AFTERMATH
The truth is, I do feel lucky, but not because my kids were little when their father tried to kill me. I feel lucky because I survived, and so did they. I feel lucky because when he stole them years later and took them to Greece, I was still a young adult, with all the energy and optimism I needed to risk bringing them home. (Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters by Lizbeth Meredith)
In 1994, Lizbeth Meredith said goodbye to her four and six year-old daughters for a visit with their non-custodial father, only to learn days later that they had been kidnapped and taken to their father’s home country of Greece.
Twenty-nine and just off food stamps, Lizbeth now faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget. For the next two years—fueled by the memories of her own childhood kidnapping—Lizbeth traded in her small life for a life more public to garner interest in her efforts, travelling to the White House and to Greece. The generous community of Anchorage became Lizbeth’s makeshift family—one that was replicated by a growing number of Greeks and expats overseas who helped Lizbeth navigate the turbulent path leading back to her daughters.
“Lizbeth Meredith writes hauntingly about an all-too-common experience—domestic violence, and it’s ultimate aftermath: kidnapping. In the face of a mother’s nightmare, she summons all her resources to recover her daughters. Pieces of Me is a powerful testimony to one woman’s courage and resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and to the unbreakable bounds between a mother and her daughters.”
“Pieces of Me is an important, honest, and heartrending story of a brave young mother’s struggle to save her precious daughters—no matter the toll it takes on her—as she through it all carries the double-burden of reliving her own childhood trauma.”
Lizbeth Meredith is an Anchorage-based writer and 49 Writers member and volunteer with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in psychology. She has worked as a domestic violence advocate and a child abuse investigator, and with at-risk teens as a juvenile probation supervisor. A contributor to A Girl’s Guide to Travelling Alone by Gemma Thompson and author of When Push Comes to Shove: How to Help When Someone You Love is Being Abused, Lizbeth blogs at www.lameredith.com.