Please tell us about the various career paths you have found yourself on.
I did not attend college until I was married and had two young children. I was moved to study history thanks to my beloved History teacher at Bensalem High School, Mr. Tafel. I had a professor at college who was an archaeologist and he got me hooked on that career path. I had the opportunity to be part of many excavations (Philadelphia, Valley Forge, Cornwall Iron Furnace, London, England) but one of the more important excavations I worked on for over a year was on the site where the Point Pleasant Pumping Station was to be built in Lumberville, PA.
As this excavation was coming to a close, the protests to fight the pumping station started up again, and I found myself crossing the line from archeologist to activist once I learned what was driving the conflict. That led me to my career as assistant to the executive director of B.A.N.D. (Bucks Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament at The Peace Center) and I then became Executive Director for the next couple of decades.
In my early days at The Peace Center, I began studying conflict and how to transform it. I was a conflict avoider and I wanted to challenge myself to grow more comfortable with conflict, as I saw this as a path to a more peaceful way of parenting, and dealing with community conflict. I became a Mediator, and a facilitator for Restorative Justice, and I learned how addressing the roots of conflict was needed in order to prevent violence. I worked in upwards of 300 schools to set up programming to address bullying, implement peer mediation, and train teachers in Conflict Transformation in the classroom. I began learning about trauma-informed conflict resolution by working with mentors such as Dr. Louise Diamond of the Institute of Multi-track Diplomacy; Dr. Sandra Bloom, author of Creating Sanctuary: An Evolution Towards a Sane Society; and Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, along with a few other teachers along the way. That changed the way I approached all conflict. Punishment rarely works because we are just adding onto the trauma that has gotten that person into trouble in the first place.
I began teaching in Arcadia University’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution program, which is a two-year master’s program. I did that for twenty years, helping educate young people from Sudan, Kenya, Ghana, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China, and many other countries, including across the United States.
I recently learned that you are a cancer survivor. Can you please share about that?
When I was a baby, my parents learned that I had a tumor growing on my shoulder that kept me crying all the time. The tumor was removed by a renowned surgeon who was treating cancer in children, so my first surgery was before the age of one. The tumor grew back and at the age of two and a half years, I was back in surgery again. This went on until I was going into second grade, for a total of five surgeries. My parents purchased a gravesite for me before I was a few years old because it looked like a dire outcome. There were children around me who did not make it, and I was sometimes with them when they passed. At a young age I could envision a better world if I were to live through this. I did not know how, nor did I understand what my role would be in the world if I survived. But by around the age of 12 or 13, I knew deep down that peace was possible. However, the adults in the world around me seemed to have lost sight of that.
You have said, “I spent the last 35 years walking into conflict and conflict zones.” What were some of those experiences?
Once you become a specialist in something – those in need find you! As a Mediator, I had the skills to deal with someone else’s storm. As each conflict I took on seemed more and more challenging, I decided to travel to places such as the Middle East, Rwanda, South Africa, Northern Ireland, India, Japan and with Indigenous people on a reservation in Canada. I met with survivors of genocide, of apartheid, of IRA bombings, and of the first and only nuclear bomb dropped in our world. I witnessed oppression, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment. I traveled with the International Council of Indigenous Grandmothers to meet with the Dalai Lama: all in the service of trying to understand how to address and prevent conflict, violence, war. I created audio documentaries of these interviews, which aired on NPR and Public Radio International. My goal was to help listeners gain an understanding of conflict through perspectives not found in the traditional news.
Who are your role models as peacemakers?
John Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Louise Diamond.
We are living in a time of extreme turmoil. How do you take care of your mental and physical wellbeing in the midst of it?
It is truly hard to hold onto one’s sanity in the midst of this effort to divide us; to have a president who is a White Supremacist in his behavior and policies, and have family members, neighbors, friends who have fallen for all the lies. I lose sleep over it all and I worry a great deal about how far this will go before people wake up to the danger.
What I do to take care of my own mental health is speak up at Town Hall meetings, and with legislators; I am an ally for those being targeted by ICE and those who are most vulnerable; I conduct Peacekeeper Training for those who want to stay safe while protesting; and I make sure I help someone once a day who needs something but can’t leave their home. Helping others is a sure-fire way to keep the focus positive. I eat healthy, I exercise daily, walk at least two miles a day, and read a lot of good books to distract me! I have to have faith that if we can remain sane and healthy, we can be part of the solution. I also derive a great deal of benefit from my Quaker Meeting community, and from serving on the Boards of the NAACP and Nakashima Foundation for Peace.
