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I Love New York by Mynou de Mey, Aromatherapy Educator - Volunteer with CERMT- Aromatherapy Effort
Living in New York for the last twenty-two years, I have grown to love Manhattan so much that most of my friends say that I live in Manhattan and go to sleep in Long Island.

All one has to do is listen to Billy Joel's  "New York State of Mind" to understand how easy it is to fall in love with The Big Apple.  

It is  a metropolis of people of all nations, all religions, all backgrounds, ethnic communities, art everywhere, the best pretzels on the street, American flagseverywhere... "Getoutahee'e".

I watched with horror on the morning of September 11, 2001 the felling of the towers. The rest is history. History of the worst kind.  At first I was overtaken by panic and then by fear, and eventually settled for a broken heart that has not mended as of yet.

Fortunately I was able to channel my helplessness into volunteering to help the families of the victims and all other volunteer workers such as firefighters, police officers and others.

  CERMT (Carolina Emergency Massage Team) was in search of a locale at which they could offer their services.  

It was quite difficult at first to locate an agency that would allow that team to operate in Manhattan. 

After spending many days on the phone and calling around the City, I was able to make contact with Safe Horizons and initiated the first contact for our team

  Since then Safe Horizons has been able to send our team all over Manhattan, and it's surroundings areas.

It was a fantastic journey that has allowed me to participate hands-on with the healing of my city, it's people, and myself. We met with firefighters who had lost half of their crew, some other stations had lost everyone. We met with police officers from England who had come to lend a hand.  We met with people from all over the States and from all over the world, who came generously to give of themselves, and in the process gave us their hearts.

The acceptance of our services and our help was beyond expectations.  I am particularly thankful to the members of the IDMA list on the Internet (an Aromatherapy list), who have been extremely generous by donating large quantities of essential oils, blends, respiratory formulas, that our team has distributed among the different fire houses and other places we visited in New York.  The response of the aromatherapy community was tremendous and it is very clear to me that this has been one of the largest team effort I have seen in this industry so far.

One experience that stays on my mind is the day that I worked in Staten Island, that famous hill which is the cemetery of the World Trade Center. 

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