Amanda Lindhout on Resilience, Courage, and the Value of Forgiveness

How can we develop strength and resilience, and how can we take difficult experiences and turn them into a platform for healing and growth?

On April 25, author and journalist Amanda Lindhout spoke to the Greenwood community about strength, resilience, and forgiveness.

At the event, which was open to parents as well as teachers and students in Grades 9-12, Lindhout shared her life story. She spoke about her childhood growing up in a low-income family in Red Deer, Alberta and her early career as a war correspondent, the unspeakably difficult time as a hostage after being kidnapped in Somalia, and her life now and the steps she takes every day to heal and grow.

Lindhout’s book, A House In The Sky, details the circumstances of her captivity. Having built a fledgling career as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq, she and photojournalist Nigel Brennan traveled to Somalia to chase a story about impending famine. They were kidnapped only a few days into what was meant to be a short trip, and were held for a total of 15 months.

Lindhout described the appalling conditions of her captivity, and the times she lost hope, or that her hatred, anger, and guilt were so strong that she felt she would lose her sanity or her life.

In her talk, she focused on the things that helped her get through it. Coming to understand her captors, that they had also suffered, gave her some relief from her own negative emotions — though she stressed that this did not justify or excuse their actions. Self-talk and mantras such as “I choose freedom; I choose peace” comforted her more than she anticipated they could. She kept up daily gratitude practices, working to find things to be grateful for, sometimes as small as hearing birds outside. Lindhout said that these practices recommitted her to the desire to survive, even when things were at their worst.

Lindhout and Brennan were finally released when their families were able to fundraise enough to pay their ransom. Lindhout’s family had collected donations from Canadians nationwide.

“I experienced the worst of humanity,” she said. “I was freed by the best of humanity.”

Her path to healing, as Lindhout described, is continuous and it is not easy. She has PTSD, and had a great deal of anger to work through; managing it can be a daily struggle. But she realized that the anger she felt kept her trapped in the experience. To be free of it and to move past it, she felt she had to change how she framed her experience in her own mind.

“We are the products of the thoughts we choose to describe what happens to us,” she said.

One way she mentally frees herself is by forgiving her captors. She says that she cannot always be forgiving, but she tries to, and tries to let go of her anger. For Lindhout, forgiveness is becoming empty of anger, and it is something that becomes easier with time and practice.

She manages her PTSD symptoms by doing what works for her: being active, diving into her daily activities, reaching out to her loved ones. She works to transform her suffering into its opposite, getting to “the joy of living” by experiencing everything that was taken away from her during her captivity.

She said, “The negative emotions that we hang onto live inside us; they become our enemies.”

Her talk was a powerful inspiration for the members of the Greenwood community in attendance. She brought new perspective to the way that we can each manage our own struggles with negative emotions, and how we can develop resilience in the face of trauma. Her strength, both in surviving the experience and in healing, was inspiring.

Students were eager to find out more, asking insightful questions such as whether writing the book was difficult or liberating. After the assembly ended, students lined up for the chance to say a hello and thank Lindhout for sharing her story.

It was certainly an assembly that the Greenwood community will remember. Thank you to Greenwood parents Farah and Martin Perelmuter and Speaker’s Spotlight for making this event possible.