Helaina Hovitz near the World Trade Center complex in New York on May 23, 2016. (Justin McCallum)
All it takes is a scary story to stir up wild fears in
children, causing them to expect the bogey man in every dark corner.
After 9/11, even adults living in the shadow of the World Trade Center
had nightmares and lived in perpetual fear of another attack. They
couldn’t assure their children that everything was going to be all
right.
Some of those children had watched people jump out of the towers and
land in front of them. They had waited for the air to clear as black
smoke and debris engulfed them. Their homes—normally places of safety,
security, and stability—became Ground Zero.
They looked at every stranger as a potential terrorist, every backpack or car as a potential bomb threat. Nothing was safe.
Helaina Hovitz was 12 years old when she fled Intermediate School
(I.S.) 89, near the World Trade Center (WTC). “I’m a nervous wreck,” she
wrote in her journal a month later.
“We’re on full alert, so security is higher. I live by the bridge.
What if a plane … flies into it and it’s too late? Chemical threats are
scary.”
Now 26 years old, Hovitz has emerged from more than a decade of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to become a journalist who focuses
on good news.
“My experience as a journalist who lived through trauma and was
re-traumatized by the headlines in the news led me … to pursue inspiring
but meaningful journalism,” she said in an email to the Epoch Times.
She co-founded her own news organization, Headlines for the Hopeful, in April.
Helaina Hovitz (Courtesy of Helaina Hovitz)
Helaina Hovitz at her home office in New York on May 23, 2016. (Justin McCallum)
She has also written a book, “After 9/11: One Girl’s Journey Through Darkness to a New Beginning,“
to be released later this year, which the Epoch Times has previewed. In
writing the book, she followed up with her classmates, finding many of
them had followed the same downward spiral in the years after 9/11.
My experience as a
journalist who lived through trauma and was re-traumatized by the
headlines in the news led me … to pursue inspiring but meaningful
journalism.
, Headlines for the Hopeful
“There’s a reason therapists always ask about our childhood,” Hovitz
said. “Our early experience of the world really does determine how we
continue to move through it.”
In the foreword of Hovitz’s book, psychotherapist Jasmin Lee Cori
wrote: “I would argue that Helaina and her classmates, who were just
heading into adolescence, were less resilient than adults who had more
stability and coping under their belts, and more vulnerable than
children too young to fully cognize what had happened.”
Cori explained that as Hovitz and her classmates were just starting
to understand the world around them, that world was deeply shattered.
People who are able to have a more active response to trauma usually
cope better, Cori said. The children at I.S. 89, however, were not able
to do much but passively watch as their world crumbled around them.
Sept. 11, 2001
Hovitz had written her notebook assignment the night before, dating
it 9/11/01. She wrote about the MTV awards, ice cream, and getting her
braces off in a few months.
She gathered with other students in the cafeteria for an emergency
assembly. “They’ve bombed the World Trade Center,” her teacher said.
“Nobody leave the building under any circumstances, and stay away from
the windows.”
Her mother worked as a travel agent at Rockefeller Center, and her
father was a special education teacher on Staten Island. Other parents
arrived at the school to pick up their children, but she knew her
parents were too far away to come for her. “Take me with you, please,”
Hovitz said to her neighbor, Ann, who had arrived to get her son.
When the three of them pushed open the double doors of the school
building, the debris in the air stung and burned her nostrils. Screams
faded in and out. Cars were stopped bumper-to-bumper; ambulances
received people bleeding on stretchers; smoke and paper spewed from the
towers; and Hovitz could feel the heat on her face.
People
run away as the second tower of World Trade Center crumbles after a
plane hit the building on Sept. 11, 2001. (Jose Jimenez/Primera
Hora/Getty Images)
Before she reached her home, near the Brooklyn Bridge, she saw scenes
of death, destruction, and anguish. For many of her classmates who
lived closer to the school, going home was not an option. No one knew
what to expect next or what precisely had happened.
