Elizabeth Smart: “We are not defined by what happens to us.”

Ken and I had the pleasure of attending the Lowndes County Anchored in Hope benefit dinner last week, in Valdosta, GA. The dinner was held Tuesday, March 19, at the James H. Rainwater Conference Center and featured Elizabeth Smart as the keynote speaker.
In 2002, Elizabeth Smart was 14 years old and was one day away from graduating from Junior High School when she was kidnapped out of her bedroom in Salt Lake City, UT. She was awoken to, “I have a knife at your neck. Don’t make a sound. Get up and come with me.” Her captor then forced her, at knife point, to go up a mountain and half-way down the other side to a secluded spot. There, she was met by a woman, who she later describes as one of the most evil persons on this earth. The woman made her change her clothes into a robe and then left the tent. Soon, the man entered the tent and began to explain she was now his wife. He then raped her, while his real wife stood by. And that began the next nine months of Elizabeth Smart’s nightmare from hell. She was bound and shackled, raped almost daily, and moved from place to place within the mountains.
She explained after being raped, that first night with him, she felt filthy, unlovable and worthless. “I felt like I was ruined. Like no one would ever love me. Like I wasn’t as good as everyone else,” she said. You could have heard a pin drop in the room of more than 400 people, as everyone clung to her every word.
I, personally, remember the day Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. I remember reading the newspaper stories and listening to the news for the next nine months as police continually searched for her and for new clues to the case. I remember seeing pictures of all the billboards that were on display around Utah. I prayed for that young girl daily and worried constantly about what was happening to her and being done to her. I remember the day they found her and then my worry turned into “what will become of her?” I feared the last nine months would mess her mind up so severely she would never have a “normal” life. I remember for the next several years I still often thought about Elizabeth Smart and wondered how she was, how she had fared through her ordeal and how she was handling life now.
And then suddenly, she was back in the news. Only this time as a grown adult, married with children, and had become a child advocacy leader.
I was so happy and so proud that she had overcome her past and made a good present and future from it. For, far too many are not able to do that!
I’ve kept up with Elizabeth throughout the last several years. I’ve watched her documentaries and have seen several of her speeches on YouTube. So, when the opportunity arose to see and hear her in person, I was ecstatic. There are not a lot of people in life who truly impress me … but she is one of them. She is a survivor and a true fighter. She took something so tragic and has turned it into something so good and has helped so many.
Elizabeth now dedicates her life to child safety activism and speaks across the country to inspire others. She teaches and speaks on how to help children victims and what not to do to the children victims.
She credits her bravery and courage to her mother. She told the crowd how, following her rescue, her mother encouraged her to keep moving forward.
“Elizabeth, what these people have done to you over the last nine months is terrible. They have stolen nine months of your life from you, that you will never get back. But the best punishment you could ever give them is to be happy, to move forward with your life, to do all the things you ever wanted to. Because, feeling sorry for yourself, holding on to the past and reliving it, that's only allowing them to steal more of your life away from you, and they don't deserve that."
With those inspiring and encouraging words she found the strength and courage to testify against her captors and become one of the best leading child activists in today’s time.
In the past few weeks, Elizabeth has been traveling to Barron, WI and speaking with Jayme Closs, the 13-year-old kidnapping victim, and holding town hall meetings, in which she helps instruct citizens on how to treat (and not treat) Jayme or any other victim.
She stresses that over the years, some of the most asked questions she has received have been, “Why didn’t you run?” “Why didn’t you scream?” “Why didn’t you yell?” Elizabeth addresses everyone as she states, “And I want to take a minute to answer that because you should NEVER ask a victim a question that starts with the words ‘Why didn’t you’ because they don’t hear the curiosity. They hear ‘you should have run.’ ‘You should have screamed.’ ‘You should have done more so it must have been your fault (this happened to you).”
She continued, “Speaking for myself, and victims everywhere … as a victim you do absolutely everything you can do to survive. Your sole focus becomes survival. In your mind your best chance of survival is doing everything they say. The best chance for survival is doing everything they say and wait for your moment. That moment may not come for 30 years. That moment may not come until they die. So, the main focus is on just staying alive and surviving. That’s what survivors do. That’s what victims do. They put all of their energy simply into surviving, simply into making it into the next day,” she stated.
Every day we should wake up and ask ourselves, “What can I do to help someone else today?”
Elizabeth Smart has found the answer to that question, every day, through her own tragedy in her life.
Elizabeth ended the evening by saying, “My Mom is right. These things happen. A lot of bad things that happen are from the consequences of other people’s bad decisions. It’s nothing that we deserve. It’s nothing that we asked for. It just is. And so it is up to us to decide what we are going to do with what we are given. We are not defined by what happens to us. It shapes us and changes us.”
Elizabeth now spends her days, weeks, months and years helping children across this nation learn how to cope and learn how to be a survivor. But, just as importantly, she teaches others how to help victims.
That is a true hero to me.