MSNBC, September 11, 2008

At some moment every day, Michelle Rosado thinks about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- the Twin Towers she captured on her camera a few days before and the moments she spent at her desk on the 95th floor of Tower 2. She told NBC 6's Willard Shepard that she also thinks about the friends, like Robert Chin, who didn't make it out of the building in time.

"What I really love is the fact, Willard, that I had the time to spend with them. It was their time to go," Rosado said. "When it comes closer to the anniversary, every year I think back on the great times that we spent together."

She described the moment one of the planes hit.

"I heard a vibration," Rosado said. "It sounded like an airplane, but it also sounded like a bomb."

Rosado's life today is about the strength Sept. 11 gave her, about telling people how to draw on their powers to overcome tragedies and setbacks.

"Anybody who has any type of tragedy in their lives, whether it be sickness, whether it be the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one -- I connect with them and say, 'You have experienced your own 9/11," Rosado said.

Rosado began to write her thoughts about Sept. 11 seven years ago. Her thoughts have turned into a motivational book she wrote with her husband, Randy Rosado.

"She started designing the articles that eventually led to the book," Randy Rosado said. "It's based on our life together. A lot of people look at us and think we had it pretty easy, but we got through a lot of hardships we got beat up by the real estate industry."

The Rosados' mortgage company hit hard times, but they are not deterred. The couple met shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when Rosado's company transferred her to South Florida. They were engaged three months later.

"Some people would say you work pretty quickly," Shepard said.

"Yeah, you've got to seize the opportunity, I guess," Randy Rosado said. "We don't feel like there's anything we can't get through, so I think that's what the book is designed to do."

"With my own experience, with Randy, our experiences, we have overcome adversity," Michelle Rosado said. "We want to show people how their own strengths, not ours, but their own strengths can lead them to pursuing their own destiny, whether it be in relationships, in work, whatever that they pursue to do in their life."

Michelle Rosado said she saw her life framed for her in the morning hours of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Every single opportunity that came before me after that day, I took. Every door that opened, every person – the one person who I fell in love with," she said.

A photo Michelle Rosado took shortly before Sept. 11, 2001, will be placed in the memorial to the victims that is scheduled to open at ground zero in the fall.