Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - 460 Days in the Darkness of Somalia | Amanda Lindhout | Ep. 468

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Amanda Lindhout grew up in small-town Alberta and waited tables to pay for backpacking trips through Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She taught herself the job along the way and turned into a freelance foreign correspondent, filing from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan with no network behind her and no one responsible for her if it went wrong. In August 2008 she flew into Mogadishu to cover the famine. It was supposed to be a one-week trip. She was ambushed on the road outside the city and held for 460 days. Her memoir about it, A House in the Sky, became a New York Times bestseller. This conversation covers the whole arc. Why she kept choosing more dangerous places, and what she can see now that she couldn't at 27. What captivity actually looked like day to day. The escape attempt and the punishment that followed. We also spend real time on the aftermath, which she says was almost as hard as the captivity. Complex PTSD. Going back to Somalia and why. Coming off the medication. Plant medicine. And why she stopped saying she forgave them.   Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com   Today's Sponsors:  Montana Knife Company:  https://www.montanaknifecompany.com Brunt:  Get $10 off at BRUNT with code "clearedhot" at https://www.bruntworkwear.com/clearedhot and enter THE BRUNT POTTY OF GOLD SWEEPSTAKES for your chance to win $50,000. No purchase necessary. Ends 9/18/26. Official rules apply. 

Okay, got the red smoke. To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. God, I'd so deeply want to get up and double check his work. Trust, right? Once it's gone. But here's the thing. I think he knows what he's doing. I've trusted him in the past.

Oh, no. And it didn't go my way. And so once trust is gone. Michael. What? It never goes to your way. Oh, what do you on the road for? I mean, I know you guys are making your way from.

BC, where you're, we're just relocating within the province. So we're moving to Vancouver Island, a place called North Sanich, which is really close to Victoria. My wife has a friend, female, what's the appropriate way to say this? Sorry. No, it, she, I want to say previous M.A. Fire. Sorry, Sarah, if I'm incorrectly describing. She is a police officer very, I think she might be on Vancouver Island, actually. And if that is the case, I will link you guys up.

Yeah, please. She's a badass. Cool. She tries to rip my face off when we train Jiu-Jitsu, and I did nothing to her at all. I don't deserve any of the aggression she comes at me with, but she is gnarly. And I'm pretty sure that's where she lives and works. Okay. Well, if that's so, yes, please, connections would be great.

I get confused sometimes because there's a Vancouver, Washington as well. Oh, is there? Yes. And then it's not that far from Vancouver, B.C., so, yeah, people could really probably benefit. Why the move, though? Well, Nelson is a beautiful place, as you know, but it's in the middle of freaking nowhere. It kind of is. It is part of what makes it really special and nice.

But, you know, we've been there for five years. And I'm just on the road a lot. I do a lot of public speaking. And it's a slog to get in and out. So we have to drive four hours to the Colonna Airport, which isn't a major airport. So then there's usually a connection flight. And, you know, in some months, like, May was it for us because I think I had like six different flights that month. So that was six separate trips to Kelona, eight hours round trip each.

And I just went, no, we can't do this anymore. Would it almost be closer to go to Spokane? You obviously have to cross through the border. Yeah. Yeah. And we've used Spokane too. We've sort of utilized all that's available in the area. Yeah, why not?

Nelson is just too remote. So we were like, where can we move that's beautiful in pristine nature near a good airport? And it wasn't really clear to us for a while. We were just kind of like sitting, thinking about it. And I have one of my best girlfriends lives on Vancouver Island. And I was kind of reminiscing about some nice memories there and thought, oh, my God, Vancouver Island. That could be the place. And so, yeah, that's, it felt good.

It felt right. I mean, life's kind of an adventure anyway. what's the worst case? It's not right. And then you find another place that might be right. Yeah, exactly. I think flexibility is really underrated. People are, people really like structure and routine. And that works for some people. I've always been a super flexible and adaptable person. And so the idea of moving is exciting to me. Yeah. Yeah. I've moved a lot in my life. You have lived a lot of life in your life so far. Your story is pretty, I don't know the correct word. It's wild and fascinating, but for largely the wrong reasons. Not that you were making bad choices, but you found yourself in some situations that were pretty utterly horrendous or a situation that was for sure. How did you find Nelson? Because it is in the middle of nowhere,

so you almost have to be looking for something that's in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Nelson came many, many years after those reckless decisions that led me into the heart of Somalia. You know, I would disagree with somebody that said that they were some poor decisions. But, you know, I was in my early 20s and I was, I don't know, testing my own boundaries and I had traveled around the world a lot and crossing a lot of borders. And yeah, I think my ability to be with danger just increased over time. I had spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq. And- There's traveling the world and there's time in Afghanistan and Iraq and then Somalia. Those are two very different things.

Yeah. Do you truly view it as reckless now? Oh, God, yeah. Yes. I mean, I'm 45 years old now. And looking back on this younger version of myself, I mean, I've accepted it. I'm not like super hard on myself for making those decisions, even though they had pretty significant consequences, not just for myself, but for all the people that I love the most in the world too. But I've been able to really trice the roots of those risk-taking behaviors.

Like I realize now things I didn't even five years ago. Like I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence. There was a lot of conflict. It wasn't a very safe place. So being in a war zone as a young adult, it wasn't as unfamiliar to me an experience as it would be maybe for someone else. I didn't value my life a great deal during those years. Yeah, because I... Did you realize that when you were that young or is this looking back?

No, this is looking back. So this is the perspective that I have now at 45 years old. I certainly did not have that then. Yeah. No, I spent many years after that big experience, like pondering the why me question. I couldn't really work it out. Like, why had I gone there? I mean, it was working as a journalist.

That was my ambition. That's what I wanted to do. but was, I think I was 27 at the time. Like what was a 27-year-old young woman from a very small city in, you know, central Alberta, Canada, doing in the most dangerous country in the world, right? I really had to be with that for many years and have the willingness to ask myself some pretty big questions and go deep, go back to my childhood, go back to like, who was young Amanda? what was I thinking? Why was I making these decisions? And I was able to come out with some pretty

clear answers to those things, which now I'm no longer sitting with the why me. I can, I can, I can trice it all back. And I just have full acceptance now of both the choices, the experience, the aftermath, all of it. I mean, it's all happened. So, and my life today is wonderful. How do you think 25-year-old Amanda would have answered the question, do you value your What do you think your answer would have been in that moment? I would have said I do. Really? Yeah, I would have said I do.

How would you have justified the risk in your answer with that? I do, however, headed to Somalia. I do, however, reporting from Baghdad. Right. Yeah. I think, and it's not a lie. What I was very attached to at that age, and I can still feel into the truth of it, was that I believed so much.

in the work of a journalist to share important stories from corners and parts of the world that we often don't see. And so I think if 25-year-old Amanda was asked that, that would just be the answer. But I didn't, as most 25-year-olds don't, have the self-awareness that I have now to be able to look a little bit deeper, to pull back the layers of that. Like, I'm going to the heart of places that most people, you couldn't pay the millions of dollars to go into. But I'm looking at a map of the world going where else? Like I've been to Afghanistan, I've been to Iraq, I've been to northern Uganda, I've been to parts of Africa that are pretty scary and what's next? Okay, the worst country in the world, you know, which, you know, that year, that was, Smolio was, you know,

pretty widely reported to be the most dangerous place in the world. But I just, I didn't have that self-awareness yet. I felt like what I was doing was, I don't know, like noble work in a way. I don't necessarily feel that piece now. You know, there's a lot more to it than that. But at the time, that's what I would have said. I think I was peak Dunning Kruger at 25. I think it was at the apex of knowing everything.

Well, simultaneously, no. Right. But my confidence, I'm trying to remember what my buddy Evan says. It's like supremely confident, never correct or something like that. Just there's some version of that, yeah, which is just absolutely nails at least young men from the age of, let's be honest here. 14 to maybe 45. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. You know who they are.

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Right? Some people never really get out of that place where they can't see a bigger picture. They don't grow the self-awareness. My God, I know many people, you know, people that are in their 60s, you know, people I'm related to without naming any names that I just haven't gone on that journey of growing their self-awareness to become, to expand who they are. You know, they're still stuck in the same patterns and habits and things that they did that didn't really work for them in. their 20s, only they're decades older now, right? Don't you think? Many people do that. Yeah, and I wonder, and I don't recommend my own life experiences to other people. I'll answer honestly, I can explain my why as to why I went down those things and the things that came from them, both positive and negative. And I never tried to tell people what to do. If they ask me questions about what potential outcomes will be, I'll be super honest, but like, even with my own kids, like, you guys need to make a pure own mind. Let's water the grass where you have interest as opposed to me telling you what it is you should do. I don't.

and ask my kids, what do you want to be when you grow up? I say, what are you interested in? And we can go explore that. Very wildly different answers with all three of them, too. And they've changed over time. But I often wonder that person who doesn't evolve, do they live a simpler, happier life? Not that I would want to have that life,

because I truly do value the vast majority of mistakes that I've made or the uncomfortable moments or the failures, such great teachers. Yeah. But also, if you just, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I didn't do that myself, but I wonder sometimes, did I make the wrong choice here? Did they make the wrong choice?

Or is there no wrong choice? We just took different paths. Yeah, you know, similar but different. I often think about, you know, you come out of some kind of difficult experience. And if you're wired like we are and you go down that path of like lots of self-reflection and growing the awareness and answering all the questions. I mean, it's a lot of work. And then there's another danger of getting stuck on this never-ending hamster wheel of the personal development project, like the healing work. You know, and the culture supports that so much now.

Eventually you become. Yeah. It's so true. Like you can just never get off of that too. There's another stone to turn over and another thing that's happened that you need to like dissect right down to the. I have buddies who have morning routines that end when they go to bed. Right. Yeah. Me too. Like, excellent cold plunge and sauna ratio.

Your morning routine just took you nine hours and you're exhausted. What the fuck? But also live your life however you want to. Right. Yes, definitely. Yeah. I'm the one to judge. I mean, I basically wake up every day and it's a train wreck. So I'm not advocating that for anybody either. I'm like, let's just see what, you know, kicks in the teeth.

Life has for me to do. day. Yeah. In those other places, it's tough to say how close sometimes you got to danger, but do you have any sense of, obviously Somalia was head and shoulders above specifically ended up happening. But do you think you got relatively close to that type of danger in any of those other places? There was, like, it's kind of shocking that it took as many years for something like really drastically bad to happen as it did. Because when I look back on, because it was quite a few years of being out in the world in these really tumultuous places. And I guess I was just really lucky that nothing actually did ever cross over into like a full out disaster. But sure,

there was lots of scary things. I mean, when I was in Afghanistan, I was in Afghanistan for almost a year. And I was as a journalist embedded with the American military and the Canadian military. And we're going out and there's firefights with the Taliban. And I'm just like down on the ground, there's bullets flying around. I mean, I lived that and nothing happened. And then in Iraq, there was an experience that I had with, I was out with like my cameraman and my fixer and drivers. There was like a group of us. And we were in an area where there was a lot going on. It was not safe to be there. And yeah, we got stopped by a militant group. And like that could have become what happened in Somalia, I could have easily become abducted. For whatever reason, they let us go.

But when I was in captivity in Somalia, I often thought back to that experience, which had only been like six months before. I actually got taken in Mogadishu. And so, yeah, there were numerous other frightening experiences. The Iraq group might have been hesitant because of the values. military presence from both the U.S. and Canada. And it brings a lot of scrutiny and heat. And with that comes a lot of pressure, especially if it can be applied. What was your, at that time, what was, do you remember what your biggest fear was? Was it death?

Was it injury? Was it abduction? It was, I know for sure what it was. It was being beheaded, which is pretty gruesome answer. Let's add the tail into that, too, and ending up on YouTube. Right. Yeah. But that was very much. I remember at that time, it was 2008 when I was in Iraq. And you just, you saw that kind of thing in the streets a lot. You would see, I mean, it's so horrible to even like put a voice to it. But yeah, you would see people who had died in that most terrible of ways, like their bodies on the street. Or the bread concrete or a street corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, my God, that puts some. fear in you. So definitely that was my biggest fear that I carried with me all through captivity

as well because that was what they often threatened me with. That that's what they were going to do. And so, yeah, I lived with that fear for a long time. How did you decide on going to Somali? You were in Iraq at the time? Yeah, I was living in Iraq. Just a quick vacay over to the Horn of Africa, you know? As you do. Just we'll just bounce over for the weekend. Yeah, a short flight. Yeah. Yeah, I was living in Baghdad. I lived in an apartment building that like all the major journalists were living in. It was quite a scene there, you know.

And like most of us were always also looking for other stories, what else is going on. And there was a lot going on in Somalia that year. There was a big food crisis that became a famine. And because it was so dangerous, I mean, everybody wanted to go. That's the thing. If you're wired to go to these places, I mean, I'm sure it'd be interesting. Now, all the people that I knew back then, all those journalists who, I mean, they just went from war zone to war zone to war zone. Like, what's the backstory there? Why were we all there? Right? We were all wanting to go to Somalia. But, you know, for many of them, it's like news editors that are saying, no, right? We'll get a local fixer to get the story. I had more freedom because I was mostly freelance. And so I thought, well, here's a great opportunity. for me because others aren't able to go. There's some pretty big genuine stories coming out of the Horn of Africa right now. So it was supposed to be a one week work trip. And I had some contacts in the country from other journalist friends who had been there over the years. So I was

connected with like the main fixer, like the guy who organizes everything for any journalist that that went there at that time. Like he was like, you know, at the top of the chain, a joe was his name. And so I felt pretty confident having someone like that organized the security detail and all the logistics. And so, yeah, it was supposed to be this quick, this quick work trip. I left behind all my stuff in my apartment and just went with a backpack with an Australian guy who I'd known for many years.

