Changing over the years

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

My sister, Judy is my inspiration.
http://theprojectbyjudy.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-day-after-911/

I help teachers in a high school.  The students there were between 2 and 6 years old when 9/11 riveted everyone to their TVs to watch the tower tumble again and again.  Last night I watched a documentary on the History Channel.  It is now history.  That day I watched the reaction of a room full of people in the computer lab every monitor played some version of the same thing over and over all day.  I watched people gasp in horror.  That was the day that I understood that I felt nothing.  I watched but felt no sorrow, no sadness, no horror, no empathy.   That day, I knew something was wrong with me.  I was able to blame the fact that I just learned I had cancer the week before.  A week later when People magazine did a special on the people that stepped up to help each other I read every page and the tears finally fell.  By then, cancer had dropped from a life tragedy to an annoyance.  It was the day my eyes were opened to myself.  I went through cancer surgery and then started to pay attention to how I was living and was not happy with what I saw.  I moved through life just surviving.  It was several more years before I started counseling but by then I was into photography and the class assignments pushed me to explore things that I long ignored.  A project on self portraiture shook me up.  I had a roll of pictures that I had no idea where the pictures came from but I knew no one used my camera accept me.  I created pictures and displayed them on a mobius strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip  It is the only one sided shape in the world but you can only see part of it at time.  People were fascinated by the project; I was stunned.  Where did all this come from?  What had I done?  I turned the key to unlock my mind.  Eleven years later, I spent most of that time in counseling.  All six of my kids are married.  We now have nine grand children under the age of 8 with another one having her debut around Christmas.  I integrated.  I changed jobs.  I woke up to living.  I declared my independence from my parents.  I am learning to dream.  I turned myself inside out and upside down to bring the pieces together.  Last night in the class talking to teens the teacher read off different things kids faced from adults.  We were asked if that happened to any of us.  Ridiculed, hit, belittled, the list went on and on and I kept standing up.  On one of them I looked down the row and I was the only one standing, I couldn't bring myself to turn around to see if anyone else was standing.  But out of a row of 15 people I was the only one standing.  Then I realized she barely brushed the surface of the stuff of my childhood.  Writing this I realized, against all odds, I stood my ground.  Took me hours to settle down last night, but watching the special on the History channel once again grounded me to the understanding that horrific things can happen and we can go on with our lives or take a stand and make a difference.