Share your 9/11 Journal Layouts and/or Stories here!

Hi everyone, I thought it would be wonderful in honor of September 11, 2001 if we could all share with each other layouts or just stories (either way it's journal keeping) of what you were doing that day, how you were affected, how it touched you, and how you could never forget. Thanks in advance for taking the time to do this and if we can comment on each other's pages and comments that would be amazing because we all could use a little extra comfort during this time. Again, thanks.

Here's mine. The journaling is in the gallery link:

I did one a couple of years ago... and here is that one...



I was in Beech Island, South Carolina on a business trip with 6 other team mates and a bunch of business team members.... it was surreal, the feeling of not being able to get on a plane (and the though of having to get on another plane to head home) was so hard to handle... one of the girls on my team had to drive home that weekend, her hubby suffered a heart attack... and I gave her my rental car to drive back with... a few others headed back home to be with family. I couldn't leave, we were middle of rolling out a new software package at the mill.

Here's one I did a couple of years ago about what I did that day.


Here's one I did on the 10th anniversary:

One I did...



One I did on about a 10 year commemoration...one of our best friends is a fireman and plays the bagpipes. We now have a retired NY firefighter that lives in our town and to hear him speak is just so telling.

Journaling reads:


Journaling is: September 11, 2001- It started out like any morning. Left the apartment at 6:45 and as I got on the subway I was give a flyer for the primary Mayoral elections for the day. I got to the Trade Center at 7:45 and as usual walked around the Mall a bit before getting my coffee and going up to work. At 8:40 I went tio the bathroom. While in the bathroom I felt the building shake. When I got out everyone was standing at the window looking up at tower 1. There were papers raining down all around, it looked like a ticker tape parade. I was pushed into the stairwell because the evacutation bells were ringing. Walked down 25 flughts of stairs only to get out and see a gaping hole in tower one and fire everywhere. People were screaming. The n the people started jumping. It’s a sound I’ll never ever forget, bodes hitting the ground with a sickening thud. My heart broke into a million pieces. As the bodies were falling around me, someone appeared in front of me and asked if I worked for Fidelity. I said yes and he told me to go back upstairs because it was safer up there. I went upstairs and called my mother crying. I told her a bomb went off in the trade center. As I was talking an airplane flew by and BOOM the building shook. I screamed that another bomb went off and hung up on my poor mother.

I bent down to get my stuff to evacuate again and when I looked up my two friends were waiting for me. We ran down 25 flights of steps (again for me) and got out. Again, the fire, the bodies falling around us. We immediate began walking down towards the tip of manhattan. We were walking back up to head towards Penn Station when we heard what sounded like an explosion. I looked up and the top of tower two was falling. Next thing we knew a HUGE cloud of smoke came barreling towards us. We began running and ran for our lives. The cloud enveloped us. I remember thinking “f this is how I am supposed to die, so be it, but I don’t feel ready to die. We ran and ran and decided it was best to get off of the island. We began walking over the Manhattan bridge. While on the bridge, tower 1 fell. We just stood quietly and watched. We found someone on the bridge who took us into her apartment until my father could come get us. My life change that day. My innocence was lost and it would never be found again. I suffer to this day from a crippling fear of flying. It has affected every aspect of my life. I have nightmares every year as the anniversary approaches. Those hijackers took so much away from not only me, but from the entire nation. What a sad day for me and our country.

Here is mine that I just did during the Summer Games:

Here's mine that I finally got done and uploaded today

I think a lot of people have seen mine, since I did it a few years ago. It's not in the SSD gallery any more cause it uses La stuffs, but here it is:

These are so beautiful you guys and touching. Thank you for posting them.

I am feeling so overwhelmed right now, emotionally. I think I may need to step away from the computer cause I'm losing it. Hugs to all of you feeling it too.

I did this one last year


and this one the year before that


I live near DC and know people who worked at the Pentagon or had a spouse working there when the plane hit. I spent the day at work sitting next to the tv they brought up so people could watch on their breaks (so I got to watch it all over and over and over again from about 10am until 5pm) and dealing with frantic coworkers trying to reach loved ones & needing me to give them call codes for the outgoing phone because we had no cell signal where our building was. And the overflow calls from NYC needed to go somewhere because our offices in lower Manhattan had been shut down when the city phone lines became jammed after the second tower was hit. That is what I remember most about that morning, trying to control the things that were in my control and pushing off dealing with what was out of it. I shut myself in my bedroom and watched Star Trek for 2 hours when I came home even though a bunch of our friends were gathered in the living room watching the news. They hadn't seen any of it while they were at work but I'd been immersed in it for almost 7 hours and just couldn't cope with watching it or talking about it anymore.

These are all so awesome!

I was deep in depression at that time, having just lost a baby the June before. I had major issues sleeping and I had actually slept in that day. I woke up and checked my answering machine. There were several calls from my grandma. She was freaked out wondering where in PA my husband's family lived. She had a tendency to exaggerate a little or jump to conclusions so when she was saying something about terrorists and a plane down I figured there was just a plane crash. I really didn't think too much of the call and figured I'd call her back when I woke up more. When I turned on the TV I thought it was some kind of joke, like a spoof TV show or something. I kept flipping channels. It all seemed pretty surreal and scary. By this time the buildings had both collapsed and all the damage was done, workers were on the scene and the news just kept showing re-caps. I watched for a bit and then turned off the TV and sat there staring out the window, kind of numb. When my husband woke up a few hours later I told him something crazy had happened. He said he heard on the radio as he was coming home from work that there had been a plane hit one of the towers. I was irritated at him and asked why he hadn't told me. He said he just figured it was an accident and he went to bed. I didn't bother to fill him in as it was all over the news so he just watched for a few minutes and got up to speed.

here is mine......

thank you everyone for sharing these. They are wonderful tributes.