 This week's episode is sponsored by Change. Change is an online mentoring program that teaches people with no experience how to create a real profitable online business and e-commerce. I have been working with Ryan at Change for a few years now and attended many events and got to meet the amazing community of like-minded people. These guys are the best of the best. The support these guys offer is personal, no bots or employees. There's no experience needed but like anything in life it takes time as it's a real business with real results. For more information go check out Ryan on Instagram at RyanGiB and he will guide you through the steps to help build a successful business. You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. Boom we're on and today's guest we've got Loretta Lyon. Did I say that correct with the Scottish accent? Very good I love the Scottish accent actually. Very powerful book, unbroken, captured in Yugoslavia, tortured, a lot of bad nasty dark things that people would only see, they wouldn't even see in their worst nightmares like you've been through so much. Motivational speaker, you're doing amazing now in life, leaving inspiration to show no matter how dark your past is, you can still do something wonderful with your life. Before we get into everything first and foremost how are you? Oh good, thank you. How are you? Really good, really good. I'm just down here doing my podcast for a few days and then I'll go back home but the sun is out today, I'm speaking to yourself, life is amazing. It is, I agree. I'm going to promote your book straight away which is unbroken. Where can people buy this? It's available on Amazon and it's on Kindle or paperback like this and I'm working on the audio book as well because a lot of people are requesting it so we'll see. I'm an audio book kinder guy. Are you? Yeah, I'm lazy. By the end of this speech I'm going to try and speak like you because I tend to mimic accents without my knowledge. Don't ask. That's a good thing. Before we get into everything, I always like to go back to the start of my guess, get a bit of understanding about you, where you grew up, how it all began. Gosh, I was born and raised in former Yugoslavia and people will learn this in the book. The book apparently is quite educational from the feedback that I'm getting which is quite good. I won't spoil the book too much but I grew up in Yugoslavia with mixed background but I'm not going to get into that now but my parents were Muslims, not necessarily covered up or anything like that but fairly Western looking Muslim people and so where my parents decided to live was a little small town, majority if not all were Muslims and Albanian speaking. So in that town majority was Albanian speaking but then the next town was a mix. It's where I went to school. So at school we learned two languages. These were the two languages spoken at all times. Albanian and the first one was Serbian and then Albanian as a second language. And yeah side by side we spoke both languages and we lived amongst each other with the Albanian speaking and the Serbian speaking nationalities. I think when I look back and even now because people sometimes say oh you must really, you know, how do you feel about back home? You must hate it. I'm like no I don't because hate is such a big word. I don't hate anything about my people or anything about these nationalities that gave me all these troubles in this book as it says but I absolutely love my people because they are very straightforward. I just realized that evil exists in any nation, any religion and especially at war. And so going back to my childhood I had such a humble childhood I grew up, we grew up very poor but to me I think there is poor in wealth in terms of money and then it's also poor in love or respect or peace and we had that as richness. You know we had a lot of respect in the house, I had a great family, I'm the only child and so for me wealth number one meant that respect, the love that's really important because the rest can come. And so my dad worked really hard as a doctor to provide for us. He's a doctor, he was a doctor I should say, I keep speaking present tense but he was a doctor and my mom professor of languages and so they really tried their best to give me the best life they could. Yeah very well educated, very good parents who tried their best. What would you like at school? Myself? Yeah. Brilliant, I just really wanted to choose. I was just one of these students that everybody thought I was an example because I was well behaved, never really caused any scenes, always liked peace, I always tried to you know diffuse any conflict in the class, in the classroom, assistant to some of the professors eventually as I went to the high school because I became very good at technical engineering and I wanted to be a doctor actually like my dad but that didn't work out and didn't work out because of the war but in the meantime I was studying technical engineering, I did I had really high all my all my all my grades sorry I'm mumbling were all high, the highest you could get. Is that because because I've interviewed many Muslim brothers and sisters where they talk about how strict the household was with the Muslim beliefs that I'm not a religious man anymore but I keep saying this but I'm probably more sway to the Muslim kind of culture, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't gamble, I don't take drugs, I don't eat bacon but it's just I like that sort of belief. Do you feel because with the strict household I feel as if a lot of families now are becoming weaker, they're coming from broken homes, there's a lot of uncertainty on ease and parents struggling and abandonment issues for kids and it tend to go down the route of addiction but do you, did you see was it a strict household where get your grades, make something of your life because your dad and mum led by example, there's a lot of pressure on you from them because they were doing it and they understood the key elements to be successful. To my surprise my parents never forced me to do anything, in fact I think compared to the parents now and I look back they were the most holistic parents anyone could wish for, they never imposed religion on me or never put me under pressure to study, I was just genuinely really driven I wanted to do well at school and some may argue say oh school is not all that important and that's fine you know I'm never going to argue with people because everybody's entitled to their opinions but I think I did it because I always was so, I craved to learn and explore, I was so passionate about space so I think finding out things that we didn't have internet so books were the only things, teachers were the only people you could ask questions, you know now you go on Google and you say Google tell me this and he tells you, Alexa, you know all the answers you know and these generations looking at children now they have the answers on their you know the fingertips but we didn't so school was really something for me anyway it was something I don't know I just saw so much wealth in learning and I wanted to do well I wanted to become a doctor I genuinely saw a lot of value in doing so but my parents never pushed me in fact sometimes they used to ask me to chill because I would stress out so much I'm very OCD like I have to do things straight away if a task is given to me I have to complete it I have to deliver and then over deliver so I've always been like that as a child picking things up quickly I mean languages come very easily to me so I tend to pick up languages very quickly and I couldn't speak English when I came to the UK 22 years ago 23 so it comes to show you that you know it's just it's just the way I was you know I was created to want to learn and to I don't know to to do something but yeah so never in terms of religion my parents only towards the as they got an older have they turned after they retired and everything they turned more to praying and practicing five times a day because prior to that they and I don't want to speak on their behalf but I noticed it was really hard to stay on top of it because my mom was teaching throughout the day in the school so doing five times a day of praying she found it difficult to keep up with she would do maybe an early prayer evening prayers and then anything in between or at the weekend whereas my dad being a doctor and all he then would be called on emergencies and his duties so he really also struggled to stay on top of it but they did their best they fasted and all never once did they ever say you must do this must do that in fact in book in my book I mentioned going to my dad and saying oh dad all my you know my cousins and the neighbors children are going to the mosques to learn Quran the the our bible and I said I want to go and learn Arabic and this is because I have such passion for languages and my dad looked at me said listen if if that's what you want to do you do it but I'm not asking you to go do or anything because he meant what he meant is when you go to mosque you had to cover up so unlike in the Middle East when people cover up they cover up and they don't take it off back home people especially children they would only cover to go to mosque and then take the scarf off or anything that covered them up so it was a bit of just a slightly different kind of way of religion it's not really it's not like I think in every country or society it's treated differently slightly so some more extreme than others so yeah I did I did study Quran and I loved it being able to write in Arabic and and read in Arabic although I didn't understand the word it was just read and write talking to me then and it's about that listening to me the Scottish Jackson I love it honestly I think I I'm such a big fan of Scotland and when I watched Braveheart the movie the Mel Gibson's movie oh my god I cried so much and at that point when I watched it nobody knew my story and the guy that I was with didn't understand why I cried so much but everything like that injustice um cruelty just brings me really brings me to my knees I'm very sensitive when it comes to even the power of the word because people think the power of the word it just there is no power you can say it's smiling and you can say a really nasty word and it will affect somebody for days and you have no idea you had that effect on them and in a bad way as well so I always try to really think before I put something out there because I know it's all it's like a real spell you don't know how you're gonna affect someone yeah words are so powerful and I've been saying this actually recently they used to say sticks and stones may break my bones but names don't never hurt me but I believe names are probably worse because names and what people say break people they break them down they manipulate some it kills us so it kills our spirit and the sad thing is people take their life by what people say about them even on on social media it's just certain sentences certain words to word someone they can't handle it anymore and they take their lives so words are powerful and like you say it's spelling writing things down it's spelling it's putting things into the universe you are but you speak you are but you are but you visualize and we're just living in a society where everything seems uneasy there's an unrest I love Scotland because its nature is green I used to love London but there's just a little unrest down here when I'm here now I don't know what that is just a little feeling I love the people but I've got friends from all over but there's just a little weird vibe I don't know where it is hopefully it goes but it's just the way I feel sometimes so your life going amazing then studying good girl mum and dad doing well praying you were learning languages you are very interested in very much books and just being a good girl trying to make something in your life was life perfect was there any unrest in Yugoslavia then where you talk about other countries and the wars was like Ireland when you've gotten all the island and stuff there was a lot of bad stuff there just a few years ago a lot of killings I go to Belfast for some interviews and again there's a little feeling of uneasy I don't maybe that's just because of the shit that they went through and there's still that energy there but was there ever any signs of wars coming or anything arising back then I remember it as a child actually I mean I remember as I was growing up my mum kept saying to my dad since Tito I lead her at that time in Yugoslavia and I'll who will remember here listening Tito since he died she kept saying to my dad it just doesn't feel right anymore and I didn't I think when Tito died I was born kind of people gonna work out now my age 25 exactly so and I used to think what does this mean Tito died who was I mean we knew Tito everybody he was very well regarded in fact I spoke about him recently on holiday I just I was reflecting back on how well regarded he was he he kept our country at bay and he was not respected in Europe and you know the United Nations and all of this and then this episode is sponsored by fire away pizza the fastest grown pizza company in the UK with over 150 stores with their fresh quality ingredients and unique pizzas they will have you coming back for more use code James 20 for 20% off that's James 20 for 20% off it was all for the power of a seed for politics basically so the civilians really were never for war but from my perspective this is only from what I've seen what I witnessed it came down to power land control and ultimately religion and then ethnic cleansing ethnic cleansing became such a big thing so when you look back at Yugoslavia it was Slovenia Croatia Bosnia Serbia Montenegro Macedonia Kosovo am I missing anything I don't think so how about Czech Republic and stuff no they were not that not near one there they are near with us on the border but they're not they were never part of us and maybe in a very very long time ago there was this some kind of a union going on but not that I remember in history but this was Yugoslavia and so they started the war with Croatia initially I believe the Serbs so there was a big conflict there somehow Croatia and then got Bosnia got hit and this is all in the north and Bosnia was hit the most and they did the biggest massacre because you and couldn't make it in time the troops were not authorized to go on time to save the people so they it was one of the biggest graveyards ever found of ethnic cleansing and only because they were Bosnian Serbian speaking with different dialects like you have a different dialect to the British and so just because of their religion because they were Muslims so that was ethnic cleansing because they were mostly because they were Muslims so is that what that means ethnic thing is really should just mean for example in Kosovo they did a lot of ethnic cleansing and that's what they try to do to our town killing people because they speak a different language but then it turned into religion so ethnic cleansing so they didn't want the Albanian speaking communities anymore and also anyone that was Muslim that would practice the religion so although it was called ethnic cleansing