He at one time was a boyfriend of mine. But we were no longer a couple for many years. But he was a pretty great photographer. And he was not so far away. He was in London. And he said, yeah, I'll join you. So we met in Kenya. And then together we went on that fateful trip.

Why do you think all of the reporters wanted to go? There's a difference between actively participating or being engaged in the wars and like the soldiers that you were with in Afghanistan. there's a huge difference between being there and being able to shoot back and not even having a gun to shoot back with and relying upon other people. Why do they want to go? Well, I can't answer that for them. I mean, like in general, is it a competition for the story? Is that how you build your bona fides in that world? It's your resume.

Are they drawn to it? Because again, it's you're a witness, hopefully. and hopefully not an active participant. But there's just such a huge difference in those. I think all of the things you named are a factor. But I've come to believe that those of us that are drawn to careers that put you in such danger, there's got to be something else. There's got to be some kind of backstory that maybe some kind of trauma background that going to

these environments is appealing to you. That was the work that I was saying that I did much. much, much later, kind of pulling apart. Why was I interested in going to those places? Perhaps if I just stayed in that line of work, you don't ever have the space to really ask those questions and to reflect on that. It becomes your lifestyle. You're also drinking, I mean, maybe not everyone, but definitely as part of that culture,

you're experiencing a lot. You're incurring a lot of trauma, even in these environments, even if nothing is terrible happening to you that's absolutely terrible, the things you're seeing every day or leaving a trauma imprint. So what do you do at night? You get together. You drink your faces off. Historically great for working through things.

Right? Yeah. But there was a certain point for me when I looked back. And I would bet that if those people have had the space and time and maybe aren't in that line of work anymore to kind of reflect back with honesty and self-awareness on the story of their lives, there's probably something else there. I would, that's my guess. In that world, what is, what's your metric for success?

Is it how many articles that you have had published? Is it breaking a story? Like, you know what I mean? What's the pecking order and how are those things established in that world? Or isn't there, is there not one? Well, I'm sure that there is. Now, I will say, I'm probably not the best person to say the pecking order because I never had that, I never achieved that pinnacle of success.

I wasn't, I am. What did you think that the pinnacle of success? was. I thought the pinnacle of success was working for one of like the big guns, like one of the big publications. At that time, it was like Newsweek magazine right back then. You wanted to be working for like Newsweek or Time or I don't know, USA Today or the New York Times. You don't want to be working for one of these and breaking stories and getting the exclusives. And many of us were not at that level and we're just trying to, I guess, get enough experience. And, and street cred, then doors start opening for you.

And you slowly, like in any industry, as opportunities become available, you know, it's who you know and you've kind of positioned yourself with your past experiences to maybe go through that door. Yeah. Wild. Those we'll call them what we call those major publication houses. How often do they use freelances or do they often have people that are on salary? Or is that the move? You go from freelance and yes, I have a contract with one of these organizations.

So I think it has changed so much. I think the publishing goal has changed quite a bit. Right. Since I was doing it till now. Back then, it was a lot of staff. And yeah, the goal was to transition out. I mean, for some people the goal. I can't speak for everyone.

For me, the goal would have been to transition out of being freelance and have like a steady job. These days though, what I understand is that it's it's a lot more freelance work because then those major publications don't have the same level of risk if something goes wrong. They can use local journalists who are stringers for them who can get the story, get the pictures, or just foreigners who are working as freelance journalists and buy it off of them, but without bringing them under their umbrella where they're responsible if something goes wrong, which was the exact scenario that I was in in Somalia. I had pitched the story to many different media outlets. Of course, everyone was interested. It was a big story. I would have had no trouble selling what I

got. And so I went there without the protection, though, of any particular news organization so that if something went wrong, they would be the ones maybe negotiating for me, maybe potentially paying a ransom. I don't think a lot of media outlets actually pay ransoms, but they'll do a lot of facilitation and they have insurance, and it kind of goes down like that. But I really and truly had no one looking out for me. And then as soon as I was kidnapped and it was reported like that night.

I remember being in captivity that night. and my kidnappers were listening to the BBC radio, which was the BBC Somali service. So it's all in Somali, but I can understand my name and my colleague's name being announced. And I know it's news now. And of course, all those editors and news directors that I had been in touch with and that I had worked with in Iraq were like, you know, she's not ours, which I wasn't really. you know, and then that became my government and my family's, like, situation to deal with. How did it get reported so quickly? Gosh, I can't remember how that all went down.

Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. It came out rather quickly because, so my colleague and I were in Mogadishu. We had that fixer, a jove who kind of manages all the journalists who come in. And there was two other journalists who were staying at the same hotel as us with National Geographic magazine. So that morning we had each the National Geographic guys and then ourselves gone out to get our respective stories. We never came back. So, yeah, we were missing. And in a country like Somalia where there is so many kidnappings, we hadn't been reported dead anywhere.

We were, yeah, we were missing. We had been abducted. No one knew who took us for a couple of days. And then what happened was one of the leaders of the kidnapping came to visit us. And he had a phone and he wanted us to call our families. And we had to tell our families like, okay, this is what's happened. These guys are demanding a ransom. And that's how the details of it started to come out.

when did you knew you were in trouble like as the kidnapping was ongoing i mean really that first day i mean even in those first moments like we're driving along a highway road there's myself my colleague we've got three armed security guys with us in the back a driver a translator so there's a little group of us we're driving along i'm listening to my um ipod and like daydreaming and then our vehicle slowing down and I look up and I see on the road up ahead there's a parked car and and from behind that parked car there's like a dozen guys that are now running out they're all holding AK-47s their faces are all wrapped up in scarves and I'm like oh shit and rather quickly it went into shock like I'm quite numb. I'm not even just completely terrified. I'm quite numb. And I'm thinking,

I do remember thinking, this is a robbery. I had actually in my travels in Sudan once been robbed. And it was kind of similar to this. That was my first thought. I would look back later and think, if only it was as simple as being robbed by gunmen. And so our vehicle was surrounded. Our doors were pulled out. Our gunmen were left behind. And they basically, it happened so fast. They're in the vehicle, now one of them's at the wheel. They're just like packed in like sardines around us. And there's a gun held to my head. And they just drove us off the road like literally through the desert. We're just like offroading to to a house that they had set up for us. So this had been very planned. They had someone had, we figure like someone had tip them off that we were going

to be driving down the road that day, probably someone from the hotel that knew our movements. And basically by the time that we got to that house, I knew we were in trouble. And that worst fear that I mentioned to you earlier about the worst thing that could possibly happen to me, that was already in my mind. That there might be something pretty gruesome that might happen. Did they explain anything to you when you got there or are you just being manhandled? No pun intended. Yeah. No, they actually those guys that took us off the side.

of the road, like, spoke barely any English. And I would find out later, not even that much later, by the time we got to that house, a lot of them took their face scarves off. And I'm like, oh my God, they're barely older than being children. Like, truly, the youngest of them was 14. So they were like really young, barely spoke any English, a couple of words. So they didn't really have the means to communicate much with us. However, over time, it's interesting how you find ways to like communicate even when you don't speak the same language but initially no it took it took quite a few hours for one of the leaders to come and he spoke english really well um he it's it's almost like comical looking back on that that scene because my colleague and i are in this

room there's no electricity like it's really primitive um and this guy comes in and he's wearing these like perfectly round little glasses and he is missing his top front tooth. And he speaks English perfectly. He's got a little notebook and a pen and he sits down across from us. And he's like, you know, introduces himself. He tells us his name is Adam. And he's, yes, right? And he tells us, you know, you've been kidnapped. We're going to ask for a ransom. What do you think of that? I remember him asking us, what do you think of that? But this was straight money right from the beginning. It was. It wasn't anything political.

Okay. No, it was a group of criminals after money. And then he asks us, like this shows, even though he spoke English, like how really ignorant of the world these guys are. His question wasn't even what country are you from. He's like asking us what village were from. And he's getting ready to write down all the answers. It's like, wow. They really knew so little about the world outside of their borders.

Yeah, it was shocking, actually. And, yeah, that's when we learned that there was going to be a ransom demand. I think he was asking us to, like, how much? What do you think we should ask for? What is the fair market value on you? Right? And I remember us telling him the truth, which was two things. Our governments don't pay ransoms.

They don't. Unless you're a diplomat, then they might do that quietly. But they weren't going to pay one for us. We knew that. And neither of our families are very wealthy, but like my family in particular, I mean, I grew up on welfare, right? Like my mom was a cashier at our neighborhood grocery store. My dad, my parents aren't together, but like my dad lives on long-term disability payments. So this guy's talking about asking for millions of dollars, right?

Because in his mind, not knowing much about the world, he's like, Like you're white. In your countries, everyone has millions of dollars. Like, it'll be nothing for them to pay it, right? Little did he realize. And we're trying to tell him, like, no, our families don't have this money. I think the initial ask was for $3 million. It changed all the time. But I think the initial ask was for $3 million, which was like asking for the moon from our families. How long until it really sunk in? that's a good question. There was maybe even a couple months. Like that might sound like a strange answer, but it is longer than I thought you were going. When you said maybe a couple, I was thinking hours. Now let me clarify that.

I mean, the hard reality that would set in, but then perhaps it's my wiring as an individual, too, that I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, I'm very optimistic. And so I would think, well, they're going to realize really soon that, like, our families don't have that much money. And maybe our family, and I would be trying to do all this math in my mind, like, okay, maybe if my dad sold this house and then, you know, Nigel and I would have these conversations. That was my colleague, Nigel. How much money do we think our families could get together? I mean, maybe they'll just take it. So we'll be out of here next week.

I would set these dates really arbitrarily that I would imagine. and really hope and almost start to believe that it was it was going to be over. Like it would be like, well, there's no way this could still be going on by Christmas time, right? Like, I would believe that to be true. Like, this has got to be over soon. Like, this is so difficult for everyone, including these guys in the house. And so, I mean, yeah, I want to say it was like a couple of months that I just, it really, the reality of this could take like years. really started to land.

And then there's like quite a depression that comes with that realization, like a feeling of real hopelessness. And yeah. And then, you know, I would over the course of time, like I kept finding ways to kind of pull myself back up out of this. Like there's got to be a way. There will be a way. But there were from time to time these phone calls

with my mom, who is the primary negotiator for both of us. There were always... Which, by the way, sounds insane. I mean... Just a direct phone call with your mom? Right. I mean, it is. Just the emotional insanity of that.

Yeah. I would almost not want to talk to my mom. Maybe just somebody's voice I don't recognize. Right. Hard enough as it is. I don't need to say, hey, mom, how's it going? Yeah. Shitty on my end, how's your day?

Yeah. The way that they, the way that the Canadian government and the Australian governments were managing this situation was they didn't want to be the representatives on the phone, though they were providing support to our families. They felt like it was better for, and it ended up being my mom, who was the voice of our families. they felt that that would be, that might soften them a little to heap for the reason that you just said like it's someone's mom, right? Maybe it wouldn't, they wouldn't be as like, take such a hard line. My mom was always surrounded by Canadian negotiators, like from the Canadian police who were coaching her. They were putting up like boards of, say, this, ask this. Everything's being recorded. But as far as the kidnappers know, they're just talking to

mom. She's by herself. She's saying the government won't help us. We don't have the money. But I would get these updates periodically from my kidnappers. I was rarely on the phone with my mom. And yeah, it just sounded really, really grim. Like there's this was where I really started to go, oh my gosh, this is going to take years because I like I knew my family. doesn't have this money. Like my mom is a cashier at a bakery for minimum wage. Where is this money going to come from? This might, you know, I may not make it. This may take years or I just may not make it out of here because as time was passing after the first couple months especially, that's when they started just very regularly threatening us that if the money wasn't paid

like quicklyish that they were going to kill us, that they would behead us. So they started saying that to us really regularly. So I began living with this fear every day of like, when is it going to be too much time that they deem, okay, just kill them. How did you spend your days? Well, there were different, you know, I was in captivity for 460 days. So that's almost a year and a half. That's a long time. Yeah.

And there was different parts of the captivity. the answer to that, like, how did I spend my days changed a lot over time. Initially, I was, for the first three months, I think it was, I was held in a room with my colleague Nigel. In hindsight, that was the best part of the whole captivity because I had someone to talk to. We could trade information and try to problem solve. And then one day, really without any explanation to us, They just came into this room that we shared and they picked up Nigel's things. Like we didn't, we had almost nothing, but we were sleeping on these little foam mats on the floor.

And they like picked up Nigel's mat and they told him they've got their guns like come with us. And they bring Nigel to another room in the house. And like no explanation. And just like that, suddenly we were alone. And we were never again held together. So I don't know the actual math on 460 days, but say it's around about a year and a half for only for three months was I with Nigel. And then the rest of that time I was by myself.

