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

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.

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 am so proud to be a Canadian.

Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.

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.

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.