On August 24, 2001, Margaret McKinnon and John Baljkas boarded a flight to Portugal bursting with excitement, newlyweds en route to their honeymoon. Just a few hours later, their lives changed forever when the plane's cabin lights flickered, TV screens clicked off, and the engine went out. The plane seemed doomed to crash. When it somehow landed on an island in the Azores just over an hour later, it seemed like a miracle. McKinnon, a PhD student studying psychology, walked away from the crash bruised and deeply shaken. At the same time, she couldn't help but think: "We should really do a study on this."
In the ensuing decades, McKinnon rose to prominence as a researcher of memory and trauma, largely inspired by a desire to understand her own brain in the aftermath of the near-fatal crash. And she did end up revisiting the incident in her work. The saga of McKinnon's study lies at the heart of Erika Hayasaki's 2021 profile of the psychologist, "How to Remember a Disaster Without Being Shattered by It."
After the crash, it took McKinnon and her colleagues years to track down enough passengers who were willing to participate in the research. Of the 19 who took part, around half lived with symptoms of PTSD, while the other half did not. McKinnon had seen a similar pattern emerge in her own marriage: She suffered from anxious flashbacks, while her husband just seemed happy to be alive. In the end, the process of talking with her fellow survivors about their memories of the crash forced her to work through her own trauma as well.
Hayasaki's feature is gripping, and well worth reading in its entirety. As I revisited it, I found myself thinking about all the ways we process hardship and emotion and trauma. That McKinnon chose to situate her day at the core of her life's work is so striking to me. How do emotional, personal moments show up in your work? I'd love it if you wrote me a note sharing your thoughts or left a comment beneath the story.
See you next week!
Eve
.jpg "An illustration depicting the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake with lots of smoke and fire.")
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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