From the Editor-in-Chief
By Ryan Michaels | The Maine Mirror
September 11, 2026

When I think about September 11th, 2001, the first thing that comes to mind is, of course, the horror.

The lives that were taken.

The families who woke up that morning never knowing that, by the end of the day, their lives would be divided forever into before and after.

The firefighters, police officers, first responders, service members, ordinary people, and complete strangers who ran toward others when every instinct must have told them to run away.

My heart breaks for every life lost, every grieving family member, and every person who has had to carry some part of that day with them ever since.

In many ways, all of us still carry it.

But today, 25 years later, I want to share something different.

Not because my story belongs beside the magnitude of what happened that day. It doesn’t.

But because September 11th has been tied to my own life in a strange and deeply personal way for as long as I can remember.

Growing Up Where Birthdays Weren’t Celebrated

I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness.

For anyone unfamiliar with that upbringing, there were many things we could not do. We didn’t celebrate Christmas. We didn’t celebrate birthdays. There were significant restrictions surrounding relationships with people outside of the religion and how we were expected to live.

For part of my childhood, my parents and I lived with my grandparents. My grandmother was a devout Jehovah’s Witness.

My mother was her daughter, and she had been deeply affected by that upbringing herself.

I don’t share that to condemn either of them.

At 33 years old, I have learned that human beings are far more complicated than heroes and villains. People can love you deeply and still hurt you. People can believe they are protecting you while teaching you something that takes decades to unlearn.

My mother wanted a life outside of the religion her mother followed.

But instead of openly living that life, she often hid it.

Information was withheld.

Truths were distorted.

Sometimes there were outright lies.

And sometimes I was expected to participate in keeping those truths from my grandmother.

That matters to this story because one of the things we didn’t celebrate was birthdays.

And my birthday is September 12th.

Eight Years and 364 Days Old

I will never forget September 11th, 2001.

I was eight years old.

Eight years and 364 days old, to be exact.

I remember sitting inside Mapleton Elementary School. Students and teachers from across the school were gathered together around one of those big old televisions on a rolling cart.

And we watched.

I can still picture that television.

I can still picture that room.

I can remember knowing that something terrible was happening without having anything close to the capacity to understand how terrible it really was.

Think about that for a moment.

Millions of adults were struggling to comprehend what they were witnessing.

And there I was, an eight-year-old boy in northern Maine, staring at the same images.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but seeing something clearly doesn’t mean you yet have the capacity to understand what you’re seeing.

I think that sentence describes more of my life than I realized until recently.

The Morning I Turned Nine

The next morning was September 12th.

My ninth birthday.

And for the first time in my life, my birthday was acknowledged.

My mother didn’t say, “Happy birthday.”

There weren’t presents.

There wasn’t a cake.

There wasn’t a party.

Instead, she asked me a question:

Would I like to stay home on my birthday?

That was it.

And to that nine-year-old boy, it meant the world.

Looking back today, I believe my mother was trying to do something kind for her son. The circumstances of the previous day gave her a reason that could be explained to my grandmother. Keeping a child home the morning after something so horrific had happened wouldn’t have seemed unusual.

And somewhere inside that terrible moment in American history, my mother found a tiny opening to acknowledge something she had never been able to acknowledge before:

Her son’s birthday.

There is something beautiful about that memory to me.

And there is something painful about it, too.

Because now I understand the other lesson that little boy was absorbing.

Love was something that sometimes had to be hidden.

Truth depended upon who was in the room.

Something could be true between my mother and me but needed to become something different when my grandmother walked through the door.

I learned what it felt like to live between two realities.

And when I chose truth, sometimes I got in trouble for it.

Maybe that is a story for another day.

Twenty-Five Years Later

But today, at 33 years and 364 days old, on the 25th anniversary of September 11th, I find myself thinking about that eight-year-and-364-day-old boy.

Twenty-five years separate us.

And if I could sit beside him today, I think I know what I would tell him.

We don’t always get to choose our pain. But we do get to choose what we do with it.

And if there is one thing my life has taught me, it is that pain can become purpose.

That doesn’t mean pretending the pain was good.

It doesn’t mean pretending it was necessary.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that suffering itself should ever be celebrated.

September 11th was horrific. Nothing I say changes that. Thousands of lives were stolen, families were shattered, and the consequences of that day are still carried by people today.

We should remember that.

We should mourn that.

We should never forget that.

But remembering darkness doesn’t require us to remain inside of it.

We can decide what we carry forward.

There Is Always a Next Morning

Through the lens of my own lived experience, September 12th has come to represent exactly that for me.

September 11th, 2001, I was an eight-year-old boy watching something terrible happen on a television screen, unable to fully understand what I was seeing.

September 12th, I woke up nine years old.

