I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms—or, more accurately, my quivering bank balance, accessed through foreign ATMs—would give out, and I’d fall to the ground.

I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.

I think that I find a lot of my healing out in the world.

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.

After being in captivity for so long, I can't begin to describe how wonderful it feels to be home in Canada.

I don't think I'm unusual in that, in my 20s, like many people, I felt invincible.