Wishing for September 12, 2001.
Jennifer Heiner combines a passion for running with her business skills as retail director for a New Jersey running company. Managing the company’s three retail locations, she helps control inventory, hire new employees, and ensure day-to-day operations run as smoothly as possible. Jennifer Heiner also provides coaching services and assists with the five races her company hosts each year. Outside of work, Ms. Heiner stays active in her local running community. She maintains membership in New York Road Runners as well as USA Track & Field. As part of her activities with these and other organizations, she has participated in and organized group runs, including training events to prepare participants for the New York City Marathon. In addition to her love of running, Jennifer Heiner has a passion for animals. She is the proud owner of an English bulldog and serves as a volunteer for animal rescue groups. Other pursuits include travel, theater, and seeking out great food and wine at new restaurants.
A life long resident of New Jersey, especially living so close to New York City, Jennifer Heiner was, like so many, deeply impacted by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Only a senior in high school, the depth and breadth of the tragedy that happened that day impacted Jennifer’s life and those of her classmates.
The news events leading up to the 20th anniversary this past weekend also talked about September 12th, and how we all came together as a nation. During a time where we as a country are divided about so many things, we often long for that closeness and togetherness and comradery of that day. One of the best articles that I have read about the grief process was in The Atlantic.
Grief and Conspiracy 20 Years After 9/11 — The Atlantic
“Most theories of grief, particularly the ones involving stages, are more literary than literal. People don’t mourn sequentially, and they certainly don’t mourn logically. But there’s an aspect of one of those models I keep circling back to whenever I think of the McIlvaines. It’s the “yearning and searching” stage of grief, first described by the British psychiatrists Colin Murray Parkes and John Bowlby in the 1960s. ‘When searching,’ Parkes writes, ‘the bereaved person feels and acts as if the lost person were recoverable, although he knows intellectually that this is not so.’”
