Elizabeth A. Smart - Where theres hope: healing, moving forward, and never giving up

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This book is dedicated to the safe return of missing children everywhere.

As a little girl, I always imagined that Id go to school, study music in college, get married, have a family, and be a music teacher out of my home. That was what I envisioned for myself, partly because thats what my parents envisioned for me, and I never dreamed that anything else could happen. I would grow up, find my Prince Charming, be a bride, and live happily ever after. I look around myself now and, yes, some of those things have come to pass, but when I was fourteen, I survived a horrific experience that forever changed my life and the lives of the people I love.

Afterward, I did go back to school and studied music in college. I married a wonderful Scottish man named Matthew Gilmour, an entrepreneur building a company in the vacation rental industry, and now we have a beautiful, vibrant little girl named Chlo. When she was born, she looked exactly like her father, with angelic, delicious facial features, and had a strong singing voice. My life has been and is filled with love and support. I am happy, but at the same time Im dumbfounded at how different this life is compared to the life I imagined before I was kidnapped and brutally taught that happily ever after is a myth. Instead of quietly teaching music in my living room, Im traveling almost constantly, doing everything I can to advocate for exploited women and children through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and as a reporter at large for Crime Watch Daily and other news programs. I do quite a bit of public speaking, sharing my story and talking about what helped me survive and recover from this traumatic experience. I never asked for or wanted this platform, but it is what it is, so Im determined to use it to help others.

I recently visited a small Ohio town that used to be a major hub of industry, with steel mills and automobile factories employing thousands of workers. Since almost all the factories have moved to Mexico or elsewhere, the population has significantly decreased. People go to where there are jobs, and the people left behind are struggling. At the venue, I was greeted by a flock of gracefully aging women. They brought me inside for the sound check, asked repeatedly if there was anything I needed, and told me how excited they all were that I was there. They could not have been more welcoming. It was like having an army of grandmothers looking after me. The auditorium held close to six hundred women, and Im pretty sure I was the youngest one there by at least forty years.

After some announcements and housekeeping issues, the president of the ladies group introduced me. In 2002, when Elizabeth was fourteen years old, her story captured hearts and minds all over the world. She was abducted at knifepoint from her home by a pedophile and his wife. After nine months of indescribable abuse, she was rescued and returned home, thanks to the diligent efforts of her family and others who refused to give up the search. Sustained by faith, her family, and her own resilience, she rose above this ordeal and wrote about it in her bestselling memoir, My Story . Shes now a wife and mother, an internationally recognized speaker, and an important voice advocating for exploited children and survivors of sexual violence.

Its always hard to hear my experience summed up this way. For eight years after I was rescued and returned home, I swore up and down that I never wanted to write about what had happened to me. I just wanted to leave it in the past. Then the criminals who abducted me were finally brought to trial, and I had to talk about it. But it just felt like facts on a piece of paper, and that felt wrong to me, because all those things happened, but that wasnt all that happened. My goal in writing my first book was to tell the rest of that story.

My goal when I stand in front of an audience is to let them know that theyre not alone and that whatever they go through does not define who they are. So I stepped to the podium with that purpose in mind.

I smiled and said, Thank you so much for having me here today. It truly is a pleasure to be here. I feel so lucky that I get to travel around the country and meet different people and work with different organizations. Ive learned so much, but the one thing I have noticed that we all have in common is that we all have problems. We all have trials, and we all have those mornings when we just want to pull the covers back up over our head and go to sleep until all the problems disappear. Unfortunately, that never seems to work. At least not for me. But Ive also noticed that every day, we make choices. And when were faced with struggles, we have a choice to make: Either we surrender to our problems and give up, or we decide to keep moving forward no matter what. Im not at all suggesting that once you make the choice to move forward, your problems disappear, but making that choice is the first step down that path. We are so often worried that we will be defined by what happens to us, and yes, that sometimes happenswhen we let it. But its important to remember that you are not defined by what happens to you. You are defined by the choices you make after . Some people will look at me and forever see the little fourteen-year-old girl who was kidnapped all those years ago, but when I look in the mirror, I see a wife, a mother, an advocate, a friend, a survivorsomeone I want to be, someone I never want to disappoint. No matter what our situations may be, we always have the power to decide who we want to be.

After the speech, we moved on to a nearby banquet hall/restaurant for lunch and a Q&A session. A ninety-four-year-old lady seated at my table leaned over and said, Dear, you did such a wonderful job, but Im disappointed that you didnt speak more about God and his influence in your life.

God certainly does play a big role in my life, I said, but some things are a little more personal than others, and that is one of them.

I have always felt that this particular topic is a sensitive one. As a devout Mormon, I have a very strong faith, but I recognize that other people are equally devout in their own beliefs. I always want to be respectful and not give the impression that Im shoving my faith down anyones throat. Plus, I have always felt that my relationship with God is between God and me, something I treasure as very private. I dont want to sound as though Ive sold my soul or cheapened my faith, and I definitely dont want to come off in a preachy way that might make others feel that Im disrespecting their faith in any way.

This same lady happened to be the one saying the blessing over the food, and I have to admit, I was ready to eat. Exhaustion had set in, and I didnt want anyone to notice. Maybe it was because I was eleven weeks pregnant. Maybe it was the lack of a substantial breakfast or the time change from Mountain Standard to Eastern Standard Time. Two hours might not seem like a huge time difference, but at seven oclock in the morning in Ohio, it is five A.M. in Utah, a time Im not at my best. In fact, Im usually flat on my back, mouth open, and snoring (or so Matthew tells me). That morning, I was functioning at a very low level of energy but trying to appear as if the exact opposite were true, and this sweet ninety-four-year-old woman got up and gave what felt like a twenty-minute prayer. Maybe thats not considered a long prayer to other people, but I wasnt sure if I was going to make it through.