much of.

Tell your family and friends how much you love them!