And now, 25 years later, I see something in that transition that I couldn’t possibly have understood then.

There is always a next morning.

For me, quite literally, that next morning was the beginning of another year of life.

So perhaps tomorrow, September 12th, can mean something more to me now.

A day to move forward.

A day to tell the truth.

A day to speak openly and honestly even when doing so is uncomfortable.

A day to choose love over resentment.

A day to give grace without surrendering truth.

A day to take whatever pain yesterday handed us and ask ourselves:

What am I going to do with it today?

Because that is the choice I have tried to make in my own life.

I choose to turn my pain into purpose.

Telling the Truth, Even When It Costs Something

For me, part of that purpose is telling the truth—even when the truth is uncomfortable. Even when people would rather I remain quiet. Even when telling it may cost me something personally.

Not because I believe I possess every truth.

Not because I always get everything right.

But because I know what it feels like to be a child learning that truth can change depending on who walks into the room.

And I don’t want to live that way anymore.

I want my words in the light.

I want my mistakes in the light.

I want my convictions in the light.

I want the people I love to know that I love them while I still have the opportunity to tell them.

And I want the painful chapters of my life to become something more than chapters I wish had never been written.

I want them to have purpose.

Maybe there is something in that for all of us.

We spend September 11th remembering.

We should.

We always should.

But then the sun rises on September 12th.

What do we do then?

Maybe we wake up and decide to love one another a little more openly.

Maybe we tell someone something we’ve been afraid to say.

Maybe we forgive.

Maybe we apologize.

Maybe we stand up for somebody.

Maybe we tell the truth.

Maybe we take something that hurt us and refuse to let pain have the final word.

Why This Story Belongs in The Maine Mirror

And perhaps this is also the right moment to explain why this story belongs here, under From the Editor-in-Chief.

Because when I look back at that little boy learning that truth could change depending on who was standing in the room, I understand something about the man I eventually became.

And I understand something about why I created The Maine Mirror.

At its heart, this is why.

I believe truth deserves to be spoken.

I believe truth deserves to be heard.

I believe uncomfortable questions deserve to be asked.

And I believe no person’s position, title, political affiliation, popularity, power—or even my own personal beliefs—should determine which facts are worthy of being brought into the light.

That doesn’t mean I will always be right.

I won’t be.

The Maine Mirror won’t be, either.

And when we get something wrong, the same principle demands that we acknowledge it, correct it, and put the truth ahead of our pride.

Because I don’t believe journalism should tell you what you are required to believe.

I believe journalism should give you the information, evidence, perspectives, and context necessary to think for yourself.

There is an important difference between claiming ownership of the truth and committing yourself to its pursuit.

I choose the pursuit.

Even when it is uncomfortable.

Even when it challenges something I believe.

Even when it challenges someone I respect.

Even when it challenges me.

And yes, even when speaking openly may come at a personal cost.

Maybe that conviction began much earlier than I ever realized.

Maybe some part of it began with an eight-year-old boy learning what it felt like when truth depended upon who was in the room.

Today, I can take the pain of that experience and give it purpose.

That is what I mean when I say we can turn our pain into purpose.

We don’t have to pretend the pain was good.

We don’t have to be grateful that it happened.

We simply refuse to let pain have the final word.

For me, one small part of that purpose became The Maine Mirror.

A place where the pursuit of truth should matter more than who the truth comforts, who it challenges, or whose beliefs it happens to affirm.

Because you are free to disagree with me.

You are free to question me.

You are free to believe differently than I do.

In fact, I hope you will challenge me when you believe I am wrong.

But facts do not become less worthy of examination simply because they make one of us uncomfortable.

Truth deserves to be pursued.

Truth deserves to be spoken.

And truth deserves the opportunity to be heard.

That was something the little boy in this story struggled to understand.

It is something the man writing this today has chosen to build his life around.

September 12th Still Comes

Tomorrow, God willing, I turn 34 years old.

And I think I finally understand something that the nine-year-old version of me couldn’t.

My mother gave me no birthday cake that morning.

No presents.

No candles.

She simply found a way, however imperfectly, to tell her son that his birthday mattered.

Twenty-five years later, I can recognize both the pain surrounding that memory and the love inside of it.

Both are true.

And maybe that’s the point.

We cannot rewrite yesterday.

We cannot undo September 11th.

We cannot bring back the people who were lost.

And none of us can go backward and give our younger selves a different childhood.

But tomorrow still comes.

September 12th still comes.

And when it does, we get another choice.

Another day to love.

Another day to forgive.

Another day to speak.

Another day to tell the truth.

Another day to turn pain into purpose.

So today, I remember.

Tomorrow, I move forward.

And for however many tomorrows God gives me, I hope I have the courage to do both.

Never forget September 11th.

And never forget what a gift it is when the sun rises again on September 12th.

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