Beth Holloway - Loving Natalee

Life

by Natalee Holloway

Life is a hard journey that we all take.

Unfortunately, its not equipped with any brakes.

The probability of being perfect is extremely slim.

Indeed, we all have our odds and ends.

Every now and then you are told a lie.

Before you know it ten years have gone by.

Positive thoughts come in by the day.

Negative people take them away.

Time multiplies our days to years.

Every now and then we shed a tear.

In life, love should be the base.

We must cherish every face.

T he following account comes from my memory, conversations, and notes I kept of the events that took place surrounding the disappearance of my daughter, Natalee Holloway. I have tried to relate to the best of my recollection what took place during this crisis. Quotation marks are used in the book for the purposes of readability, not necessarily to indicate that the words in quotes are exact.

T he first person who suggested I write a book about Natalees disappearance was Jamie Skeeters, the polygraph expert sent to the island by Dr. Phil McGraw. Jamie died in January 2007. He was on the phone with his wife during a connecting flight when he suffered a massive heart attack. The plane was still on the tarmac when Jamie died in his seat. Jamie worked very, very hard on Natalees case and we all miss him very much. When I got to a place in my life that I felt I was ready to tell what happened surrounding my daughters disappearance, I was so pleased when senior editor Maureen OBrien called from HarperCollins to say they wanted to publish this book. Im grateful to everyone at HarperCollins and HarperOne for this opportunity. I just wish Jamie were here to see that Natalees story has finally been told.

Throughout this account Ive tried to recognize the individuals, companies, and organizations that have played a significant role in helping our family pursue justice for Natalee, and want to again thank all of them for their support. In addition, I want to especially thank Governor and Mrs. Bob Riley and all the Alabama representatives who stood behind us; the FBI; the media; Heather and Phillip McWane; Richard Rogers; the National Sheriffs Association and the National Association of School Resource Officers for their endorsements of the Safe Travels campaign; Baker Crow; the LeMay family; Ashley Cockrell for the Natalee Run; High Noon Film and Interactive, LLC; Auburn University; Florida State Universitys Underwater Crime Scene Investigation Unit; Texas Equu-Search; John Q. Kelly; Dr. Phil McGraw; Fred Golba; Jossy Mansur; and the Aruban citizens who gave their support.

Also, special thanks go to Red at Scared Monkeys, and to all the kind helpful bloggers who have supported our family, from Blogs for Natalee to Truth for Natalee, and all the others. You have truly been a source of great support as well as providing important and useful information.

Without Natalees friends, my friends, the good people of Mountain Brook, and everyone else who reached out, we would not have been able to achieve what we have on this journey. We didnt get Natalee back, but everyone gave it his or her very best. And we could not have asked for more than that. I want to thank everyone involved from the bottom of my heart. God bless you all.

I m the parent who got the dreaded call. The parent no one wants to be. The one whose phone rang out of the blue in the middle of the day, and the voice on the other end said, Your daughter is missing. Im that desperate mother on TV holding up pictures of her missing child, pleading for help, describing the details surrounding an unthinkable crime. My daughter is Natalee Holloway. She disappeared in Aruba on the last night of her senior-high graduation trip in 2005 and hasnt been seen since. I never imagined that I would be that parent, living an endless nightmare in front of the whole world. But I was, and I still am, because I will always search for her. I will forever be Natalees mom.

Two questions are most often asked of me since Natalees disappearance. One is, How do you keep going on this journey to find her? My answer is always, Hope. At one time or another weve all experienced hope. That inexplicable empowerment that enables us to move successfully from challenge to resolution with courage. The guarantee that theres light at the end of whatever tunnel were trying to find our way through. Its more than just a feeling. More than wishful thinking, I believe hope is the almost tangible reaction to ones faith. But let me tell you, its easy to lose when youre faced with bitter tragedy. Its easy to give in to pain and let go of all hope. I learned this firsthand when Natalee disappeared. Ive learned a lot of things about hope since then.

Bridging beliefs from Judaism to Catholicism, from Protestantism to Mormonism, from Islam to Buddhism and everything in between, hope is a religious message common to all faiths. The universal message that better times are ahead is nourishment for the soul, just as food is nourishment for the body. Hope comes in many different forms, and each one of us reaches for the one that will satisfy our hunger. For me it means reaching for the next sign of hope, and the next, and the next that will lead me to what happened to Natalee. I find hope, it fades, and then I grow hungry for it again. One sign of hope doesnt sustain us, as I learned. We have to keep reaching for it. And thats the very definition of resilience.

Hope presented itself to me in the most likely as well as the most unlikely places. I found it first in God, centered on a firm foundation of faith established by my parents in my childhood in the Methodist Church. I also found hope in the unwavering support from our hometown community and in the volunteers who came from the United States and other countries to help me search for Natalee. I found it in every anonymous tip that she had been seen alive. It was there in thousands of letters and cards with prayers and encouraging words from caring people all around the world. The best way to describe it is that hope came as surges of energy. Big, bright, vibrant waves of energy that washed across my soul the same way the ocean tide comes to shore and smoothes out the sand. Then it went away, ebbed, like the tide. But it always came back. And thats the most important realization in this tragic experiencethat no matter what, just as sure as the tide rolls in, hope always comes.

Ive learned very important life lessons about survival in the face of tragedy since Natalee disappeared. First, hope is always obtainable, but sometimes we overlook it and fail to embrace it. There have been many times on this long and painful journey that I forgot to recognize the signs and began to lose hope. But I found out that all I had to do was reach for it, let it in, consume it. What a gift we have before us. The second important lesson is that faith knows no boundaries. It doesnt matter what your religious preference is when it comes to reaching out to people in need. It doesnt matter which church or temple you attend when it comes to prayer. What matters is that you express this love. That you share this hope. That you give comfort by asking God to bring peace to someone. People from all walks of faith have done this for me, and it has saved my life.