PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Bucks County grief and trauma counselor whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 has released a memoir about her journey and coming to terms with her grief.
Tara Bane’s husband, Michael, worked for Marsh and McLennan on the 100th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. In the weeks after, she held out hope that he would come back to their Yardley home.
“I don't know if it’s what allowed me to continue to function that first week and a half,” Bane said. “Not until I saw the rubble with my own eyes downtown was I able to say, ‘He’s dead. He’s not coming home.’”
As an art therapist, Bane uses drawing, painting and clay to help people organize the parts of their brains that store trauma. Despite her expertise, she struggled with her own trauma.
“I knew I had the tools to work through it, but it wasn’t enough in the beginning. It took a while for me to feel like I could use my own tools,” she said.
In her new memoir, “Evolution of a Heart,” Bane said time, family and community helped her emerge from a very dark place. She talks about her 9/11 journey, but also grief as a universal experience.
“Society rushes everything, but it took a long time for me to recognize that grief is not going to go away. That doesn’t mean I can’t have joy and love again,” she said.
Adding to the challenges of grief has been sharing it publicly, but Bane said she doesn’t want her late husband to be forgotten. And, as so many people were either too young or not born when 9/11 happened, she said it is that much more important to keep victims’ memories alive.
“I want Michael to be remembered as the person he was to me, and his life means something, and the life that we planned is no longer.”
