Helaina Hovitz was twelve years old and in middle school three blocks away when the World Trade Center was attacked. Her memoir encapsulates the journey of a girl growing up with PTSD after living through the events firsthand, chronicling its effects on a young girl at the outset of adolescence and following her as she spirals into addiction and rebellion, through loss, chaos, and confusion.

The events and experiences that are now common knowledge to everyone were a very real part of Helaina’s life and are still as vivid in her memory today: the sickening thud of falling bodies hitting cars, the crumbling towers, running for her life as she tried to get home, her universe literally engulfed in a cloud. Hundreds, including Helaina, were stranded in the neighborhood, also just blocks from the towers, without phones or electricity or anyone to help. For fear of subsequent attacks, not to mention the toxic substances in the air, everyone was urged to stay inside their debris-filled apartments.

Anyone who has survived a horrific event knows that just because a body remains in motion does not mean everything will simply “go back to normal.” The chemistry of the brain and the body changes, impacting our relationships, our choices, and how we experience the world around us. Yet, we rarely find out what actually happens to people as they try to move on from a life-threatening experience—especially children, who are just beginning to develop an understanding of the world around them.

It would take Helaina more than a decade to overcome the PTSD — and subsequent alcohol addiction — that went misdiagnosed and mistreated for so many years. In many ways, AFTER 9/11 is the story of a generation growing up in the aftermath of America’s darkest day. And for one young woman, it is the story of a survivor who, after witnessing the end, got to make a new beginning.

Helaina Hovitz is a journalist and editor, specializing in positive and inspiring stories. She has written for the New York Times, Salon, The New York Observer, Forbes, Marie Claire, Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, and Newsday. She is hard at work on her latest venture, a news service called Headlines for the Hopeful.

"Hovitz shows us, for the first time, what it was like for families in New York City who suddenly had to live like other war refugees, with no idea where their loved ones were or when the next attack might come. After 9/11 is a moving and remarkable testament to a time that changed our country, told beautifully by a young woman who never gave up hope that she could reclaim her life, no matter how grim things looked.” --Newsweek

"Helaina Hovitz's first book is a brave, honest, and fast-paced personal account of the ways in which one day can change the course of our lives forever. Her story is an example of how trauma and addiction become part of a life, not someone's entire life, and how we can take the wheel and change that course if we are willing to work for it. By combining her own personal experience with interviews and journalistic research, Hovitz shows us, every step of the way, what it is like to finally move towards the light after so many years of darkness."—Time

"Helaina Hovitz has written that rare kind of book that combines a poetic sensitivity to detail, the stark emotion of memory, and a searing glimpse of the human spirit as it suffers, struggles and learns to heal. In her story are the seeds of hope for anyone who has survived trauma and seeks to truly live again."--Michele Rosenthal, Heal Your PTSD: Dynamic Strategies That Work