When I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, I was in the backseat of a car as it drove by Ground Zero - a place I have never visited, in spite of the fact that I’ve been to New York ten times in the past year. I didn’t go there on purpose. It took me by surprise. With no warning, I burst into tears.

The ground was like a giant cavity, like a mouth with two big molars yanked out and bloody, red gums oozing underneath. I could smell the burning embers, taste the ash raining down on me, feel the terror. 

Memories From Ten Years Ago

Ten years have past since I was driving in my surgical scrubs on Interstate 5 in San Diego on my way to the hospital to perform a vaginal hysterectomy. The DJ on the radio cried, “The second tower of the World Trade Center just went down,” and I almost hit the car in front of me. When I arrived in the doctor’s lounge, CNN was front and center. Everyone was glued to the television. Footage of the towers falling played and replayed. The doctors all had tear-streaked faces and bloodshot eyes. The only sound in the usually noisy room was the muffled sound of sobs. Every person who walked in was seeing it for the first time, and whenever another doctor entered the room, we all looked up and watched the doctor’s face. Every one of them cried when they saw it, even the crusty old men.

Newscasters were telling us to go home, to take our children out of schools, to find safety, wherever that might be. Planes were still in the air. We didn’t know who might be next. I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to operate. But it wasn’t my surgery - I was there to assist my partner. I couldn’t just disappear.

I Didn’t Want To Operate

I hoped my partner would cancel the surgery. I didn’t want to have a retractor in my hand if it might be my last moment on earth.  I wanted to be with my husband.  I wanted to cry for the people who had died. I wanted to face my fear and pray. Like everyone else around the world, I had just witnessed a mass murder. I was traumatized.

And yet my partner wanted to operate. I begged her to cancel. She said no. So just like I did after my father died, just like I did when I had to leave my newborn, just like I did when my teacher told me to suck him good, suck him hard, I wiped my tears, swallowed hard, stuffed my emotions, and operated, like the good doctor I was trained to be.

Unleashing Tears

Not until a few days later, during A Tribute To Heroes televised concert, did I hear Bruce Springsteen sing My City Of Ruins and I started to unwind the feelings I had bottled up in that operating room. I cried through that song - and all the ones that followed. I sobbed until I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t sleep all night. My eyes were so puffy the next morning I could hardly open them. But that morning, I had to go back to work and operate again. So I stuffed how I felt. I tried not to think about it. I plugged through my day, my month, my year, my life.

Then the car drove past Ground Zero, and I saw the gaping hole and the new tower being built where the Twin Towers used to be, and it all came back in a flash. I realized I never fully healed from the trauma of that day. Have you?

Issues In Our Tissues

Even as I write this, I am crying again. I feel the loss viscerally. I’m nauseous. My head hurts.  My arms ache, as if I’m holding those retractors in the operating room all over again. Although I was blessed to survive September 11, it makes me wonder how many days or weeks or even years September 11 took off my life. How have the issues in my tissues wounded me, aged me, planted seeds for disease? And if I still hold this trauma so deep within me, how many others are still there? How many other times did I have to operate when I wanted to cry? What toll will that take on my body? What toll will it take on yours?

A Prayer For Those We Lost

This post was not supposed to be about me. It was supposed to be a tribute to those we lost. And yet, as I started writing, I realized that those we lost on September 11 would want those who survived to heal. And so I decided to write about my process - so you can examine yours. But before you do, let’s join together in a prayer for those we’ve lost and those who survived them.

May we never forget those whose lives were terminated prematurely.   May their love replace the fear and darkness that caused their deaths, and may that love continue to surround us as we heal from our collective trauma. May their lives - and their deaths - remind us that light, not darkness, rules the world; that peace, not war, reigns supreme; that love, not fear, is the miracle of life. May we hold those beings in our hearts and send a golden beam of light down from our hearts into the core of Mother Earth, where we are connected to all planets, all stars, and the hearts of every being who has ever lived anywhere. May we recycle this healing light on this matrix of golden energy and may we never forget that we are all one - whether we’re Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or Hindu. May we choose to banish hate.  May we turn and face the light, even when hate swirls around us. May we find our own true north and gather together, holding hands, united we stand, together we light up the world. May this be so not just in spite of, but because of, the horrors that happened on September 11, ten years ago today. May we never forget. May we finally heal. Amen.

Have You Healed From September 11?

It’s been ten years, but have you healed from the trauma of that day? When we stuff trauma, we wind up sick. Whether it’s the trauma of September 11 or your divorce or the loss of your loved one, when you stuff it, you get sick.

What issues still reside in your tissues? What traumas have you stuffed so you could get on with your life? What do you need to release?

Remembering - and releasing,

Lissa

Lissa Rankin, MD: Founder of OwningPink.com, Pink Medicine Revolutionary, motivational speaker, and author of What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend and Encaustic Art: The Complete Guide To Creating Fine Art With Wax.