We all have a well of courage we can draw from in times of need. It's one of the things that makes humans amazing. We heal. We build. We travel. We dream. And we overcome.
If your back is ever against the wall and you need to find a way to draw from your well of courage, remember these two young women. Their courage saw them through unspeakable darkness, and even now, on the other side, they're still showing the world what courage looks like.
After enduring ordeals few of us can even imagine and then escaping the hands of their brutal captors, two women were honored by the European Parliament with the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Nadia Murad, now 23, and Lamiya Aji Bashar, 18, are Yazidi, a minority facing terrible persecution by ISIS. Although their beliefs are ancient, they blend elements of many Middle Eastern traditions, and extreme Muslims associate them with devil worship.
The two women were captured when ISIS militants overran their village in Iraq in August 2014.
They were told to convert to Islam or die. All the men and old women were killed and the girls were sold into slavery.
Nadia managed to escape to a refugee camp in November 2014, and from there made her way to safety in Germany.
Since then, Nadia has been an active advocate for Yazidis and for refugees' and women's rights. She even launched Nadia's Initiative, dedicated to helping victims of genocide.
Although she was taken in the same raid as Nadia, Lamiya was not so lucky.
She spent years in captivity, tried to escape five times and was sold four times by ISIS before a desperate, harrowing journey finally brought her to freedom...
Lamiya made her first escape by jumping out a window when she was left alone in an apartment. A family took her in, but after three days they got scared and turned her in to ISIS.
She says that her treatment by her captors only made her more determined. "‘Every time I tried to escape they tortured me, but it made me stronger," she told the Daily Mail. "I never gave up. I saw so many atrocities, so many crimes. This gave me the power to keep fighting against them."
After yet another escape attempt, Lamiya was sold to an ISIS bomb-maker. She was forced to work alongside him, churning out as many as 50 suicide vests every day.
When she persuaded some of the other girls there to make an escape, a sharia judge threatened in court to cut off her foot to prevent her from escaping. "I told him that if you cut off one foot then I will escape with the other. I told the judge I would never give up." Fortunately, she didn't lose her foot.
She did finally manage to escape after her owner gave her a mobile phone to summon her. She used it to call an uncle, who hired smugglers to get her out.
Lamiya fled with two other girls, but in their flight, the other two were both killed after stepping on a landmine. Lamiya was left scarred and lost an eye. Kurdish soldiers took her to a hospital, and that's where her uncle found her. Twenty months after the ISIS raid, she was free. A charity later airlifted her to Germany and funded operations to help with her injuries.
Lamiya and Nadia never lost their will or determination, and now that they're free, they continue to work for the countless victims of human trafficking.
"I believe I can be a voice to the victims. And the Sakharov Prize gives me great strength and this is why I have taken the decision to become a voice for the voiceless," Lamiya said in her acceptance speech. "More than 3,500 children and women are still held hostage as slaves under Daesh (another name for ISIS). Every day they die a thousand times."
