172: Hidden Wounds Of Surviving A Public Crisis

A bomb explodes across the street, and you walk away with both your legs. People call that fine.

But your body tells a different story for years. On the 13th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, I share what that day felt like from the bleachers, what came after, and why invisible injuries like trauma, PTSD symptoms, and nervous system triggers can be so hard to explain to anyone who hasn't live them.

Then we turn the lens toward leadership, crisis management, and employee well-being. Operations can return to normal while people are still not okay, and anniversaries are one of the clearest moments when that gap shows up. 

I talk about the two common mistakes leaders make: saying nothing and leaving people alone with the date, or over-commemorating in ways that feel performative and can reopen wounds. The goal is not a perfect script. The goal is a culture that can acknowledge reality without controlling how people grieve.

You will also hear a personal contrast that still shapes how I think about institutions: one response that felt human and one that felt like a form-letter refusal. We close with practical, trauma-informed actions you can take now, including marking key dates on your calendar, offering support resources, checking in and listening, and giving everyone clear permission to opt out of remembrance. 

If you found this helpful, subscribe to Notes on Resilience, share the episode with a leader who needs it, and leave a review. What anniversary do you wish your workplace had handled differently?

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Transcript

A Day At The Marathon

Manya Chylinski 0:00

Thirteen years ago this week, I was standing in the bleacher seats at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It was a party, great celebration. The announcer was calling out names, the towns people came from, the charities they ran for as they were crossing over the finish line. I was screaming and cheering on these strangers who'd run 26 miles to come past me in the bleacher seats. At 2 49 p.m., a bomb exploded across the street from me. Thankfully, I was not physically hurt. And a few weeks later, someone looked at me and said, You still have both your legs. Why are you upset? He wasn't trying to be cruel. He just couldn't see my injury. Here's the question I've been sitting with as this anniversary approaches. What does it mean that 13 years later I'm still explaining this? My experience and the experience of everyone who walks away from a crisis looking fine, but not fine at all. What does it mean that the systems around us, the organizations, the leaders, the institutions, still have that same blind spot built into them? Welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. Today I'm doing a solo episode recorded close to the 13th anniversary of the bombing to talk about anniversaries, what they surface, what does 13 years actually feel like from the inside? And what all of this means for the people listening to us, the leaders, the crisis professionals, the people responsible for other people. There's something here that your planning might not account for, and you might actually already know that. April 15th, 2013 was a Monday, Patriots Day in Boston. I'd watched almost every marathon since moving here. I loved being a spectator, loved the energy, and that the finish line was the home stretch. That year we got there around 2. We had bleacher seats. I was there with a few friends. We were all standing in the bleachers. Once the first people stand up, then the people behind them can't see, so then you have to stand up. And I always thought it was funny that I was tired standing while these people had run 26 miles to pass in front of me. At 2 49, I must have been looking directly ahead because I feel like I just moved my eyes upward and watched a bomb explode on the sidewalk directly across the street from me. Then I had tunnel vision. I could only see that space directly across the street. I could see the smoke rising, see the people running away. Then the second bomb went off. I turned to the left and thought, I don't even know where I am. This isn't my neighborhood. We evacuated. I looked down at my feet to get out of the bleacher seat, and I never looked back across the street. Made it all the way to the front of the Boston Public Library on Dartmouth Street, where one friend and I waited for our other friends. So grateful that I was not physically injured. I was hit by the blast wave, but I wasn't hit by any shrapnel. I wasn't okay though. I didn't know that yet. It took days, maybe some weeks, to understand what was happening to me. And it took years and a lot of work to understand why the systems around me aren't even built to see that. 13, it's not one of those milestone numbers like 10 or 15. So it'll be in the news, but it's not going to get the same kind of headline. Here I am, and here this date is, arriving like it does every year. A little differently each time, but April 15th always shows up. Anniversaries do something specific. They collapse time. That distance you've put between yourself and the event, me and that day and those bleacher seats, the coping, the processing, the motion of just living a life, it compresses. And for a little bit, it could be a moment, it could be a day, a few days. You feel closer to that original moment than any other time of the year. And for some survivors, that is really difficult. For others, that is a very important feeling. It's a very important moment. For some