Today marks the most tragic day on US soil, for me, and many others. Not just in New York City, or the United States, but the entire world.

We are all linked to one another. We are all the same. We cry the same, we smile the same, we bleed the same, and we die the same.

We are all human beings. We all have our own free will. Some choose to be for the most part, good people.
Some will choose to use fear and terror to get what they want, even still, the good outnumber the bad.

I will never forget the feelings I had that day, and for weeks and months to come. The images repeated, repeatedly. My concern for not just our country but also our world, and the children I had brought into it.

The reaction my body has, even now, every time a special news report breaks into regular programming.

I was watching Matt Lauer live on the Today Show, when I saw the small black image behind him, heading for and into the tower. No one had any idea what was happening, for seconds, but what seemed like forever. Then in horror, we saw the other plane.

Then of course, the reports of the other two planes. One would crash into the Pentagon, and the plane of heroes on board another flight that heroically took a plane back from the hijackers that day. Ultimately it would crash, albeit away from its intended target of Washington D.C. in a field in rural Pennsylvania.

The way we came together, in all the chaos and the fear. The way it no longer mattered, if we knew each other, we were each other. We were all the same. People helping strangers, people searching with and, for the other strangers in need. People grieving together, people all over the world grieving as one.

It has been nine years, and we will never forget the bravery, the heroes, and the freedom we continue to see today.

I decided to honor the victims of September 11th in this article, but I do not want us to forget the places and the people where freedom is a foreign concept. Even in 2010, our very planet harbors some of the most oppressive places against other human beings, mostly women.

Here is a list of just a few.

-Iran

-Afghanistan

-Nepal

-Somalia

-Pakistan

-Democratic Republic of Congo

-Iraq