The is a guest post which first appeared on Facebook from my long time friend Jennifer Gibbs who lives in the St. Louis area with her husband and three children. Her words to her daughter reminded me to see the tragedy in my life with a new point of view. I hope it inspires you as well.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n My daughter, Megan, is twelve years old and some people don\u2019t know she\u2019s on the autism spectrum.\u00a0Frequently I have to explain\u00a0people\u2019s reactions emotionally because she doesn\u2019t get it. So today Megan came home from school and I as always asked about her day. She told me about the\u00a09-11 remembrance ceremony they had\u00a0at school and how her history teacher cried while explaining the events to\u00a0them. She\u00a0seemed concerned and confused. I asked if she knew how old her teacher was on that date, she said she didn\u2019t. I asked her what grade she was in (because that\u2019s a\u00a0detail I guarantee would have been relayed). Her teacher was in the 10th grade (making her 1sixteen) Of course she was crying, describing the events Megan.<\/p>\n Megan didn\u2019t understand why.<\/p>\n I told my daughter about how\u00a0I found out. How\u00a0I was woken\u00a0up after a long night of dealing with my child who had a cold\u00a0to a phone call. My dad called to tell me he was okay and he was going to go home and if I talked to my mom let her know so she wouldn\u2019t worry. I immediately started bawling explaining the rest of that morning. See we as a people have something\u00a0special. In a\u00a0city that is known for it\u2019s rudeness and anger something remarkable happened. People helped complete strangers without any question or doubt. Our humanity shined that day.\u00a0That spirit and downright grit that makes this country amazing came out and\u00a0we\u00a0carried on. Because I wanted my daughter to learn a lesson, not to be afraid\u2026 no baby\u2026 understand we\u2019re made of some amazing stuff and we can make it through just about anything. Even something so horrific as what happened on September 11th 2001.Remembering is never ever about fear, it\u2019s about understanding ourselves and knowing we\u2019re pretty strong.\u00a0That\u2019s why we do it, we remember the fallen and it makes us sad. But we know we\u2019ve persevered and gotten through it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The is a guest post which first appeared on Facebook from my long time friend Jennifer Gibbs who lives in the St. Louis area with her husband and three children. Her words to her daughter reminded me to see the tragedy in my life with a new point of view. I hope it inspires you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[27,1511,1497,1513,1512,1510],"class_list":["post-2343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-author","category-magick-and-spirituality","tag-27","tag-autism-spectrum","tag-children","tag-emotions","tag-jennifer-gibbs","tag-september-11th"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSee Megan at first we thought it was a really bad accident, we didn\u2019t realize it was an act of\u00a0psychological weaponry\u2026.right up until the second tower got hit. I remember watching it on TV and my mouth wouldn\u2019t close for a good 15 minutes.\u00a0 Terrorism was something we as a country weren\u2019t familiar with dealing with. I came to find out my daughter thought it happened to the military and the police and she wasn\u2019t so freaked out.\u00a0I explained to my daughter, \u2018no sweetheart thousands of people who just went to work that day died.\u2019Megan at this point is\u00a0pretty upset looking. She gets it\u2019s not some battle in some distant place now. It\u2019s serious it\u2019s scary (because it was and still is scary). But I made a specific point. I told her it taught us something about ourselves. See the terrorists wanted us to be afraid, they wanted to instill\u00a0fear and make us grind to a halt and be in awe of their power. They didn\u2019t expect the byproduct of\u00a0such a significant attack on\u00a0American soil. <\/p>\n