And those first months of being by myself were, oh my God, so challenging. It was the first time in my life that I was ever just alone with myself, right? I didn't have anything to listen to or read or watch or anything. I'm just like alone with myself in a room. And that was painful at that time. My own thoughts. Like I hadn't yet learned how to really manage my own thoughts. And so I was, yeah, I was like plummeting down into despair.

And things did change for me when Nigel was taken out of the room because now I'm alone. I'm a woman. there's no witnesses to anything that's going to happen. So my reality changed a lot. And that was so difficult. It was so difficult that I began to take pretty big risks to find ways to communicate with Nigel. Like he was held in a separate room, but it was down this hallway. And I had to walk past his room anytime I was allowed to use the toilet.

So like there was no toilet nearby. But a couple times a day they would let me go to the toilet. And as time was going on, like they were getting a bit lazier. They wouldn't always come and walk me to the toilet. They would just tell me I could go. And so I would stop at Nigel's door. He could hear me coming. And we could exchange a few words.

So for a few months, it was like that. He had become aware that bad things were happening to me. He could hear things in the house. And we were both just feeling so desperate. Like, I mean, they're starting to really cross lines with us. The threat of killing us has amped up. And we decided that we should try to escape. Like, we should try to find a way out of there. And that was like the next phase of our kidnapping was planning and executing an escape. And then there was the aftermath of the escape. So all of those parts of the kidnapping were very, very, very different from each other. How do you survive that abuse? How do you get through that?

Yeah, it's a hard question to answer. Like, in hindsight, I've thought about that so much over the years. You know, I was saying to you earlier in our conversation that, like, why did I put myself in such dangerous circumstances? And I was saying, I think, like, inherently, I didn't really value my life very much. And then there was something like a shift that happened for me actually in captivity where I was starting to think, oh my God, why did I take such big risk? Look where it led me. Here I am now.

And I actually started to realize like I don't want to die. Like I do want to live. And I felt that really, really strongly. And so I think my own desire to survive. played a big role in how did I get through those really difficult experiences of abuse. I had really connected to my own will to live and to survive. Not that it made it any easier to experience that. There's something that happens, I think, when you're being abused,

and many people talk about this experience of, Just disconnecting from your body, I remember that happening to me almost every time that I was abused, just this total separation from, okay, whatever you're doing is happening to my body. But there's another part of me, like my essential self, you could say, like who I really am, that isn't my body actually. that could almost transcend in the moments that suffering. And so that helped me. It helped me get through it. I had to find many other ways in the aftermath

to process like those things that had happened to me once I was finally, ultimately back at home and left with just the memories of all of that. But I think in the moment, you know, our bodies, our cells, have such an enormous capacity to get through really difficult things that we don't even know of until we're in that moment. Man, what was the Jason Bourne escape plan that you came up with? We're talking the highest level of espionage now.

It's so amazing looking back on it. I mean, I cannot believe we were able to execute this. Like when I tell the story, I think people probably think I'm... Well, spoiler alert, you got caught. We did. But just the fact we were even able to get out of this house. So we'd been moved around a couple of times over these. So the escape happened at about month five.

So over those five months, we'd moved around a few times. We were so valuable to them. They didn't want to leave us anywhere for too long in case like the neighborhood became aware we were there and maybe another. group would come and kidnap us from them. So we were in, this was the house, though, that they had separated Nigel and I. And so we were having our secret conversations. And we knew that at any moment we may be moved to another house. So there was a real motivation. Like if we're going to do it, we need to do it rather quickly because at least now we can communicate with each other,

like in a new environment, who knows how far away from each other will be, or even if they take us to separate homes. So we were held in this house, and both of our rooms were in the back end of this house. And all these guys, there was always like a dozen of them. Same age group as those that were kidnapped or so we get a little older? Well, they're all between the ages of maybe 14 and 19. Okay. Yeah.

So they're young. They're all, they spend their days at the front of the house. They're just on their phones all day, right? And as, like I said, as time has gone on, they're a lot more lazy. now. They're not checking on us all the time. Like, where are we going to go? Right. We have windows in our rooms, but there's bars across the windows as the homes are built there to, you know, from, from robbers or animals. As much to keep people out as it is to keep people in. Yeah. It wasn't put there for us. It was there before we ever got there. And also in the back of this house was a bathroom. And this was essentially our

bathroom. And they went to almost comical lengths to avoid this bathroom because we were, uh, to them unclean people. So it was really like, oh, they would, they would, they would, they would really go to these like comical lengths to like stay away from this bathroom, which was like at the end of this hallway, um, unclean people because, um, you know, we're, we don't have the same faith background that they do. And so that worked to our advantage because in this bathroom, there was a window high up on the wall. Bricks had been put in place in this window many years before we ever got there. But those bricks were like really poor quality.

The cement that had was between them was like falling apart. And we had a pair of nail clippers that our kidnappers had given us. Like I said, we didn't have much. We had like a bar of soap. We had some nail clippers. Like almost nothing, but we had these nail clippers. And so we thought, I wonder if we. we could use them to chip away at this crumbling cement and remove some of these bricks.

It was a bit of a project. It took a couple weeks, but we were able to do it. It was like slow going, but literally that cement was just crumbling to dust. It didn't take much. And then the bricks were just like crumbling as we did it. I mean, had our kidnappers ever looked in there, they would have seen in one second what we were doing. But they never did. Like that's the lengths they went to to never go near this bathroom. And so eventually, a couple weeks later, we were able to make a, you know, it was a pretty small hole. We were not being fed much. We were pretty emaciated.

What were they feeding? We need to be very big. Again, it changed over the course of time. We were eating. There's like a fried bread that the small, you know, is pretty common. in Somalia. So just like a real simple bread. Sometimes we would get cans of tuna.

Sometimes we would get a mango. Later we would get none of those kind of things. But in this first stage, sometimes we would get those kind of things. But I mean, it really wasn't much. How would you estimate calorie-wise? Oh, God, I don't. Under 500 a day, probably?

Maybe some days it was more than that. But yeah, maybe let's say 500, generally speaking, in those early months. I mean, we rapidly dropped weight. Later in captivity, post the failed escape attempt, we're talking days and days and days with no food. I thought I would die of starvation at that point. So, I mean, no more cans of tuna at that point. but the hole that we escaped out of didn't need to be very big we were pretty much skin and bones already and the day that that hole was ready like we were ready to go we had our plan which which was

devised in these like me walking past his room okay when the hole is ready and you know I would walk past his room several times a day as I'm using the toilet and as long as they weren't watching me we could just exchange a few words but enough to come up with a plan And so our plan was that we would do it in the middle of the day. And we knew that there was a mosque really close by because we could hear that call to prayer, like so close. And we thought, okay, once we're, once we jump out of this hole, we'll find the mosque. And hopefully someone will be willing to help us. And that might sound kind of naive.

But I will say, I mean, for both Nigel and myself who've traveled the world like a ton, I do think it's true that most people will help you. Like even in these kind of wild countries where there's war and all kinds of crazy things going on, most people are good. Like most people are kind and will help you if they see someone in need. And I thought, I bet someone in the mosque will be willing to help us. And so we timed it for like the middle of the day prayer. We heard the call to prayer that was like, okay, let's. So it required a little bit of sneakiness, like, get slip out of the bathroom.

Meet there. He hoisted me up. I'm the first one out this little hole. How do you get out of his room? He just, we both just kind of snuck out. We just moved quickly to. Did you have a code word? We did not have a code word.

Missed opportunity. Yeah, right? There should have been a code word. Pineapple is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And also our kidnappers were distracted because they're praying right now. Right. And again, like we're now so many months into this, like, where are we going to go? I don't think they're even thinking about this that we're going to escape. And so, yeah, we were able to do it quickly. I was the first one out, long drop down on the other side. He follows. And so we're now out of out of the house. We're on the other side. And it's just, it's bad. Like it doesn't look like whatever we imagined in our minds. It might look like.

like out there. It's not it. It's desert. It's hot as hell. And there's people, not right there, but like we can see people who as soon as they see us, they are running away from us, which you can't really blame them, right? You see two white people in the middle of a war zone. Like we, we are danger. Coming out of a hole in a window. Yeah. Right. Get away. We don't want to be around whatever is, is going to come next. Right. Fair. And we find that mosque very quickly. It was almost directly behind that house. And we see there's a big pile of sandals.

So the mosque is full of people. And we run to it. And we're just about to the door. And I looked over my shoulder and I see two of our kidnappers. And one of those two is like the worst one. The one who's been like so terrible to me is one of those two. And they are like running full. tilt towards us with their guns. So like it we must have made some noise. They see we're missing.

They look in the bathroom. Hole, boom. And they find us. And we run into the mosque. And yeah, it's full of Somali village men. The women don't pray in the mosque with the men. So I don't know, maybe like 200 men. They're all sitting on the floor. Everyone is absolutely shocked to see us. But then our kidnappers run in right behind us and they've got their guns. They fire a few shots. I mean, it's just like chaos instantly. Everyone's up and on their feet. And we realize, like, yeah, it's over. Like, we're not going to escape this.

And so we're kind of just like huddled together, Nigel and I at the front of the mosque. And more of our kidnappers are arriving, like, literally by the second. So, I mean, very quickly, they were all there. There's like 12 guys with guns. And they're panicked because we're so valuable. They just, they don't want anyone else to get wind that there's foreigners there because then we can be stolen from them. So they're like really panicked. We need to get these guys out of here.

And a really remarkable thing happened though that I should say because sometimes people hear the story and they think like someone in that mosque should have helped you. Someone, right? And as I said about the people who saw us outside, like it's hard to blame them because they, I mean, there's been war there for gosh, almost 40. years, like they know how dangerous it is to get involved in things, right? They might lose their life, which makes it all the more remarkable that there was someone who did actually really try to help us. So as we're at the front of the mosque and they're surrounding us, our kidnappers with their guns, this woman comes into the mosque. And this is the first woman that I had seen since the day I was kidnapped. So like five months. Oh my gosh, just the sight of this woman was,

it was like some kind of relief to me just to see another female. And she was coming in through like a back door of the mosque. And she's dressed as most women in Somalia are. She's like fully covered up. So all I can really see of her is her eyes. And she just comes right over to like the kidnappers. And she's yelling at them and she's telling them like the word that. she was using is haram like what you're doing is wrong and she just holds me in this like bear hug and she's got like tears in her eyes and she's just like pleading with them to let us go and they're getting really agitated because this woman is like interrupting what they need to do they need to get us out of there and so they just change their tactics quickly and then one of them grabbed me by my

legs and my feet were pulled out from under me. And now I'm being like dragged across the floor of the mosque. I can see out the back door that now their truck is out there that's going to take us away. And I'm being pulled across the floor. My pants are like literally being pulled off of me. It's just this like horrible, horrible scene. And, uh, and this woman tries one last time. She literally like throws her, her body on top of mine to try to like stop them. from pulling me out. She's holding on to me and holding on to my arms. And then she just like physically can't anymore. And so we're separated and I'm at the door now on my back. And they're about to like just pull me right out. And and the last thing I saw before I was pulled out of the

mosque was I looked back and I saw her on the floor. And her face, her face covering had come off like in that struggle. And she was, She was a woman who was like about my mom's age. And she still had her hand outstretched to me, even as a group of my kidnappers were surrounding her with their guns. And then they pulled me out and they put me in the truck and they brought Nigel out same way, like drug him out. And we're sitting in that truck and we hear like a gunshot inside the mosque. And I don't know what happened to her. like I've tried to find out it's quite hard to get information out of like really rural Somalia.

But yeah, that was like the last moment before we drove off with our kidnappers to what would be the next phase of the kidnapping where everything that came before that would seem like it had been pretty good because things changed. in such like a dark and horrible way following that failed escape attempt. Like we'd really crossed a line with our kidnappers. And then everything that followed that was like the punishment for that decision that we had made. That is an exceptional amount of bravery from that woman. Yeah. And I say that based off a lot of experience, not necessarily in that area of the world, but in and around that particular, at least religious culture in that setting.

Fuck, there's some brave people out there. Yeah. Yeah, I think about her so often. What would you have changed about your escape plan? Let's after action this real fast. What have we learned? The next time that you're kidnapped, perhaps the middle of the day, you're too easy to be seen.

Right. Yeah. We had weighed out all. all the like options. Should we do it in the middle of the night? Should we? As if there's a. Yeah.

Clearly this is what we should have done. Right. I mean, I lived with a lot of regret that we had tried afterwards, you know, like, because things got so terrible. I was like, oh, why did we do that? Like, why? There was, I mean, now in hindsight, like many years have passed and I can look back on that.

And I know why we did. I mean, especially for me, the abuse that was just becoming part of my, like, daily life was making me so desperate. I just wanted to believe that there was a way out. And so, yeah, we took that enormous risk and it did not pay off. Everything just got dialed a 10 after that on you. Yeah, yeah. I'm assuming, so they drove you somewhere else, not back to your house, obviously. Did not take us back.

So it was clear they didn't know where to take us, right? So we're just like driving around in this vehicle with them for a while. And they're on their phones and they're totally panicked. They are furious that we've done this. Eventually we get taken to a house where they're still trying to figure out like where we're going to go next. We get taken to a house where there's like a family there. This is like some family. One of them must have known.

maybe it was a relative, I don't know. But there's like kids and a woman and like were brought in and we're put into a bedroom. And we are just like terrified that they're going to torture us, that they're going to just kill us. What is going to happen now? They've been really violent with us like in the car and like being pistol whipped. And like we were already in not good shape. And it was so surreal, like we're in this house, like, what's next?