people, it's both. And here's what I want to say clearly. You do not have to commemorate an anniversary like this. There is no way. I mean, there's no right way to mark an anniversary of something terrible. For some people, ritual is important and it's comforting and it's what they do. For others, they need to ignore it and let the day pass by like any other random weekday. Some people benefit from talking about it. Some people need silence and they don't want to think about it at all. All of that is absolutely legitimate and all of it is recovery. Over the last 13 years, I've noticed that my relationship to April 15th has changed. First of all, I never think of it as tax day anymore. But in terms of the bombing, in the early years, mostly dread as we approach the day. Felt like bad weather coming, that I could see it, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. These days, it's a little more complicated. There's still some of that approaching gray clouds, storm. But there's also something that feels almost like not gratitude exactly, maybe meaning. This date is part of my life now. This event, it's part of my life. It changed me, and some of what it changed me into, I don't regret. I know that might seem strange to some of you to say that, but it's true. And it doesn't mean I wanted it to happen. It just means I can see how I've changed and the things and the way that I've grown. And let's shift now to anyone listening to this, if you're responsible for other people, because this is where the anniversary conversation becomes a professional one. So when an organization goes through something significant, a disaster, a crisis, a major disruption, there will be an anniversary of that day or days. Maybe it's already passed a few times in an organization you're thinking about right now. Maybe this is the first year of the anniversary. Most organizations don't necessarily plan for that. Leaders often think, we handled it, we recovered, we've moved on. The operational timeline says we have. And that is important. Of course, your systems need to come back online, people need to come back to work, life needs to continue on. What I know from the inside, though, and from years of research and conversation, operations and rebuilding happen on a different timeline than the recovery of your people do. Systems can get back to normal while people still aren't okay. And anniversaries are one of those moments where you can see that. You can see that gap. It's visible. The employee who seems fine but goes quiet every April. The team that basically falls apart around the edges when there's a news story about something that they went through, or the leader who doesn't understand that morale dips at a certain time of year and there's a reason for that. And this is biology. When we experience something traumatic, our bodies and brains encode it. It's a memory, and for many people, it was a physical response. And anniversaries can trigger that response, even for people who've done a lot of work to heal. It's just how humans are built. And leaders often get wrong one of two things. They either ignore the anniversary entirely, no acknowledgement, no space, just business as usual. That may not be cruelty, they just might not be thinking about it. Or they know about the anniversary and they over-commemorate it in ways that can seem performative. And if not done correctly, can re-traumatize people by kind of forcing them back into the story when they're not really ready. What actually works is something simple and often harder to do. Acknowledgement. Genuine, human acknowledgement that something happened, that it mattered, that the people who lived through it are still the people who live through it. And then giving them the freedom to decide what they need to do about that day or that time of year. What did it actually feel like to navigate the institutional response after the bombing? I'll share that with you. I think it's useful as a map. It is a little bit of a horror story, but that's not how I mean it. So a few months after April 15th, I wrote a bunch of letters to the governor, to the mayor, to my city counselors, my state representatives, people like me with mental health wounds and no visible physical wounds. We were invisible in the official response for the most part. The focus was on the bereaved families and those with physical injuries. And those of us with psychological wounds, we just weren't part of the story. I didn't think our leaders even knew we existed. So I wanted to write this letter so they would know that. Someone from the governor's office called me. She spoke with me for about 15 or 20 minutes and asked all sorts of questions. What kind of help was I getting? How was I doing? She offered to get me help and find me services. She was warm and present, and I felt supported and I felt like a human being. Now, to be fair, she didn't fix anything. She didn't address any of the things I had specifically asked to change in the letter, but she showed me compassion. And that mattered more than I can easily explain in this episode of the podcast. And then there was the mayor's office. I basically got a form letter back, and it said, and I'm paraphrasing only slightly, please contact OneFund directly regarding victim assistance. The mayor and Boston City Hall are not involved with this issue. And it wasn't even signed by a human. The signature line actually said, Mayor's correspondence staff. I had written to my mayor saying I was traumatized and needed help several months after a bomb exploded across the street