"“ Seeing his image has just been haunting me.”" deep within herself to the essence of her being, seeking a place of peace and light. She continually drew upon her memories and hopes to keep herself alive.
A FACE OF RESILIENCY
What was it really like for Amanda, living in a state of continual torture for months on end? Can anyone survive that type of unrelenting abuse, or would some perish under the weight of their own physical trauma and emotional hopelessness?“ Resilient” is a word used often to describe Amanda and others who survive— and even manage to thrive— after unspeakable horror. In fact, the ability to survive and bounce back from difficult circumstances is a prominent topic of psychological research today.
Amanda embraces the fact that she has become one of the faces of resiliency. When reading about resiliency in the psychological research literature, one quite literally finds Amanda’ s name in it. A 2014 article in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology cites Amanda’ s story recounting the 29th annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress studies, in which she participated.
According to her own account, Amanda continues to work on forgiving both her captors and herself. It’ s a process, she says, more than a decision— a place she aspires to so she can free herself from negative emotions like anger and hatred. Her progress was sorely tested in June of 2015 when her key captor, Ali Omar Ader, was arrested in Ottawa, having been lured there on the premise of book publicity in connection with the abductions. When his photo was widely released throughout the Canadian media, Amanda was completely traumatized.“ Just seeing his face again for me brings back real, true, hard memories of that time in my life,” she says.“ Seeing his image has just been haunting me.”
Self-forgiveness is another hill Amanda must climb. She tries to stay strong in the face of criticism regarding her decision to travel within a country so dangerous in the first place and of the unimaginable strain she put her family through. Of that, she says,“ I’ m still going through this process of forgiveness with my family. It hasn’ t been easy to forgive myself. But at the same time, I don’ t want to beat
18 WINTER 2017