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I will never forget the morning of 9/11. I woke up early that day and was enjoying the morning calm before it was time to wake the children and get them ready for school. It was shortly before 6 am Pacific Standard Time when the normal TV program was interrupted by breaking news that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center North Tower.

From that moment on, I was riveted to the television and watched the events unfold on live TV. I am a fireman's daughter and I remember calling my dad to talk with him about the tragedy that was evolving before my eyes. When he answered the phone, I burst into tears and said, "Daddy, they hit the towers!" and then later, "Oh my God! Daddy they hit the Pentagon!" I don't remember many details of our conversation. But I do remember that I was hurting so badly and crying as hard as I ever had in my life, and in that moment, I reverted to a little girl who needed her dad.

My sons were 10 and 8 at the time, and I made the decision to wake them up and let them watch the events unfold. Even though they were young, I wanted them to witness history as it happened. I felt they needed to share in this collective moment, and I instinctively knew they would someday be better men for it. They sat very still in front of the television, quietly taking it all in with an understanding and inner strength that I had not yet seen from them in their young lives. The questions they asked were far wiser than what I would have expected from children that age, and the three of us hugged, cried, and prayed together in the floor of our living room that morning. It was an incredibly sad, but beautiful and bonding moment in our lives.

Soon it was time to decide if the boys would go to school and I would go to work, or if we would shut ourselves inside the safety and protection of our home as so many others did. After all, the world had changed in those moments that we huddled on the living floor and watched the towers fall. We now knew we were no longer as safe and protected as we once believed. Our shell was not impenetrable, and we suddenly understood deep in our souls that but for the grace of God, go we.

I decided to leave it up to my children. I wanted them to feel like they had some semblance of control over their lives, and if they were too afraid to leave the house that day, I wasn't going to force them. It was the boys who said "...we cannot live in fear because of this. We cannot stay inside and hide because if we did, then the bad guys would be the winners and we would be the losers." After hearing those words, I held my boys close and marveled at the wisdom that comes from the mouths of babes. We all wiped our tears and got ready for our day.

Later that evening after the children were in bed, I sat outside thinking about all that had transpired and how our lives were now changed forever. I thought about my beautiful boys; I wondered about the future. I cried, I got angry, I cried some more, and nursed a broken heart that I shared with every other person who loves this country. I had a notebook in my lap and just started to write. "I Am America" is what came out of my soul that evening. It was written in one sitting and never revised or edited in any way. It's a gesture of love for my country, and fellow man.

I'm usually quite stoic, but ten years later I still cry when I remember 9/11 and the lives that were lost. My heart still hurts, and I am still riveted by the events that unfolded that morning. But because of the tragedy my sons and I shared on the living room floor, we learned a lesson that the three of us will take to our graves. You cannot, you must not live in fear.

On September 11, 2001, my two little boys decided that the best thing our family could do to pay tribute to those lost at Ground Zero was to not let the bad guys get the better of us, and we didn't. Not on that day or any day thereafter. We will not live in fear and we will rise up again and again. We are Americans, after all.