And we can, like, hear kids in the house and, like, a woman making a meal. Like, it was so strange. And then one of them comes into the room. Actually, more than, like, two of them come into the room. One of them is holding a brown paper bag. And he pulls out of this brown paper bag some chains, some, like, thick, heavy metal chains. It's like, oh my God, what is this? And those became our leg shackles, which they put on there in a kind of figure eight. So like wound it really tight. Like it was almost impossible to walk.

Wound this piece of chain around each of our ankles in a kind of figure eight and then secured it with a heavy padlock. Like these things did not come off again until we were. were released. I don't know to be honest. That's a really weird thing to come out of a paper bag. Yeah. Because they're heavy. Not the traditional carrying case.

No. For heavy leg shackles. Right. I guess you have to solve the problems you're presented with in real time. Yeah. How, um, so you and Nigel were back at least in the same room at that point, separation again shortly thereafter. Yeah.

So a couple hours later, they had figured it out like where, where we're going next. And so we are put back. And now it's dark outside. It's nighttime. And we're put. And it's been many hours of terrible in this room. We're being interrogated. Like, did somebody help us?

Did we have any conversations with people? And this is from the leaders. As we call them the boys, they would call themselves the soldiers. Like the actual guys that were in the house with us all the time, they didn't really speak English. But the leadership did. Most of these guys we barely ever saw. They didn't live in the house with us, but they were there that day. There was like emergency situation.

So there's like a handful of these older guys that are like the leaders. So they're there and they want all these details to us. Of course, no one had helped us. It was hell happen so quickly. But they're, I think, feeling very powerful in this moment and they're being very abusive to us. And eventually they figure out where we're going to go. We're put in the car. Nigel and I are sitting next to each other and I remember us just like holding hands in

in that back seat. Just kind of trying to give each other strength because we really didn't know whatever was coming we knew wasn't good. And eventually it was not nearby. It was like, you know, a long drive. Let's say hours of driving. Eventually we stopped at what will be our new house. and they're fiddling around with locks and stuff. We're sitting in most of the houses in Somalia are like behind these big walls. That's kind of like a court, even the houses that are pretty basic. Like I think it's a protection thing for the families that live inside. So we're out of the car and we're in this little courtyard and they're trying to open up this house.

There's so many of these empty houses in Somalia because like millions of people have fled that country because of the war and just like left everything behind. And so this is one of these houses. And so they get in and Nigel and I are separated from each other again. I really wouldn't see Nigel much again. We moved houses a few more times. That would be the only like fleeting moments, but they had stopped putting us even like sitting beside each other. So I remember just trying to steady myself like, okay, we go into this house.

they put Nigel in a room that's kind of closer to the door and they just keep walking me deeper and deeper and deeper into the house. I'm like in the back, back, back part of the house. There'll definitely be no secret communications going on with Nigel now. And I'm in this back room and this room is pitch black as I came to realize the next morning. So there was a heavy metal shutter in this room like that was on the window. well that was closed but that night they had gone the extra mile they had taken black plastic garbage bags and like literally stuffed them in the cracks so that no light would come into this room at all so i'm laying on the floor in these leg shackles in a pitch black room just terrified of what

like okay what's next like what's going to happen now And everything changed. Like it wasn't just one thing. Like what's going to, you know, what's going to change? As a result of that, it was like literally everything changed. We were barely being fed the water that, you know, previously they would usually try to bring us actually bottles of water, which might sound surprising. But the water is so contaminated there. Like we could just die from the water.

So they were trying to keep us alive at. least enough to get their money. Now forget it. Like literally mosquito larvae in the water, they're just getting it from some dirty well outside. Now I'm not allowed to use the bathroom when I want to or need to. I'm allowed to use it five times a day, which would coincide with their like five times that they pray. And I had three minutes. And those lake shackles never came off. They literally timed it with a stopwatch. So there's no more of them being lazy, you know, as we experienced in the first house, like a little bit of freedom that kind of came with that. No.

Now, any movement has to be like okayed by them. In fact, I'm no longer allowed to move off of this mat at all. My thin foam mat had found its way there. So my prison wasn't even the size of this room. It was just like this little foam filthy. foam mat on the floor in the corner in a pitch black room what was the worst day was there a bottom yeah yeah there were so many bad days but there is absolutely like the worst the worst three days actually um and this came a little bit later um after the one year mark had passed so the one year mark was

significant to them. They were really getting like tired of waiting around for this money, right? Like, come on. They would tell us like, your families don't love you. Like, why aren't they paying this money? But they, I think the one year mark, they thought, we really got to like amp this up. Like, we got to put some pressure on the families to pay this money. And Nigel and I's experiences were always different as a male in a few. female in captivity for lots of reasons, the vulnerability of my body versus his for sure, but also just their culture and religion, there's an inherent, I guess, respect that they have for another man and an older male. So he, Nigel was like in his 40s at that time. And so he, he,

he was mistreated too, for sure. But it was a lot harder for them, I think, to step into like really being like really mean to him. They're so conditioned to have this different kind of relationship with older males. However, I'm, so I'm like the brunt of everything, like all their frustrations, their anger. And those boys that are in the house with us, like their reality in a way too was that they were kind of captive as well. They rarely got to go home. So for a year, they've been unable to be with their own family.

families and friends. And like as as as as as time has gone on, even though our food supplies had had almost completely diminished. So so had theirs. I think there was just less money for the leadership to keep putting into this operation like feeding a dozen of these boys that are that are watching us all the time. So like they weren't eating a lot and they were angry and frustrated. And so around the one year mark, it definitely came from the leadership and and, those boys were only too happy to like go along with this, that the leaders were like, we really got to put some pressure on their families. And the way that that happened was, I'm in this dark room. And it's funny, like looking back, I had a sense. I had this like feeling

like something bad was going to happen. And a bunch of them came into the room and they were holding a twisted-up bed sheet that they had kind of made into a kind of makeship rope in a way. And they had me move from my little mat into the center of the room and lay on my stomach. And they tied my hands and my legs together behind my back. I guess like you do to like a farm animal or something. They had to really kind of try different ways. Maybe they had found something on the internet or something about like how to how to tie someone up. The first couple times they didn't really get it right.

And then so there's many of them in there trying to figure this out. And eventually they had it figured out. And my hands and my legs were all bound together. they left me like that for three days. Part of that time they had stuffed a sock in my mouth. They came in pretty regularly to like tighten the ropes, to abuse me. But I was never untied. I wasn't given any like water or food or untied to use the toilet or anything like that.

like I almost died and the pain was extraordinary. I mean, unlike anything, I'm sure that I'll ever experience in my life ever again. There's no words for it. Hope so. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. I mean, I had a baby with naturally and I can say that was like nothing compared to this pain.

and three days like i i i'm sure that i almost died i i was in a very um gosh that's hard to find the words to describe it but um i was in a very altered state like where you go mentally when when your body, when every part of you is suffering to that degree, like just screaming with pain. I had at least once during those three days, like a true out-of-body experience, a true out-of-body experience where I could see myself, like I was like looking down on myself in this room on this woman who's suffering, who is me, watching these young men just hurt this person who is me. But it was, yeah, it was such a surreal experience for me. So when you ask like what was the worst, that is undoubtedly the worst,

thing that I experienced in captivity. How did they use that to pressure your families more? Right. So on the third day, they came into the room. The leadership is there. And I'm, I guess they had left me there for that long just to get me into this state of absolute desperation. And they came into the room with a phone.

Oh, my God. and my mom is on the other end of the phone and they're telling like they're like it's all a bit of a blur but they're like kicking me and they're telling me like tell her tell her um there's a recording of this call like all the calls with my mom were recorded and i i have listened to it it's it's it's so horrible but i'm telling my mom really i'm screaming i'm in so much pain i'm telling her like mom everything has changed you need to understand everything has changed like you need to pay this money which of course she doesn't have the money right and i'm i'm i'm just i'm i'm begging i'm just begging and begging and the call is two minutes long and the call ends with it's so heartbreaking

i'm i'm saying over and over again i'm saying mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. And then the phone is like, like thrown across the room or something and it like disconnects and that's the end of the call. I'm still tied up on this call. They're just like holding it, holding the phone out. And yeah, there's a loud noise and it just disconnects. And that's the end of this call. And later that night is when they untied me. they came in and they untied me and my limbs are just dead right there's i can't move them anymore and they tell me um we're going to come back in again and tie you up again um and we're going to keep doing that until your family pays the money and they basically drag my body over to that mat

in the corner and it's the first time in captivity that i think okay i'm going to kill myself like fair enough i've tried to be strong i've tried to if they're going to keep doing that to me i just i can't bear it and i had a small piece of a razor blade that i had hidden for like so many months and i thought just you know just for just this situation if i ever needed it and i thought it was like hidden under there was like this piece of linoleum right by the bed and I just like had this. It was just a little piece under there. And I couldn't yet feel my hands or anything. But I thought, okay, like this is what I need to do. And through that night, I, like, so I came up with my plan. Like, I'm going to do this. And, but before I do, I want to remember

my life. I want to really try to, through the ether, connect with my mom. And, um, but before I do, I want to remember my life. I want to really try to, to through the ether connect with my mom and my family and just like remember the life that I've had. I didn't, I couldn't have done it in that moment anyways because I couldn't use my hands. But that was part of the plan was I wanted to like honor my life in a way and by remembering it. And so through the night, that's what I did. And I could slowly start to like get this tingley feeling. It would actually be quite a while before I really had like full movement again or could walk. But enough that I could have done the thing. And I felt really calm about it, actually. It was like it felt like a position of power. Like I'm going to do this.

Imagining what they were going to think when they came in and found me and I'm so valuable to them and now I'm gone. But it wasn't just to punish them. It was like genuinely I can't do this anymore. if this is my reality. And I knew it was like time to take the action because I could see that like the day was breaking. The room that I was in was pitch black. But that night they had left the door ajar just a little bit. But like just enough that like this little beam of light came into the room. It was still a totally dark room.

But just there was this little beam. and because there was a little bit of light, I knew like the morning is here. So I'm going to have before they come in and tie me up again, I need to do the thing. And so I had it. I had the little razor blade and feeling very calm. And then a little bit of movement in the room caught my eye over by the door. And there was this little brown bird that had flown in through the house. Like the houses in Somali are mostly open.

They don't have glass on the windows. Somehow this little bird had flown in to the house. I mean, I don't think I'd seen a bird in a year. And was in that little beam of light, this little bird, this little brown bird is just hopping around. And I knew in one second, Andy, like I knew in that second that that bird was some kind of like a mess. to me of hope, of like holding on, and truly in that moment that desire to like end my life left, it was, it was so amazing to see this little creature there. And it really immediately reconnected me to that, like, profound.

desire that I had connected to to like live that has what has carried me through captivity to that point and I thought okay whatever comes like I'm going to face it I'm going to get through it I'm going to that bird represented the world to me and came at just that right time and I think it's amazing I have so many examples of this through my time in captivity and in the aftermath of rebuilding my life where it's like things feel so hopeless and like the environment itself gives you something to hold on to and like this little bird was it for me in that moment and and it wasn't the last time they tied me up by the way but it it really was the last time that I had that desire and plan to end my life from that date I still

had five more months in captivity ahead of me did you name the bird ha I didn't name the bird Francois would be a good name. Yeah. Five more months. Yeah. How did you eventually get out of there? Actually, before you answer that, yeah.

Why did you decide to listen to the recording of that call? Well, Andy, the truth is I didn't intentionally the first time that I listened to it. That's not awesome. No, actually, it was such a shock. So this kind of takes the conversation a little bit of a different direction, but we'll bring it back. So my colleague Nigel and I experienced the captivity together and in our own ways because after those first three months in the escape, we really had our own experiences. And people ask me all the time, like, what's your relationship like with Nigel today? And the truth is we really don't have much to do with each other.

very, very immediately after our release, he really wanted to, like, do his own thing. And that can be common when you go through a traumatic experience with somebody. I had to accept that. As you do when you go through this big, like, headline event, people often ask you to speak about it. And so, you know, you go to events. You stand on stages. And so it was maybe two years after our release. and I get tagged in something on. It was Twitter back then. And I guess Nigel had been, so we really have nothing to do with each other at this point,

but Nigel had given a presentation somewhere in Australia, which is his home country. And just a random person who was in the audience had like filmed a piece of it. And unbeknownst to me, Nigel was using that audio clip in his presentations. And so I got this tag

and I really don't know what this video is and I click play and then there's the recording. And you might think, well, how did Nigel have this recording? They were all, all those recordings were shared between the families, of course, right? Between the governments as well. Yeah, exactly.

So he had access to that. And so it was like, boom. That's the truth of how I heard it for the first time. I do a good amount of public speaking. Yeah. I use good old Microsoft PowerPoint. I like to use pictures more than bullet points because it helps keep me on track and I can tell a story through a picture. I'm not sure.

I've only been thinking about this now for about a minute. So maybe I'll hitch you up in a few months when I find a better answer to this. But I'm struggling to figure out how that would be, don't know this man at all. I haven't seen the presentation, but just I'm really struggling with how that would be acceptable for an audience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have the same questions.

