I know firsthand how critical support systems are.

Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.

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.

We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.

I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.

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'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.