COVER STORY myself up for something I can’ t change.” BUILDING HER FUTURE
Instead, Amanda has devoted her life over the past six years toward helping disadvantaged women in Somalia through her Global Enrichment Foundation. Founded by Amanda in 2010, the foundation’ s Somali Women’ s Scholarship Program( SWSP) aims to send one hundred women to university annually, among other initiatives. In response to questions about why she established the foundation, Amanda told CBC’ s The National,“ You can very easily go into anger and bitterness and revenge thoughts and resentment and‘ Why me?’... I had something very, very large and very painful to forgive, and by choosing to do that, I was able to put into place my vision, which was making Somalia a better place.”
In 2011, two years after her release, she traveled to Kenya for several weeks to see the Somali refugee camps firsthand— a trip she terms part therapy and part research for her charity. The fear she felt upon seeing a road similar to the one from which she was abducted, she says, was so intense, it almost took her breath away.
Amanda revels in her positive energy now, as evidenced by a November 2016 Facebook post that illustrates just how far she has come. Alongside a cheeky beachfront photo of her bare feet she writes:“ There is so much beauty in life that it’ s hard to take it all in! Tears come easily these days from a wellspring of gratitude. I used to ask‘ Why me?’ and now I am asking‘ What is the gift?’ I have the opportunity to transform the painful experiences in my life into healing, growth, and purpose. I get to experience the depths of suffering and then the metamorphosis of it into the opposite. Wow. To be awake to the truth moves me at the deepest part of my being— it is all, ALL, a gift, just waiting to be taken.”
Amanda lives by those words now, fighting to be the person she wants for herself, rather than be a sheltered and bitter woman who is afraid to venture out into the world again. She says,“ I always believed in destiny and that life has a way of always guiding us to where we need to be for our next step in our growth. If
I believe this, it means that everything that happened to me, including the pain and suffering, was meant to happen to me.... And yet, I believe this to be the truth, and my life is so different and so much better now than it was before.”
To get to this point, Amanda has worked with therapists, acupuncturists, nutritionists, meditation experts, and other specialists to help her heal. With every decision— to travel, to buy a plane ticket, to step onto the airplane— she chooses to move forward with her life. Amanda is also looking forward to the movie release of her story, which will star and be produced by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actress, Rooney Mara.
WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?
Could any of us be as strong and resilient as Amanda in the face of extreme torture?
In 2003, Psychology Today’ s editorat-large, Hara Estroff Marano, wrote,“ At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself— yet also a belief in something larger than oneself. Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs ….”
Qualities of resilient people, according to the magazine, include flexibility, self-awareness, acceptance, and selfcare— a process of acknowledging the fact that life is full of challenges to overcome. Yet resilient people believe that it’ s always possible to work toward these challenges, fortify one’ s psyche, and develop a sense of mastery.
The vast majority of us will thankfully never face the type of upheaval and pure trauma that Amanda faced. Some have called her a hero, and one may be hard-pressed to disagree with that assessment. But the rest of us are tested, in both small and large ways, every day— by a family death, illness, or other tragedies. To the extent that we can work on our own resilience, the better off we will be in these circumstances. According to Amanda, love and forgiveness trumps hate and bitterness, and a positive attitude is a huge first step in that direction. It is definitely a path worth trying.
THE HEARTBREAK OF SOMALIA
Today, according to UNICEF, Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with its infrastructure and economy decimated by years of violence and unrest. The statistics cited by UNICEF are grim: a total population of 12.3 million, with 43 percent living in extreme poverty, defined as earning less that $ 1 per day, and more than 50 percent unemployment. Over 300,000 children are malnourished and
1.7 million do not attend school. According to the State of the World’ s Children 2016 report,
Somali life expectancy is only 56 years compared to a record-high 78 years in the United States. A large portion of Somalia’ s population lives without access to clean water or adequate sanitation.
Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda survives on memory— every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity— and on strategy, fortitude and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark.
2017 WINTER 19