And just for me personally, it, well, truly that's like one of the most vulnerable moments of my life. Like I almost died. And yeah, it was quite a shock. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have to noodle on that one. and maybe rethink my presentation strategy. But I'm really drawing a blank in real time

as to how that would, first off, what does that bring for the audience? The story itself, just listening to you tell this, I can see it and feel it and how you are describing it. Whatever, I wasn't there, don't know the guy, doesn't make sense to me. That's a rough one that you accidentally encountered that. Yeah.

Okay. How did you get out? of that place. Well, from my vantage point, you know, in chains in these dark rooms, I had no idea what was going on across the world. And so when it happened, ultimately, it was a complete surprise, meaning there was no buildup to our release. The leaders weren't coming saying, we're close. We're almost there with, you know, the negotiations. I mean, literally, It went from, I mean, things continued to get really bad. In fact, the place that I was being held in when the release happened was I was basically in like a shed. It was just had gotten increasingly grim. And then they come in and they have a change of clothes for me. So something's up, right? I've not received a change of clothes this whole time. And they no longer have the key to the padlock on my ankles that they put on. whatever, a year and a bit ago.

So they have this little saw. And they start, they're sweating bullets. It's hard work. They're sawing off the chains. And I'm just terrified the slaw is going to slip. Right? I mean, it was just. But I still don't have the feeling that we're going to be released.

And I'll tell you why, because they had started some months before that to tell us that, to tell us that they were going to sell us to another group. Of course. This is a perfect opportunity for just a total mind fuck. They're like, you know, it's taking so long. We're going to sell you to another group. They can wait for the bigger ransom to come. Maybe it'll never come, but we'll just take some money and, you know, from this other group.

And so I'm, this is actually what I'm thinking is happening. We're just going to another group. So I'm terrified. And those chains come off. My ankles are just like black and blue and there's rust all over them. And it's so weird to have movement without them. And they have me follow them outside to their vehicle. Nigel comes out. He's in new clothes too. And they pack into the vehicle. No one's saying anything to us. They've all got their guns and their, I mean, it was so dramatic anytime we'd go anywhere. They'd have like rounds of bullets like around their chest and like grenades strapped to them. And like it was just terrifying. It's important to look the part.

Right. They definitely look to the part. Yeah. And so we drove for hours. And I'm actually so stressed out that I've started to like vomit. I'm like throwing up in the in the car. as time is passing, I'm just like a nervous rack. My nervous system is completely shot. And eventually, we're out in the middle of the desert. We're not in a town. We're not a village.

We're in the middle of nowhere. And the car stops. And there's calls being made. And out of the darkness emerged these other Somali men I've never seen before, also holding guns. They were kind of parked somewhere further away. I couldn't see their vehicles. But the These guys are kind of, and I'm like, okay, this is our new, the guys who are going to own us now. So terrifying. And we are taken out of our vehicle, put into, walked over to, you know, one of their vehicles put in. No one's saying anything to us. I'm quite hysterical.

And there's a guy from this new group who's really clearly the leader of everything. And he's on a phone. and he's talking in Somali. I can't understand anything, but he's got a real, like, air of authority. And he comes over to me, and he just hands me his cell phone. And I put it to my ear.

And my mom's on the other end. And she says to me, Amanda, you're free. And right away, I think I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. Right? I think literally I'm pinching myself. because I used to have these dreams of this, of freedom, of being released all the time, like almost nightly.

So I right away, I'm like, this isn't really happening. She says, Amanda, you're free, but you're not safe yet. She says, because we had to go with these new guys now and travel to Mogadishu where the airport is. It's like the middle of the night. And so we travel with these guys. Yeah, it's not a short drive. Like we travel with them back and uneventful. And we get to a hotel in Mogadishu, not the same hotel that we had been staying at when we were had before we'd been abducted. And now it's feeling like it might be real. However, we get to the hotel and we're told by someone at the hotel that a few months before two French journalists, had been kidnapped from the hotel. So now we don't feel in super safe. Excellent bedside manner.

Right, but they bring us two cold Coca-Cola's in a glass, glass bottles, like on a silver tray. It was, yeah, it was utterly surreal. And they had given us two rooms in this hotel, but, I mean, we didn't sleep. And we just wanted to be together. And Nigel and I, we were too scared to be by ourselves. and like the minutes felt like hours as we were waiting for the morning to be able to fly out being worried that we were going to be abducted from the hotel or something bad was going to

happen to us but I remember seeing that first sunrise from that hotel room I still remember that how that made me feel I'd miss that so much I had missed that when people were people say like, what did you miss the most in captivity? Well, obviously my family and movement of my body. But I missed the sky in a way that is like when you're really hungry. I was like hungry for the sky for that whole time. And I remember seeing that first sunrise and just going like, wow, the world is so beautiful. And the kidnap and the, I'm losing my words here, the private security company that our families had hired to help facilitate our release were there. They hadn't been able to leave like the airport area, but now it's daytime they can come to us. And there was

a guy from South Africa who came into our room. It was such a relief to see him. I was still worried that maybe it was a dream, but slowly I'm having moments of realizing it's not. And we're taken to like a little plane, a Cessna, and began the flight back to Kenya where our families were waiting for us. So this had been in the works for some time. So they had had time to arrive and they were there waiting for us. How do you even nurse yourself back to health from that, From just a malnourished perspective. Yeah. I mean, I would assume you have to start incredibly slow.

Yeah. I was actually malnourished for a full year after my release because it took my body so long to recover from that experience of like extreme starvation. So it was like its own kind of torture because one of my favorite things to daydream about in captivity. had been like, what am I going to eat first when I'm free? You know, and it was it? I mean, I think I wanted a hot fudge Sunday. I liked the idea of pepperoni pizza. Sometimes I'd go healthy and be like, you know, a really nice piece of salmon and

vegetables. It was the game I would play like, and I'm going to eat lots and I'm going to. And then I get out and I literally can barely eat anything because it just made me so sick. Like my body was just rejecting food. So that was, that was pretty disappointing. So it took a long time to recover from that. I remember, so they took us to a hospital. And we stayed in that hospital for about two weeks.

There was a lot that needed to happen. Like my teeth were really messed up from the violence. I'm nourished as well. It's not going to help you. Yeah, exactly. So I needed a lot of work there. I was, yep, super malnourished, just absolutely shell-shocked. And so we go to the hospital and that's where I see my mom actually for the first time.

So she wasn't, when the plane landed, there's a whole bunch of government people there. And then were taken to the hospital. Canyon government or Australian and Canadian? The Canadian and Australian government officials like the diplomats. there's huge teams of people there. I can barely make sense of who all these people are. I mean, I'm talking dozens of people. And we're brought to the hospital.

Now, this is a big news story, right? So it had already broken that we were released. And there was like press everywhere. And so we're trying to be kind of hidden from the press. They were like brought in like a back door from the hospital and put into like a private area of the hospital where the press can't access us. and like I see my mom for the first time. And that's the moment. Like that's what I had been waiting for, holding out for.

And the truth is it was really bittersweet because I could see in one second like the toll that this had taken on her. She really looked like a different person in many ways. Like the stress, she'd lost a lot of weight to. But of course it was. wonderful to like be in her arms again. And then I see myself in a mirror really like looking at myself, I remember in that hospital. Like there'd been a mirror at that hotel in Mogadish, but I was just in such a state of shock. Like now, okay, it's landing that I'm safe. I remember just looking at myself in that bathroom mirror and and just feeling like I literally did not

recognize the person that was staring back at me. It was like different eyes, which was pretty, um, like it was a pretty freaky thing to experience. It's like, who am I now? I literally don't even look like the same person. Not just I've lost weight, but like my eyes themselves are different. And so, you know, the road to recovery, whatever, the languages, the healing journey, you know, all these like these words we put onto what that process is. I mean, it was, it was so long. It was so many years. And it was so difficult. Like the captivity, people often think the captivity part was the worst part of the story. And in some ways it was. But the aftermath was, God, I don't know, almost equal in measure in terms of difficulty of getting through the days. I was diagnosed right away with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And the Canadian government had flown in a clinical psychologist from Ottawa, Canada, who was like with the military to do the debriefing with me. So over God, like maybe a week or something, we would, they wanted me to tell the story, right?

And so I would sit with her and tell the story. And yeah, like right away I got this diagnosis. Like you have C PTSD, which is like, what's that? Well, I soon got to know very well, like what living with that was, which was terrifying. Absolutely like knocked my socks off. the reality of living with that volume of trauma in my body. You know, and then I come back home to Canada, which was wonderful. And I felt so disconnected from everyone.

Like I had changed on every level. And my friends, you know, we were at that stage of life. We were like they're getting married for the first time, having their first child. Lots of weddings and stuff happening. And I'm this shell of a person, right? I feel so lonely. And I wanted to just be happy. It's like, my God, I survived. I'm home. This is what I wanted. But I could barely leave my house most days. I had absolutely nothing. I was very, like, very initially sharing a bed with my mom in like a basement apartment suite where she had been living. Like I had no money.

I had nothing. So the rebuilding of my life took so many years and with great difficulty and effort was I able to do it. It seems like you, first of all, I can't even feel. fathom what the journey after that would be what is the um i'm familiar with post-traumatic stress the term what is the complex mean it does that mean it's just a level of severity what is yeah like in to make it really simple it means it's really bad so that's a nice way of saying that yeah the clinical way of saying like oh you're fucked up yeah okay yeah like it was off the charts and um no eventually it was quite a long journey to

find this particular psychologist. But I eventually found my way to a woman who has done a lot of work with survivors of torture. She had said to me many times that like my PTSD was like pretty much the worst that she had ever seen. Well, I mean, torture, you can play with vernacular if you want to, but it sounds like you were living it for 160 days. maybe to different degrees, obviously,

and it sounds like it got worse after the, I'll call it the Shawshank Redemption Escape. Man. I was reading your bio before we started talking, and it seems like you got back to work pretty quick. Maybe not work is the right answer. You got back in motion. Yeah.

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Or were you, I don't want to use the term hiding behind that. But as somebody who maybe hasn't dealt with things. appropriately in their life, man, staying busy, giving yourself another purpose, whether it's a totally bullshit purpose. I'm talking about myself here, not you, or maybe Michael. We don't know who we're talking about. We're talking about this side of the table. You can hide there, but it's coming for you.

Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you're bringing up this return to Somalia because that is so directly linked to my PTSD. So there's a really common symptom that people who have PTSD have, and it's called reenactment. And what that is is you unconsciously put yourself back in situations which resemble where the original trauma happened because you're seeking subconsciously seeking a different ending or some kind of resolution to it. And you can see this with very different stories than mine, but where like the same kind of terrible thing can happen to a person many times with maybe different people through the course

of their life. Yeah. How? Right. Why? Yeah. Why would you, why would you put yourself back in that situation? Absolutely.

Yeah. And believe me, now sitting where I'm at with, you know, the vibrant health that I have today, my God, You could not pay me all the money in the world to go back there. I'll just say that. Even if so long as you became a really peaceful, nice country, not going back there. No, thanks. Been there, done that. Right.

However, at that point in my recovery, yeah, I didn't understand that. So basically what happened was I was released, had this massive amount of trauma. And yes, very quickly, I was in motion. I was thinking about, okay, like, what am I going to do now? And it's, you know, it's a curious thing when you go through a trauma that isn't just private, but it's playing out on the front pages of newspapers. And this is back when people still read newspapers. And it's on TV. And everybody's like, what are you going to do now? And there's, I think I really, in hindsight, now looking back, I think I really felt this, like there was almost like an expectation of. me or something from this public that this that I didn't even know to um yeah to do something meaningful right with it with this experience and um when I was when I was released you know what was

what was really genuinely touching to me was the response from the Canadian Somali community this community like showed up like they they held I remember like very soon after I came back to Canada. They held this in Calgary, the city where I was living at that time. That community held this beautiful event where they had different people, you know, speak about, well, basically apologizing on behalf of like the bigger community, like what had happened to me. It just like really heartfelt. There was a, you know, kind of famous Somali artist who had done like this beautiful painting for me of a bird and not even knowing the story of the bird. but just what birds represent freedom.

And it really touched me. And I actually made genuine connections with a number of people in that community. And so when people were asking me, like, what are you going to do now? It's interesting how quickly to people are like right away, like, have you forgiven them? What are your thoughts on Somali people?

Like, I've been free for like three weeks. Oh my God. It's like immediate. I mean, there are things that you can be curious about and then maybe just sit with yourself with those thoughts. Like read the room. Yeah. And because I was, you know, a lot younger than I am now, pretty shell-shocked, hadn't gone on the journey of self-awareness that I embarked on later.

I think I really just stepped into, lacking a sense of purpose, just stepped into this like, what do people want me to be? Right? I'm the hostage who wants to forgive everybody and do something for that country that, you know, I'd experienced so much loss in. And that's exactly what I did. So with the support of the Canadian Somali community, we did a whole bunch of fundraising for educational programs, mostly for women in Somalia. And the story within myself at the time was like, this is a way to honor the woman at the mosque who had tried to help me. And of course, that experience made me very aware of the conditions in that country, which, you know, it is very sad that there are these places in the world where these decades of war are like young people don't have any great opportunities. And so there was this big spotlight on me.

