SALT LAKE CITY — Elizabeth Smart is a new mom.
What happened: The Utah author and motivational speaker announced on Instagram Monday that she just gave birth to a baby girl named Olivia.
See the photo below.
- Smart announced she was expecting her third baby back in June. She said she and her husband were expecting their new baby in November, the Deseret News reported.
- The Salt Lake City native travels the country on book and speaking tours, advocating for survivors of sexual abuse and assault.
- Smart was taken from her home on June 5, 2002, and was found alive the following year after suffering nine months of abuse.
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Flashback: Smart told the Deseret News her children help her survive every day.
- “When I’m out speaking and working, I am there. But when I’m at home, I’m at home and I’m with my children,” she said. “… But (finding the balance) is a struggle. I have two children and I came from a family of six kids and I look at my mom and think, "How on earth did you do that?" I have two and I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. … I’m open to pointers if anyone has them.”
- "When it is day-to-day, mundane life — but I don’t really feel like life is really all that mundane with a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old, so my life tends to be full of fireworks all the time — but I think hope is what gets you through the mundane. It’s that belief in a better future, a belief in the positive in life and the good that will come,” she said. “I think that’s what it is for me, so when I was kidnapped it was that belief that my family would still love me, that they’d still accept me, that they still wanted me back, and that’s what I held onto and that’s how I survived my kidnapping.
- “Now, my children, they’re my hope. My family is my hope. I see (a) change coming about in our society that’s a big hope for me,” she added.