RealElizabethSmart

1. Make sure your child knows that they are loved unconditionally, and make sure your child knows what unconditionally means.
2. Make sure that your child understands that no one has the right to hurt them or scare them in any way. It doesn’t matter what that person may be: family, friend, religious leader, community leader, it doesn’t matter.
3. Should anyone hurt your child or threaten them in anyway, they need to tell you.

My favorite movie is Eddie The Eagle. I can eat Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia by the pint, and my toughest boss is my two year old daughter.

I couldn’t just runaway. I couldn’t just scream out. Everything I did, I did to survive. I never suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. I never identified with my captors or cared about them. Every decision was made with survival in mind.

There are things that make me wary, one of them being when someone uses religion excessively to justify what they’ve done or are going to do.

The hardest thing about speaking out and becoming an advocate was the fear of having everyone know what happened to me. The one thing I would tell a survivor about speaking out is no matter what people’s reactions are, you deserve happiness, you deserve love, you deserve support and you deserve to know that you are worthwhile.