most people thought that even religious cleansing was all one because it unfortunately just how we unfolded but yeah our town was singled out for ethnic cleansing and we were all Muslims and Albanian speaking because my parents decided to live in that town because they found jobs which is fine and because my mom's origin is from Turkey she's a mix she's from Bursa originally but she studied in for Yugoslavia she met my dad and you know she's just happy happy go lucky but going back to the book or to my story when we got singled out for ethnic cleansing it was really stressful by them we had already figured out that Kosovo just went through a huge war with Serbia and United Nations had interfered and when United Nations interfered in Kosovo what happened was Serbia dialed the heat in its own land by attacking the towns there are Albanian speaking which also happens to be Muslim because there is some Albanian speaking but they are Catholics but mostly in in Kosovo and Montenegro you find these these communities and also my bet it's also Macedonia but not so much where we were and so yeah they Milosevic I can even say that he was in charge of all of this and he dialed up the heat and we were singled out for ethnic cleansing and I'm not again I don't want to spoil the book too much what we were saved my uncle was really wealthy guy he was a farmer and he used to say to my dad brother you've gone and you know wasted all these years in university and as a doctor you can hardly make your ends meet you know because the doctors didn't really earn much in former Yugoslavia but he said look at me I'm just you know I'm just a farmer and he used to joke he was such a joker and he was right it just then I he inspired me because I thought you know what I'm so fixed in like education and stuff but ultimately if you have a drive and you want to have a better life or you've got great ideas you've got good business sense you can apply that you don't need a diploma yeah so I think going back to that kind of in this day in life without we don't have any war I think you don't necessarily always need the qualification no everybody's define success differently some people might define it by going to law school and being a doctor for four years six years nine years whatever it takes to get degrees and diplomas but the most successful people I know the ones who didn't go to university there's a lot of people I know who go to university and don't actually do anything with their degree yeah so again it's just life it's only textbooks you're only studying and memorizing what others are in those textbooks not really life we need doctors of course we need lawyers but for me life is life I'm trying to go through it blissfully and peacefully as I can sometimes I'm living in chaos but that's okay that's life we're living in a very fast-paced world but I think it's important for people to understand because not everybody's loves education I fucking hated it but I just like to stare out the window and look for spaceships yeah I know I was waiting for them to come apparently it's coming soon so we'll see but I just it was a visionary I like to and I wasn't very good academically but sports and stuff and outdoors I thrived I loved it and what is this saying Einstein says if you judge a fish by climbing a tree the fish will believe it's stupid or something but I feel as if everybody's different we've all got different beliefs we've all got different the way we see the world so when your uncle came so he saved you the farmer the funny man he saved the whole town literally he I mean it's a real scene it's a very intense scene we get dragged out of the houses and it's a huge chaos what age me then I was 17 just about have just hit 17 and for the for the listeners we are about to touch base on human trafficking and if people haven't gathered the story yet but it started with ethnic cleansing and then war brought human trafficking and organ harvesting as a market so this is where we had him with the story just so they were aware and so yeah so we got marched into the crease of the mountain it was really late at night it was called children screaming baby screaming the elderly limping we're being pushed around it was really daunting and scary it was this really uneasy kind of background noise of our footsteps of the soldiers just marching us and people just shuffling because it was the whole entire town and it's a big town and so when we got to the crease of the mountain and it's dark and it's cold and we could just about see the sky the soldiers are screaming oh we got them all here all in Serbian and we all understand the language because we both we all learn both languages at school so majority of the people in their crowd speak both languages and they say we've got them now we're going to do the biggest massacre that's ever been we're going to show you united nations that they should never get involved because of they should let us lead our war with them so they all for the sake of making a point and my uncle is standing there and he just said to my dad just watch them i'm going to speak to them and my dad is like don't even they're going to kill you on the spot we were dying anyway and so he negotiated with them he said you're going to be hunted forever if you don't take my deal i'm going to give you wealth so you can only dream of take the wealth spare the town and you don't even need to work for these people meaning you don't have to even serve in the army just disappear the the rest of the people that were in power they could easily disappear to other countries but the civilians that were at war all the all the borders were shut so when you look at ukraine now at least although i work with the survivors of ukraine and we work with charities with ukraine they can come out of the country the least to say we couldn't for us it was like on the frying pan that was it so we all knew either way we're going to die but how we're going to die we were just waiting for it and um after a long negotiation that my uncle did eventually they said okay let's uh let's see how much wealth he has he's bluffing and my uncle said i'm going my mom followed my uncle she's like i'm coming i'm like mom like could you just please i was like i'm laughing now but i remember the fear i like i'm like oh my god i've never seen my mom again and uh she went and helped my uncle but yeah that really um that really saved us that night i never knew my uncle was that wealthy he had when we after we got released because you can imagine after quite some time they went digging in my uncle's garden they found all the gold everything my uncle had hidden everything that is ever earned they took all the wealth and the soldiers just kept retreating themselves and then we were just left there unaware they said stay here don't move and we didn't move for like hours and then my dad said we need to make a move because they're not here anymore some people were saying what am i might be snipers we said we've got to move we can't stay in the mountains and it was called children were crying babies hungry so we decided to take the risk and we walked back into our sort of into the town again and to our homes and i found my mom and my uncle just sitting there they thought they had killed us anyway because we took us ages to get back home so my uncle and my mom thought if they hadn't come yet it's been a while since we gave the gold they spare us to see the trouble to see the defeat so they've killed the town but when they heard us coming in it was very emotional time i just never forget you know going into my uncle's garden and just seeing them it was like yes it's nice that's a bold move but like you see you were dead anyway so to take that risk and figure out what to do with that i'm surprised they didn't kill you anyway honestly i genuinely i'm really surprised that they didn't i don't nobody understands to this day everybody that remembers that night and it's so many young generations now they were babies then they don't remember it but i do and there's so many other people we often talk about my uncle and how he's become this legend he must have had a bit of scottish in his blood i'm tearing you funny brave oh it means with myself yourself and melgipson how many people did they save save everyone so the whole town got saved but the the trouble started the next day when basically what happened was in the next couple of days after that the soldiers kept attacking the town raping women and really like properly going at it and my dad just came home and he's like listen i need you to pack i'm like what i'm not going anywhere i was like what the heck he's like no no no you have to go cross the mountain go into kosovo and all the borders were shut so he meant i had to trek through the mountain on my own okay it's not very far but it's a few miles that i don't know directions i mean when you're in the mountains you get completely lost because you can't see sense of direction and i was young and it was cold and um anyway after a long debate my mom said you got to listen to your dad i said will you come with me she's like i can't leave your dad so i decided to listen to my dad and we said goodbye i crossed the mountain into kosovo just to give the overview of the story found a bus and i speak the language in kosovo they speak albanian only and uh because the serbian because there were serbs as well in in kosovo but they had left by that point they were migrating into Serbia and i went in got on the bus managed to get into the to the capital of kosovo which is now pristina it was always pristina anyway and um by that point the night had fallen and i was thinking where do i go where is the red cross because my dad really said you need to go and find the red cross i'm like okay the red cross cool the camps i got it and i got completely lost didn't know what i was doing i was thirsty i was hungry and ended up i saw this bar open and it was police hours as well so nobody on the roads and it's quite daunting i was like oh my god what am i doing i don't know this town is big and um i went into this bar when i walked in i was so surprised everybody there was foreign foreign police officers they all had blue helmets uh uniform i'd never seen before some blue some with flags with different flags german flags and i walked in and i was like oh my god i walked into some different country not even this is not kosovo so i went to the bar and spoke to them in albanian i said i just need a glass of water because they looked at me too young to be in a pub uh well they looked at me a bit sheepish to like what are you doing here so i got some water and then basically decided to go outside and um sit because i didn't know where to go but i was very lucky so i went outside sat down and i started to cry because i was like oh my god what am i going to do and i didn't tell the barman that i'm looking for the red cross i just i completely shut down i didn't know what to do what i witnessed back home i was really worried to tell anyone i was from Serbia and to my surprise i was followed out so as i sat down i looked up and there was two big american guys i'm not even going to try to do the accent they are my best friends still i love them to bits and um peter and brian they both looked at me with a translator hands like this on their ways like in english because i didn't understand english what are you doing here it's dangerous and i'm looking at them like what although i was good at languages i wasn't confident enough to speak english because we didn't learn it at school only through movies uh we weren't very lucky to learn it properly at school and the albanian guy said it's dangerous on the road what are you doing here they're asking you i said i am looking for the red cross i'm from Serbia and immediately i saw the translator's face just changed as if to say oh from Serbia what are you doing here you are not welcome here but luckily he did translate it to them and they said we can't take her to red cross now but since she's completely on her own and lost we can give her shelter in our own apartment and it was so out of you know out of ordinary so to say i was like what two men their apartment it's like no way am i going with these two people like you know young girl muslim girl and thinking these big guys anyway i didn't have a choice to be honest and i said to the translator okay i'll go and will they then take me to the red cross tomorrow he said well we'll speak tomorrow about it go in the jeep it was a big jeep took me to their apartment they were so respectful my goodness i was so lucky so lucky to have stumbled across them and they took me straight to the kitchen there was a sofa there gave me blankets pillow some pajamas of brian's pajamas big massive peter got me these little like slip-ons with ducks on them i've never seen anything like that with the shape of the duck and he was also alien to me because i grew up so poor uh what pajamas they want pajamas for all my life kind of thing we were very poor and um so they all dressed you know they gave me stuff i got myself dressed i was so cold made me some tea and the translator stayed for a bit we couldn't really communicate in english just they were trying to speak in albanian police officers peacekeepers and we were trying our best but that morning when we woke up they had to go to work so they said to the translator just tell her to stay here she can't leave the apartment she can't leave without us at all when we come back we're going to speak to our superior and see what should we do about her going to the red cross i didn't understand until much later why they wouldn't send me to the red cross and they never explained this to me because of the translator they never trusted the translator and they were in the in the right sort of right feeling right kind of instinct not to have trusted him because he was the one that got me in trouble completely and um and they came back and in that time that they went to work and that same day i thought this whole place look a mess and i started cleaning the uniforms hanging brought this carpet in from outside it was wet and i had to dry it and it was they came home and i was cooking some food and they were like what on earth is going on this girl like uh i just wanted to thank them i wanted to say thank you for having me you know in the night because i was in in the streets i was scared so i didn't know how to thank them so i made it homely for them i even cooked a meal and they started laughing they said the translator down and they said just tell her that she cannot be sent to the red cross but until things calm down in Serbia and we will keep an eye from over here what's happening in her town she has to stay here is she all right with that i had no choice i had to be all right with it and then we became the best friends it was really just a most unexpected friendship and respect that showed me and they're not even from my religion of my nationality or anything but i'm so pleased i met them because anytime at any point in the future from that on somebody completely broke my faith in man my my trust in my own people or my own religion it was those two guys that constantly reminded me that they in