I know firsthand how critical support systems are.

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.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

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

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