And so I was doing all this fundraising. And that was very successful. Like, you know, the group of us collectively, like we raised about $3 million to support these different programs in Somalia. And yes, that work brought me back into Somalia. And as I said, I now recognize very much the role that PTSD was playing in that. There was a lot of different factors. I mean, certainly no one will ever find the Amanda. of present day sitting here defending that decision or saying that that was like, you know, it was

yeah, it was very complex at the time. And I was just moving forward in the ways that I thought were best. I didn't have the kind of, you know, professional care that would come a little later to help me maybe understand why I was making some of those decisions. I actually found it really challenging initially to find any kind of help because what I had gone through was so extreme, right? It's like I was kidnapped for a year and a half in a foreign country and went through all these kinds of abuse and torture and now I'm just in like some psychologist's office in the small city of Calgary who's never seen anything like this before. Like it was really, really hard to find good care.

So I was making a lot of these decisions really uneducated about my own conditions. like what I was living with and what that can manifest into. So I can't, I just choose not to live in a place of regret. Like I wish I wouldn't have done that. Undoubtedly, that would have created so much more stress for my poor family. I'm going back to Somalia. I went with kidnap and ransom insurance when I went back and things that I didn't have the first time. Nevertheless, my God, I would never do that now. But, you know, I have to look back on that very, version of myself with some compassion too. And just I was very lost at that time. When you were doing that focusing on being the Amanda that you thought people wanted you to be in the forgiveness or being

the public face of the fundraising, there's a, I get there's a performative aspect of that when you're the public face. How were you though? How was that serving you when you were alone by yourself? What I remember about that stage of my life was just being so profoundly lonely. I really felt like no one could understand me. Of course, I was the only one who ever went through that, but it's such a rare and unique experience. And even the other captive, Nigel, like we weren't even in touch with each other. So that work, the sort of outward mission of my life at that time to help the people of Somalia, it wasn't fulfilling to me on a personal level.

Yeah, the truth is I felt totally lost, very alone and very damaged. I really did. You know, that was such a feeling that stayed with me for so many years that like I was irreparably damaged. Did you really want to forgive them? So I love the opportunity to talk about this because I really haven't gotten to talk about this very much. I think there's an important step before forgiveness. Yeah.

Now granted, I'm not going to say therapy, by the way. My answer is revenge. However, I'm not trying to. Maybe don't come to me for advice. But like, I'm sorry, where are these people? did they do to you? I try, I try to be, and I've gotten much more empathic as I've gotten older, and I do my best to try to see the world through other people's eyes. And I'll ask myself, what has this person maybe seen or experienced that I haven't? And would it change how I felt?

All of that shit falls to the wayside when it comes to kidnapping and abuse and all of that stuff. So maybe you're better to talk about forgiveness than me, because like I said, that's a really important middle step there. Right. I have a three-step. program. Well, I think the, first of all, I think there's, there's such a cultural component of this. Like, we really idealize this idea of forgiveness. And it's just like a switch that you flip. And then if only. Right. It's like, have you for, it's like I said. I mean, it was, it was kind of shocking how that was one of the first questions. And people still. And people still ask me that, right? It's, but even in the immediate aftermath of that people want to

know, have you forgiven them? Are you going to forgive them? What do you think about the people there? It's like, I haven't even had a chance to digest this. But if you're not willing to go deep with that, I think it's really easy to, and in some ways convenient emotionally, to skip over the volcano of anger that you actually have and just go, okay, yeah, sure, I've forgiven. I don't really need to think about all the anger that I, the rage and all of that that's inside of me. And if I land there on the forgiveness, everyone pats you on the back and goes, oh, my God, that's amazing. And then it's even harder to step away from that.

So noble and honor. Right. And meanwhile, you're fucking exploding on the inside. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe for some people, for me for sure, I, because I was bypassed. the anger. I wasn't even really in touch with it. It wasn't like at the end of the day I was laying in bed going, oh, this is so inauthentic. I'm so pissed. I couldn't even really be in touch with that.

It was like I had put up this wall against my real feelings and I jumped right to what was the easiest to get to. It wasn't real, the forgiveness part at that time. But it kind of was a good block from what was really going on inside me, which I wouldn't really be able to touch on until many, many years later. So I could say, yeah, and you know what I would say to people back then? And it's not untrue is that I could, what that experience helped me understand was the conditions that could create young men that behave like this, like that these young men grew up around, you know, violence and death and war.

Yeah. You know, their value for human life is very low, if at all. And there's just conditions that are really hard for people from, you know, our privileged part of the world to understand. That being said, of course, they made their own decisions and, you know, acted in ways that are, now my perspective is totally unforgivable. But at the time, I would, I would rationalize the things that had happened to me within that context of, you know, I've often said this, it's like a, quote, I don't know who originally said it. Hurt people, hurt people. And I do think that that's true.

Absolutely. I do as well. However, does that mean I should forgive them? Does that mean no? Or does it mean that you should go hurt other people because you're hurt? Is that your excuse to hurt others? Right. Yeah.

Some hurt people. Yeah. Hurt people. Yeah. Yeah. So my feelings on forgiveness and what does that even mean? Like what does that even mean? You know, I spent years later, I would really contemplate that.

Like what? I'd be like in the dictionary actually looking up the definition of that word because it's like, what does that even mean to really forgive someone? Because I don't live with the anger anymore on a day-to-day basis of what those guys did. I've moved beyond it. However, I don't, I actually, I, I do not choose forgiveness for them anymore. I just don't. I don't think they deserve it.

I don't want to say that I forgive them anymore. I went through that chapter. You can come to my side of the tape. I have a three-step program. I'll pitch. And so that's, that's not where I'm at anymore. But that being said, I don't live in this angry place. In fact, I just don't think about them much anymore.

I've moved on with my life. And there was a rather interesting opportunity for me to really reflect on that, which was very out of the blue. God, it was like maybe seven years ago. I can't remember exactly how long ago it was. But I got a call from the Canadian police telling me they had some news for me. this was a guy that I had been in contact with after my release, but like years and years had passed. And then I get this call. And literally, it was on my birthday, which was strange. I get this call. And he says to me, I've got some news for you or are you sitting down? And my heart like drops. And I'm like, oh my God, what? And he tells me that one of the leaders of the kidnapping, the guy that I knew as Adam with the little round glasses, had been arrested. in Ottawa, Canada.

What? And that there was going to be a trial and that I would have to testify at the trial. I have a few questions. Yeah. It opens with what was he doing in Ottawa? Right. It's such a good story. There's actually a whole Dateline episode about this.

That's like totally for people that are interested in this story. They've done a really good job of it. I'm just like a very small part of that story. But it basically details the undercover operation. that lasted many, many years. So basically there was an undercover officer who, after my release, befriended Adam. How did he befriended Adam?

Over Facebook initially. Right. Posing as a book agent. A book agent. Strong. Yeah. And Adam, Adam, you know, the details I got to know about him. through the process of this trial, like for sure, just like a narcissist.

I mean, he felt he had such a great story to tell, right? Being involved in this kidnapping. And so it took many years. In fact, this undercover officer would travel to Africa to meet with Adam. So Adam's like totally buying into this. This is my buddy now. And he's going to get this great book deal for me. They had even like drafted up like fake book.

covers and I mean it seems so legit so it got to the point where Adam what they needed him to do though was to come to Canada and then basically like confess in Canada that he had done these and then they could arrest him there so the way there's small prints somewhere to what they can do where so so that's what they did after all these years he um he flew from Somalia probably connected somewhere else. There's probably people trailing him this whole way. I don't know that detail. But eventually he lands in Ottawa where he's met by his friend, the book agent undercover officer, who apparently I heard the story, like he's met at the airport by this guy who gives him a copy of my book. And then they go to a nice hotel in Ottawa and the room is set up with like a camera.

And so they're there and it's like, finally, you know, you're going to get. your book deal and they start sharing stories and Adam basically in that room confesses. You know, he gets it out of him for him to say exactly what he did. And then the room is stormed. He's arrested. And then I got the call. And there's going to be a trial, which ended up being a few years later. And I was the victim in this.

and because it was happening in Canada, Nigel was a witness, but I was the victim. And so, yeah, that was an unexpected plot twist. Yeah. Did you have to testify? I did. I did. And initially, very initially, I wanted nothing to do with it. I just, the time that the call came to me, I felt like I was making pretty good strides in my health.

Like, my life was getting better. And then I got this call. And it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Yeah. And all of that trauma from the past was just like right in front of me again. And I wanted nothing to do with it. But they needed me. And, you know, I found my way with it.

And I was really able to attach to that ideal that this isn't happening. to me it's happening for me. There's that kind of nice saying about that. And that really, I really leaned into that idea at that time of the trial preparation. Because it was really difficult. I would meet with the Crown prosecutor to do like preparation for testifying. And yeah, just just telling, telling that story again in that context of knowing that was going to be in a courtroom with him in there.

it was so challenging for me. It really activated my PTSD. And I would go and meet with a crown prosecutor. And then I would get like really unwell with PTSD afterwards for a while. Like it'd be really hard for me to engage with the world again. And then it'll kind of put myself back together again. And then a few months later, we'd have another one of these like preparation meetings. And then that day came, you know, in an Ottawa courtroom where he at a Adam was in the room and he's sitting in this little plexy glass box. And my God, he just looked like such a small little man. He actually is a small little man. And he had a translator there. And there was something really empowering about him having to listen to everything that had happened to me because he was never in the house day to day. As I said, the leaders usually weren't there. But they were, well, those boys were. acting of their own impulses, they were also taking direction from their leadership. So he had to really listen to just the full gamut of everything that had happened to me. And there was something very empowering about that. I remember like as, and it was many, many hours, days even, actually of me testifying. But I got to the point where I could look right at him. Would he look back?

No, he couldn't look at me. But I could look in his direction. I wanted him to look at me. And I was furious that he pled not guilty. And he actually, he chose to like make a statement, like he was allowed to do that. And he actually came up with this like big story that he said that he was also kidnapped. And he had been forced by those guys. And they had forced him to do all of these things.

It was so fantastical, like his version. It's a good movie plot. Right? of what had happened. So, yeah, I mean, the judge wasn't buying that. So obviously he was found guilty. And he was sentenced to 16 years in a Canadian prison, which became nine. And actually last year, he was deported back to Somalia.

Man, that's not I was hoping that story ended. I was hoping there was a shiv involved in that and really shitty jail cell in Canada. you know and I'm sure. Three step program. Right. I'm sure that he was in. I think the prison that he was in was, I mean, this is, this is the prisons in Canada. I think it was very comfortable and nice.

And he had a cell to himself with a television. And I don't think it was that difficult for him. However, what I think would have been difficult was I learned through that trial that he had like a wife and five kids back in Somalia. So, I mean, being a parent now myself, I mean, I'm sure that would have been difficult for him to be separated from his family for that long. So there was some punishment in that. Depends on how old the kids were. It's an argument to be made at certain ages that he actually was taking a little bit of a vacation.

Now, he got to go back to his family after probably getting three square meals a day. And like you said, at TV. Yeah. God, I hate the justice system sometimes. 16, you'll do nine. Eh, you were pretty good. Let's get out of here at seven. Like, why can't it just mean 16?

Like, I get it. There's logistics involved in that. but well I do want to say because this is so like real to me is that yes I also have many complaints about the justice system but that makes me like feel a bit emotional but um like the individuals that were involved in my case both when I was actually in Somalia as a captive which I found out were like hundreds of people you know in the intelligence services and in the government like for some people that was their their full-time job was the Amanda Linto kidnapping case. And then unbeknownst to me, this undercover operation actually to try to bring some kind of

justice to that story. And yes, I wish that he was still in jail. And yes. But I have to, I just have to acknowledge that because I've had the privilege of meeting a lot of these individuals. And my God, I'm blown away. thank God that there's people like them that are working on our behalf, like us citizens who get into trouble. And it's not just their job, as I came to see for many of these people.

Like they're human beings who genuinely came to, whether they knew me or had ever met me, they cared about me. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a pretty incredible effort to be able to do that. What was the most effective thing for you to do on your dream? from where you were to where you are today. Was there any one thing that stuck out as a most effective modality for treatment? Or, I mean, sometimes one of the best things with treatment is time, too.

Yeah. Well, I've done it all in all these years. Like, I really feel like I've tried all the different things. So for many years, I was super medicated. I was following a pretty traditional model of like, how do you deal with trauma? You get a therapist. And I was very lucky to find a woman who was incredible. And then you get a psychiatrist and you get some meds.

