September 11, 2001, is a date forever etched into our collective consciousness. That morning, as I, like millions of people around the world, watched the devastation unfold in real-time, I felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. We were in shock, experiencing the raw edges of fear and sorrow.
As an artist, when words fail me, my hands take over. In the days that followed the attacks, I found myself gravitating towards materials I didn’t typically use in my work—heavy watercolor paper and a needle threaded with red. The two pieces that emerged from that time were made from torn pieces of paper, stitched back together with red thread. It felt as though my ancestors were guiding me, as if they knew I needed this small, meditative task. It became a symbol of my own attempt to repair the grief and brokenness I felt in myself and in humanity. In stitching those torn fragments together, I was performing an act of quiet defiance—refusing to let destruction be the final word.
But as I reflect on that day and those acts of stitching, I am reminded of the wars, genocides, and violence ravaging communities across the globe today. From Syria to Ukraine, from Sudan to Palestine, there are millions more facing unimaginable trauma. Families are displaced, children are orphaned, and cultures are being decimated.
The grief is not isolated to any one nation or event—it is a shared human experience that stretches across borders and oceans. The need for repair is as urgent now as it was then. We are all living in a world that is frayed and torn.
The act of stitching was meditative but also profoundly emotional. My hands knew what I needed to do even before I did. Each stitch was a small step toward healing, even though the answers to the larger questions—about how we as a society would recover, how we would treat one another in the days to come—remained unclear.
Today, as we remember 9/11, I reflect on how we are still in the process of repair, not just in the U.S., but globally. The threads of humanity remain fragile, but they are also strong. Through art, through connection, through small and large acts of repair, we can begin to heal. I share these works as a reminder that we are all part of this ongoing effort to stitch the world back together.
What traditions or practices have helped you heal in times of grief? How can we, as a global community, work together to heal the wounds caused by war, violence, and division?
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