The media momemts that touched me the most were those about the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11. Their stories - told through other firefighters, their families and friends - are what made the horror, the loss, the devastation of that morning in September real for me.

Through those same 343 firefighters, my grief finally, slowly, began to move toward some semblance of healing and moving on when I saw that Leary Firefighters Foundation raised 1.9 million which went directly to the struggling families of those lost firefighters. Witnessing people coming together to take action to help those in need roused my spirit, ameliorated my mourning. 

What meant, and still means, the most to me is action. Combine that with compassion and phenomenal differences are made in the lives of others. Combine action and art - and the founder of Leary Firefighters Foundation - and you get Rescue Me. The show that told even more stories of firefighters, not just from  9//11, but also about the day in and out of that job, that calling. I process things through story and Rescue Me has used the art of story to keep the conversation of 9/11, of firefighters, going. Much like the series M*A*S*H, Rescue Me told stories that needed to be told and heard, stories that woke us up to the shrapnel still falling, even today, from that morning in September a decade ago. 

Rescue Me didn't erase the grief of 9/11, but that series, those stories and characters, helped me get to a point where my grief was something I could carry while moving forward - never leaving that grief behind or forgetting about that day, about the 343 firefighters and the other souls lost, but being able to live without the weight of the mourning and the memories mooring me to the past.