It was more than three years ago when the scribbler interviewed Amanda Lindhout. Having family roots in the city of Red Deer and region, she came to make her first public appearance and presentation in the city following her release several months earlier from the hands of Somali teen kidnappers.
Lindhout, who was a young freelance journalist at the time of her abduction, had little to say about her horrendous ordeal in Somalia. Instead she focused her talk to Red Deerians on her hopes for the future, a passion that for her was never lost, not even in her times of unimaginable darkness.
She still wanted to make a difference, to help Somalians. Lindhout told her audience about her plans to launch the Global Enrichment Foundation, an organization to create more opportunities in Somalia by offering university scholarships to women.
She gave her presentation with skill, passion, strength and integrity. It was impressive.
Afterwards, she agreed to a one-on-one interview. Of course we all wanted to know more. The media, always searching for the best story angle, wanted the juiciest details about her abduction. Lindhout politely told the eager reporters who eagerly gathered around that she was not quite ready to talk about many things that happened during her many months of captivity.
In the meantime, in the absence of Lindhout making any public statements for many months after her release, Canadian opinion makers had their own take on the once aspiring journalist, a strikingly pretty woman who was by her own admission an inexperienced journalist and not particularly war-zone savvy when she entered Somalia.
The Toronto Star's Michelle Shephard wrote a column headlined, ‘Amanda Lindhout: Gutsy reporter or naive thrill-seeker?' Her piece offered this catty line: “Online blogs note her dozens of Facebook photos striking glamorous poses amid conflict.”
Unfortunately for Lindhout there was much more of that unfairness, including from journalists in Central Alberta who sniffed at her integrity.
Thankfully, however, she was able to focus on what was really important. Her foundation has been a success: earning international respect and support while helping dozens of women in Somalia achieve their higher education dreams.
Her determined mission to make lives better for others has in turn helped heal her once broken soul. The power of forgiveness has also proved to be a guiding light for her healing.
"You can very easily go into anger and bitterness and revenge thoughts and resentment and 'Why me?” Lindhout told the CBC's The National. “Because 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. I've never questioned whether or not it was the right thing to do.”
And now she has written a book, A House in the Sky, co-authored by Sara Corbett, a contributing writer with the New York Times Magazine.
The book, which will be released next month, will address many of those “juicy” details of her captivity she once declined to talk about.
More than anything though, it will be a profound document on how the human spirit can rise above and beyond any time of trial and darkness, an indomitable shining spirit at that – a lesson from a once aspiring, and yes, inexperienced journalist who has beaten all the naysayers with the best story of them all.
