I remember that day. Dark. Painful.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was eating breakfast in front of the Today Show at my house in Birmingham. Our cat Oliver, a ball of fur, was purring and wanting some of my food.

I was petting him when the news came: a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I froze, then turned slowly to the screen and watched the plane disappear into the building, followed by fire and smoke. My cereal bowl tilted. Milk spilled. A little later, I watched with a horrified America as the second plane went into the South Tower.

That moment is still vivid. My eyes were fixed on the screen, and my lips were whispering with agony: please, oh please, don't let them be Arabs, don't let them be Muslims. My hand let go of the bowl. It hit the floor and shattered, cereal and milk everywhere. Oliver ran and watched from a few feet away.

That afternoon, before anyone named a single hijacker, I drove to Samford University to teach my photojournalism class. I walked into the teachers' lounge for coffee, and a professor I had known for over a decade snarled at me. "I can't believe you would show your face around here on a day like today."

The next weeks were a blur. I ate little. I moved through a cloud of sorrow and shame. I blamed myself for being a Muslim Arab, for belonging to a religion and an ethnicity that could carry out such a massacre. I avoided people. I did not want their accusing looks, though there were plenty. They didn't bother me. I deserved them. Look what we have done. Look what my people have done.

Then a friend told me those pronouns were wrong.

"You have nothing to do with those terrorists," he said. "So what if you're a Muslim? There's good and bad in every religion."

True. But I knew that day would mark me for the rest of my life, and it has. Twenty-five years later, I am still explaining my religion and my ethnicity. I still want to say: stop asking me if I am a terrorist.

I'm not.

Stop asking me if Islam is a terrorist religion.

It isn't.

This memory has edges. it has been cutting me for twenty-five years, and the only thing that slows the bleeding is kindness.

So do something today to make this world a little friendlier. Smile at a stranger. Love people harder, Give something away.

Do it before you know their names.