I was born in New York City in 1932, which makes me, like my mother before me, a native New Yorker. We who were born in New York love the city in a special way. We become militant in its defense. In our eyes, the city can do no wrong.

The 9/11 terrorist attack hit home for me in a visceral way. What I felt on that day, and in the weeks and months that followed, I share with other New Yorkers. I learned that it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been away, nor where we live now, New York is still our hometown. The wounds to our city are our wounds, and her acts of bravery rub off on us, too.

We own the city in all its ancestral grit and glory, not just in times of high drama and heroism. We who are natives have lived through her political scandals and financial ruin, through garbage strikes and power failures, police corruption and traffic gridlock and racial conflict, through the grandiose plunder of urban development, the tense and volatile hot-wire continuum of visibility and invisibility that stretches tautly between its poles of wealth and poverty.

Sometimes we are the city’s parents, shaking our heads in collective and loving bewilderment as it threatens to self-destruct yet again. Sometimes we are its children, the city our beloved muse, our role model of how to be in the world.

The New York I love the most is the one I grew up in, the one that I still call home. That New York no longer exists. Because just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, the city changes, having reinvented itself while we weren’t looking, or right before our very eyes.

Urban legend has it that New Yorkers are tough and combative, pushy go-getters with trademark killer elbows from nudging our way onto crowded subways and buses. I cherish this reputation, and I can feel the difference in the way I walk when I’m there, a “don’t mess with me” attitude that I could never pull off anywhere else.

Under all this bravado is the spirit that the city has never lost — fierce, compassionate, and indomitable — that flourished in the weeks and months after September 11th.

I went back to the city on Thanksgiving of that year. It was sunny and warm. I was alone. I had expected the city to be quiet, even deserted. But the streets were crowded. As I walked, I saw something in the eyes of those who met my eyes that made us smile at each other, an unheard-of indulgence, even for the holiday season. We shared a new sense of gratitude for those of us who were still here, a silent homage to those who were not.

I went back on the first anniversary of 9/11. With Ground Zero closed to the public, I found my way instead to St. Paul’s chapel, just across the street. This sanctuary opened its doors to policemen and women, firefighters, rescue workers, survivors, volunteers, and families of the missing and lost. It offered shelter, food, beds, counseling, massage, chiropractic services, or simply solitude, whatever would help them endure and return to their work at Ground Zero.

Here, in this chapel, that spirit had been distilled. I could feel its embrace as I walked in and sat down. I was no longer a displaced New Yorker who grieved her loss from a distance. In this place, I became part of the communal spirit that gathered in both our loss and our healing.

It was in me and around me, in the pews filled with firefighters and police in dress uniforms, in the faces of the docents and clergy, in the hush of prayers offered and received, in the pellucid sun filtered through stained glass, illuminating the banners and memorabilia that covered the walls.

Once again, I had found my way home.

Patricia Stamm lives in Stonington.