from me, and I got a form letter where someone didn't even want to put their name to it. And that contrast between those two responses, that's the lesson. That's it, right there. One person, I felt seen. The other institution made me feel like I was some sort of processing error. And both responses tell you a lot about the culture behind them, whether the humans running those systems have been prepared to respond to the humans affected by crisis. That's the work. Not the form letter, the 15-minute phone call. So what does doing it right look like? For leaders, organizations, anyone responsible for people who've been through something hard? Well, of course, there's no one way to handle this. Some things I will offer. First of all, know your own calendar. If your organization or your city went through something significant, mark it. It doesn't necessarily have to be public, but so you and your teams know when the anniversaries are coming and think about what your people might need. Because a simple acknowledgement from leadership can make a real difference. It can mean everything to someone who's struggling. An email that says, we know what this week is, we haven't forgotten, here's some resources. That's not a big lift, but it will make a huge difference. And here's something that makes this even more complex. Most organizations, municipalities, you're not managing just one anniversary of a bad thing that happened. There are many. That is unfortunately the way life works. So the bombing, then the executive who died suddenly two years later, a tornado that took out your warehouse, or a layoff that happened last year. Each of those dates within your organization or your community lives in someone's body, even if you don't put it on any kind of official calendar. So you might think you have one hard week a year, but it may be several. And you might not know it yet. And then there are anniversaries that you will never know about. And I know this is a challenge. The employee who survived a car accident before they joined your organization, the one who lost a child, someone who was in a building when there was a shooting, three jobs ago, and they never told anybody about it. These dates arrive for them every year, whether you and your organization acknowledge them or not. Now, of course, you can't manage what you don't know, but you can build a culture where people don't have to carry those dates alone. And that's the deeper work. Not tracking everybody's trauma history, but creating an environment where if someone is having a hard week, they don't have to pretend otherwise to stay safe. And they don't have to tell you what their trauma is and why they're struggling. Second, let's remember that recovery is not linear. And for some people, it's not complete. The person who looks like they've moved on may be doing an enormous amount of work that you're not seeing. Therapy, mindfulness, exercise, all sorts of things, medications. The anniversary may be harder this year than last for someone for reasons that have nothing to do with the original event and everything to do with life as it just happens. So check in with people, ask. And then here's the really important part. Actually listen to the answer. Third, if you are going to have some sort of commemoration, give people permission to not join in. Mandatory commemoration or remembrance can re-traumatize people. If you force them into a collective grief on your schedule, that might not be honoring their individual recovery. It might just be as an organization, you want to make sure you look like you did something or you did do something. So let people opt in, make the space available, just don't require it. And don't require someone to explain why they don't want to do it. And finally, this is the leadership. This is it. It's not a soft skill, it's not a nice to have. The way an organization handles the anniversary of a crisis is a direct expression of the culture. It tells your people whether they are seen, their experiences are counted as real, and if they're safe. That man who asked me why I was upset, he couldn't see my wound. Most leaders, you can't see these kind of wounds either. Not without looking really hard for them. But you have the power and the responsibility to look and to build a culture that's supportive even when you can't see them. 13 years. Some of what I've built from this, I definitely did not expect. The advocacy work, the policy work, the podcast, these conversations, standing on the TEDx stage, South by Southwest. These were amazing things to participate in and to share with the world. The thing about going through something that breaks your world apart is that you get to decide how and when you rebuild, even slowly and imperfectly. I don't know what the day is going to look like for me this year. I never quite know until the day actually arrives. But I know that I'll mark it in some way because that marking matters to me. It's a way to say to myself, okay, this happened, it changed things, and I'm still here. So if you're a survivor of anything, and most of us are survivors of something, I hope you find your own right way to mark the days that matter, or let them just go by quietly. Whatever you need. And if you're a leader, your people have dates on the calendar that mean something. Some of them you know about, many you don't. The ones you don't know about are still there every year, arriving like the weather and those storm clouds. You don't have to fix it. You just have to be willing to see it. Thanks for listening to Notes on Resilience.