Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am so proud to be a Canadian.
Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.
I'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.
Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.
With awareness come responsibility and choice.
What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.
I know firsthand how critical support systems are.
What a woman is taught, she shares with her family.
Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.
I think that I find a lot of my healing out in the world.
Being in the dark, there's a real weight to it. It's heavy.
Every day I have many choices to make about who I want to be.
I have watched lives change. I have seen women gain confidence.
Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.
We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.
My confidence came from the way I grew up, and I'm grateful for it.
Somalia is an important story in the world, and it needed to be told.
You have a responsibility to move your dreams forward, no matter what.
I'm afraid of elevators, because they are an enclosed space, but I get in.
Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.
In my version of paradise, the air was always cold and the rivers ran with candy.
I don't think I'm unusual in that, in my 20s, like many people, I felt invincible.
I never felt an obligation to say every single terrible thing that happened to me.
A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.
Friendships that don't fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.
It was a slow understanding that my kidnappers really are a product of their environment.
I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.
Contemplating Christmas when you are isolated and far from home brings its own unique pain.
Hillary Clinton has a strong and powerful voice regarding ending violence against women and girls.
I went through an extremely trying ordeal, but I never forgot the world outside was a beautiful place.
The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?
After being in captivity for so long, I can't begin to describe how wonderful it feels to be home in Canada.
It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.
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.
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 road to recovery will not always be easy, but I will take it one day at a time, focusing on the moments I've dreamed about for so long.
I would like to especially acknowledge my home community of Calgary, and the people of central Alberta who made my dream of freedom a reality.
Christmas was the one time of year when my brothers surfaced at home, when my parents and grandparents congregated to eat my mother's roast turkey.
I used my captors names every chance I had. It was intentional, a way of reminding them that I saw them, of pegging them, of making them see me in return.
I used my captors' names every chance I had. It was intentional, a way of reminding them that I saw them, of pegging them, of making them see me in return.
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.
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.
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.
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 must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion.
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.
I've realized that the world is, in essence, full of banana peels - loaded with things that may unwittingly trip an internal wire in my mind, opening a floodgate of fears without warning.
I'm afraid of the dark, but I choose to sleep in the dark. I can fall right to sleep with the lights on. But I want to be someone who can sleep in the dark, so that's the choice that I make.
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.
Because that’s the thing about the exact moment when you get somewhere that has required effort: There’s a freeze-frame instant of total fulfillment, when every expectation has been met and the world is perfect.