This post is in honor of my friend Elena’s Be Enough 4 Me Cancer Campaign, a partnership with Bellflower Books and Cricket Answer to provide memory books to women with cancer by linking up a post about being enough.

Right now I’m struggling.

I’m desperately trying to juggle parenting a newborn with parenting a toddler, being a wife/daughter/sister/friend, working a full-time job on part-time hours, and keeping my house clean – all on broken sleep and without losing myself in the mix.

And I’m failing.

Its driving me nuts, this “season” of my life. I want my life to be “back to normal.” I want to be able to tackle my to-do list instead of letting it go wildly out of control.

But I can’t and I need to accept that, right now, what I can accomplish, even if its just one thing on my list, is enough.

I know I’ll soon have more time for that to do list. And I know that the stuff that really matters isn’t on the list anyway. I just need to give myself permission to let it all go and know that what I can do right now is enough.

What are you struggling with?

The roar of an airplane still takes me back with a shudder.

I was walking through Bryant Park in Manhattan on my way to work when the sound of a passenger jet interrupted my thoughts. I looked up to see the white underbelly of a plane flying dangerously low. While the plane didn’t seem in distress, I thought it might crash in the Hudson. But once it was out of sight, it was out of mind so I continued on my way.

It was 8:45 a.m.

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing on the corner of Second Avenue and 41st Street, waiting to cross. An ambulance sped by me with a news van inches from its bumper. The man next to me said, “Did you hear? A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”

And I knew. It had been that plane. I looked up and saw the black plume of smoke reaching across from lower Manhattan against the bright blue sky.

By the time I reached my office, the second plane had hit the second tower. I couldn’t comprehend how that happened. How could an accident like that happen twice? Terrorism wasn’t in my vocabulary.

The rest of the day is chaotic blur in my memory…

• watching the events unfold on the TV in our conference room
• trying to connect with loved ones on the phone but only getting through on email
• walking 40 blocks north with a coworker to her friend’s apartment and happy that I’d worn flats instead of heels
• hearing the fighter jets over Manhattan and being afraid, a feeling that wouldn’t go away for a long time
• taking a ferry from Manhattan back to New Jersey that evening that almost capsized when everyone rushed to one side to see another WTC building collapse
• talking to my mom and crying
• finally getting home – the next day – and wondering how life could go on

Ten years later, the world around me has definitely changed but I don’t think my life has turned out all that different for having been in New York on September 11. For awhile, the experience defined me. Healing took a long time. But life does and has gone on. I will never forget that day but I can now face it without fear.

This year, as in year’s past, I will observe a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. and then I will go about my day. I will not watch the endless television coverage. I lived it. That was enough.

How will you mark the tenth anniversary?

Photo: Lower Manhattan as seen from New Jersey, taken a few days after September 11. The smoke was fading but still visible.