And that's sort of the plan. Did that work for you or did it just numb you? Yeah. It totally numbed me. So basically at the point that the meds came in, I was really super. suicidal. Like the PTSD, I didn't know how to manage it. I had the psychologist and we were doing lots of talk therapy, which there's its benefits. But there's also this thing that happens where it keeps you in the story. And so I wasn't really getting better. I was being very

validated, which is important. I felt very seen and understood in my crisis, my mental health crisis. But I wasn't getting better. In fact, I was getting worse. And so that's when it was like, well, let's try some medication. And so I was on a lot of different things. You're on antidepressants, then you're on antipsychotics, little bits of that, not because I had psychotic impulses, but because one of the classic symptoms of PTSD is ruminating. And so your mind is just going to the same thing. So you take a little sliver of this and that's going to curb the ruminations. And so very initially, at least those meds helped with the suicidal ideations. They did, like very initially. But rather quickly, even the benefits of that went away. And I could see really no measurable gains in terms of my health and my mental health. And yet I was on those meds for many.

years, like eight years. And what we kept doing, which is kind of the thing that happens, is you sit down with your psychiatrist and you assess, how are we doing? Okay, so then you increase the dosage. Maybe you add something else into the mix. And now you were taking three, now you're taking five, now you're taking eight. And yet, you're actually, I mean, I'll speak for myself, I'm not feeling any better on all of these meds. And I'm just feeling completely. completely numbed from the experience of life. So it's not even working very well to curb the edges of my activation, like an activated nervous system. It's not even doing that very well. But what it is doing is it's curbing the edges of joy and my ability to be present in my life. Like many people say this that are highly medicated. You don't feel like yourself. You feel numb. You feel like a shell of a person. That was my. experience. And so I lived like that for many years thinking, well, this is the way it is because I have PTSD and I have to be medicated until, and it's kind of like an amazing set of circumstances how it

happened. Like my brother, my older brother had gone and done ayahuasca. He had had done this plant medicine that I had never heard of before. And he told me about his. experiences. And it was a couple years later, I'm in this very medicated state. I'm once again, very suicidal. I just don't even really want to be alive at this point. Are you doing public-facing things at this time too? Yeah, definitely. I'm, I, I, my book has now come out in this time. my book which was and is like very successful right new york times bestseller international bestseller i'm going to denmark on book tours i'm going to brazil i'm going all over the place i'm telling my story again and again which is reactivating the trauma i'm drinking every night i'm smoking weed

historically classic pairings with antidepressants right i'm just like trying to not the F out. And I'm just, I feel so bleak. I feel so, so bleak. Meanwhile, people are paying you to get up on stage and be the opposite. Right. Yeah. What a mask.

Yeah. And then I'm living in, you know, a beautiful apartment in Toronto. And I'm so depressed. And I wake up one morning. I'm not a religious person at all. But I can only say it was like this voice of, I don't know, say my own intuition, telling me that I need to try ayahuasca. It was so interesting in hindsight because my brother had done it a few years ago.

I didn't know anyone else that had ever had any experience with plant medicines. And it was like this clear message. I knew so little about it. I called my brother that morning. He gave me a little bit of information. And he connected me to a woman who, you know, this is the work she does. In Canada? Yeah.

How does Canada treat it? Is the old U.S.? Nope. Same. Yeah. Really? You had to go outside of Canada to do it? Yeah.

Or people find ways to bring it in and are doing those. You know, they're called ceremony. So I'll just use the language of, you know, that culture. But yeah, so she would do these private ceremonies with people with this plant medicine that she's, however she's doing it, she's bringing it into Canada. And so I was put in touch with her. And I quickly learned that in order to. to use ayahuasca, it's highly recommended that you go off of SSRIs like antidepressants. It can be dangerous actually to take ayahuasca while you're on them.

And because this message was so clear inside of me that I needed to try this plant medicine, I was willing to go off of these medicines, which when I informed my team, my psychologist and my psychiatrist, like, hi, I'm going to go cold turkey off of these meds, and I'm going to do something called ayahuasca. Yeah, that was not met very well. They were not receptive to this idea, which would fare, right? I mean, there's these days a lot more information about how effective these plant medicines could be, but this was like over 10 years ago. And, you know, my psychologist was gravely concerned. What I knew was going to happen was I was going to withdraw off of these meds I'd been on for like eight years and I was going to, you know, have some dark days ahead.

I put in my calendar, I just, I marked a date about five months ahead when I went off those meds cold turkey and I thought to myself, I just need to make it to this date. I'd researched it a bit. I was like by five months I should be feeling better. But I'm going to go like hit the bottom here because without all those meds, my whole system is going to be disrupted. I was already feeling like crap, by the way. But it's true. I went off of those meds to prepare for my very first ayahuasca ceremony. And I just, yeah, things got black. Like, I just, it was the physiology of my body just reacting as well to like the taking out all of those meds that my body had become. My body had become so dependent on. How quickly did that hit you?

Oh, like, I mean, it was like the next day. And I also could anticipate. dissipated a little bit because over all those years I was on those meds, there was occasional times like I'd go somewhere for the night. Oh, shoot, I forgot them. Even missing one day of those meds had massive consequences to my body and mind. And so I knew it was going to be really bad. And it was, you know, for people, I've talked to many people that are trying to get off of these things like Lexa Pro or what have you. And it is, it feels impossible to. them because you you really do just plummet. What helped me was having that date five months down the road and just saying to myself, I just come hell or high water, have to hold out to that date. If I get to that date and I think it's better to go back on them, I'll go on them. If I think it's better to end it all, then let me at least get to that date. But I'm not, I just made a choice that I wasn't going to do anything before that date. And what happened

between going off them and that five month mark was I had my ayahuasca ceremony. And I've had now many of those ceremonies, but from that very first one, I knew this was something that was going to be a very powerful catalyst for my healing. It gave me a completely different perspective on the PTSD. this actually is something that arrived to me this perspective in one of my early ceremonies, which to this day feels really true for me, that my PTSD, as uncomfortable and difficult as it was, was also the health, like a health expression of my body trying to metabolize some pretty gnarly trauma.

And I was not allowing it. I was putting medication into it, alcohol, weed, just all kinds, anything to not feel it. Now that I had taken that out and eventually found my way to no alcohol, no weed, all of that, I came to this idea in plant medicine that that my PTSD wasn't something wrong with me. It was my body trying to find its way back to homeostasis, to its like optimal health. I'd had these activations of my nervous system. And if I didn't try to suppress it and I rather allowed it to happen and I held it with this mindset that this is discharging some of this accumulation of my trauma,

that as uncomfortable as it is, it's actually something that's like working for me. So it was like a complete shift of how I viewed this condition that I had. It didn't make experiencing it necessarily easier, but I had a different mindset around how to experience those activations, which were coming up really regularly. It was just part of my life. But I was instead of right away reaching for the wine or just trying to do everything to suppress it and numb it, I was finding ways to instead try to regulate my nervous system while it was happening.

and to just hold the whole thing in my mind in a different way. It's a discharge. It's happening for me that it's bringing me back to more health. And over many, many years of holding my condition with that perspective, I mean, things have changed for me. My whole quality of life has changed. I continued over many years to have. Plant medicine ceremonies, ayahuasca.

And eventually I just felt a natural conclusion with ayahuasca. It's a very intense experience. It's like you're getting on a roller coaster and you don't really know how it's going to be. Have you ever experienced it? Zero psychedelic experience. Oh, okay. Scares the shit. Yeah.

And people should approach it with that kind of healthy fear because it is very, very intense. With ayahuasca, it's literally like buckle up. you don't know where that's going to go. No, no. No, no. Heart pass. In my experience, it always gave me just what I needed, but it's not an easy experience. Almost everybody.

So, um, play medicine that most of the guys from my old line of work, for whatever reason, seems to be what they go with is the ibuk gain and then five MEODMT combination. Right. I don't know why. That versus Iowaska. They do not describe that as a fun ride. Yeah. The five MEO, they describe.

They describe as undescribable, which really doesn't help me understand what their journey was about at all. But everybody who seems to go gets shot through the lens of time on that one, Pixcalated space and time. But the ayahuasca, whoa, that sounds like the same thing. Buckle up and it almost like, oh, you want to fight this? Okay, okay. We'll fight you. Yeah. Until you're just so exhausted that you can't fight anymore.

Yeah. But life changing for almost everybody, for almost everybody. There's no magic button out there because I do know people who did not get what they wanted from that experience and some that may potentially have been worse off because of it. Yeah. But for the vast majority, life altering, life changing. I think super important to work with those medicines with someone who's really experienced who can hold that. Not a guy who cleans pools on Friday and becomes shaman, whatever. whatever his name is on Saturday.

And there's so much of that now out there, right? Because these plant medicines have become more accessible. Like, you have to be so discerning who you're doing that with. But I've found sort of the natural end of my experience with ayahuasca. But there was another plant medicine called San Pedro. It's a cactus that grows in Peru. It's traditional name is Wasuma. And it's called the heart opener.

It's very, very gentle compared to ayahuasca. I've done that many times it's never been scary. It's much softer way into yourself, into the integration of your life experiences. And so, yeah, I've had many, many beautiful ceremonies with a different plant medicine woman where we've worked with that, where I've had really great outcomes. And the same thing, after many years, I just came to a natural end of that too. I think I spent many years on, as I was describing at the beginning of our conversation, like that hamster wheel of healing. It's like, and you can keep going and going and going on it. I mean, I certainly, I see people out there that are like decades into their healing journey.

They become defined by it. Yeah. And it. Which again, I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. Me too. And maybe they need to be on that to be able to be functional. But from the outside and again, zero perspective. So I'm talking completely. completely out of my ass. They're defined by it as opposed to getting something out of it. It is now who they are. Yeah. And I'll say there comes a point where the best thing you can do is just get on with living your life. You know?

Like it was necessary for me to do all that healing, definitely. but it was as essential to my health to find like the natural endpoint, not to say that I won't revisit different therapeutic things through my life, but where it being such a big purpose and focal point in my life in order for me to now enjoy the life that I have, the health that I have cultivated in myself, I now need to look at the life that's right in front of me and just live it, you know? And that's truly what I'm doing. So I'm married now.

I have a two-year-old daughter. And it's it startles me sometimes. We're in the process of moving houses. And I'm kind of going through old boxes. And I found all these old journals from about six years ago. And I was still, I was still doing the plant medicines. And I realized like at that time, That took up almost all my energy. All my, all my thought was, I have this pattern and I do this and I need to work on this. And in this book, there's like all these lists of these things that I'm dissecting myself. And I'm sure it was useful. But that is no part of my life anymore. I do not spend my days anymore thinking about how do I resolve my traumas. You know, what are my patterns? What are the things? I'm just genuinely living my life now.

which I think is the best possible outcome. I mean, if something presented itself and it needed my attention, I'll give it. You know, I know how to regulate my nervous system. But I just want to be present in my life. Easier said than done, actually. Mm-hmm. God, what a journey. You know, Andy, I realized I left out a detail of my release,

which was how it actually came to be that a reality. that a ransom was paid. Because remember I said, my mom was, you know, working a minimum wage job. The government didn't pay the ransom. I think it's so important to share this because I think in today's world where when you turn on the news, it's just like so easy to believe that the world is such a bad place. Like so easy to believe that. Let's just say pick up the phone, too.

Doesn't you have to be the news? You are interacting with the internet. Right. Wear a helmet and a seatbelt. Yeah. Yeah. So this outcome is just like really good news, which is that the way that I came to be free was through the collective efforts of literally thousands of people that had never met me before. Like complete strangers who responded to my families, Nigel's families, efforts to race.

money for a ransom. So people knew what they were giving to, right? Who knows where this money is going to go? But people wanted me to be free. People wanted me to be reunited with my mom and my family. And there was something so profoundly healing about that for me and still is when I found that out because the most difficult times in captivity for me, like I've told you about the most difficult physical experience I had. But on a day-to-day basis in Somalia, my God, it is so scary to be face to face with the worst that humans can be. Like you just lose any faith you ever had that humans are good. Right? When you have that firsthand experience that humans can be just total monsters. And so I really, that was really scary to be confronted with that truth,

that humans can act like that. But then when I was released and I'm in the hospital, And my mom is telling me, like, how it all came together and how it happened. And I'm learning about that, like, literally thousands of people. Like school kids were doing fundraising. People were donating, like, $2. People were donating, you know, there's like an NHL team owner who donated big money. You know, they came in all shapes and sizes. But it came through community and the goodness and the kindness and the kindness.

and the generosity that is also so much part of our essential nature, which has, you know, in my healing has that, that truth, that knowledge has gone a long way in helping me come to terms with the opposite of that. I think, thankfully, the true expression of evil is very statistically anomalous. It's out there. Most people never come face to face with it. And that's an amazing thing. I'm very happy that that's the case.

There's a hell of a lot of good, too. Yeah. And I think it's so important to remind ourselves of that because, yeah, the world is just crazy right now. Well, I think the world has always been crazy. Yeah. My father was born just before electricity was invented and, you know, I served in the Civil War somehow still with us.

That's what at least I think when he picks up his phone and does the things that he does with his phone or comes over for us to solve his problems. I'm like, were you born in this century? Not the one we're currently in the previous one and not the one before that. But he has memories of conversations

with his parents who thought that either a technology or a time in the world was going to end it all. And it doesn't. Let me figure it out. And I think every generation has that. if you participate though only what I have to do for myself so I don't go down that negativity rabbit hole is I have to constantly and actively ask myself is what I am seeing in the artificial world and I'll just say a screen of any size.

Yeah. Does that align with what I'm seeing with my own eyes in real life? And it's not the case. Yeah. I do see a lot of kindness. I see a lot of love. Do people do some gnarly stuff sometimes? Yes.

Yeah. They do. And you should be as prepared as possible for those. things, but the statistics do net out that the vast majority of people don't touch evil like that. And that's a great thing. It's horrible for you, obviously, because you directly were associated with that. But it's not as bad as people can be led to believe. But just remember for people listening to this, you have to participate in that to fall for

that. You can let go the rope too in that tug of war. Yeah. Did you have to stop doing public-facing stuff to really have to make strides forward? Yeah, I did. In 2020, so yeah, so I was released and then had the big success of the book, lots of book tours, lots of public events, lots of speaking. And then 2020 came. And I was so exhausted.

