‘We Held Each Other Up’

This week in our New York City office, we found ourselves talking about what we remembered from 25 years ago: the darkness, the sadness — and the ways people cared for one another. Our managing director, Rebecca Faulkner, is an award-winning poet and proud transplant to New York. We asked her to share her memories of building community after 9/11.

Thank you to the readers who shared their own memories, a few of which we’ve included here. The photos behind the reader contributions are of Tiles for America, a 9/11 memorial in the West Village.

–RTBC Editorial Team

On September 11, 2001, I was newly married, newly graduated from an MA program at NYU, and was a London transplant, ready to claim Brooklyn as my true home. 9/11 changed my life, and the lives of all New Yorkers; transforming the city we loved and the ways we interacted with and supported our friends, neighbors, and the strangers we shared our subways and streets with.

In the days immediately following that unforgettable, devastatingly bright blue Tuesday morning, I watched my community come together: giving blood, organizing vigils for the families of the firefighters, plastering Union Square with flyers for the missing, and opening our homes to one another to talk, share and grieve. We literally held each other up.

Those of us who worked in Lower Manhattan returned to our offices with tremendous trepidation. At that time, I was lucky enough to be working on a unique, non-sectarian restoration project at the Eldridge Street synagogue, programming site-specific visual arts installations in the historic and tumble-down sanctuary.

The project, which would eventually culminate in the reopening of the synagogue as a museum, provided me with a tremendous sense of purpose: bringing a building back to life and imbuing it with new meaning. It was there, in a landmark house of worship below Canal Street, that we persevered, opening to the public to enable people to gather and seek solace.

In the months that followed, my colleagues and I paused once a week to connect with one another, listen to music, drink tea, and sit, sometimes silently, and reflect. I believe it was the combination of solidarity and fellowship and that got many of us through. A time to laugh, a time to weep.

It was that way all across the city that fall. People came together, encouraged by the mayor to dine out and shop in Lower Manhattan. My friends and I gathered more frequently, intentionally, and purposefully. We cooked together, traveled in packs, walked the downtown blocks we loved, eventually making our way to Ground Zero to pay our respects.

Community reveals itself in remarkable ways in the wake of catastrophe, in the ways you can see — the vigils and potlucks, the bravery and resilience. But it’s also there in the small unspoken gestures that make us human. A neighbor’s “Good morning, how are you today?” A colleague walking you the last long block to the subway. That extra firm hug from a friend.

What was happening to our city and the world was devastating and extraordinary, but on the streets, in cafes and restaurants, in our homes and gathering places, we sought comfort in the ordinary and in each other. Humanity is found in the everyday, chaotic noise of our lives. 9/11 showed us just that.