ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes her private office on an ordinary Tuesday morning, when a patient came in saying she heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center. She was anxious, but both of us discounted it as some curious accident and continued with the session. Then another woman came in, critical time a mother who was worried about her children and wanted to pick them up from school. Traumatic grief differs from uncomplicated bereavement in that post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms are also present, and intrusive traumatic reminders interfere with the child’s ability to do the grief work. There was one woman with two young children who lived in an apartment near the World Trade Center. They were trying to get to a country home in northern New Jersey. Both mother and children were relieved to share a little of their scary experience of the cloud of smoke and dust and their struggle to get to the ferry.
