203: The Long Shadow: What if you were on the 68th floor?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

Twenty years after the attacks of September 11th changed the world as we knew it, this month the This Is Actually Happening podcast dives deep into the stories of four survivors whose jobs brought them face to face with the unthinkable. Today we continue the series with a long shadow, featuring Kayla Bergeron, a Port Authority Public Affairs Chief caught in her office on the 68th floor.

It's not like there was time to ponder your fate. I thought we were trapped at that point and there was no way out. You just thought, you know, we're powerless to get out of the building. This is it. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening with our special series honoring the 20th anniversary of 9-11, The Long Shadow. Episode 203, The Long Shadow, Part 2.

What if you were on the 68th floor?

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I am the second of three children. I grew up in Louisiana, right outside of New Orleans. I'm a Cajun. Being a Cajun meant a lot of food and a lot of family gatherings. Either sitting on the porch with your neighbors, having a crab or a shrimp boil. It was a different world. It was a different era. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a comedian. I was always a practical joker.

My whole life, I was told I was too sensitive. I was sensitive to other people's feelings, and I guess I was sensitive in how people interpreted me. I didn't care to really joke at other people's expense. I would always joke about my own expense. My dad was a marketing and sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry. I think I got my business sense from him. He's a logical thinker.

He has a sense of humor, too. Very charming. When we would get in some trouble, we would talk it through. Occasionally, the belt came out. But I got my thinking from him. On the other hand, my mother was a stay-at-home mom at the time. Three kids. I don't frankly know how she did it. I think I got my emotions and sensitivity and my desire to be a public servant.

When I was a kid, I'd go with her as she collected clothes and food for families. So I think I got that need for public service from her. But I learned how to be practical, to always consider other sides of the story. In terms of growing up in Louisiana, there's a diverse population.

My dad had been in the National Guard and he had protected the civil rights workers in Montgomery. That played a big part in my growing up. I think I was either eight or nine years old and my parents were friendly with some folks down the down the road.

I remember going to their house one time and there was a guy who was, I guess, a teenager at the time. And I remember him asking me to come into the attic and help me bring down Christmas decorations. There were more to that than Christmas decorations. And he told me not to say anything to anyone.

I didn't want to affect my parents' relationships with that family, so I didn't tell my parents until many years later, and it turns out he's dead. That's one of the things I just put away and never really spoke about it. I just stored it in a compartment and thought I never needed to speak about it again.

My parents were active alcoholics. I stayed up many nights with my brothers and my young sister, worried about the safety of my mother, what was going to happen. Living in fear, always walking on eggshells. The next day after there would be fights and stuff, my parents would tell us not to talk to anybody about it. And then they would take us to the zoo.

I only realized recently why I hated to go to the zoo, and that's exactly why. Those experiences really shaped me, so when I was at the Port Authority, I could always anticipate the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario. But that played heavily, heavily on my mind, always in fear, always worrying.

I wanted to get out of this situation. It drove me to be independent. That's what I wanted more than anything else. I didn't want to rely on anybody. Frankly, that's why I'm still single today. I wanted to just take care of myself and know that I would be okay. The family moved to St. Louis, where I graduated from high school. That's where my fears and my doubts started. And the self-doubt just came over me. I felt like I was on eggshells just going to college.

I don't remember a lot through college, to tell you the truth, because I had my eye on the future. I couldn't stand sitting in the classroom. I did three years of college. I was frankly anxious to get out and get in the campaign world, which I did. I worked on many political campaigns. I happened to be a Republican, a moderate Republican.

I wanted to see people come together. It shouldn't be so cut and dry because I think most people in this country want the same things. But the way they frame it is all about winning and losing. Imagine if you brought the two parties together, you melded them and seeing different points of view, imagine what you could get done.

And then I met somebody in New Jersey who asked me to work for their campaign. And I learned skills in that campaign that really carried me through throughout my life. I worked on lots of local campaigns. I was basically in charge of either campaign manager, the communications director. To this day, I'm a multitasker. I work at a very fast pace.

I had gotten a call from the Lieutenant Governor of New York, Betsy McCoy, and they needed a communication director. It was a great job. I was there for about a year. I'm having dinner with some colleagues in New York. Next thing you know, one of my friends introduces me to Bob Boyle, the executive director of the Port Authority. It turns out they needed a public affairs director at the Port Authority. It was one of those unexpected moments.

