THINK: A 9/11 New Yorker's Memoir & Manifesto

Life can change us all in a millisecond. That is known. What is unknown is when the entire world shares that exact millisecond, and that millisecond happened in your front yard. That day was 9/11.Think chronicles both Wall Street and my own transformation during its most interesting times—the melding of the millennia with 9/11 on the horizon. Some of us witnessed that day in person, where we were left without a tour guide to navigate a Metropolis we loved yet no longer understood—during the worst time the world has ever collectively witnessed. Psyches exploded with never-experienced views, sounds, and fear, resulting in a mental health impact that the very people paid to protect us dismiss.Mental illness knocked on my door, and this is my response. I hope that my journey imparts an understanding of how mental health crises can arise, manifest, and be misunderstood. May it be seen as an instruction manual for both sufferers and their support systems alike. As ill-prepared as I was for Wall Street, I was equally unprepared for mental illness, and we all need to do better because what is at stake is a society unfulfilled.9/11 New Yorker’s were commuters, workers, residents, and heroes who walked, worked, lived, and excavated side by side. People came from all over the globe to support their brothers, and they stayed in an apocalyptic experience for months. In some cases, for years, and they continue to die. Think describes what it feels like to be a 9/11 New Yorker on its 25th anniversary, when the world is, yet again, on fire.Think transports readers through both scenes and psyches alike as Zip codes change from coast to coast and country to country. From an idyllic childhood at the Jersey Shore to Wall Street and 9/11, to the booming Silicon Valley, and ultimately, to Ireland’s Emerald Isle. Woven through these Zip codes is a psyche on the fray.As one of the World Trade Center’s daily 200,000 commuters, I had a front row seat to Satan, who seared buildings and psyches alike. My trajectory changed from a New York City Wall Street player to a San Francisco prison inmate. Think is where Wall Street and Silicon Valley meet mental illness. The path is privilege to prison. Success to suicide. Suicide to thrive.We have much room for improvement in the mass hysteria known as mental health. It is the world’s number one economic drain, yet its stigma prevents support, understanding, funding, and ultimately progress. It’s time we reevaluate how to incorporate it into our practices and utilize technology for the greater good. It’s also time we finally understand what The Cloud is and that it’s not in the sky. Quite the contrary.The science behind mental illness and its medication is examined along with the society that still loathes it. If mental illness can happen to someone like me, who had everything in place for a happy and successful life, it can, and does, happen to anyone. It wasn’t in my life’s plane. I don’t feel I was born with it, but I feel I was born for it.“It has been said that on September 11, 2001 we saw the worst of humanity and the best of humanity. Beth’s story helps us understand the far reaching yet personal cost of being a witness to the worst/best of that fateful day.” ~ Ann Van Hine, author of Pieces Falling Navigating 9/11 with Faith, Family and the FDNY"What makes this book truly remarkable is the way it blends heart and truth—telling a story that is both deeply personal and universally human. It’s a story about facing the unimaginable, about the courage it takes to confront our darkest moments, and about the power of love, compassion, and connection to heal... This isn’t just a book you read, it’s a journey you live, and one that stays with you long after the last page." ~ Maria Fontana, Business Consultant-RE-Invention Expert Read more