Stephanie Mast
speaker
221 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Stephanie Mast’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Enough to communicate. Yeah, she could communicate early on. But there was one...
time early on that really gave me a glimpse of what she must have gone through is we were i was going to i was loading the younger kids up into the car to go pick up the older kids from school and i was carrying her out so she's kind of at arms arm or at eye level on the hip and uh they're building a new community near like right across the road from us and there were roofers and they were going down the line going pop pop pop pop pop with a with a nail gun
And I didn't even notice it. And I was just going out to the car and she looks at me and she goes, and she had this look on her face and she made eye contact with me. And that was very early on where she couldn't talk, but she looked at me and the look said, are we going to run? It was like danger. Are we? And she was looking at my face to see how I was going to respond.
If I was going to duck and cover, like if I was going to run. And in that moment I looked at her and I just, it broke my heart. that a child that young had experienced some form of violence to know what that was, that that was a threat. And I was like, it's okay. Let's just start building houses over there and just try to lighten it up. And like, we're okay.
We're just going to go get the boys from school. But just little glimpses of that, you could see little what it does to a person.
It's more when you compare it to like how a child normally behaves, that's when it becomes more apparent. So I never realized when we first got her, she would stay. And still to this day, she's still somewhat like the kids will run all over the house and go into this room and that room. And she does now. But when she first came, she would stay in one room, like one area.
Wherever you put her, she would stay there and not like almost the freedom of movement or freedom of play. It was like she didn't know.
Yeah, she would stay close to you and stay in one room. And so I would say it's been even like going to a playground, the kids would go play. She would stay close by or not interact with other kids. So it's been a process. And like, I mean, the best thing that I could say is just she has blossomed with love.
And circling back, because there's one point that I wanted to make when she was turned over, out of U.S. custody. I mean, obviously, it was just her whole future was at stake, and that was just grieving in and of itself. But what bothered me is that she could go through the rest of her life in Afghanistan and never know how loved she was.
by hundreds of people that she had a name, that she had an identity, and people that fought and loved her fiercely and advocated that she could go on for the rest of her life and never know that reality. And what has been... so satisfying is for it to come full circle and for her to feel that love and to see it firsthand.
To the point where I couldn't even speak about it.
I could even testify.
What's hard, you know, for me as his wife sitting here, you know, beside him living this, you know, going through this with him, is we've been, you know, known each other since we were kids. We remember 9-11, watching the Twin Towers fall. And he's as much of a red-blooded patriot, you know, American as you can get.
and to see someone that has throughout his whole life acted honorably for his reputation, everything, and his morality, everything to be skewed and twisted to advance a different narrative and to favor another side. It's been hard to sit there and watch it, knowing the truth, watching him literally fight for his life, his career, everything.
Everything for us is at stake, and it has been at stake for a while. And to see a lie seemingly prevail for this long has been difficult. But... when we have had the opportunity to share our heart and share our story and share what we've seen, good people have stepped in and come along and contributed just enough.
It was in January. That was two years ago?
Well, earlier in this, when it became just litigated, I read a quote and it said that you can't rewrite someone's opinion of yourself. You can't change their mind about you. All you're responsible to do is to tell the truth and share your story. And that was our motivation coming on here, was not to sit there and fight down all the arguments, everything that's been thrown at us, but really just...
share the story share what happened and like as joshua showed there's a ton of facts out there that support everything but ultimately it comes down to a decision that in the moment just like the rangers did just like we did just like the hospital staff and all of the dod personnel it was a split-second decision to step up and advocate for one child
And for, I hope, most Americans and most people, they'll understand how easy that is. Like, really, there's not, you know, some sort of twisted motivation or it's just really, there's an innocent child, there's something that we can do to help it.
It's pure instinct. You just step in and you do it. And so, yes, living out the ramifications of the decision has been challenging. I think it's made us grow as people. But, I mean, ultimately, what we ended the Board of Inquiry, if we were asked, would we do this over again? Absolutely. We have no regrets. Okay.
Showing 121–140 of 221 · page 7 of 12
← Previous
Next →