I'm an adventurer and I like to go where opportunity is to learn and to grow. So when I went to New York, it was a change. It was a significant change, but it was a change that I embraced. In terms of the Port Authority itself, some people used to call it the UN, people from all walks of life. And I enjoyed that. So I embraced New York. I embraced the Port Authority. To me, that's what the nation needs to be like. It was sort of a microcosm.

The Port Authority's mission is to provide transportation for individuals throughout the region, whether it was the World Trade Center that the Port Authority had built, port commerce between New York and New Jersey. You had the major airports, JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia. You had the major tunnels between New York and New Jersey. You had the major bridges, and they had a police force of 1,600 people.

I started in April of 1999. I was probably 28 and my job was to help get information out to the public on the status of our transportation facilities, whether it was say the blackout

Major snowstorms, shootings, service interruptions, whether the bridges were open or closed, what's the status of the airports, are there going to be delays? It's sort of a hodgepodge of issues that I oversaw. But I had a top-notch staff. We worked so well together. Working at the Port Authority was the best job of my life. Every morning, I'd get off at the Fulton Street subway stop,

and then I would get my venti mocha and then I would stride onto the plaza of the World Trade Center. Even sometimes I would sit on the water fountain. We'd just sit and relax and stare. There were concerts on the plaza. What I liked about the World Trade Center is that it was like nothing else. It was hustle and bustle. It was like a world unto its own. From my office on the 68th floor,

I had a view of the Statue of Liberty, which was just magnificent. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. In June of 2001, a new executive director, Neil Levin, came to the Port Authority. Previously, he had been the superintendent of Department of Insurance for the state of New York.

September 10th, 2001. I had been to the airport JFK with my boss, Neil Levin. There was a TWA building that is an engineering feat in the design. It was so unique. We were talking about the redesign and making it a conference center.

We did those interviews. He gave me a ride back into the city. They dropped me off. And my last discussion with Neil Levin was, I don't know if I should go to the gym or just chill. He said, go to the gym. Those were my last words to Neil Levin. It was election day. I remember the sky was the bluest I had ever seen. Going to work. We're supposed to have a meeting with Neil Levin at 8.30 p.m.

So I'm sitting at my desk, getting ready for the meeting, and all of a sudden, the building lunges forward about 10 feet, and then it comes back into place. I'm looking up outside the window. I saw shards of glass, but mostly paper, paper everywhere. Someone for emergency management had called me, and they said, "We thought a small plane had veered off course."

I tried to call my boss, but I couldn't reach him. I talked to his wife who said, "Oh, he has a meeting on Windows of the World." I called both governor's offices to say, "Something is not right. I'm seeing this happen, but I don't have any information at this time."

I send my staff to the Marriott. The Marriott is where they set up during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That was going to be the command center for us and communications hub. So I said, get some pencils, get some pens, set up a lot of phone lines. Meanwhile, I'm texting through this BlackBerry, the senior staff to say that we're setting up communication at the Marriott. So get to the Marriott.

Somebody had come to my office, a security guard, said, "Hey, your life is in danger." I said, "Well, give me a few minutes. Let me go turn off my computer." So I walked the floor with the security guard. I had a person who was physically challenged. She had a wheelchair, but she had gotten into the stairwell. Some guys had lifted her and carried her all the way down. There was no one else on the floor.

So I go down into the stairwell. I'm texting the people ahead of me that I'd sent prior. I said, "Okay, where are you?" I'm in the stairwell. There were only 10 floors ahead of me, which I thought was odd.

But meanwhile, because of the 1993 bombing, there were certain changes that were made. One of the changes they made was to have glow-in-the-dark tape on the floor and the stairwell, on the steps. So all you had to do was just stay on the tape. So it was very calm because we had had so many drills. It worked like clockwork. Nobody was panicking. We were just waiting for our turn to get down.

We still didn't know what was going on. Because it was so calm, the assumption was, "Okay, you got 68, actually a total of 88 floors to evacuate, so it's going to take time." That was it. I'm going a little bit further down, I think to the 40th floor, and then I see my colleague, Patty Clark from aviation. We're chatting, walking along.

