Separated by more than 12,000 kilometres and unable to speak or see each other for 460 days, Amanda Lindhout and her mother Lorinda Stewart kept repeating the same mantra to themselves: One day closer.
It’s the motivation that helped Stewart spend one stressful day after another negotiating with the Somali kidnappers who took her daughter. It’s the motto that motivated Lindhout to survive, and now, it’s also the title of Stewart’s new book.
In her memoir ‘One Day Closer,’ Stewart describes her experiences during that 460-day ordeal, which began when Lindhout and an Australian photographer were kidnapped while working as a freelance journalist in Somalia in August, 2008.
Under the guidance of the RCMP, Stewart was directed to answer calls by the kidnappers and establish trust with the man negotiating the ransom for her daughter’s release. That man is currently on trial in Canada, after he was lured here by the RCMP with the promise of a fake book deal.
Stewart says those negotiations took an emotional and physical toll and, eight years after the kidnapping, she still has a vocal tremor.
In an interview with CTV’s Your Morning, Stewart and Lindhout described what they went through during that trying time and how they survived.
As a mother, Stewart said nothing could prepare her for her role as the lead negotiator fighting for her daughter’s life.
“I think that none of us actually knows what we’re capable of until we’re in a position where we have to do something,” she said. “When it comes to the life of your child I think a mother would do anything.”
During one particularly difficult phone call with the Somali negotiator, Stewart recalled how she was told by the RCMP to hang up if the kidnappers tried to pressure her by hurting her daughter.
“I knew that I had to hang up, but I also had a message that I needed to get to the kidnappers. I had to stay on the call long enough to get my message across while I was listening to my daughter being hurt,” she said.
In her own best-selling memoir ‘A House in the Sky,” which was released in 2013, Lindhout detailed how she was severely abused during her time as a hostage. She told CTV’s Your Morning that the thought of reuniting with her mother gave her the willpower to survive those months of captivity.
“What I focused on as a survival strategy for myself was the reunion, the day that we would be together again,” Lindhout said. “I would picture that in granular detail and I think she was doing the same.”
Lindhout was eventually released in November 2009 after her family raised enough money to pay the ransom with the assistance of a private security firm. After so long dreaming of the day she would see her daughter again, Stewart said the reality was far from the Hollywood reunion she expected.
“It was shocking and horrifying to see the condition that my daughter was in when I saw her the first time,” she recalled. “Her eyes looked haunted with pain. It was extremely difficult.”
Lindhout agreed that, despite the relief she felt being with her mother again, there was still “a lot of pain wrapped up inside of that moment.”
Now, eight years after Lindhout’s release, the pair said they have had time to heal.
“It doesn’t define us actually in our real lives,” Lindhout explained. “That experience has changed us and changed our relationship. Eight years later, we’ve moved on. We do things that are fun.”
The mother and daughter even embarked on a dream trip to India for a month last year to celebrate Stewart’s 60th birthday.
“We have a great relationship. We laugh a lot. We play a lot. We dance a lot,” Stewart said with a laugh.
