I spent the night at Ground Zero on 9/11. I’ve lived the trauma ever since.
Therapy and professional accomplishments can help us to go on, but there is no unseeing what we have seen.
I have been faking it for 25 years. Not about the people and issues that matter to me. Not my work or anything like that.
But in the way everyone tells you to “fake it till you make it.” Get up. Go to work. Act like you’re doing fine when you’re not, hope nobody notices, and hope that you’ll eventually get better.
When I got to Ground Zero late on Sept. 11, 2001, nothing felt real. Therapists have since explained that I may have slipped into what they call a dissociative state, and it was frightening.
I hadn’t exactly lost my grip on reality, but I felt detached, like I was living in a movie, feeling uncertain about what was real and what wasn’t.
I managed to keep taking pictures, leaning into the parts of myself that were still working, like I have in some ways every day since.
My friend and colleague Chris Brennan, the reporter with whom I had gone to the scene for the Philadelphia Daily News, later wrote about our journey together and the early aftermath.
A harrowing aftermath
The next 18 months were the worst for me, filled with flashbacks, nightmares, extreme insomnia, memory blackouts, mood swings, and broken relationships.
Serendipitously, a psychiatrist wrote to me in early 2003 about acquiring some of my photographs for instructional use. She also sensed what I was going through and provided the treatment I needed to get the most crippling symptoms under control.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Far from it.
From the outside, what followed looks almost ridiculously good: a career filled with fellowships, faculty appointments, and even a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for my photographs from the war in Iraq.
I had accompanied U.S. troops on hundreds of combat missions over the course of a year, feeling indestructible following my initial recovery, but then some new and old symptoms emerged, and I needed more care when I got back. I got better again, although I still overreact when startled.
One of my pictures from 9/11 went on to have a remarkable life of its own. The New York Times wrote about the time it toured alongside some of the great artworks of the 20th century. My alma mater, Tufts University, hung it in a gallery next to a Picasso.
We talk a lot in the news about surviving terrible events and their immediate aftermaths. But we don’t talk much about the long tail of trauma.
Looking back now, it feels painfully obvious that I have also spent the past 25 years stockpiling accomplishments as if to prove I was OK, probably to myself as much as anyone else.
We talk a lot in the news about surviving terrible events and their immediate aftermaths. And we love stories of recovery. But we don’t talk much about the long tail of trauma.
Our traumatic pasts aren’t so easily fooled. There is no unseeing what we have seen.
I still have occasional nightmares and persistent phobias that seem obviously related to things I saw at Ground Zero.
And random reminders can bring me back there in every sense. The smoke and rubble appear behind my eyelids in an instant. I can hear the sounds and taste the dust. My breath deepens, and my skin crawls again.
Giving back
Most of the time I am completely fine. Sometimes I get triggered, and I’ve got my hands full again for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I had a bad year not so long ago.
Living my best life takes maintenance, just as I imagine countless people quietly manage other long-term health challenges.
Since 2006, I have also spent a lot of time studying and teaching students and journalists about trauma. Giving back has felt both cathartic and critical to maintaining my well-being.
I have spoken previously about covering the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Katrina survivors, violent demonstrations in American cities, and endless gun violence in Philadelphia.
But while journalists and other first responders are frequently invited onto stages for these conversations, most people carrying trauma will never get the spotlight.
Domestic violence and other crimes can alter lives without ever making the news. Trauma can accumulate alongside structural violence, from racism and concentrated poverty to over-policing and mass incarceration.
Communities most vulnerable to trauma are often the least likely to have access to the kind of care that helped me endure.
Too many are left to carry their burden alone, while resources seem perpetually overstretched and horrifying headlines keep coming at us with relentless frequency.
If nobody is coming to save us, we’ll need to get better at taking care of one another, now more than ever.
I’m no clinician, but I can tell you what I needed: Listen when people tell you about their struggles. Don’t turn up the heat or ask when they’re going to get over it. Ask what they need, ask how you can help, and help them find more support.
I recently moved to Ireland, where my grandparents were born, thinking I might have one more chapter to write in my career and that, for once, I might step away from all the trauma.
Instead, every new relationship and opportunity seems to be leading me back to the same work: helping journalists stay safe and healthy while reporting responsibly on survivors.
The distance has also helped me see more clearly what I’ve carried all these years, and what we can’t fake.
Jim MacMillan spent 17 years as a photojournalist at the Philadelphia Daily News. His photographs from Ground Zero now reside in the Special Collections Research Center at the Charles Library at Temple University, and one was acquired last year by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He founded the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting in 2019 and served as its director until June.
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