09/11/2025
No dance today. ✋🏻😒
Not because of unhappiness, but out of respect. There are days when the music doesn’t reach deep enough to shift the vibration of a hurt heart. 💔 🎶
No dance today, not in opposition to joy, but in honor of it. Because joy only exists fully when we’ve known loss. Gratitude becomes richer when shaped by grief. 😞
Yesterday’s national news of multiple losses already set a somber tone on the eve of 9/11. It was a reminder that grief doesn’t belong to one day, it lingers, it echoes, and it shapes how we step into moments of remembrance. 🙏🏻
Today marks 24 years since 9/11. I still remember. More than half my lifetime ago. Back then, a school year felt like an eternity. Now, entire decades seem to slip by before we even have time to feel them. I was in Boston back then. We weren’t ground zero but we knew we were the place where that terrible day began. The flight path right over my childhood home and Boston completely on shutdown. 🛑
The next day, Boston was on lockdown. No one in the streets and military planes circling the city. I was an “essential worker” back then but we didn’t have a name for it. People had to feed the animals. 🦭
I walked through empty streets and had police ask me where I was going. Never thought I’d have to ask a national guard for permission just to go clean pools & feed sea lions. That’s a strong dose of reality we often forget. 🤔
It’s healthy to pause. To sit in reflection, in remembrance. To honor the weight of what was lost, and to respect the resilience of what still carries on. ❤️
Survivor’s guilt is a real thing yet we don’t give ourselves the collective approval to admit it. We often just end up feeling awkward in our emotions 💁🏼♂️😮💨
You also don’t need my permission (or anyone else’s for that matter) to feel however you want today, but, for me, not dancing says way more than picking a song to honor the fallen. Thats where I’m at today and that is ok. I still have to work, run errands and keep moving forward but this pause is just part of more growth 🌱
May today be a reminder that it’s okay to feel both grief and gratitude and that remembrance deserves its quiet space. 🕊️🇺🇸
Without cloudy days, one wouldn't care as much about the gifts hiding in a rainbow… 🌈
- Bryan ❤️🕺