And all of a sudden, someone sends me a story from AP saying the terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center. I looked at my colleague and I said, "I'm going to show you something, but don't react. We don't want to set off panic." So she looked at it, I looked at her, she looked at me, and we're both saying, "Let's get this line moving."

We continued to go down, continued to go down. Around the sixth floor, it had been so powerful, our building had twisted. So we weren't able to go down any further. The door wouldn't open because the building had twisted. All of a sudden, these gigantic pipes in the stairwell burst. There was water for the chillers, for the air conditioning for the building.

At that point, I was thrown down into the platform of the stairway, as were a few colleagues. There was frankly no way to get out. And that was my moment, my moment thinking this is it. Interestingly, I was calm. They say you never know how you're going to react to a situation until you're in that situation. And so I just kind of sat there. I was bruised after the fact, but I was just trying to figure out, is there any way out or is this it?

So I just kind of sat there quietly. Everyone else I was with, they were all quiet too. It's not like there was time to ponder your fate. I thought we were trapped at that point and there was no way out. You just thought, you know, we're powerless to get out of the building. This is it. And then all of a sudden, Port Authority police officer David Lim pops up and says to us, hey, come up, come up. Now, the Port Authority police officers knew the buildings in and out.

At the same time, last thing we wanted to do was go up since the tower was burning from the top. But there was absolutely no choice.

So we went up with David. He took us around to another stairwell, but we're climbing over desks. There's hot wire. There's computers on the ground. And so we climbed through all of that and we get to another stairwell and the water is rushing through that stairwell as well.

So they told us to grab the belt buckle of the person in front of us. And they were letting people go down through the stairwell, but there was a door. You had to get into the door. And the water was so powerful, it was coming at such a fast speed, they were only letting two people go through the door at a time. So when it was my time and Patty's time, we go through this door, and then we think we're out of the building.

It was as if there was fresh fallen snow. Everything was white. The ceiling, the walls, and the ground. We were in sort of a state of disbelief. What is this? And why is there what looks like snow? I never really pondered the destruction. Obviously, it was there. But my mind was in high gear, trying to anticipate what else we'd need.

But that was kind of defied, defied everything we could anticipate. There was nothing that was certain at that point. So I was just focused on walking around the side of the building and getting my feet back to ground level. Patty and I, for a moment, she started to scream and I said, don't scream because there's still stuff coming down. I said, let's look for footprints.

So we looked for footprints. There were no footprints. I said, okay, now is the time to scream. So after screaming a few moments, we see this light. We saw this light. And a guy on a bullhorn said, if you can hear me, follow the light. So we followed the light. It took us to the side of the building. There was an overhang. And it was nothing like I had ever seen. It looked like bombed out Beirut.

They told us to walk around the sides of the overhang because there was still debris falling down. And so we're walking around the buildings and the way out from the plaza was through these steps. So we're walking down the steps at the corner of Veazey and Church Street. We get to the ground, we take a breath, and all of a sudden the police officer says, run.

So after being stuck in that stairwell for 40 plus minutes, the last thing we wanted to do was run, especially my pumps, my dress, that sort of thing. And I turned around and I looked at this black plume and then I ran 16 blocks to the Holland Tunnel. I think that's the fastest I ran my entire life.

Frankly, when we got to the Highland Tunnel right before, we dove under cars because the plume was so thick. A couple of the businesses in the area gave us bottled water to drink and to also put on our head from all the soot and stuff to help us try to get that out. I texted my staff. I said, "We're going to go to New Jersey. We're going to go to our police offices. Meet there."

So we get there and I said, where's Fred Marone? Fred Marone was the superintendent of police. Nobody heard anything. I said, what about Neil Levin, the executive director? Nothing. So the chief operating officer comes in with soot all over him. And then I realized at that moment, I nearly killed all the senior officers at the Port Authority because I had sent them to the Marriott and the Marriott had collapsed on them.

Luckily, no one was hurt. Our chief operating officer grabbed the flash drive that had everything that was needed, including payroll. But thank the Lord they got out. That stuck with me for a long time, that guilt of nearly killing the senior staff at the Port Authority. When the chief operating officer comes to the police headquarters, he says, Kayla, I need your help. We need to figure out who's dead and who's alive.

