Headwinds: A Memoir of Loss, Love, and the Long Road Home (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798182725682)

A World Trade Center survivor's true story of losing his sister on 9/11 and the long journey of grief, faith, and finding purpose that followed.

In 1993, Patrick McGarry was trapped on the 96^th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower when terrorists struck, and he survived. But eight years later, he lost his younger sister, Katie McGarry Noack, on September 11, 2001. She was only thirty years old and newly married. Her last words home were simple: Please tell my family that I love them.

For the next twenty-five years, Patrick built a career in the energy industry, got married, raised two sons with his wife, Mariana-and tried to outrun his grief. But grief is patient, and loss doesn't disappear with time. Instead, it changes shape. And so, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, Patrick decided to turn grief into purpose, to honor Katie and all the others whose lives had shaped him by riding his bicycle across the country. At sixty-two years old, he rode over three thousand miles, through harsh weather and exhaustion, raising more than $113,000 for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. It became a pilgrimage through memory and a final step toward peace.

Because those we love are never truly gone if we remember them-and love can still have the final word.

For readers of true stories of grief, faith, and finding purpose after unimaginable loss, like Crying in H Mart, Notes on Grief, and Blessed Are the Spiraling.