As a child, I chose to distrust my family, especially my father. I was terrified of his physical and verbal abuse. I responded sometimes by hiding under the bed or leaving the house for long periods of time. As a teenager, I became constantly angry and judgmental. The culture of violence was (and still is) all around me. I was growing up in the Cold War, with the constant terror of nuclear incineration on my mind. I was tense. I could be easily triggered into physical explosions of violence. I entertained thoughts of suicide. My life descended into a living hell and remained there for 20 years. Eventually, I was forced by my own dysfunction to admit that I knew next to nothing about creating the human connection that I so severely lacked.

For the last 30 years I have been on a long journey back to wholeness. It has been a collaborative effort on the part of hundreds of fellow “victim volunteers,” quite a few therapists, mentors, and key life events that awakened my ability to thrive in spite of difficulties. The critical process now in place in my life is to give up on having the answer myself — asking for help — no longer asking “why?” and trusting, however tentatively at first, that if I put even the slightest bit of focus on self-management of my attitude I will eventually find a kind of inner serenity and peace that is more permanent and more meaningful than the excitement of transitory accomplishments.

As a teen, I somehow understood that the conflict between the US and Russia was no different than my father’s readiness to inflict punishment, and that underneath it all there was problem of mistaken perception and ineffective communication. The rest of my life has become devoted to removing these root causes of war. What a humbling task it has been! I am now convinced that transformation of the external world is dependent upon and happens simultaneously with our internal transformation.

My first priority has become letting go of my vanity of rational superiority and to pay attention to intuitive or heart-felt guidance. I cannot be effectively connected with either partners or opponents when I am erecting mental barriers, and heart connection is truly what will move the culture of violence to a culture of peace.

I believe that the hope generated by heart connection is the rocket fuel for social change. My second priority is to deliver that vision and hope for the joy, wonder, and power of people working together in community. Toward that goal, I’ve written a book about my journey to hell and back, sharing the lessons learned along the way. I was greatly inspired by the work of Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, who co-wrote the book, The Cultural Creatives. In that book, there was a graphic illustration by systems theorist Ervin Laszlo which matched the process of cultural transformation to the grief process and to the addiction recovery process. What was most exciting about this match-up was to see that both personal and social change occur in sudden leaps to new levels of functioning, not in protracted linear struggles.

My third priority has become the continual design, implementation and evaluation of grassroots social engineering experiments towards the goal of building community. Some of them have been colossal failures, such as last year’s Sweet Peace Festival, even though previous annual celebrations of the International Day of Peace had grown in popularity. Dinners to raise startup capital for local social entrepreneurs were a modest success. An effort to introduce teen leadership and success mapping into local service providers gained little traction. On the other hand, the “Peace is Sexy” stickers have been very popular with teens.

Recently, I’ve discovered that the faith community has a built-in moral structure for supporting peace and cultural transformation. I’ve seen that there are an abundance of love supplies and that they simply lack organization. I have a bee in my bonnet to create a network of all the churches in Eugene to collaborate on the housing crisis, and to include the business community as well. Universe is saying  yes, opening pathways and connections to people who want to help. In addition, my secondary, more long-term aim is to create a public forum to expose the myths around addiction and homelessness. I’m lining up speakers and refining the message, bit by bit.

Above all, I’ve learned to strap myself firmly to my meditation cushion and prepare myself for sudden acceleration, because that’s what if feels like when I let go of the struggle for control. Grief is a necessary part of the process, the portal to release from struggle. Recovery of human connection is the end of the struggle, the end of war.