The morning of September 11, 2001 began like any other Tuesday.

As the publicist for Fox & Friends at Fox News Channel, I was always one of the first to arrive at the office. My day began at a desk surrounded by four television monitors, each tuned to a different morning news network - Fox News Channel, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. It was a time when 24-hour news coverage was still relatively new and none of us could have imagined how dramatically that would change over the next few hours.

At 8:46 that morning, the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Within seconds, every television in front of me switched to live coverage of lower Manhattan. I was also the coordinator for the Media Relations department, seated outside the office of the Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications, just steps from then-Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. When the second plane hit, there was no longer any doubt that our country was under attack.

I was immediately assigned to the newsroom to help monitor our breaking news coverage, where I would remain until nearly 10 o'clock that night.

Once I was finally able to reach my mother and tell her I was safe, I pushed everything else aside and focused on my job. Throughout the day, I captured screen grabs from our live broadcasts and distributed them to newspapers, magazines and other media outlets so they could use Fox News Channel's coverage in their reporting. As each devastating development unfolded, I repeated the process over and over again.

I wasn't sitting at my own desk anymore. I was in the middle of the newsroom, surrounded by journalists working to cover an unimaginable tragedy in real time. While the images I sent to the media had already been deemed appropriate for broadcast, I was constantly exposed to raw footage coming directly from Ground Zero.

I didn't know it then, but many of those images would stay with me for years.

At the time, I was still living on Long Island. Because transportation into and out of Manhattan had shut down, Fox News put me up in a nearby hotel for several days. I bought a toothbrush at what I remember being the only open Duane Reade and wore the same clothes until the Long Island Rail Road resumed service and I was finally able to go home.

In the days that followed, many of the images I had distributed appeared on the front pages of newspapers, including USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. They were also published in magazines and online as news organizations recounted the events of September 11. My supervisors, including Roger Ailes, praised my work and my focus under extraordinary circumstances.

But pride wasn't what I felt.

As a media professional, it was my responsibility to help get information to the public. Looking back, though, I've often wondered whether my commitment to doing my job kept me from fully processing the human tragedy unfolding just a few blocks away.

I think about the firefighters, police officers and first responders who ran toward danger to save complete strangers. I think about the ordinary people who left for work that morning expecting nothing more than another Tuesday. I think about the families whose lives changed forever in a matter of minutes.

Twenty-five years later, I still struggle to reconcile those two realities.

I like to believe that the work I did helped people understand the magnitude of what was happening and, in some small way, helped inform a nation searching for answers. But I also know that no professional accomplishment could ever outweigh the human loss.

What remains with me most is not the praise I received or the newspaper front pages.

It is the memory of that day, the people we lost, and the extraordinary courage of those who gave everything for others.

As we remember September 11, my thoughts remain with the thousands of lives lost, the families who continue to carry that loss, and the heroes who showed us the very best of humanity in one of our darkest moments. 

May we never forget them.