A brush of the hand (Part II) — Receiving.

True peace didn’t arrive for me with a treaty — it arrived with a single brush of the hand, many decades later.

As a young child in the wartime of Cambodia, I couldn’t make sense of the powers at play; all I knew was the fear of bombings, attacks, and armed silhouettes I had learned to fear as Vietnamese enemies.

From the iconic “Napalm Girl” photo, capturing the terror of a young Vietnamese girl of my age caught in a napalm strike, I learned very early that human beings are enduring suffering on all sides of a conflict.
Although I had long understood and felt compassion, I never felt called to set foot in Vietnam… until life recently led me there.

And here I was. Leaving the conference group visiting the bay, I found myself sitting on the bench of a tiny deserted temple.
The elderly Vietnamese woman who guarded it came to sit beside me.
We couldn’t understand each other’s language but we talked anyway; smiles said it all.
Then she gently brushed her hand over my hair — and suddenly I felt a profound, unprecedented peace.
As if the childhood fears of the enemy, unknowingly stored for decades somewhere deep within me, had finally been released. At long last.

🌱 Fears, animosity and traumas last long after treaties are signed, insidiously hijacking our bodies and sometimes echoing across generations.

✨  Healing our wounds of separation — between people, between communities, between nations — is our way back to peace.

💛 Join us in supporting transgenerational healing, so the legacies of conflict can become legacies of peace — learn more from our activity report.

#PeaceBuilding #HealingFromTrauma  #TraumaRecovery #PTSD
#TransgenerationalHealing  #CommunityDevelopment

Photo credit: Ga @neringa