After 9/11, I mostly remember the horns honking, the lights flashing, the arms waving out of windows as people sought to assure me, "You are not alone."

I remember like it was yesterday minding my business babysitting a three-year old and waiting to see his mother who had been ill for a week and hadn't gone to work, but on 9/11/01, she  had said she'd be going in, taking the long bus ride to the PATH train in Jersey City; taking the PATH into the World Trade Center in NYC; transferring to the subway train headed uptown; walking two blocks to work. I asked, "Are you up to all of that?" She said yes like she always does because she's resilient, always. But because she followed her intuition and decided she wasn't ready to return to work after all, she's alive today. Trusting her intuition saved her life.

When the twin towers got hit, it was surreal. I thought it was a preview for some horrid movie, but then the commentators' frantic voices assured me, this was happening in real time--the explosion, the fire and black smoke, the people jumping from windows--horrific.

There had been a small attack on the World Trade Center in the early 1990's, but no one saw it as an experiment or practice run--but what else could it have been?. After all was said and done, people on the street, in diners, at work kept repeating, "Somebody should have known...How were we caught so off guard?"

So much about NYC and the world has changed since 9/11. The streets are more crowded, neighborhoods are unrecognizable, people are in such a hurry--sign of the times, but New York City used to be so different back before September 11, 2001. Neighborhoods still held together, supported each other, and the people took pride in their communities. Now, with all the hustle and bustle, who knows where one community ends and another begins?

After the event, I mostly remember traveling up and down I-95 with my NY license plate and a big red, white and blue bow & ribbon tied to the grill of my car. I remember the horns honking, the lights flashing, the arms waving out of windows as people sought to assure me, "You are not alone." Somehow, these friendly gestures and listening to Enya on the radio helped see me through. I was not alone, All of NY, all of the nation, and much of the world was mourning with me.

Still, I shouldn't have moved away from the city a month afterward. I needed the mutual support from those who witnessed the black debris hovering above the city stretched across the horizon for what seemed like an eternity. I needed to talk it out with frantic neighbors. I needed to be there in the thick of it, expressing myself and grieving out loud. Because I wasn't talking it out, it took years to overcome what happened to our city, our country, our people, and to me.

Yet I too am resilient, like New Yorkers and Americans are resilient. Had my NYC daughter gone to work that morning, I'd be mourning her death instead of celebrating her life. Like all who survived this traumatic event, I realize how precious and fleeting life is and how important it is to trust your intuition.

My intuition tells me to live with a sense of meaning every day. Looking back, I try to remember the beauty of the twin towers but I also embrace the new reality of our precious city. No matter how much it has changed, it's the place I call home, and visiting home adds meaning to my life.