It’s the question everyone is asking today: Where were you? So, I decided to share my story.

Matt and I were living in Englewood, Florida, at the time. He had just quit his job as a youth minister at a church there and we were preparing to move back to Louisiana the next week. I was still attending classes at Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers (over an hour drive from Englewood), reluctant to resign until we were certain another job wasn’t going to come through for Matt that would allow us to stay until the end of the semester. I was driving to school that morning on I-75, when I heard on the radio station that a plane had flown into the one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The radio DJ didn’t know much, wasn’t sure whether it was an accident or not, and didn’t really have any concrete information. Florida Gulf Coast University was a brand new school and already had smart classrooms back in 2001, so when I walked into my first class that morning the news was turned on and being projected onto the enormous screen at the front of the room. The teacher said she had family in New York, that she didn’t know what the school was doing, but that she was cancelling her classes and she ran out of the room with her phone in her hand. It didn’t take long to figure out from sitting there watching the news what had happened, and knowing that I was more than likely going to be resigning that next week, I went ahead and went home, figuring classes would probably be cancelled. (And they were, like most universities did.) Like everyone else, I spent the rest of that day (and many weeks after it) glued to the TV. It was unbelievable and incredibly sad and a little scary…but being so far removed from the tragedy (in distance and in not knowing anyone involved), it was easy to go about living life. On that day, I never thought my life would intersect with anyone involved in the tragedy.

Ironically, three years later to the day, I was standing in LaGuardia airport in New York City, waiting on my flight out. I had just wrapped up my first media tour with an author that had left me emotionally exhausted more than anything else. (In those three years since 9/11, Matt and I had moved back to Louisiana, I had graduated with my bachelors degree, Matt had just graduated with his masters, and we were living in West Monroe, where I was working as a publicist for Howard Books and Matt was teaching at ULM.) The author was the grieving widow of the co-pilot of the first plane that was flown into the World Trade Center. (He was probably, when you think about it—and I don’t like to—one of the very first victims on 9/11.) While traveling with the author in the week leading up to the third anniversary of 9/11, I found myself having mixed emotions…empathy and sadness for her loss (and the fact that she was still very much in the grieving process); uneasiness over the fact that my job was profiting from her loss (since she wrote a book about it; although, technically, she was profiting to, but you get my point…not trying to make the author sound bad here—the book was part of her grieving process and allowed her to share her story and her strong faith); and frustration over working with someone who wasn’t sure some days if she wanted to talk to the media about her loss. (Which was understandable, but as a book publicist I was very much torn between doing my job and pushing her to finish what she started and as a caring individual protecting her from the media. I didn’t like being in that situation! There were still a lot of raw emotions, and I felt like a degree in psychology would have been helpful to get through that time.)

I was glad to have the experience behind me when it was over (and it helped me immensely in dealing with future authors who wrote books about their losses). As uncomfortable as I was with the situation, though, working with that author put a face on 9/11. I needed that! Although I was saddened by the situation and would cry sometimes when watching some of the heartbreaking stories on TV, it was still easy to push those temporary emotions aside because I didn’t know the people affected. My day-to-day life didn’t change, and aside from stricter airport security, it still hasn’t, but having a face on 9/11 helps give me a little more sympathy and compassion, helps me to not so quickly “forget” when national tragedies happen.

Every 9/11, I think about that author, and I probably always will. That book promotion was the toughest one I’ve ever done, but I need to remember the emotions, the author and her courage to tell her story…I need to remember that there are nearly 3,000 other families just like hers. I need to remember 9/11.