People rally around woman after in-laws criticize her for 'talking like a survivor' of 9/11

The 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked one of the most harrowing days in American history. The attacks saw two hijacked flights crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, killing thousands and injuring many more. A woman who goes by u/911kidwitness on Reddit, who was a schoolgirl at the time, was among those who witnessed the devastation from a close vicinity. But many years later, when she shared her experience with her in-laws, she was negatively criticized by them.

In a post shared on Reddit a few years ago, the 34-year-old woman recalled the time she was studying at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The school was located in lower Manhattan, only a few blocks away from the Twin Towers. As a 14-year-old who went to school, she had the most horrific and traumatic experience as she and many of her classmates witnessed the attacks firsthand. "I heard the first plane and saw the second plane crash. I saw the people jumping from the buildings (that's what really still gives me nightmares to this day)," she explained in her post. 

She has unpleasant memories of smelling the smoke, the sound of the buildings crashing down and how many of her classmates suffered from health problems since they were in the area. "As you can imagine, with the 20th anniversary approaching, I've had a lot of feelings. I now live in a suburb of NYC and was invited to speak at a local commemoration ceremony tomorrow. I also have been sharing my thoughts on social media. My in-laws, mainly by brother-in-law and mother-in-law backing him up, have been complaining about my posts," she added in the post.

The in-laws criticized her for talking like a "survivor" of 9/11 because she wasn't in either of the buildings that came down. They also said that the woman was trying to "make it about herself" and "taking away from actual survivors" and also that it was just "over the top." "I will grant that maybe it is a little over the top but I still suffer both physically and mentally to this day. I was deeply impacted and forever changed, as were my classmates. You can't witness something like that and not be. I wasn't in the actual buildings but I was right there and saw it all," the post mentioned.

She then turned to the Reddit community, asking for their opinion on whether or not she should consider herself a survivor. Both her husband and the Reddit community supported her and assured her that she was not in the wrong. u/oh-potato shared, "Fellow New Yorker here! Lots of people really can’t grasp the scale of this event so they don’t understand how you were truly and deeply impacted by it. Brother-in-law is definitely rude." u/BigRad_Wolf pointed out, "That wasn't a backyard barbecue, the smoke you were breathing was every bit nasty. Hope you get your lungs checked often, this isn't a joke a lot of good people in the same radius as you have faced long debilitating issues from that smoke." 

The original poster commented on this and revealed that she has respiratory and digestive damage. Some of her former classmates have cancer at present. u/jcacca added, "Sweet, sweet, young lady. You’re not in the wrong here. You were young and close to the towers. Your young brain experienced something more traumatic than most people will ever even begin to understand. Are you a survivor of the buildings? No. Are you a survivor of the event? Yes. Please be kind to yourself and ignore those around you who seem to discredit your experiences. You were a child, for god’s sake. Sending so much love to you."