And we decided the most sensitive way to find out who was dead and who was alive was to set up a phone number, Port Authority, employees, call this number to learn where to report. And then another line for families who haven't heard their loved ones, call this number. So as people would start to call in when they were alive, we started clapping and cheering. That was what it was like.

Meanwhile, we had to move to another transportation facility, a Port Authority facility, because the proximity to the police offices was right near the Holland Tunnel. And no one knew what was going to happen next. So we went to another Port Authority facility, and that's where we set up for the next eight months.

I had sent my dad a message, I think when I was around the 20th floor, saying, Dad, if you get this, I'm okay. I'm not thinking the building necessarily would be coming down at that point. So right after I sent my dad that page saying, I'm okay, here comes the building down. And he's thinking, well, if I was on the 20th floor, I probably didn't make it. And so I didn't get to reach my family until about 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

And then my nieces, my nieces were in grade school and I just wanted them to know that I was okay. And I tried to keep a brave face, but then I just broke down crying with them. And then I went back to work. I stayed there till I guess around one o'clock in the morning with our chief operating officer, just trying to anticipate what we needed. And so I took the PATH train back to New York

The train was just silent and I'm sobbing on the train because I'm seeing all these photos of people. And so I get out of the train, I call a cab, and then the cab comes, and then I got home. I went upstairs and one of the things that made it scary was this smell, this soot that was all over Manhattan. You could, the smell of death. The city was silent.

And so all we had was this eerie dust and not knowing what was going to happen next and how long we'd be with this. I guess it was the uncertainty that fed the fear. The fear, the not knowing, just trying to figure out everything. I was alone and frankly, I was too scared to even lay in my bed.

I was too afraid to sleep in my bed. I still don't understand why that was. So I slept on the sofa, and I also had a dream about my boss, Neil Levin, getting out of there on my answering machine. I had all kind of people calling, not just relatives, people I hadn't even met from New York and New Jersey. I don't know if they had databases. They were checking to see if I was alive or not. I didn't return any of those calls that night.

I didn't take a day off for several months because I wanted to show some strength so they wouldn't see me crying or anything like that.

I think it was a good distraction for me. That's why I didn't deal with emotions or anything. It was just a next step, next step, next step. Because if I let the emotions get to me, I'm not sure how well I would have performed, to be honest with you. I just didn't know. So that's why I kept my eye on the prize, so to speak. Because the antenna from the World Trade Center was down,

I couldn't get any news, so I'm sitting in a hotel alone and I don't know what's happening. So I didn't sleep for several days. I just kept running on adrenaline. To this day, I don't know how I kept doing that.

I guess I kept everything in. And then I think by the third day, I think some of the leaders around could see that I was holding on to the work and I really hadn't spoke to anybody. So they sent the Port Authority rabbi to talk to me. And I said, why are you sending the rabbi? I'm a Catholic. And so we sat down and talked. That was very assuring.

I think I got a hug. That was the first hug I got. That lifted me tremendously, mentally and physically.

So we went from rescue, holding out hope every day that miraculously a bunch of people would be pulled out. At the same time, all over downtown Manhattan, there were pictures of loved ones everywhere, in the trains, on the fences, in the walls, in the front of people's businesses. I think it was difficult for the country to wrap their brains around everything getting vaporized. There was this hope everywhere.

that maybe a bunch of individuals had made their way to the hospitals or had been brought to the hospitals. So we're trying to figure out who's coming in, who's not there, you know, trying to get your legs underneath you. I found out a few days later that Neil Levin had been on Windows of the World with a few people.

And that when, I guess, the tower was hit, the head of our police department, the whole leadership, 12 of them, were at some kind of conference together. And so they attempted to go up to help my boss get out. But we found out, you know, after the dust settled, so to speak, that it was too hot. The fuel was too much at that point for them. It was just too hot. All of my staff died.

Thankfully, they were okay. It was mostly police officers, 33 of them, and then 34 civilians. I think I attended 33 funerals. And then came shortly after the 9-11 commission hearings, which were very difficult to deal with because you had families grieving, wanting to place a blame on someone.