Sitting next to esteemed broadcaster Walter Cronkite who narrated a couple of her audio documentaries.
Can you share the story about your encounter with white supremacists?
My first encounter with white supremacists took place when the KKK came to New Hope to walk through the town in protest against the LGBTQ community. As executive director of The Peace Center, we collaborated with others in the community to hold an Interfaith Unity event the same day. Due to all the press about the situation, I was asked to go on television along with the leader of the KKK and the White Aryan Nation. During that difficult interview, I channeled Gandhi to help me get through it. Afterwards, the leader of the KKK decided to visit me at The Peace Center. He felt he could talk to me about his situation because of how calm I was and didn’t take his bait in the interview.
It was my first ‘listening’ session with a self-avowed white supremacist, and after two hours of listening and me asking questions, he made a decision to leave that life and asked for my help. After that, whenever there was a specific situation in which law enforcement was up against white supremacy behavior, I was asked to ‘deal’ with them. We have had white supremacists as young as 13 up to those in their 40’s.
How can we keep from ‘othering’ those whose values are dramatically different from ours?
When I saw what happened in Rwanda and how ‘othering’ led to genocide, I knew we couldn’t afford to be doing that to anyone in our lives. I stand for justice and peace, so I draw my boundaries pretty tightly…meaning, when talking to a friend about their disgust on say, those who are transgender, I don’t stay silent. I actively engage as an ally for transgender people, because I need to counter what is being said. I ask them if they ever had a good experience with someone who is transgender, or if they had a negative one. Who in their lives was prejudiced in a way that impacted them? I have someone in my life now who has very limited contact with me because of the differences in our perceived values. We are civil to one another, but no longer get together like we used to. I try not to take it personally because I feel strongly about my values of Care vs. Harm in our community and I won’t be part of something that hurts others.
How does trauma impact conflict?
We carry ancestral trauma in our cells, so we start off our young lives with trauma impacting us in unconscious ways. On top of the trauma we carry from our great, great grandparents, we experience trauma in our own lives. This wounds us in ways that no one is able to see. There is no cast on our arm or leg, no visible scars, so we don’t know where each other’s wounds are – until we bump into them. We see them when we are triggered by something someone said or did, and we get defensive and often feel victimized by it. That is when conflict can escalate, and if we don’t have strong conflict resolution skills or an understanding of trauma—or at least compassion for another human being— we can end up hurting each other badly. I have known people who are very skilled in conflict transformation but don’t understand anything about trauma. Conflict and trauma go together, one doesn’t happen without the other! We need skills and we need an understanding of trauma if we are going to de-escalate the pain and conflict in the world.
If you had the attention of the world, what would you say to bring about peace, reconciliation and healing?
I love this question! There is much we can do:
- Learn about our own triggers. Once you learn what triggers you, you can end the conversation that is escalating by saying “I’m too upset to talk about this right now. I need to take a break and some deep breaths. Give me an hour (or a day, or a week) and then let’s talk about this. I care, but I just recognized I am triggered right now.”
- Trauma-informed training is needed by all educators, parents, and anyone is a leadership position.
- We can prevent so much violence by understanding what the root causes are, such as poverty, racism, addiction, prejudice and discrimination, and child abuse. These are traumas we can do something about.
- Early intervention is critical. When Dr. Sandra Bloom introduced a program that brought senior citizens together with young, single new mothers, they reduced child abuse by over 80%. However, even though successful, the program was abandoned due to cost. Can you imagine reducing child abuse by that much yet somehow saying it isn’t worth the money?
- Emotional and Social IQ should be introduced to pre-schoolers through high school. Children can be taught empathy, compassion and problem-solving at a very young age; and it should not end until they reach young adult-hood.
- If schools would use processes such as Restorative Justice or Mediation early on when there has been an incident, this would help kids understand each other better, reduce conflict, build empathy, and give them a sense of justice, of being heard, of being part of the solution. We need to steer away from detention, suspension and
- Teach children about the Peacemakers in the world. Not just on specific holidays.
- We are our sisters/brothers’ keeper. Ask yourselves, how can we put that value into action, locally and globally, so that we can create a World Beyond War?
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Author
