LESLEY: You really are an extraordinary person. Most of us reading this have never been close to the kind of danger you were in. You went to hell and back. Tell us – big picture – what you learned, how you’ve changed and what the rest of us can learn from you.

KIMBERLY: It’s more what we can all learn – what I learned – from this tragedy. I survived because I had so many people working on me, doing everything in their power to keep me alive — from the troops, to the doctors, to the nurses, to my family who got to me in Landstuhl, and stayed by my side.

And I also made it, and fought through the recovery, because of … all those things I fought so hard against over the years — the obstacles to the jobs I wanted, all the times I was ever told "no," all the things that break your heart — as they tell you, those things that "give you character" … I now realize every single one was training to get through this. So that stubborn streak I developed — to put my head down and fight, and the grace I had to learn when things did not go my way, and the passion that fueled all of it — I’m now thankful for. It fueled the fight back to health. And I will always try to bring it to the fore in everything I do from now on — like writing this book, trying to make something positive out of a moment of hell, and turn it into something that can perhaps help someone else.

***

Kimberly is back at work, assigned to the National Security beat in Washington. She is still asking the bosses to send her back “home.”