order to have that respect and trust people didn't have to be from the same religion or the same culture it was a universal thing so you have bad and good in every culture and you have bad and good in every religion but yeah they they were great but then the translator had given me up to the human trafficking gang one of the biggest human trafficking gang to this day believe it or not they're still alive they're still very dangerous and they're still ticking human trafficking is at the all-time high it's more money made than human trafficking now than drugs that's how big a business it is with the the organs and organ harvesting yeah the harvest harvesting is unbelievable for the things that they're doing to create money and generate money from kids adults it's all around the world and it's a massive massive business i had a man on who was a navy seal from america and he tries to he goes to places in asia and tries to stop a bit it's just it's just so big and there's just so much money involved it's scary to think this shit happens in the world so see when you get captured what happens then i got taken it was this one day i never left the apartment on my own because i knew i wasn't supposed to but we didn't have electricity because it was still sort of war in even in kosovo so i thought there was always a stand just outside of the window and i could see it from peter's bedroom and i thought you know what if i could just go and just get a magazine so i can read because i was going a little bit crazy you know you you you there on your own all day they had to work they can't take you with you although they did a lot with me they took me that i met majority of their friends in in the military and stuff they introduced me i was not somebody they kept hidden so the all the hierarchy they knew i was there and they wanted me safe and the reason they wanted me safe because again i had cross borders from syria to kosovo so i was a huge target and they wanted me to be safe until they were ready to send me back to syria and so i thought do you know what i'm gonna go buy a magazine i had some spare change and i said you know what if i just buy a magazine it's only 50 pens i mean i can read something all the housework were done and i didn't have anything on me i even left the door uh semi open because i didn't intend to take the keys and leave completely it was open and i just left something to block the door i went out and i just heard this squeaking wheels like a really harsh black van pulls in front of me on top of the pavement and my my instant reaction was to say excuse me watch out what are you doing on payment so i'm about to tell them off little did i know they're gonna actually they're gonna be the ones telling me off and then completely terrorized my innocent mind so they they came out so quickly they opened the doors and i was like like whoa i didn't even know what happened it was so fast they put this black thing over my head and they both of them two guys they grabbed me just up here and sort of shoved me into the van closed the door and it's like let's go let's go all in albanian they're speaking albanian i'm like this is surely a like a nightmare i'm having like i was hoping i'm having a nightmare and i can you know like a dream i can pinch myself and i could wake up and they were like we got her we got her and they calling me names and they're referring to me really nasty words and i was like wow this is happening and this is i'm like what's going on why am i the spy they were calling me a spy ended up dragging we did drive very far is still in the central of pristina at this abandoned building and they end up dragging me from the van to to this room a huge building and when we got near my feet were dragged i was i wasn't even walking my toes were just like i could feel the ground i was just being dragged like a body and they're still swearing and they saw happy they have got me away from the americans and they said we found i mean they swearing that we found her and this and that the spy this and that and i'm like oh my god i really started panicking i knew i was in big trouble and uh the boss said take the hoodie off so they took the hoodie off and i was on my knees and i looked at him he looks at me said oh so he said you're the one i'm thinking okay clearly i'm so famous now i mean i'm the one such a spy james bond girl you know when i look back i'm like gosh bad bad girl anyway so uh um he actually gave the the the order for me to be what can i say in this podcast can i use words yeah so he said okay i want to watch this you guys rape her and when he said that i was like oh my god and i you know you can't even describe it with words the millions of conversations in my head with myself like this can't be happening this is not happening and i started screaming because i was flipped on my back i'm pinned down by other guys and all my everything i had on was ripped so fast and the only thing i could do is just as i was pointing my face to the ceiling and i'm just like please don't do this i'm a virgin because i didn't know what else to say i was so scared i mean the way i was i grew up is that in a small town in order to marry a nice decent guy you had to be a virgin when you marry or when you decide to be somebody's otherwise the whole town will know they will they will let you go you can't stay in a family if you haven't come as a virgin things have changed now it's tremendously i'm so surprised when i go back home it's like like anywhere else in the world but not so long ago he was on the same this is only 20 something 23 years ago 24 years ago maybe we're talking really like extreme in terms of you had to be a virgin that kind of stuff when they heard when the boss heard this because the guys were so charged up like yeah we're gonna do this and the boss luckily heard when i when i said that's so out loud that i was a virgin and he's like whoa boy stop and they all stopped it's like they programmed to stop and they all like undressing and i'm like oh my god oh my god i'm like oh my god it's just like what's happening he's like put something on her he said boys we have stumbled across a huge cargo in my humble opinion cargo is something that you shape and you it's good and i thought what cargo i'm a human like i'm thinking in my head i was always like a thinker he said right let's get her ready to the safe house because uh she needs a lot of training and i i didn't understand what he was meaning with a lot of training so it took me to the house and introduced me the head there was a lady there this woman much older than me and uh she was very sinister and they all were sinister to be honest very very very rough people and they trained me they i mean in the book it's a lot of details i don't want to even go into the details now it's quite upsetting but i was just on the hindsight i was made to watch a lot of the act and to the point where you know it's like people might watch porn and then might enjoy it but when you are forced as a child to watch something like that and a gun being held to your head that you have to watch you can't even blink no matter what's happening how cruel the sexual act is and whether the person that's being done to is conscious or not you're still having to watch and it's um if you see an animal like that it's upsetting when you see a human and it's lifeless and being abused like that it's it's um it's hard yeah that's heartbreaking like that's you wouldn't wish that upon anyone but how many people were in this place do you know it was i never i only saw the other girls when they came to be done something too who was doing something to them was it the soldiers or was that the gangs the human trafficking gang i was taken by human trafficking gang and organ harvesting gang so i was with them now there were no soldiers they were just complete monsters and no matter what they claimed they were in the past or who they served i can tell you they might have served for the sake of anger or vicious stuff and they might have killed some serbs in the act of war but what they continue to do to their own people because i was from outside but they continue to do this to their own people the cost of and children they weren't missing the cost of the girls they weren't missing during the war some of which organs have been found to exist in someone else's body in germany and so on i've been following such a track of people asking questions where did my heart come from when they start doing the research and in dna they go back to kosovo but my son has gone missing since war we thought he was dead now your son clearly was trafficked and his heart taken by the black market and ended up saving a boy in germany that kind of stuff so how could you do this to your nation and so when i say this i don't hate the kosovo i absolutely love the people are so lovely and i have lots of kosovo friends and i have so many serbian friends but i'm saying that the gangs that the human trafficking regardless of what nationality or religion they are from they are monsters if they are even able to think of trafficking anyone or doing anything to anyone that's living being for me they are monsters i don't care what religion they are to me they have zero religion or for me they're just like uh how can i say no identity they're just monsters yeah evil that's evil complete evil they're doing the most catastrophic things for money yeah that's what all boys do that's it they're completely brainwashed they only care it's money they're suffering in the pain i don't believe in wars i don't believe there should be wars but i understand people can be brainwashed i interviewed a man earlier who says look at that time i was conditioned to just follow orders yeah just do what i want i thought that was normal some people came out the army and they think what was i doing you talk about the weapons of mass destruction it didn't even exist there was over a million people were killed who they fight for is for the greed of the hierarchies who are calling the shots to make them richer but yet those suffer homeless people on the streets the majority of homeless are military they go away and fight for a country that when they come home no one fights for them and this is a sad reality of it i don't believe in words i feel as if all wars are murder some people may get upset with that but that's just the way i see the world there was a time i actually tried to join the marines but i'm glad i didn't get into because i've been so i'll do whatever it takes this is the right thing to do that's what i believe was was just when i interviewed so many people you realized that destruction the pain the misery it causes and innocent kids and women and men men come back with ptsd because it's not a humane thing human being shouldn't be seen destruction pain torture misery the ptsd now is a big thing where people are struggling mentally why because it's not a thing you should be seen human being should be the cheeses it is the most important thing on this planet is love yeah but it's difficult because sometimes we don't love ourselves sometimes we hate others and the whole vengeance and anger and that's just the environment we're in it's so fast paced we don't really sit back meditate and go wait a minute life is pure life is beautiful and we're all confused including myself listen i have the answers to how i should be feeling i don't always follow it because i'm trying to improve i'm trying to create a business i'm trying to earn money even though i know money's bullshit it's an energy currency it's an illusion it doesn't really mean anything but we give it so much meaning here we feel as if that's what we need instead of communication helping others because the gift in life is helping others as soon as you help someone you automatically feel good it's a one one for both parties how long were you in captive if i i was with them for quite some weeks and i really had to in the book it's everything is precise because i contacted my two american police officers and got the timeline right because what you find is i also suffer with ptsd i suffer so much after that i was on a sub aside a watch initially in the uk because i was what happened next after my kidnap just gets worse and worse and you just think when you just like this can't go any worse than this then you end up even worse so when i eventually made it here the ptsd was huge and i couldn't i couldn't i went blank i almost tried to delete you know it took me quite a while to retrieve all my memories because i was trying to block it so much because i really it's a i i did this live thing the other night on instagram only because i wanted to be really vulnerable with people for people for my audience that asked me you are so strong i'm not always strong i'm only strong because i'm trying to do the right thing that's giving me strength but when i go to bed every night i have i go through the same journey that i've been through in real life every night every night i face these people so it never goes away i can completely understand the soldiers i have lots of soldiers that i know and they they've done their best and i know sometimes maybe they've done you know when uh because i've spoken to them i've been working with them it was out of their control because sometimes you get like you get the orders and people making the orders are not there they're not seeing everything it's only through statistics or information so it's really hard sometimes to make these decisions even peter and brian i mean after what happened to me peter especially brian peter came to the uk and saw me we reunited but brian completely hibernated he was really hurt and i always wanted to know you know how did he feel you know how what was going through his mind after he knew that i was gone they thought i was just gone i left them i ran away but when i initially escaped my kidnapping my first kidnapping first i say because there is the second coming i had an interview at the police station in kosovo and uh they wanted to know what had happened because the moment i got rescued or ran away i was fighting with the last guard that was left to kill me rape me and kill me it's a long story and people can you know read the book so it's really detailed so that night that i fought against the driver the the uh guard uh as i as i went down i mean i tricked him and so on but as i walked down these stairs it was from the fourth floor when i come out it was after midnight and he punched me so hard he had a gun on him and he punched me so hard i went flying onto the road and as i flew onto this middle of the road in kosovo in pristina i looked around because i was all disorientated and i could see a big jeep same as the police american officer's jeep that they gave me shelter peter and brian uh oh this is a police officer jeep so i started screaming and it was dark only the street lights a little bit and um the police officer that was finishing his duty was an italian police officer and the reason i remember is because i saw his flag so he saw me so he started shooting at my guy that is about to shoot me and he then started shooting at the police officer so there was a lot of shooting going on while i was crawling on the road towards the police officer to hide behind the car and uh go to the police station we do the interview and they really are grateful that i finally and they said do you believe that you are the only survivor we've been we've been waiting for someone like you to come along and you have to appear in court i said there is no way i want anything to do with this i said here's the interview i had a case number i said i want to go i wanted to come back to syria and and die at war with my mom and dad i didn't want to be near these people so they took me back to brian and peter i told them that they were giving me shelter they woke up they woke them up at three a.m. in the morning by then peter took me in brian woke up completely depressed and they learned what had happened to me the next day they said loretta you have to go because now it's really dangerous we have to change apartment but you also need you need to make a move excuse me to syria because now you are complete target like they were probably would have followed me everywhere until they killed me and that was going to put their mission at risk themselves and every everyone involved so it was the right choice to have made went back to syria they put me on this bus that took me as near to the border as possible crossed the border again i knew where to start to cross the border still illegally because the the borders were still shut and when i reached my town it was like a ghost town that been bombing that been like you could see the smoke and the air wasn't clear and it was like a ghost town literally like oh it's like i don't know how to explain and i got these shivers on me and i thought oh this this is not safe and probably they're all dead but i'm just going to go and see by that point what had happened is our town had gone to war against the soldiers so where the border with the town is they had created these barricades so they were shooting each other but where i entered there was nobody but it was mostly on the on the main kind of road where the big trucks have come in and the tanks i went into my mum's dad's garden and i can't find them anywhere in the house and i thought they dad they must have died in the crease of the mountains i'm thinking these thoughts is there never only any word contacted with your mum and dad when you were with the americans no it's no way because you're still living every day not knowing what's happening back home no news not knowing no contacts no telephone nothing it was all dead it was like a nonexistent kind of place it's quite daunting not to me because i wondered all the time if they're still alive yeah because that's added pressure without all the other shit added on to what you were going through to be honest when i got taken the first time by the human trafficking and i knew because they told me like we have sold you to the highest bidder this is before before i escaped and they said once the highest bidder is done with you then we'll put you to the general public for prostitution and after they are done with you as well then we take your organs and we sell it to the red the black market so ultimately they said you need to resign to the fact that you're gonna die so you're never gonna escape us and the first thing that went through my mind was like i just need to make it through make it out tell my mum and dad what's happened and even if i have to die it's fine so the death itself didn't scare me but my parents not knowing what had happened to me really frightened me that obligation that that i thought they if they live throughout their life and i just gone i'm gone they're never gonna know what happened to me and that was something that really drove me to make it through to fight to want to escape to stay alive to stay alive to make a scene every time we stop somewhere i made a scene that's how i escaped them i constantly was making scenes were they telling you that they were going to sell you on how much were people actually getting sold for did you know i don't know but uh they had put because i was a virgin so a highest bidder had bought me so they had sold me to the highest bidder i don't know how much it's fucking creepy isn't it it's creepy that there is even a market from a health you'd think from a healthy human mind okay these guys are monsters but the buyers are too yeah and these are the ones are sitting in suits probably sitting in fucking parliament and all over the world i'm not saying i'm not i don't have the answers the names but it's the high-end people who are walking the streets and suits and calling the shots and i'd imagine so it would pay that sort of money i don't know what they pay but with some of the stuff that you need some of the girls are a hundred thousand could be half a million it depends who they are and what the juice they can get from them do you think a lot of people actually buy these girls and just keep them and a house or a dungeon and nobody ever knows all around the world over the years we have heard different cases some people believe that have i mean this is information coming from a cia agent i haven't done my homework myself yeah same but it's just coming from someone else different sources so the few that have made have escaped and they never want to speak they just hibernate have said the that some of the people have been killed their blood has been taken organs have been taken some say it's constant prostitution so it's really it's like their imagination is quite wild it's just how much money they can make but again it's for their own evil frills we talk about adrenochrome and a lot of people think it's a conspiracy this and that but people are getting tortured for their blood and they're paying top dollar for it and we talk about the heart the liver the kidneys the brain people and people just a lot of these some of these people will be using their money just to torture people for their own frills for their own kicks there's i've spoke to people who says that the the high end people a lot of money are buying human beings setting them into the wild and chasing them to kill them like some sort of game people putting people's life it's like hunger game you know like they're creating these films and then lo and behold it's almost like they're giving people idea what to do but i think that it's always been there i don't know if they're just rubbing in people's face as well some of these films it's not as if it's giving people ideas i just feel as if it's already there and they create these films to say this is what we do we're going to make a film of it so you think it's so far-fetched yeah exactly as if because sometimes you think what do they what were they smoking to have made this film i mean who came up with stuff like this i mean i don't do drugs i've never done drugs but i'm just you know it's just an expression like what are these people taking to have such creepy imagination but maybe it's coming from real life events yeah events so seeing your mind but you're constantly thinking i need to escape will you will you case in the place and thinking okay there's exits here there's a security guards there did you plan it with any other girls or could you speak with anybody else no i was always on my own with them so as i said they would bring girls only to teach me and then once they were sort of convinced that i knew what to do because they didn't want me to be spoiled i was just this pristine they wanted me to know stuff but if i was to perform something it was to be done to the highest bidder so so he can see that i'm nervous maybe he or she whoever bought me because i probably would have been very nervous to have done whatever i learned but so they they have worked it out in such a way so they trained me never put me to test because they didn't want to spoil my innocence and they knew that i was ready because of like weeks of training and watching constant crazy stuff and then you know but that night uh that night i mean it's a it's a very long process because they were meant to in the book if people read it because i'm just spoiling the whole book people the powerful the story people will go and buy the book so the well people support you for your strength and what you've been through thank you so well people go fuck me i like her she's unbelievable so people will buy into not the book obviously we're here to promote the book but people with your story people go i'm going to buy that so people just buy it for support and obviously find out in more detail but generally people people come on the podcast people gravitate towards a book because they like the individual it's more important so i think just being you and showing you your strength and courage i'm not going to die and you're thinking about all the shit that you're seeing and going through you're still thinking i don't want my mum and dad to suffer because it's a life sentence for them it's this is it and it's so strong it made me realize my love my bond going back to the question you asked earlier you said uh how was it like you know to be because i grew up i was so lucky to grow grow up with with two parents that really loved and respect each other there was never strictness it was very holistic way never pushed me to do anything always did their best to educate me and they always said if you're going to do anything do it in front of us so we can help you and my dad as a doctor because drugs were big even on those days but i was never into drugs i was never into smoking or drinking anyways it wasn't something that i wanted to do but yeah my love for them the way they i just the love they showed me just rubbed on me and i just it really rubs on you it's like if somebody shows you love then you that really saw oh contagious then you just feel that sense of thing back and i just wanted to make it through so i could tell my mum and dad look this is what's happened and i made it through and you're okay and even if we die we die together at least we all die and kind of thing but as i said i made it back i found my parents hiding in the basement poor them and they in panic they started like my mum specifically she's like oh my god you shouldn't have come back no no no and i'm like what mom i have so much to tell you you know i just wanted to tell her like mom i've been kidnapped and the love for you and and the resilience and i almost was so proud of myself that i made it through these people she's screaming oh my god she's like blue murder oh my god honey you shouldn't have come back you don't understand the danger you are in and i'm like what danger you should have seen what danger i was in then you know i was so young and naive that i thought that was the only danger that was lying because you know when there is a lion there is hyenas and there is you know you get every kind of wild thing in the mix but um she was right she was right but i sort of under underestimated her panic and underestimated my outcome i said don't worry mom because she heard this van come into the garden this truck small smallish kind of truck soldiers Serbian soldiers they came in and now to just identify in the book this is mentioned but for the people listening in Serbia we had normal army which wore boots as any army would and then during the war to make the numbers what Milosevic did he recruited all the killers murderers rapists any crazy people from the prisons they were with life sentence out of prisons put them on uniform and put trainers on them so they knew who was so the soldiers can tell the difference it was for them not for us but we learned it very quickly that that doesn't look right these soldiers have got trainers and these soldiers have got boots why so we learned it very quickly and then the word spread very quickly and this is way before i even made it to Kosovo we already knew it was established the prisoners a recruits from prisons into soldiers were with trainers on with uniform and the other ones were just normal uniform so these soldiers picked me up from my mom and dad and to be honest at that point i wasn't scared i wasn't i'm like mom and dad don't worry you know i was so chilled about it i said i'm gonna just tell them what had happened in Kosovo that i was called a spy and that i got you know like taken blah blah blah my mom is looking at me like what because she never heard the story and she's still screaming in the middle of the garden my dad is holding her they're both crying and i just said don't worry i will speak to these guys they will understand they are our people they are soldiers Serbian i'm i don't know what i was thinking and um they took me they didn't drive also very far they were into the mountains very near to where we live an abandoned building quite rundown took me in and uh into this small room interrogated me i mean when i say interrogated me my god first with words what were you doing Kosovo why did you cross board us who are you working for i'm like i'm not working for anyone you guys almost killed us so my dad asked me to go i go there i stayed with some americans then i got called a spy so i got kidnapped by human traffickers i'm telling the truth now you're lying okay let's turn up the heat so they start beating me up and now that i start telling people there's people can see it i had a dislocated jaw which in fact is still quite sore from the beating that i got that particular day and my nose got broken quite badly then you had to be reconstructed in in the uk because i couldn't breathe it was so badly broken i looked like a rugby guy almost so tough you got to find humor because it's the story is quite um quite deep it numbs the pain yeah and um they they really interrogated me badly it was so painful the beating the pushing around psychological stuff and the last thing they did that i remember before i fainted after i lost teeth and my teeth would just i was a mess unrecognizable within a few hours i was swollen i couldn't see i was just a mess they kept pulling me and throwing me and back pain so i still have back pain i have to slip disc as a result of that and the last thing i remember from that interrogation before the next time i opened my eyes that i could open my eyes was they said she's not telling the truth all this beating let's brand her so they took this metal branding thing that they used for kettles and stuff it was like a hashtag shape because i had it on my car for a long time i had to raise or remove it and they had the hashtag of me they they burned my calf and the the the pain the instant pain when it hits you i just fainted excuse me i just fainted i couldn't i couldn't i don't remember what happened i just blacked out it was too much for the brain to handle the pain and yeah that's it really uh james and then what happened was that that was i thought he was going to be a very easy journey i was going to literally be held for a bit abuse some more you know maybe interrogate it a bit more and then i thought they can see that i'm telling the truth and they would release me but no i was completely wrong i didn't realize that that was going to be six months of mental abuse physical abuse sexual abuse just the the the the hardest thing for me initially was to to wake up in the small room no window damp cold smelly with a blanket not being able to see burning calf missing teeth bleeding my ear was ripped this ear is still it's been reconstructed but just waking up like i've fallen from from the airplane not even a building and thinking that i was going to go home and then you start thinking okay maybe today and then you lose track of the days and the time because it's dark you don't know what's happening you don't know when it's night when it's day how many hours how you can't you just can't you have zero sense so i really felt buried alive in this room for six months the only time i left the room was when initially that was my bathroom as well and i would use it for everything that i had in me and then i started starving myself because i i couldn't handle i thought i couldn't handle the the torture it was i just wanted to end it because my parents saw me who took me this time so i thought enough it's it's no need for me to fight anymore no need to to continue there is no need for any of this so i'll give in and i thought by starving myself by giving in that the darkness would take me but it wasn't my time it just was not my time and yeah then the torture really began the rape the rape from the soldiers was quite brutal it was just it was a a matter of me making a decision in my head and this is something that now people are so much more aware of it and i'm so so happy for them they are aware of how powerful our mind is and how you can block and how you can think different things to rewire your your yeah your brain and yourself and what you're feeling even if somebody's causing you harm or somebody is lashing at you or whatever you can rewire yourself to almost block it so i learned in that small room because i didn't know what else to do i started meditating i know that i knew what meditation was but just started thinking of my mom's food closing my eyes because i couldn't see anyway so i might as well have my eyes closed and just thinking it was dark so i'm laughing because it's fucking mad and it's funny to see you smiling and that's the beautiful thing because life is what is that what is that all about how can you go through so much torture and torment but still be here smiling because i know people who's not even close to what you've been through and unmeasurable bastards you know and i'm the same i've been through some shit nothing nowhere near your stuff but i've seen some pain i've seen family members struggling pain with losing loved ones to murder and suicide and overdose i've seen struggle i like to think i get on with it and i like to think i'm a peaceful man now but i do think about vengeance i do think about killing people and that's fucking crazy but and i've seen a psychiatrist and he says listen everybody has those quarts because i was thinking i'm going crazy i used to think i used to get some sort of peace of killing the people who harmed my people you know did you ever think that do you know what i think that comes from the sense that you genuinely strongly believe that this kind of people shouldn't even exist but then i used to think i'm coming to their level it's a fine line you know i james i had to work really hard on that because i don't know if i wish them harm i just wish they never existed or somebody harmed them in return as a karma but then i realized that i was only hurting myself by holding on to that kind of feeling i had to forgive them and in order to forgive them i had to forgive myself so when people struggle to make peace with something it's not because they haven't made peace with someone else it's because they haven't forgiven themselves and we forget for example how important we are to ourselves so if you for example let's just take a very simple example if you if we're sitting here and we are very good friends right and you told me oh you are rubbish and um you're crazy and you just judge me in every way you can for example then i would be like excuse me you don't speak to me like that or equally you would say the same to me so basically what i'm trying to say is if you speak to a friend like you speak to your own self in here like because we often say like you're not good enough nobody loves you it comes all from the past experience so we have been wired to think this way that stays with us the power of the word that we started this conversation with so it comes from that the evil that you have is been inflicted in you by external internal families it doesn't matter but if you then thought okay so why do you have to live with yourself by being nasty to yourself like that just because you can't run away from yourself doesn't mean it gives you the right to be so nasty to yourself so treat yourself like a good friend and be like for me sometimes i used to say oh you know your nose is like this and your nose is like that and nobody would want you and you this and you that you've been through a lot and people can't handle you maybe they would find you difficult when you sleep because you have nightmares all of these things and then i said what oh you're not good enough because you didn't get your diploma in medical because the war happened so you never went to university and then i stopped myself i said hang on a minute i'm actually brilliant because if i wasn't brilliant i wouldn't even be here i wouldn't i wouldn't be able to help others so i tell myself every day affirmations affirmations in my head anytime something creeps in like nasty or somebody's just i'll be like no no no i just like because we it's we are human so we're gonna shift between the two yeah i feel as if i contradict myself sometimes yeah exactly i mean it's normal yeah yeah so you got to refrain and just say hang on a minute recognizing and knowing the difference you know so see the people who came to your mum and dad's house the second time were they on your site the serbians that time were they good soldiers obviously they were bad soldiers but they were the trainer ones they were so they were the evil ones yeah so how did they know you were that you were at your mum and dads uh they were watching the border so the border is literally next to my mum and dad's kind of mountain and they were with the binoculars they were watching movement and stuff so because they had gone and asked they knew who lived where i mean how many people were in the town at that time oh just a couple hundred it's a big town yeah it's three thousand yes three thousand so see when you can through all the pain and torment again you fuck so you went from one frying pan straight into another you must have been thinking but did you know that it was always going to be this messy because it become a war zone or did you think everything's going to be okay did you or did you realize how messy and crazy it was getting in there because you said you were going back to die with your mum and dad's i just thought i'll die from a bomb or from a shooting from afar i didn't think i didn't think that i didn't think that was happening i didn't know what i and then now the whole perspective of war has changed for me it's like when people say war if you die by a bomb it's almost like it's been you've been blessed you know just a relief you're like you know if it's um anything like catastrophic from the weather and stuff or whatever it is you're like you just say thank you you know because when he's inflicted by people that mean they find joy and pleasure in torturing others oh my god yeah that's the weak society you know that's the weak men that's the evil of the world that we talk about and people talk about good and evil i genuinely believe there's a good and evil there seem you were going through the six months did you ever realize were you still thinking about an escape or were you thinking of i'm going to get out did you or did you give up hope i i realized i wasn't dying from starvation and stuff and and i gave into the darkness and all of this i never thought i would escape i didn't even hope for escape i just did question i thought why is my dad not coming to get me because he knows they've taken me they didn't know where you were no so they didn't and so what my dad did bless him excuse me this is not in the book the details but um because the book was getting really long and then i was advised either i do two books that straight and i was too tired from the stories it's quite draining it's draining it's uh i cried a lot i really i had guys i have been crying so much right in this book it's been cathartic it's been such a relief because i had to recall a lot of memories and stuff and relive them in order to to really put some content in but my dad bless him he had to he had to go and um contact during the this is all through war six months of war by that point slightly has calmed down i think but still war he had to go in contact a syrbian a police guy that was really high in the police and say look i know you know it's war and you guys are all following your your orders but my daughter has been taken is it and he's been taken by soldiers wearing trainers he didn't say the recruits because he didn't want to just he let him say it and the guy said listen i'm going to first search all the stations to see if she's being held in a police station in the army bases is anybody does anybody know of her so they searched all the legit soldiers said we would not go to that extent if anything we will execute but we're not holding anyone ransom so they had the decency to say so the syrbian soldiers but they said we can investigate to see what's going on with the other half that's been recruiters because they hated each other because the real soldiers felt like they were not good enough so why did they need more recruits from some lunatics so they weren't they weren't really for that even though they were killing and still they were not for people that were mental that do that kind of stuff and they investigated they found out where i was being held and my dad's friend that worked in the police a syrbian guy he was our friend for always really i grew up with him in the house with his kids he then said listen she's being held in the mountain it's this unbounded building but it's not our people it's not uh legit so be careful you might be able to bribe her take her home and then let's plan her escape because they're not going to leave her alone and my dad then he thought about it he gathered loads of cash from other cousins because it's funny enough my dad was the most educated one yet the other cousins had the most money so he gathered from the elderly so children never found out and even now i'm just breaking the news to some of the people that's still alive back home that what happened to me they slowly finding out what had happened really because my dad it was the embarrassment of knowing that i was with these two soldiers and potentially being raped it was huge even during the walk and you imagine and the whole ordeal behind it so he tried to save me he tried to save me face basically to tell my story in my own time and um he found where i was got some money and he had come to rescue me he had planned my escape and i remember the soldiers coming to the door knocking on the door because they always knocked they just mental they said um someone's here to see you but they've said this before and every time they've said this and i thought it was true they would beat me up because i came out of the cell and then i got beaten up a lot they were playing games i said i'm not coming out in Serbia i said i'm staying here they're like come on really somebody's here i was like oh my god and i was so weak i was skin and bones and deformed and infected ear and like infected cough i mean i'm surprised i didn't die from infection and so i i came and i walked into this room because there's a lot of light and i wasn't seeing much light it was all very dingy and dark everywhere else and my room was pitch black when i i could see this person and i'm trying to make out and i'm like and i heard my dad's voice and he approached me and i could see the shock on his face as a doctor he looked at me up and down and i just threw me at him he grabbed me and he's looking at me and i'm looking i said dad what took you so long he just like it's okay he just hugged me you know i could see him i could feel his trembling trembling arms and i said where is mom he said she's at home come on let's go he didn't want me to talk he didn't want me to talk anything even in albanian he didn't want me to talk with the serbian soldiers didn't speak albanian whereas out we spoke both languages he said we're going fast so we got out into the car my dad had exchanged some money and they said listen old man she needs to come back 24 hours she has with you he's like yeah i promise with my life of course took me home i'm lying there like covering my face because the the bright light my eyes were hurting it's it's really something i think the medical people that understand or anyone that's been through something like this going from not being able to see much to seeing so much bright light it's quite something yeah yeah you can't you can't look and i got home my mom was there she grabbed me lots of hugs lots of like big reunion but i wasn't enthusiastic i had i had really the depression the mental state wasn't my mental state was not stable at all i was i was like a zombie i wasn't myself and there was no emotions there was like this numbness about me and understandably i guess and my mom bathed me she got me together i fell asleep on her lap and they then walked me up to eat i couldn't even eat she cooked so many different things i said i can't eat mom i can't i was i was just like really skin and bones and she's like you need to eat and then they shush her in something they like saying something and i'm like what are you guys going on about my dad said it's time you should have seen the look on my face i almost want to see that look on my face as well i think my face said it all i just looked at him and i said that just enough you know i didn't it's not time what time for what you know it's like it's literally i didn't have the will in me anymore i didn't that was nothing nothing left in me that i wanted to go any further i just wanted then i think i could have died if i stayed with my parents on those few days i think i would have probably died because i i reunited with them again and it was just it was enough but my dad so stubborn he's like we are going like okay dad for the last time i've never spoke back at you i will never speak till i die i love you uh your wish is my command so whatever you say he said say goodbye to your mum this is our last time and that was tough so tough sorry that didn't mean to break down but you know when you say those last goodbyes i didn't even know where i was going he never told me anything i just walked with him slowly reached this uh uh we reached the the motorway sort of motorway the leads that goes through sir behind the other kind of countries so the big motorway and it was a truck that did export import for goods even during the war and he gave me to this man and i'm looking at the driver i'm thinking oh my god what now because for me i lost all trust in all humankind at that point he said listen he said you are okay this has been planned he said the driver when you reach the destination the driver has been told what to do he was a spanish driver so with the police my dad they had arranged for me to be transported uh shipped to the uk basically and um sorry i'm so dodgy i was an illegal immigrant in the country but um yeah so um i said goodbye and i looked at my dad for the last time i don't know i felt that void and that that emptiness and i thought wow that's the last time and what for what i didn't want to live anymore i didn't want to carry on you know life without that it wasn't did really have a meaning so i made it to the uk as a illegal immigrant but political asylum seeker as a child i was still by that point i was turning 18 and so on so i'm a bit older i think i don't know really i just track but uh the governments were really very very welcoming right not like oh yeah welcome but kind of my god this kid needs a lot of help and you know my mom's cousin was based here sorry oh you don't have any people that cry do you thank you james i needed this so yeah i came to the uk my mom's first cousin was here he was also he ran away from boston because he was studying medical he's a psychiatrist so he was studying in uh bosnia when war hit he took the last flight last plane that left bosnia before the bombing united nations went in or something like that and uh he didn't even know i was coming nobody knew anything my the driver just had a number just to call when he got to the uk and he did and then uh just excuse me it delivered to my uncle that i've never met before i've never met him ever maybe when i was a baby might have seen me as a baby but that's it and uh he was very kind to me as a psychiatrist especially understanding the level of once i told him the story he was so shocked he was just in disbelief what had happened to me he could see it physically visibly he was very visible everything that he saw but he just couldn't believe that i've made it through that the resilience in a he he found it fascinating he said this is so helpful to he said i'm sorry to say this but he saw me heal and he saw me go through stages he said it's helpful for me as a psychiatrist to see someone overcome because there is always a possibility there is always a chance if you don't give up but he wasn't my doctor he was in my psychiatrist because he's too close to home and i think i needed a female psychiatrist so i was appointed to a female doctor that i work with but you know james the answer always when you have a depression or or some kind of post-traumatic stress it's so easy i was like oh let's put her on drugs like you know antidepressant and there was an answer and i i will encourage i'm not i'm not going to encourage anyone people can do what they want but if if a friend asked me if they were under under medication as such as i was and they said should i stay or what do you suggest i do if they are stable and they're not like literally they're not doing it for any other reasons just because they've been through a stressful time i would say speak to your doctor doctor and try to wean yourself off because you're only numbing the issue and you are not healing because when you're on antidepressant you feel nothing so the the desire to heal yourself it doesn't even exist your body is numb the senses are numb so there's really good doctor german doctor practicing in the uk he helped me get off my medications which was good once that was done in a proper way weaning off gently so i don't have the side effects and my will to really not be on them anymore i just exhaled in life i wanted to then work i wanted to learn i wanted to study and i continued to study and then i just continued to flourish because my mind was numb and i can understand they were worried about me they needed to do something they couldn't babysit me and that was the answer but long term there was not the answer yeah long term any pharmaceutical drug is going to affect the body negatively yeah at a stage if people are so at that line where they want to not be here then sometimes these things can help just at that moment and can help save you to numb the brain and hopefully you can push through it but for me doctors aren't talking about what you're nutrition like how much trauma have you how do you exercise what sort of nutrition are you eating the doctors aren't going to tell you to go into nature and do cold water fairy pain exercise and eat clean and talk right you just go listen i'm making money i'm your drug dealer there you go numb the pain it'll tell you on the box you can still go suicidal by taking this i'm not a doctor i'm not a scientist but for me if you're really struggling if you are drinking taking drugs gambling womanizing if you're doing all those things and you feel as if you get mental health if you can eliminate them and you're still struggling then seek help but if you are not exercising not eating good if you're drinking drugs you're going to be struggling you're going to be have some sort of mental breakdown along the way it might not take a year it might take 10 years but if you can eliminate drink if you can eliminate drugs even caffeine start eating right exercise and speaking right your mind does become a lot clearer my life is going amazing i always repeat this but i still struggle but i'm just no i'm the individual you're struggling today fucking do something about it i'm in charge nobody else but it can be difficult especially when you talk about trauma ptsd because everybody's got different levels of trauma and ptsd someone can break a foot at work or in a car crash and their whole life can be ruined by that sort of trauma they can't go outside they can't go in a car but there comes a stage we need if you fight enough and fight against it and push through it you will start creating changes seem you started working on yourself when they just like you say you still think about it day in day certain smells certain even music or whatever it is it'll bring back that emotion because the brain such a powerful tool the brain releases the chemicals you're speaking about this the brain releases the chemicals to actually what you felt that day the brain is such a powerful fucking big muscle or whatever they want to call it it's just a big sponge of intelligence the same as it's the last thing to die yeah so our heart will die before our brain that's why they say you know it's the life flashes before your eyes yeah because the hearing our brain is the last thing to die so yeah sorry I didn't mean to interrupt that's okay right I'm agreeing and the level of like you mentioned this and it's so important for people to understand please don't compare yourselves to to me or anyone else if you've gone through something and we all have been I meet people every day they go when you think they have it all sorted out you'll be surprised people go through stuff and it doesn't matter because it's like what I've learned is the doctors will say okay let me see your injury from one to ten how painful is it well my tan it could be completely different to someone else's my five you know what I mean so it can't be measured from one to ten my my you know intolerant intolerance my actual tolerance to pain is different maybe to other people because my body has endured so many other pains that is becoming immune to pain so you know I'm just talking about physical stuff they'll get inspired every day have fights yeah you will be able to tolerate that pain compared to the average person who's never done it and getting punched yeah let's just you've went through so much pain you've actually not accepted it but it becomes I wouldn't even say normalised because it ain't fucking normal but it just you go through it sometimes you can go through it's that people in abusive relationships people it's like they go back and because the brain is so used to going back and forth and back and forth to the love minute they're not love me they're going back to that corner but they're when few can get in a conscious state and think about in that conscious state is this the right thing in life is it the wrong thing you can actually make the best decisions are made obviously when you're in a conscious frame subconscious mind controls your days look robotic but it's to break that mold and make the changes and no matter who you are and I always repeat this you can have better in life if people could see their lives if they could see their true potential they'd fucking hate who they are and there's nowhere people not even anywhere near the trauma in pain you went through but yet they're suicidal they're still unhappy and they're miserable and they don't want to go in and it's sad it's so sad that people actually feel depressed it's so sad that people actually want to give up it's so sad that they don't think there's hope there's always hope you're living proof even though at times you try to starve yourself and you never was the food what was the food like in that in that cell horrible oh my god it's like I mean I mentioned the details about the food it's like like soup kind of it's true and then yeah yeah but I lost my taste buds anyway you know after a while James a lot of senses you know you don't crave I think we go through life going coming back to life now we go through life thinking oh I need this to exist and I need that honestly you don't need much to exist and to be happy you I think we just external factors I think we feel as if as human beings we crave more we're very we can speak a good game now I speak a good game I understand but I still like to find I've got nice watches I retired my mum which is one of my biggest achievements do you know what I mean retired that house paid off money in the bank wage every month that's your son that's what I've known for your youth I've got you you put up with all my shit for years of prison and policing addictions and misery and I was never a bad kid but I done bad shit just to try and fit in but it was a look if we know the answers then why do I work so much why am I on the road why am I I like nice things nice clothes nice car nice house because we know we don't need that shit to be happy yeah we know but it's okay to have nice things I get it but the more I've got all that the more I realize well how am I not still happy because I know I've still got a lot of stuff internally to work work for a lot of demons and face them and as a man you don't really we pretend a lot for the great pretenders men we're scared we're scared more than any other species and human on this planet you know James I think this comes down to the fact that over time we have told boys to man up you can't cry because you're not many enough you if you cry you are not many enough so it's like we we we make boys feel this way I think they are vulnerable and you'll be surprised once people trust you at me as a woman for example or as a coach because I coach a lot of people in vps and mds of companies and stuff and when we work on one-to-one I am so grateful when they open up to me because I know there is a shift happening and they don't have to be vulnerable to the world but just be vulnerable to yourself and the person you trust because you can go through life pretending so strong but eventually it's going to catch up with you and it's just going to start impacting it's like I watch relationships where people go oh we've just drifted apart because I don't know he doesn't really say much he's always working it's always yeah he's working because he's trying to provide but he's also not saying much because maybe there is stuff to be said that he's trying to not bother you with so it's so important for them for men to find somewhere to turn like the soldiers or anyone really I mean even people that are in really high like pressure jobs to be able to say things to someone they trust even if they just say it or write it down for me it started by writing down I didn't know I will ever publish a book but I started writing things down because it was a relief yeah you don't have to think about it you're writing like yeah it's helpful but the majority of suicide is male so something's not right the something's not right in the male psyche where we don't feel good enough to be here and that fucking breaks my heart that there's a man out there or even listener watching us to think I'm not good enough I'm not good enough my girlfriend I'm not a good son or I'm just shit at my job or whatever but everybody's got a purpose everybody's got meaning in life and it's just how we see the world because there's people I know who's got less than me that are happier than me they've been told that they're not good enough so it starts from childhood it's very important it's the brain but that's why after me she's important for me every morning I love myself I am good enough just repeat that but sometimes it doesn't always work so it's okay me saying do this and do that it doesn't always work I'll do cold water fairy tale I'll exercise and I know I'm successful now I know I'm doing well doesn't mean nothing if up here is like a fucking warzone it's like just little bombs creep off from time to time yeah that's when you need to go back to because this this actually came up in conversation I was doing a motivational speech with a newspaper here in the UK and this came up because what we sometimes forget we focus on all we're doing the right thing you know but we're not actually understanding why is it not working it could be something as simple as for me I have to be careful what I listen to so you think you're listening to music but the words within the music so that kind of stuff because that brain is listening although we're not aware of it so now when I wake up in the morning I don't listen to the news and they said to me once you do a first thing in the morning how do you motivate yourself and this is me speaking to the newsroom and I just say things as they are I said my advice is don't listen to the news and I didn't even realize I was speaking to the news I wasn't really doing it on purpose and they all started laughing why because they also realized that the news sometimes can be what people listen to the first thing in the morning you know we don't wake up at the wrong side of the bed if if that was true then I would wake up every morning really up like crazy because my dreams wake me up you know I'm going through that every night of kidnapping fighting it's always like a real fight in my sleep so if that was true then I would wake up but as soon as I wake up I'm like I'm here no that was just a dream thank god so how's your life been since you've been in the UK how did you then turn your backness into light what did you do was it just steady progress of trying to face your demons face the pain initially really didn't I didn't really fully heal till much later but it started it started with me joining a gym at the school that I was going to Hammersmith it was Hammersmith West College or something like that it was called in Byron's Court and it was a gym for the students so I started going to the gym I didn't know what I was doing in the gym and the power of exercise and just releasing a bit of energy it was amazing but what happened was a lot of trainers would come to me and say and this is when I could speak only very little English oh are you trying to lose weight and I was skin and bones anyway oh are you trying to build muscle oh and I'm like why are they asking me this question I didn't understand it was so didn't mean anything to me what I was going there and I said it to them I said no actually I'm here because I feel good it makes me feel good and they looked at me like okay crazy girl so my drive immediately thought do you know what these people got it all wrong I need to get into fitness industry and I always wanted to help people because as a doctor I wanted to help people and that's why I wanted to be a doctor so I became a fitness personal trainer and worked in different gyms in London and they're all very well established gyms until I set up my own business but I always focused on making people feel good in order to see changes because unless you can train your client at the max and have heavy lifting fix the diet all of this if they're not mentally happy and you know it's not your job to make everyone happy but it's how you use reverse psychology for them to make those decisions to make themselves happy to think happy thoughts and how they see themselves and how you are with them and it was working I became one of the most busiest personal trainers female trainers in London I mean like I was being recruited by different gyms and like come and work for me come and I'm like nope and then I was just working for myself but Jewish community Muslim community they all loved me because I'm trustworthy the people know your story they didn't nobody knew the story only just recently the story as if that was a fresh chapter you could be somewhat not be you'll always be yourself but you feel as if it was a not an escape either because you've still lived that life but it was like if new beginnings would you feel as if that life didn't exist or it was always there you're right it was like it was always like a different different identity I had the same name and the last name but it was a different identity in a sense that I didn't have to talk about it to anyone nobody knew I never wanted people to know I was so ashamed of what had happened so I still hadn't healed from the shame I hadn't forgiven myself I felt this guilt the guilt that I walked out of the two American police officers apartment and I got kidnapped the guilt of going back home and the suffering of my mom and dad they had to go through because of me so I always blame myself and being able to be with these families that had it what I thought they had it all sorted out which in in external way did look like they were I mean they were like multi-billionaires kind of families and you go into the world from somebody that's come from that they have no idea who you are they just love you because you are kind and you you're just the way you approach them and just because you deliver and they keep you in the family they're like okay you're training my grandpa okay you're training our kids and they trust you want to in you in kind of thing but they had no idea who I was in terms of my history I just said I'm from Serbia and that said they never quizzed me or anything and I never showed signs of distress that I had things going on with me and that was such a good distraction for me but I forgot about me I forgot myself I completely forgot that number one needed healing yes exercise was helping me yes fixing my face and you know with surgery eventually and everything else yes those external stuff it helped me gain some confidence and look more like me before I got beaten up but ultimately my soul my confidence was like to the ground it was like non-existent so it was hard for me initially to start dating men to date anyone that that whole thing was I pretty much married a second pretty much second guy that I dated a third guy that I did in the UK is that like a protection thing or was it no I just look with listening could there be love or were you just craving something to love you did you ever crave love or were you just so distant from it you didn't trust that you could be loved I never wanted to be with anyone men or women safer in it never honestly genuinely then I ended up meeting an American guy we were together for two years he had to go back to the state yeah he was American those that are connection with Americans I think maybe that's my it was my weakness I think it was my the close I could get to my two American police officers in a in a spirit world kind of thing and and then Matt and I broke up which was fine I mean it was it was a decision we both made because he moved to the States I didn't want to go to the States and and then I don't know who was in between Matt and James but it wasn't enough I don't think actually no actually someone before Matt and then Matt was my last and then I met my husband James and what was it I fell in love with him he was the most normal person I met in terms of something that I would have picked if I never had war kind of thing he came from a very humble background teachers his parents were teachers and I didn't know this but you could just start feeling I fell familiar side to him you know I could relate to him because other guys for example Matt was a banker it was wealthy and completely the opposite of what I was used to one before that was super wealthy Jewish guy so he was like okay when I met James not that he's not successful he's a successful guy but I felt his upbringing was different it matched yours he matched mine so you I needed that match I wasn't ready to go into the billionaire's lifestyle I wasn't ready to go into the millionaire's lifestyle I just I wasn't seeking any of that lifestyle it was just universe was sending it my way they treated me well they were both gentlemen but ultimately you know months after splitting up with my American boyfriend I I met James and it was familiar we met in the gym we had this kind of exercising common we would run together he was into healthy yeah we love James oh James I can do magic I have a tattoo on my arm your name I knew I was coming today so yeah you know we we um we then decided to get married and we have two boys and yeah so it's good how do how is it for the men when you tell them your story because some men would think that's heavy because that's baggage that's a lot of baggage you would you would need a strong man because you would go through a lot of healing process and you'll still struggle so you would need a man to understand that a man who understands you and understand obviously you bring so many great attributes but the sadness and the darkness which comes from time to time which I'd imagine with everybody who struggles but you would need somebody who can guide that to a place of feeling safe and that's hard to find what's it like when you drop that bomb I never dropped the bomb with anyone other than James what do you say and I just remember he was moving in because he had his own apartment and I had my own little apartment in South Kensington area and he started leaving toothbrushes and stuff and I'm like what's going on he's like oh would you mind because I'm spending a lot of time here I'm like okay and then he because we were together he could see that I was I didn't know I was having so many nightmares until the these guys started telling me that you wake up a lot in the night you know in fact James once caught me was it James or Matt I was about to jump through the window from the fifth floor I didn't know I was doing it but I was escaping from something I think it was Matt that caught me actually and my ex and so when I told James he he was getting serious I knew this was getting serious I would I met his mom and the guy was totally in I could feel it he was to propose but I said James listen I need I said we're getting into a really serious relationship I said I need to tell you stuff and still I held a lot of information back because I was worried the level the depth and the embarrassment I said I've been kidnapped and this is what happened to me and he said it's fine nothing changes I was like really I said you need to know though because you know just in case he's like doesn't doesn't bother me said I'm here for you and that's when I realized that he was a really really good guy because it's true there's the guys that have heard the story most recently now that the fact that the book is out they say oh that story really plays on my mind that story really got me there's I'm like come on dude I mean it is my story I don't want people to feel like overwhelmed with it they should be inspired and say hang on a minute so this woman's still alive okay good there is hope so the whole idea of doing the book it's not for revenge it's not for to feel sorry for me it's literally for hope that we are stronger than we give ourselves credit and don't let yourself go through torment just because you don't believe in yourself just try and find solutions and see what works for you this is the whole thing there is always hope but yeah I mean it's been great and then James always really encouraged me to exhale like in terms of business and as a coach and I became really established in the fitness world and I was enjoying it so much and I just so natural at coaching and I worked hard in working with people and I study on the side not diploma or anything but I would read lots of psychology books and like how to use reverse psychology to help people rather not manipulate and so I was able I'm always able to talk to anyone and anything and everything about whatever because I match people's energy and I'm I always try to to see where where I met with people before I so I'm never fully me when I'm with people because it just depends on their energy but I'm always peaceful unless I'm being attacked so no attacking martial art training anyway but yeah then I set up my business in I was doing personal training but what happened James is that I have two slip discs as a result of my my kidnapping and my kidnapping my six months in prison and illegal prison I didn't realize that my back was really getting worse because I was so in the moment I was younger I was like fit and because I had strengthened my back so much it just took it took something it took lifting I had this little scooter and I was trying to put it into the stand and I lifted it and I was strong you know I mean always slender but very strong and I just felt my back I thought this is not right so I called emergency and they said well you got really bad slip discs here they've been there for a long time you need an operation and potentially you're going to be on the wheelchair so we suggest you stop with your personal training you can't run you can't do this you can't do that my whole world just can't can't can't and I'm like you don't tell me what I can and can't in my head I'm very stubborn and of course I ended up not doing personal training anymore but I retrained myself and then my mentor Gila Goni which I mentioned literally in every speech I do he completely changed my life he made me aware of healing was possible so I got to work a lot done I said Gila listen I don't think I can do personal training anymore for you or anyone that I train so I'm going to be on the wheelchair and I said it's tough he said how did this happen so I said listen nobody knows my story but he said oh he told me his story I told me my story he said Loretta listen he said I I'm seeing you on stage doing motivational speeches you're gonna have a book and he's not he's not like a some kind of person that sees the future but he was saying it for me so I believe in myself I'm like Gila I'm not public speaking or anything I'm not doing a book ah he said but what if I told you you did a book and you could help a charity and I was like that sounds interesting because for me charity is everything being able to make a difference to others so it was never about me it's always about helping others he said listen I'll let you know which university to go to retrain yourself in public speaking you can even do it from a wheelchair oh I said really could I he's like yeah wheelchair fine it's fine you'll be fine so I got it into my head I was going to be on a wheelchair because of the injury so I could do motivational stuff that's fine I was happy still happy and then I changed my career so I still remain a lifestyle coach like helping people manage really more with a mindset and stuff but then I extended it in terms of presentation skills confidence how to structure a presentation how to do keynote speaking and worked with big companies I mean WPP Sir Martin Sorrell got me into one of their conference twice into their conferences to participate he he loved the whole idea he heard about my story and then my job also and my husband's job took us all the way to Singapore so I had a real adventure I went from this to amazing life in London and just trying to show people I'm not showing off but and still not being multi-millionaires or anything but just how you can go through life how quickly things can change if you just start thinking positive and you crave again that success and being happy success is being happy and then ultimately if you need more money and stuff to support the family that's fine but there we moved to Singapore I set up my business there and I was working my kids were growing and I had the confidence in me to start because I was demonstrating storytelling when you present a lot of people present but they never really use storytelling whether is their personal story to story about how they came to be at the company and why they're doing what they're doing and why this they present in what they're presenting so linking their stories I was doing storytelling demonstration but I use my story a little bit to then demonstrate why I'm doing why I changed careers and why I'm doing this and I started using the story a lot because I used it at the Academy of Public Speakers as well and everyone stood up applauding me and that was the first time I ever spoke of my story and from then on I kept using my story but no book and people like where is the have you done a book and I'm like oh god this is I never I don't want to do a book you know it's like too much it's too too uh vulnerable no they everyone was like you got to do a book we want to buy a book and then I said okay I got to do a book so I did a book and now it's like oh you got to do a documentary I'm like yep I'm going to do a documentary I don't say not to anything now you got to do a film yes who do we get to do a film hopefully someone that's listening uh contacts me I'm still I have been approached actually a couple of different filmmakers but I'm just I go with my gut feeling now so we'll see yeah got new intuition there's so cool on if you can live a clean life your intuition you can feel and see things differently from most who are intoxicated by the bad shit in life I'm very good I'm very in tune I know it's right I know it's wrong yeah bad decision I make I can only hold my hands up I fucked up but there's no going to blame because I'm in such I don't drink I don't take drugs so only thing I struggle if he's eating I eat my emotions yeah sugar I eat if I'm feeling sad I'll eat it's a comfort but that's something I will master because I want to lead by example what people say fuck me he's came from addiction and pain and all this shit and at least flying high in life flying high in life I'd like to see as a happiness yeah what car I drive or what I'm wearing is as a happiness how he's just got a good energy that's for me flying high in life no matter what you're doing and it's important why do you think you're still alive me yeah why am I still alive I I don't think my mission is finished yet so I have this feeling that once I accomplished my mission I really don't think I'm here by accident I don't think I am anything special and whether people believe in reincarnation whether the people believe in God and that you know whatever whatever I was sent here for something I genuinely think we all have a purpose and I don't think I am special that I made it through you know I'm not some kind of superhero I'm not a wonder woman to have made it through all of that and still survive you know I'm made of flesh and bones and what have you you know flesh and blood but I think I just made me realize I I still haven't accomplished my mission until the mission is done even if my birth chart this lady that states which I I've always been skeptical being raised as a Muslim you sometimes not even I believed in star sign I used to look at the stars whatever and always ask people what's your star sign but I still do actually and then I don't remember the name but I remember the star sign you are curious oh nice hey you see I'm like yeah Aquarius are nice people you know they are very deep and so I think my mission is not done so when my mission is done I have this feeling and I will know when it happens I think that's when I would leave planet earth I don't think I would live long I've don't think I would live old I don't know James I've always said this and somebody listening will think I'm mad but I have this feeling that I know when time is I think I'm going to be so aware of it because I know it's not done and what is it not done what is it my mission for me is to leave this world hopefully in a better place than it was and I survive so I can tell a story maybe I survived and by telling the story I will save lives people that are so visible people that have second thoughts or whether they should or shouldn't know why me and why hopefully someone would listen and I always said if I could just help one soul one person then my mission is done but I didn't realize by now I've helped millions of people and I know because they write to me and they say thank you and thanks for opening up and sometimes even when I think that some of my opening up is quite lame because it's like what the heck was I thinking people still come in and say I needed that and I'm like wow so I just follow my instinct and I know my mission is done I think if as and when I should say the documentary is done and hopefully it will do really well I know then I can do more charity sales of the book is only going to help a charity and myself to be able to travel more and do I don't have the book because I want to be a millionaire from the book I have the book because I want people to read it and say oh my god okay hang on a minute I can do it too if if I was a multimillionaire or billionaire I probably will give all the copies for free and then you know just donate money to charity myself but people buy the book they help a charity yeah you need to survive yeah you know so we have to yeah do you have a question why me why me for this why I always thought the shit you went through do you ever think why me why was I brought in I say to go through that I have asked this question for so long and I said why me why did I cause this and I thought I was I know what you do as a as a so James look we can all be victims of something and that's not a choice so you can be a victim of war with victim of anything it's not your choice it's out of your control but you have a choice to be a survivor and a thriver of the very thing that was meant to destroy you so why me maybe is because this it goes way back to when my love with my parents was so strong and we say in in in our Muslim culture we say God doesn't throw anything your way that you can't handle because sometimes you question God you say oh why God you're doing this to me it's a test if you go to university you're gonna face some really tough tests and now are you gonna say oh why me why are you giving me this test you are there to learn you are there to pass you are there to to go beyond that when you went in I much rather die to have gone through this than to die and never have felt anything never have made a difference never have had these feelings because regardless whether it's pain or pleasure the feeling that we feel it awakens up everything in us so in order to know love we need to know pain you know that kind of stuff so people have asked would what could you change if you could go back in time what will you change and I said nothing nothing I said would you mean nothing you would go through that again I said yep and now I know how to do it I don't want to set you off again but what happened to your mum and dad oh gosh I try not to say too much about what happened to them I'm gonna just leave it for people's imagination but my dad suffered two heart attacks they were taken they were really really badly abused and it's not my place to say too much especially because my mum is involved in this I'm just gonna leave it for this but she then ended up suffering with pancreas with sorry with ovarian cancer almost died luckily the war had finished so they caught cancer on time she had everything removed and my dad two heart attacks which often people don't make it and and he's never had a surgery or anything and then I asked them the same question after we reunited eventually after five or six years after I became a British citizen because I couldn't travel to Serbia or anywhere near those countries because we didn't know how safe it was for me so I needed to be British in order for the British governments to be able to protect me in case I get taken or I get imprisoned because they didn't know if I was on the waiting on the wanted list because I escaped and so I said to my mum and dad I said I would like to know how did you how did you make it through I mean because they told me bits at a time not everything at once they said it's you so it was always us between each other yeah same feeling and then we cried and they said but what about you because I never have told them till actually most recently the details of what's going through my mum is reading the book now she's like oh my god I'm reading in English and said mum you speak so many languages she said it's so tough she said I didn't you never opened up to me that much I said well and it must be really tough for her to read the book yeah but your family is so strong and you're not opening up to her feelings is a protection for her because you're that you're such a good person that you don't even want to give them the pain that you felt so you bottle it up I understand that yeah such a strong bastard man and I fucking love you but for that and that's an amazing thing and you should be proud of everything you've achieved and everything you've overcome and everything you still do because the pain in misery is always there I don't give a fuck how much money we make or how successful we become the darkness is always there there's always clouds there hanging over yeah and it's just down to you okay I'm gonna have a dark there I'm gonna have a sunshine day and for me it's to no matter who you are and your prime example that people can't go on where the fuck it's tortured and puts through misery and doesn't know if they can see their mum and dad again then come to the UK and I've got to take my hat off to the UK because that's an amazing thing to be taking people in and and helping them and giving them health care and and work and that's the you've got to give credit where credit's due that's what I believe in if people are genuinely coming over for a better life and by all means fucking accept them I don't accept the people are coming over here and causing torture and pain and more destruction because the UK is already on its ass yeah people are willing here to make it a better place and work hard and bring goodness to it by all means of course come anywhere you want but because the UK is plenty of people here emigrate there's plenty people here do things and if we talk about the British army they've invaded nearly every other fucking country they've caused so much destruction and pain do you know I mean I just if everybody could think a hellfire happier life the world would be amazing but it's not see when because you've been in photos with Tom Harding stuff do you do with Muay Thai and MMA ah Tom Harding yeah he's got a great story he's unbelievable I gave Tom my book I met him he came for a seminar well he was a guy from the States actually Tom which has become my friend and you know this is why I do my story because I reached out to Tom Deblas he's based in the US he teaches Jiu Jitsu and I said Tom you're doing a seminar in London and I'm a bit delayed buying a ticket at our academy at Roger Gracie I said I would really love to attend I said you're you're a technique and just the way you are the way you support the soldiers the charity reorg I said I really want to be there he said I will get you in he said it's my seminar and I will get you in I was like okay so and he came and then I gave Tom Deblas my book and Tom Hardy was there because Tom and the other Tom from the US they close but Tom also Tom Hardy also trains with my friend Tom Azo he's a he's a Polish guy and they've got an Academy Enrichment and so I know you were Tom trains all the time but it was just the timing was just perfect I didn't get into the depth of what Tom has been through Tom Tom Hardy but I gave him the book and he just quickly read the front and he just looked at me I said Tom come on let's do a picture he's like yeah like you know the way he is he's just such a cool dude he is so respectful he is so humble at the same time at least he was at the uh at the academy he was so patient the amount of people that wanted to take pictures with him he took pictures with everyone he was in no rush just the super guy and um yeah maybe I get Tom to to direct my movie yeah maybe I get him involved he's like the actor man he is such a good actor like I say with the back story not many people know but I know people who know him and it's quite a dark story for what you saw coming it's amazing that's what it's all about everybody struggles everybody's in pain everybody but you can make a better day you can make a better year you can make a better life but it's all down to the individual and how much work you want to put on what's your plans for the future oh gosh uh more plans gosh I would love to do the documentary because I think it sticks so close to the bone it's so rule you know I'd love in the documentary to do something unique I would like to seek survivors of similar kind of uh or deal I would I'd love to speak and see if they want to be part of my documentary because I want to give other people a chance to heal they don't realize how healing it is when you start speaking out and making a difference and then uh I want to do a movie and ultimately these are just the the project but my biggest mission is to create a movement where we do we put people through I mean it's a it's a it's a long process but we we create programs and activities that people can come and it's like a round table thing everybody from the same background kind of thing not necessarily kidnapping but from the same feeling and it comes as like a safe place to to talk to do to do the activities to do some reprogramming do some challenges a bit like sas but on series if I can even say that yeah so um it's really I'm impressed in in a sense how even the sas guys some of them have heard about my story and some might even read the book actually some of them have read the book and the feedback I have gotten I cried and they said one of them particularly said think of me as Peter and Brian and and he's still in the sas I was like us it does jiu-jitsu I said I really appreciate that so I feel very passionate about making a difference continue to make a difference I just need to look at other ways and creating platforms where we can start you know help the masses and you can always use this platform if you ever need to if any survivors want to come on and help tell us yeah because you're going to get a lot of great feedback from this podcast and rightly so would you like to finish up on anything oh gosh James um I just say I don't want people to ever stop believing in themselves yeah it's important never stop believing in yourself and you know when people say if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all so that's actually really firm so please think before you say anything to yourself or anyone else because the power of the word and to this day I remember the nasty things they called me and that sort of I remember that now I don't let it affect it affect me but it did affect me so the scars that you can't see stay with you forever whereas the external heals so just be kind because we don't have here lifetime we say lifetime is short lifetime so it's not forever just my mom said if you're going to do anything in life just remember people will not remember you with what how much you had but rather how you made them feel so I know that when I die people are not going to think of oh she had this watch or these heels or this handbag or this house they're going to think I remember her because how could she smile all the time or how did she make me feel she always respect me because I I know I can stand not I'm being bigheaded now but you know people might think I am but I'm not you always see me very polite I don't believe treating people badly yeah that's a great thing to have though what's your social media and stuff for people to be getting contact and drop your message and ask questions or maybe you because I know you do the life coaching and stuff now as well maybe someone's wanting some help absolutely yeah so my name I'm just going to hold this quickly so I think it's that camera because my name is spelled very differently so it's um L-U-R-A-T-A-L-Y-O-N Lurata lion but you can people can say it how they wish so they've got every different every different person pronounces differently so my full name in all social media even my website is just with the three w's dot luratalion.com and they've got emails from my website doesn't seem to work very well so please do either call me the number is there or text me or just social media very active on instagram but not very active on other things but I still pick up stuff Lurata you absolute fucking legend listen proud of everything that you're doing man and it's unbelievable I wish you nothing but the best for the future you deserve everything great that comes into your life and anything I can ever help with you know I'm here but bless you send in love and I can't wait to see what you do for the future yeah thank you so much James