I remember a woman who had a big poster of her son. We're in the middle of it, of the hearing. She points a finger and says, "Port Authority, you killed my son. You killed my son." You try to understand the grief that person's going through, but it's like a sucker punch. It was hard to absorb that. And, you know, that survivor's guilt

Going into the 9-11 commission hearings, we're talking about building safety. Who could have ever anticipated that evil people would sit there and plan for months and months and months how to use an airplane, a commercial airliner, as a tool to kill people?

Actually, a day after September 11th, I got a call from a reporter. He said, oh, I understand there's some minutes from years ago talking about what could have happened if a plane rammed into a building. And this reporter was getting a little nasty. And I've never done this before. I told him to fuck off and I hung up the phone. So even he couldn't wrap his brain around the fact that everything was gone.

But there you are, you had families at the hearing still grieving and holding the pictures up of their loved ones and saying, "Port Authority, you killed my son. You killed my daughter. You killed my husband. You killed my wife." Part of me wanted to cry.

The head of our World Trade Center department had to testify. And we lost 72 loved ones, so it was just hard to accept that. We knew they were grieving. And I think that's why we as a Port Authority, and I'm speaking for myself now, we kind of minimized our own pain because we should be lucky to be alive. And that's why a lot of us kept it in for so many years.

You know, I was sad for the grieving family members, but part of me was angry. I wanted to say, hey, we lost people too, people we work with every single day. We feel the same pain. So part of me wanted to do that, but it just wasn't appropriate for the time. And so this is what we all did. We just pushed everything down. But going from the rescue to recovery and then to the 9-11 Commission hearings,

We just kept going and kept going and kept going. Someone recently asked me, hey, why didn't you get help sooner? And I said, because we were too fucking busy. That's why. Other family members would say to me, hey, you're lucky to be alive. You're lucky to be alive. So many survivors just sucked it up because we felt that the families who had lost loved ones and the first responders, we thought appropriately they had to be the priorities.

But many of us who just went to work that day weren't uniformed. A lot of those folks are still in the shadows. We don't know who they are, nameless faces, but are dealing with hell. No treatment. They're not diagnosed. They've got PTSD. Many of them are drugging. They're drinking. We just kept going and going and going.

My parents kept trying to see me and I said, no, no, I got to work. I got to work. I got to work. So I think it was like three months into it. My parents had come and visited me one night at the hotel. But seeing seeing the impact on them, that had a big effect on me, too, because here I am numb to all this. But I didn't allow myself to let my emotions out because I could see that they were distraught beyond words.

And then we went to the rebuilding. Rebuild the towers. Don't rebuild the towers. The families were split. And let's face it, New York, everybody's got an opinion. But we were very proactive, intentional, so people don't get the impression that New York and New Jersey are stopped. We're still at work. We're not going any way. We've got to go on with our lives. In 2006, I got a job offer in Florida.

an obscure agency called the South Florida Water Management District. It was a lead agency restoring the Everglades. So I'm like, this is a fantastic opportunity. So in 2006, I moved to Florida, West Palm Beach.

That was another dream job because seeing the changes on how they're cleaning up the pollution, we were actually using plants to clean the water. It was a great experience to see how they did that and to see how this restoration project could be a model for the nation and actually worldwide. So everything was fine until a new governor came in in 2011.

The governor had ordered $180 million of cuts to our agency. And in the PR and the marketing world, that's one of the first ones to go. And I was a part of that. At the same time, my mother, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And so that's when I started to drink. I just felt this anxiety in my body for years. But I thought maybe I was just a little depressed already.

So when I got that DUI, it limited my ability to even see my mother. And I didn't want to tell them what was going on because I didn't want to contribute to their anxiety. So I couldn't travel there for six months.

And so instead of seeking jobs in Florida, I kind of just drank out of guilt because of my mom and I couldn't go there. I was ashamed of myself, you know, to rise from the peak jobs, to be in a position where I think I couldn't find a job. I didn't know what was wrong with me.

I had to tell my parents that I had a DUI in the middle of my mother having lung cancer. I just hated doing that. I waited as long as I could, by the way, and I couldn't take it anymore. So I called them. My mother, she's compassionate. She's got the touch that I needed at that time. I'm not a hugger easily, and I just can't tell you how much it meant to me to be hugged by my mother, who's dying.

My mom died, my 77-year-old dad was alone. And after I moved to Atlanta to be with my dad following my mom's death, January of 2017, DUI number two. I remember my dad saying, "Your career is over.

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For me, if I was driving sometimes at night, it would kind of be a flash of light. I didn't know what that was for a long time. Occasionally, I'd have a little nightmare remembering that first night, but I still didn't put it together. And the anxiety, I couldn't even stand sitting down or even driving in a car for a long period of time. But I just kind of kept it to myself. I started drinking.

It was the only way to calm it down. Again, I didn't know what it was. I just knew I felt lousy. I was living by myself. So I started hitting the wine. And then when I moved here, because I had the DUIs, I knew it was going to be difficult to find a job. If two candidates are the same, I'm probably going to hire the person without the two DUIs, especially you're on the front lines talking to reporters.

The only job I could get so I could pay some bills was working at Subway. I worked three years at Subway just to pay some bills. All the pension and stuff that I had accrued was gone because I hadn't worked in, say, five years. So I drained that, my savings. I lost my condo to foreclosure. I had sunken as low as anybody could sink.

And it was at that time I was sentenced to this program called the Forsyth County Accountability Court. And that's when I was diagnosed with PTSD. I wish I had known after the first DUI about PTSD and how it's a vicious cycle, how the PTSD fuels the alcoholism and the alcoholism fuels the PTSD cycle.

It didn't occur to me about PTSD. It never crossed my mind until I got that diagnosis. I just thought I was unhappy. You know, I'd lost my dream job, that type of thing. So when I got the diagnosis, I was grateful. This is what saved my life. It was a three-year program. It involved me seeing a medical doctor for meds, which substantially changed my life for the better.

therapy on a weekly basis and group treatment weekly. And then this rigorous drug screening anywhere from two to seven days a week. And so what got me back on track was the legal system. So I wish I would never been arrested. I wish I would have never gotten the DUI, but that's what saved me.

It is embarrassing. And anybody who's an alcoholic or a drug addict, you're so shameful because no one chooses this life. We're brought into this world, but we don't know what's going to happen. And then the terrorists attack and set them up for a life of either physical problems or mental problems.

So I look even today, I look at the rise and the fall and the peak of my career to my lowest and I'm still embarrassed and I'm sad for myself and I'm sad for a lot of people who are in the same place. Everything is compounded. And I told you before about that childhood trauma and how it stuffed it down.

Just like I stored that away, that early trauma, when you're traumatized later, it brings it up again. So you have complex PTSD. And so it was like the double whammy, the stress I put on my family and some of my friends. I still regret that, the guilt from being a survivor, the guilt from almost sending people to their death.

We were so busy. I didn't think too much about the guilt. I just knew when I found out that our chief operating officer and our chief financial officer and some other people, the thought of the building coming down on them as a result of my informing them to go there. I think for years I drank just upon that, trying to cope with that thought.

But years later, the chief operating officer, I'd been back to visit New York and I had a moment with him. I said, I'm still dealing with this. I'm really sad that I could have caused your death. You know, he said, based upon the information we had that day, that was one of the best decisions I could have made at the time. And so I felt better about that. But I still carry the guilt of why I'm alive and why others perished.

I know there's nothing I can do to change it. So I'm trying to let it go. But, you know, it's kind of hard looking at everybody in your life who tried to help you and then not being able to explain why. I was glad there was a name for it. And that explained a lot. I was like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now I get it. All those years not being able to put it together. Frankly, I was angry at myself, angry at myself that I didn't I didn't see any signs. I didn't think it could be me.

I remember several months after I met with the therapist, 9-11 was coming up. And she said to me, hey, how are you doing? How do you think about 9-11? You going to be okay? No problem. No problem. No problem. I was scared. And at the other hand, I was wondering if it was a waste of time because all those years later, your mind tells you, hey, you've already dealt with that. It's 17 years later. What's the issue here?

Everything was stuck in me. It was stuck in me and I wasn't allowing it to come out. And I didn't know how. And so I had to tell my story and then I'd be probed. That's when the emotions would start to come out. And we walked through that process of a little bit at a time, taking the layers off the onion and realizing what was beneath the surface. The other thing I've done since that time is

The therapist said, "Hey, maybe you should call your colleagues and talk once a month." Thinking that would help me through 9/11.

So since then, I've started this Zoom call every single anniversary that I'm not in New York to try to take us back to that day. But it's not about the downness of the day. We have little stories that helped us to get through. And I have so much pride with that staff. I don't know if I could have done it with anyone else. They were such professionals. They just kept going and kept going, kept going. That's a blessing to be able to have them to reach out.

In the aftermath, I was very hopeful that our country would knock down the barriers of division, that we would come together as a nation. There was kindness among people who may not have been so kind prior. The thing I struggle with to this day, it just makes me angry. Once it was apparent

The executive director of the Port Authority, Neil Levin, was dead. There became a struggle between New York and New Jersey, who was going to be the acting executive director. Everything was New York versus New Jersey. Instead of making it a New Yorker, they made it a New Jerseyan who was the second in command. And here we are grieving.

And two or three days later, he calls me into his office asking me to try to get some puff pieces of him, like a profile of him in the middle of death. Play in politics when you got people dead and all these years later. I don't know what it's going to take to bring our country together. There is no Martin Luther King. It's unfathomable that we would have gotten here if you look back on 20 years.

There's an outlook of society that if you don't cry, you portray this facade of being strong, that that's going to set you on the right path for life.

That's not true. We may think it helps, but all that stuff in your body, all the emotions, it affects you in negative ways, but you got to get it out. You can't go around it. That's what I tried to do. So I had to go through it bit by bit by bit in order to start healing. Where I am now came out of COVID. I happened to have COVID last year for three weeks.

I knew with my PTSD, if I wasn't going to stay busy, I was going to have a harder time. So I started volunteering at this place called the Connection Forsyth in Cumming, Georgia. And what it is, it's a recovery community organization.

And that means we run recovery meetings for whatever path, whether it's NA, HA, OA, SMART. And so we hook them up with meetings. We also provide peer coaching and we do a lot of pro-social activities because once you stop drinking, if you don't have a network of people who are in recovery, you're probably going to go back to the same people, places and things. That's what we're seeing. And so we try to show your life is not over.

In some of these group meetings I did through the courts, even though we have different experiences, pain is pain is pain. I'm working with a guy right now. I do some peer coaching. The guy is 31 years old, did two tours of Afghanistan, and is a mess. He is very closed off. He's had five DUIs. He's a total mess.

It's a stain on our country, the lack of resources for the people who are making sure that we're safe. My last drink was on March 22, 2017. Four years and four months clean, and that's what I try to do, is try to mentor people who are having the same struggles, to let them know there's help, they're not alone, and they're going to get through it.

And that's why I am so passionate about civilians who are in the shadows. They've been forgotten about. I got help. I'm grateful. It's the other people out there who are just walking wounded and nobody's doing a damn thing for them. Once I learned that PTSD fueled alcoholism and alcoholism fueled PTSD, that was the moment I said no more.

The biggest change was starting to feel better physically, not having that anxiety under my feet all the time. And realizing those decisions that I made on September 11 were the best decisions based upon the information I had. The fact that those senior staff basically told me years later that they forgave me. I had to let go a lot of that. I'm still working on my survivor's guilt.

So I'm starting to feel better. My whole outlook is better. I don't think I'm the worst person in the world. So my future is bright and I'm grateful. Today's episode featured Kayla Bergeron. In addition to serving as Chief of Public and Government Affairs for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Kayla has also served in senior roles for the New York State Housing Finance Agency and South Florida Water Management District, the lead agency restoring America's Everglades.

Kayla currently resides in Georgia and serves as program director and as a certified peer support specialist, addictive disease for the connection Forsyth. Kayla works as a social media consultant for special equestrians of Georgia, where she participates in equine assisted therapy. Kayla recently started a GoFundMe for special equestrians of Georgia, where she receives equine assisted therapy for PTSD. You can help by donating to special equestrians of Georgia. See the link in the show notes.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening with our special series honoring the 20th anniversary of 9-11, The Long Shadow. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the Wondery app, or wherever you're listening right now. You can also join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app to listen ad-free. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our shows for free.

I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Witt Misseldein. A special thanks to all who helped out with this series to make it happen. Ellen Westberg, Andrew Waits, Marcelino Villalpando, Gabriela Quintana, Emily Caldwell, and Jason Blaylock. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the This Is Actually Happening community on the discussion group on Facebook or at Actually Happening on Instagram.

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