I was, I hadn't ever, I mean, I had come a long way in my healing, but I had never slowed down enough to really ask myself some big questions. Like, do I want to keep telling this story? Like what, what's going on here in this repetition of the telling of the trauma? And then I got this natural break when COVID happened, right? Like all these events just got canceled. I had two years worth of speeches on wind in 72 hours. Yeah, me too. Which, by the way, wasn't that fun. I was like, oh, shit. There was a bit of that oh shit that I felt too, but there was also this really deep sense of relief. Yeah. And I got to ask myself all the things that I just hadn't created enough space for, which included like, do I want to keep doing this?

Does this serve any purpose for me of telling this story? and if I am going to share it, what do I want people to learn from it? Because it can't just be the telling of the story. I mean, the story is riveting. The story is dramatic and compelling and people will listen to it. There has to be something meaningful within it in order for me to keep doing it. And so I took about four years completely. I deleted all of my Instagram posts.

I just like shut I didn't delete the account I just like turned it off like hibernated or something like that yeah and I did the same with Facebook I did I deleted my LinkedIn account and I just like I just went offline for four years

I basically stopped making any money during which time though I pursued a bunch of other things that I was interested in some body based trauma therapy study somatic experiencing and craniosacral therapy where I studied to be like and it became a practitioner of those modalities and I thought maybe I'll go into helping people in this way. But from time to time I would still get asked to do an event and I had been sitting with

these kind of deeper questions about like the meaning of it all and if I'm going to share it like what am I really want to share about? And I'd come to some kind of answers within myself about that. So, you know, I got like a great invitation from the NHL, you know, the professional hockey league. And to go and speak. And I'm like, well, I can't say no to this. I'm Canadian. Like, this is a big deal. But it, but it.

I think they might kick you out of the country if you said no. Right. So it gave me a chance to really, like, dial in my messaging. Like, what am I comfortable sharing? And what do I really want to leave people with thinking about their own lives? Not just listening to my story, but like, leave them with. And so that was like a really great opportunity for me. me to do that. And then in 2024, more of these requests came in. And I thought, okay, well,

if I'm going to turn towards this part of my life again, being on a stage, I want to do it in a way that feels good. So I was very intentional about it. And so, yeah, I've been really back out in that industry, the public speaking world, again, for two years with a little kid in tow. you know, I was until you met my daughter and she comes. Adorable. Yeah, she is. And she comes everywhere with me. And I can say like this work, I'm so glad that I came back to it again.

I could have easily put it down and just not gone back to it and led a very different kind of life. But I do think when you go through something like I did, something that is, I mean, it's such an extraordinary story. There really are like some inherent, valuable lessons and takeaways that other people can derive from it. So I feel that now. I feel a deep sense of meaning and purpose in my work now as a public speaker.

I say no to a lot of things. Like being present in my life with my family is the most important thing. But I'm having a lot of fun with it. What do you think it would have looked like without that forced break? It just wouldn't have been sustainable. I was just deeply tired at the cellular level. and honestly looking back, I wasn't even that good. I was just, you know, thank you to anyone who hired me during those years.

But like I was, I really went into this like automatic, like, here's the story. I was quite disconnected emotionally from it. I was able to do this. Just here's the story, right? There's a weight to that, though. That hits you after you're done. Oh, yeah. by yourself, it comes crashing down on you.

Yeah. But now I do a lot of intentional set up within myself before I get on stage. I actually really set the intention to feel very emotionally connected to what happened to me. I think it's really important for my own health that I don't lose that connection to the truth of what happened to me. Like, you know, in this conversation with you today, like I feel the feelings that are associated with those memories. And that is my health that's able to do that. And so if I get to another point in public speaking where I just feel totally numbed out again, that is a good sign to stop doing it or to take a break because I'm being very vulnerable in what I share with people and that's part of the power of it. Is that an amazing when she starts saying no to money that it can reshape what you think you will derive happiness from?

Yeah. I say this is somebody who's made some galactically poor decisions with money. And then we all go through our phase in life, I think, where it's the thing. I have to acquire a thing. And then once I get that thing, I will feel great. And then you know, damn it. I needed that thing and also that one over there. And it just, don't get me wrong, money solves problems.

Yeah. But what I love is the ability to do what I want to with my time. That's the only metric of wealth that I want. Yeah, I feel that too. Yeah, the looking at a number in an account and lording over the number and worrying about the size, the up, the tide, the up and the down. Trust me spent some hours doing that. But it's not, I don't think happiness is there. It's not.

And I really, I say this to my husband all the time. As a reminder to myself, it's like I've already won the jackpot. Like I have a relationship that's awesome. You know, I'm genuinely happy in this partnership and relationship. And we have a beautiful little child with us. Like anything else beyond that is just extra. And so it's so good to just. to just keep verbalizing that and reminding myself of that.

It's like I've already got the most important thing in life. We have our health. We have each other. We have happiness in our home. Perfect. Your husband is the one who connected us. Random series of, he was obviously working in the fire service in Nelson British Columbia,

where we go up and snowboard every year. I don't know how they reached out to me or the randomness that he happened to be in that room who connected us. How did you two meet? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question. It's such a cool story. Well, I have a follow-up. Don't worry. Okay. So, yeah, my husband's been in the fire service for 16 years. So the year that we met, he was living in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Not a lot going on there. It burns a lot in the summer. So he was in a pretty small city, you know, working with their fire department, I was living very far away by driving hours in the city of Calgary. And that year, it was the year before, actually, I had stopped drinking alcohol.

And when I stopped drinking alcohol, it's like all these new parts of my brain were lighting up. And I realized I had all these interests that I had never really explored before, and one of them was astronomy. And so there's this amazing national park in the southern part of Saskatchewan called Grasslands National Park. It's one of the darkest skies in the world. And in the summertime, they have a couple of astronomy nights. So they bring in some people from one of the universities and they'll do like a tour of the night sky with a laser pointer. Now, this national park in Canada, most people have never heard of it. The, the, the, the, the camp. The campground at the park is remarkably small because it's in the middle of nowhere.

People don't go to Saskatchewan on holidays, right? You drive through it. But I had learned about these dark sky nights. And to align with this newfound passion I had about the stars, I thought, okay, I'm going to, I signed up for one. And I'm going to drive there from Calgary, which is a nine-hour drive. I had just gotten a dog, my dog, Poppy. And so Poppy and I made this big road trip. And we check in at the campground to this little camp.

campground. And the woman says, oh, do you realize when you booked this online that you booked the only spot in the campground that's like a family spot, which means two different vehicles can park on this one spot? Well, I hadn't realized that. Now, the place is fully booked. And they had given, like, this other spot to someone else. And I was really pissed. In fact, I was thinking, God, I have PTSD. There's going to be some, like, who knows who this person is? I'm not going to feel safe. And so I'm like, I'm grumpy about this. I've come all this way for this dark sky night. And I go and I set up my tent.

I'm just waiting for this like other person, people to come that are going to disrupt my peace. Horrible person that's interested in the night sky. And so this car pulls up and it's Ryan, my now husband, with his dog, the two of them. And he had driven about as far from where he was living in Saskatchewan, you know, eight or nine hours down. to this middle of nowhere park for this dark sky night. And we were at the exact same campsite. And I'm telling you, when Ryan got out of the car, I mean, truly it was like love at first sight.

I mean, I just, I felt it. A handsome man, I might try to get him from you if you're not careful. I just felt it. I felt something that I'd never felt before. And we had a great, you know, night, looking at the stars and and then you know we went camping the next night too we moved to a different part of the park and just talking and talking and talking and there was such an ease and familiarity with each other even though we had just met I mean and that's it since then we've you know we've

been together we had to navigate moving provinces and you know all the things you need to do to be together um but Ryan is And then ultimately we had our daughter Lyra. Lyra is a star constellation that's best seen in the Northern Hemisphere in the month of August, which is the month that we met. And also the month that we conceived her. So we knew we wanted to name her something with, you know, a cosmic connection. My name is just short for Andrew. Not as much going on there.

And I only got called Andrew by my mother when she was pissed. And Ryan is, you know, as a good spouse should be, he's my biggest fan. He just thinks I have so much to- He reached out to me? Yeah, to share. And so he saw you speak at like their fire leadership conference a couple of years ago. And actually what's funny is I remember when he went to see you speak. I didn't know anything about you at the time, but he came home, told me about it.

And then that night in bed, he was, he doesn't often talk in his sleep, but he was talking to sleep that night. And he was like saying, you know, I have the power. I am the power. And I'm like, wow, that motivational, inspirational speaker really got you. So we laughed about that. And then fast forward to, you know, a few months ago, he read your book. And it was like, this is the guy that I saw speak. And then he was listening to your podcast and he sent you that message on Instagram and here we are.

Follow up question. Sure. Do you wait for the second date to tell that story that you just told for the last few hours? Or do you just go first date? I did not tell Ryan my story for three months. Now, Ryan already had figured it out. Okay. I did this like...

Well, in the modern era, I think you're going to get Googled. Yeah. You know, just in the dating world, which I've been, you know... God, I'm so happy that I met my wife and didn't have to experience the dating world. But from what I hear, Michael, your generation is up. If you meet somebody, do you Google them? I don't. I think it's a little weird.

Okay. Michael is an anomaly, I believe, of his generation. I feel like Google. Maybe Instagram. Like look at their profile. So there's a light stalking that occurs. Yeah, but Google is not. Just a light stop.

In internet stalking, not like in the bushes stalking people. So I had, Ryan was aware that there was some kind of like big backstory. And I just asked him on like date two to not Google me. But you know what that means, right? Yeah. That means at the second you get the chance, just go ahead and Google me. You're in the bathroom. room on your phone looking it up. Yeah, I mean, and he did. He did find out very quickly,

like the story and who I was. But what it was really sweet was that he just gave me all the space. So he knew, but he waited until I felt ready to share all of that with him. Yeah. And so, yeah, that was that was really special, actually, that he gave me that space to just be with who I am, now today without all the story, the backstories and going into that. I mean, it is very interesting for people to when they hear that that happened to me. They have lots of questions, but he didn't ask any of them and gave me all that space. That's awesome. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Well, I've got to get you back to your family. How long do you think we've been talking? I'm going to say two hours. Three. Wow. What do you want to leave people with? Other than don't go to Somalia. Is there anything you would like to add?

Well, we're so much stronger than we realize. Isn't that the truth? And when you're in your darkest days, and when you're really like in the depths of whatever the thing is, the trauma, the divorce, the financial collapse, it can it can just feel like, you know, there's no goodness up ahead. But there is.

And I think just remembering that good days are coming, even if they're, you know, a bit down the road, and finding ways to connect with the goodness that's around you, whatever that is. It's the sun rising, it's feeling the grass under your feet, just these little reminders of our connection to all that is to anchor you, to prepare yourself for those best. better days that are coming. Like it saddens me so much when I see the statistics around suicide these days. Like it's an actual epidemic. Like it's, I always wish so much, I feel my emotions right now that I could sit with those people who are right on the edge of that to talk to them. Because I've been there so many times, so many times where I wanted to give up where I had the plan. And I'm so glad that I never did because this life that I'm living right now,

all the goodness and the health and the happiness with my daughter, with my husband, sitting here with you, was just up ahead, right? I just needed to hold on to get to today step by step by step that all the small steps that took me here to today. And if Five years ago, I had just given up, I wouldn't be here right now, experiencing literally the best days of my life. And so things can and do get better. A number of times I've wished that I be able to sit with somebody in those moments. From the community of people that I come from, it's almost always associated with isolation too, and it sucks. I would hope that they would listen.

I would hope that they would believe. But, I mean, obviously they get themselves to a place where they don't think that they can. So, yeah. It's rough. Yeah. Sometimes when you're in that isolated place, I can relate to that too. Like, it often, that kind of darkness just takes you there where it's very hard to feel into connection with others. When I look back on those times for myself, I even told you the bird story.

the bird coming to me in captivity, Francois. Sometimes that connection doesn't have to be another person. It can be your environment. It can be the world around you. It can be the lake, the grass, the fresh air, the mountains. We are so connected to all that is, to the stars over our heads. And it's just holding on for just today or just this hour or just this next 10 minutes or one minute. again and again and again and eventually truly we'll get out of it you i really believe that i've been

there so many times only now to come out and live the best days in my life i agree it's what i constantly try to just remind people that you'll you'll find a way through unless you make a decision that is permanent and final it's you know your best days probably aren't going to last forever but your worst aren't either yeah So, well, on that note, let's get back your family. Thank you. See what they are up to. Honestly, I think your husband could do better with his mustache.

You know, firefighter, traditionally Canadian too. It should be, it needs to be, I think, mid-chin at least. Oh, you've got to tell him that. Yeah. Well, he's not going to listen to me. But if you were like, hey, what I really find is sexy as a handlebar mustache. Yeah. Yeah.

We've had that before. we've had a few different mustache looks, but you're right. It is so traditional, and I don't think it works well with their masks, but whatever. I think that's the thing, right? They can't have anything down here. I'm sitting with beers. I'm like, listen, man, you're the one running into a burning building, not me. So thank you for making the pit stop on the way of Vancouver.

Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure.