Words matter. These are the best Amanda Lindhout Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Hillary Clinton has a strong and powerful voice regarding ending violence against women and girls.
I have a general sense of excitement about the future, and I don’t know what that looks like yet. But it will be whatever I make it.
The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women’s freedoms in southern Somalia – that type of mentality – that’s what I had to deal with in captivity.
I am so proud to be a Canadian.
Every day I have many choices to make about who I want to be.
It’s difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.
The big-time journalists generally had kidnapping insurance through their news organizations. Usually, it would pay for a crisis response company to help negotiate for a hostage’s release. Freelancers most often had none.
Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I’d gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.
With awareness come responsibility and choice.
Sometimes it’s nice for people not to know anything about me.
I went through an extremely trying ordeal, but I never forgot the world outside was a beautiful place.
I don’t think I’m unusual in that, in my 20s, like many people, I felt invincible.
When you see a 14-year-old boy who has never known what peace looks like for a day in his life, there’s part of you as a human being that feels some degree, you can say, compassion for the fact that these boys have known war, famine, violence and death from the day they were born.
A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.
It was a slow understanding that my kidnappers really are a product of their environment.
Sometimes, you have to make the choice to forgive 10 times a day when you have these pockets of anger come up. That’s a lot of work, but to me it’s worthwhile.
I think that I find a lot of my healing out in the world.
For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms… would give out, and I’d fall to the ground.
Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.
The book is called ‘A House in the Sky’ because during the very, very darkest times, that was how I survived. I had to find a safe place to go in my mind where there was no violence being done to my body and where I could reflect on the life I had lived and the life that I still wanted to live.
I must thank my good friend Nigel Brennan. His strength of character in the midst of extreme hardship inspired me during the darkest days. Despite our separation, he always managed to find small ways to remind me that there are gentlemen in the world, even when I was surrounded by just the opposite.
Because travel has always been such a vital part of myself and so essential to who I am, I have made the decision to continue to put myself back out into the world. And that’s not an easy decision to make.
Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.
I know firsthand how critical support systems are.
After being in captivity for so long, I can’t begin to describe how wonderful it feels to be home in Canada.
The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination – what do you dream of wanting to do?
It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.
The countries with the greatest problems have the kindest people.
Going into Somalia, I didn’t anticipate how many people’s lives would be affected by it. In hindsight, I certainly wish I had taken more time to think about that, but I can’t change it.
War dehumanizes everyone.
I don’t only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.
Contemplating Christmas when you are isolated and far from home brings its own unique pain.
Being in the dark, there’s a real weight to it. It’s heavy.
Friendships that don’t fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.
I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life – and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I’d lost my freedom.