Helaina Hovitz (Courtesy of Helaina Hovitz)
Her classmate Thomas and his father rushed to their home near the WTC
to rescue their miniature poodle, Eddie. Thomas watched people jump
from the towers and land on the pavement in front of him as police
corralled him and others in front of Gateway Plaza.
“This wouldn’t happen in Florida,” Thomas kept saying. “I want to move to Florida.”
A Clear Distinction
The students from I.S. 89 could not return to their school building
in the months following 9/11. Their classes resumed at the O’Henry
Learning Center, a school further uptown.
On their second day of class, reporters showed up asking questions
like, “Did you see people jumping?” The children didn’t want to answer
those questions.
It became clear that the I.S. 89 students were different than the other students at the center.
A
visitor walks past a child’s picture of the airplane crash at a
memorial service for the victims of the World Trade Center disaster
Sept. 15, 2001, in New York City’s Union Square Park. (Mario Tama/Getty
Images)
For example, one day a truck tire popped loudly during recess. The
I.S. 89 students dropped to the ground, ran to teachers, sobbed, and
hyperventilated. “The other kids just stared at us like we were crazy,”
Hovitz wrote in her book.
That night, Hovitz dreamed she was forced to watch news footage of people dying at the World Trade Center.
Not Just Adolescent Angst
PTSD is often accompanied by depression, addiction, and anxiety. Cori
wrote: “Many trauma survivors feel confusion, self-doubt, and shame
about the inability to pick up and carry on.”
In daily life, “[they] react in a ‘bigger’ way than the situation
calls for, whether it is with more fear, more insecurity, more anger,
more mistrust, more of any emotion,” she said.
Adolescence is already a time of turbulent emotion, but PTSD caused
Hovitz and some other I.S. 89 students to plunge into addiction, have
paranoid delusions, and react with violent outbursts to seemingly minor
issues, especially when feeling closed in or physically constricted.
Thomas told Hovitz recently, “I’m not good in crowds. … I still
struggle with anxiety. I’m always on edge. I walk into my office and
think, ‘How would I get out if something happened?'”
Another classmate told her that, as a teenager, he had thoughts of
being a school shooter or committing suicide in a public setting, taking
others with him.
Recovery
Hovitz saw several therapists and psychologists over the years. Many
didn’t help her; one even fell asleep during a session. But during her
freshman year at college, she realized she was finally on the cusp of a
breakthrough.
She had just started with a new therapist, who told her: “You’ve been
pushed in so many directions by doctors telling you ways they were
going to help you, to fix you, and they were wrong. That can be
traumatic, too.
“But you’re still actively asking for help because something in you
is not willing to give up, and by now, I bet many people probably would
have. It’s not going to be easy, but if you want to do the work, I think
we can make things better.”
Good News
As a pre-teen, Hovitz wasn’t interested much in the news. But after
9/11, she and her classmates became fixated. The replays of the disaster
added to her stress, as did the alerts to other potential threats. But
she also became aware of bad news in general.
She read about murders within her own country, child abuse, all the
horrible things people do to each other that have nothing to do with
terrorism.
“In an ideal world, the media would only deliver bad news when we
absolutely need to be on the lookout for something that could endanger
us immediately, or when they can offer solutions to the problems or
‘bad’ news as it happens, highlighting what is being done to help … and
letting people know how they can help too,” Hovitz said.
She recognizes, however, that some people consider bad news helpful,
“and, hey, sometimes learning about certain instances of ‘bad news’ is
what inspires people to help and get involved.”
But as a journalist who has lived the worst news the United States
has had in recent history, Hovitz is now dedicated to spreading good
news. She has worked hard to frame her own story in a positive and
inspiring way. With a team of like-minded journalists and a strong
start, Hovitz is helping build a positive world view for others through
Headlines for the Hopeful.
“There are so many people and organizations working to help, to find
solutions, to deeply impact those who are suffering in a positive way.
How we experience the world around us is really all about
perspective,” Hovitz said.
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