Moth stories have the power to bring you into a world that is often not your own and leave you wishing that you could live in that world

Just a little bit longer since 1997 the moth has shared more than 50,000 stories with audiences around the world through shows,

workshops and on the moth podcast and the moth radio hour once the curtains have closed the rooms emptied and the voice is

Quieted it's the stories still ringing in our ears that whisper over and over we are all of us more alike than we are different

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Welcome to the moth podcast. I'm Suzanne Rust your host for this week

I was born and raised in New York City and on September 11th, 2001. I was living with my family in Harlem

That morning my husband had dropped our eight-year-old son Julian at school and I was getting ready to take Sophia our two-year-old to the park the routine

Then the news broke what I saw on the TV screen was surreal in a complete days

I foolishly made my way the playground were a handful of equally days parents paced anxiously to the soundtrack of sirens while their children played

Back then there were no smartphones in hand so I asked an incoming parent if there were any updates on the situation

She told me that the towers had collapsed and that was when I truly lost it it hit me

Racing from the playground to pick up my son from school

I ran into another mom that I barely knew and we fell into each other's arms

The walk home was long and other worldly and the fears and uncertainty that followed the next days weeks and months

I can remember them vividly. There is no chance of ever forgetting

So it's hard to believe that 20 years have passed since the tragedy at the World Trade Center

We still see it eak into our day-to-day lives on the news at the airport and banners still hung at firehouses here in New York City

But the experiences of a day and its aftermath is incredibly personal and specific to everyone who lived through it

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