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

I am so proud to be a Canadian.

Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.

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

I'm afraid of elevators, because they are an enclosed space, but I get in.

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.