Episode 160: How Being a Hostage Set Her Mind Free – Interview: Jo Marie Taylor

Episode 160 How Being a Hostage Set Her Mind Free - Interview: Jo Marie Taylor

There are moments in our lives that change us – become defining moments because they challenge what we thought we knew and make us think about things differently. 

On 2 August 1990 at 2:00 am, local time, Iraq launched an invasion of Kuwait with four elite Iraqi Republican Guard Division and Iraqi Army Special Forces. The main thrust was conducted by the commandos deployed by helicopters and boats to attack Kuwait City while the other divisions seized the airports and two airbases. Kuwait didn’t stand for long and the Iraqi invasion quickly turned into a take-over.

JoMarie Taylor, an American, was visiting Kuwait with her Kuwaiti husband found herself a hostage in the country, hiding and navigating the fear and daily threat of death; watching the destruction, rape, murder and mayhem of the invasion – all this challenged the way she thought about life.

Tune into the audio program for her story as she shares her hostage experience and the change it created in her life story moving forward. Jo’s story is an opening into our own considerations about how our traumatic experiences shape and change us and how that’s part of the messy, beautiful process we call life.

Raised in Ogden, Utah in the 60’s and 70’s JoMarie came from a mixed faith family life with a Catholic mother and a Latter Day Saint father. She met her husband, a former Moslem at Weber State University and they were married in 1987. In 1990 they moved to Kuwait to visit her in-laws because her father in-law had had issues with his heart and while they were there Iraq invaded. Her parents went for 5 weeks hearing nothing but CNN reports on the invasion and being unable to get a hold of their daughter. Let’s hear the story from Jo.

Listen to the audio to hear Jo Marie's story.

To contact Jo Marie:

jomarietaylor1@yahoo.com

Pinterest:@healthcoacch.jomarie

Facebook: Health Coach JoMarie

Website: www.coachJoMarie.com

Our life experiences shape us. We hare stretched and refined, pruned and challenged, and in that process we make many choices. We can choose bitterness, cynicism, doubt, victimhood, on and on. We also can choose hope, faith, love, forgiveness, light. I’ve noticed something about older people. Most of them are either grumpy old and bitter, or they are wise, old and enlightened. Some are extreme and of course some lie in between, but it’s easy to see the roll that our chosen stories and focus play in determining who we are and who we become. In my interview with JoMarie we see a woman who, like us all, is shaped by her experiences, and in this case, opened to broader ways of considering life.

As you consider your own life experiences, especially the ones you still find difficult, shameful, horrifying…consider your interpretation of events and the story you have built around them. Does that story feed fear and anger? If so, how can you reshape that story to serve you and help you find meaning? If you have chosen to find the meaning and learning in your difficult spaces please take a moment and congratulate yourself for such a healing, wise and self-supporting approach. Sometimes we need help to reframe the stories closest to us. If that’s the case, you can reach out to me or listen to earlier podcasts that share the 5 Steps to reframing your story.

Thanks for being with us today! May you grow and stretch as you write your best life story, knowing that while you can’t always chose what happens to you, you can choose your response to those events.

Don’t forget to pick up your copy of LIFE – Living Intentional and Fearless everyday – the 21 Life Connection Challenges on Amazon. Share the love.

See you in two weeks on the LYS podcast.