Life, Health & The Universe
Welcome to **Life, Health & The Universe**, the podcast dedicated to empowering women in their 40s and 50s to embrace a vibrant and meaningful life. Join us as we explore the intersection of health, wellness, and personal growth, offering insights and inspiration to help you navigate this transformative stage of life.
Each week, we dive into topics that matter most to you— from holistic health and nutrition to mindfulness and self-discovery. With expert interviews, relatable stories, and practical tips, we aim to inspire you to live your best life, cultivate deeper connections, and find purpose in every moment.
Whether you’re seeking to enhance your well-being, explore new passions, or simply find a supportive community, **Life, Health & The Universe** is here to guide you on your journey. Tune in and discover how to thrive in this exciting chapter of life!
Contact Nadine: https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/contact
Life, Health & The Universe
Peace as a Modern Life Skill - Author, Reba J Parker
What if peace isn’t a far-off dream—but a daily practice that starts within?
In this powerful episode of Life, Health & The Universe, we’re joined by Reba Parker—sociologist, peace educator, and author of The Peaceability Mindset. Reba has spent over two decades helping people redefine peace, not as the absence of conflict or a remnant of 60s counterculture, but as a practical, embodied path to emotional and relational well-being.
Especially for women in midlife—navigating life transitions, healing old wounds, or seeking deeper meaning—this conversation offers a fresh, empowering approach. Reba shares her 3-part formula for peace: safety, well-being, and interconnectedness, and shows how cultivating these can transform your inner world, your relationships, and even your home.
She also shares her deeply personal story of rising from domestic violence to creating a peaceful home—rated “9.3 out of 10” in her own self-assessment—and the specific tools that helped her get there, including nonviolent communication, empathetic listening, and conscious conflict resolution.
You’ll come away with a new understanding of peace as a living spectrum—one where every choice either builds or breaks trust, harmony, and connection. From how we speak to our partners to how we relate to the Earth, Reba’s message is clear: Peace isn’t passive—it’s powerful, and it starts with you.
✨ Perfect for women over 40 seeking emotional healing, soulful tools, and conscious transformation.
✨ Learn how to embody peace in real life—at home, in your body, and in your relationships.
Listen now and discover how peace can become the foundation of your midlife awakening.
You can find Reba's details in our Guest Directory
https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/person/reba-parker
Welcome to Life, health and the Universe, bringing you stories that connect us, preventative and holistic health practices to empower us and esoteric wisdom to enlighten us. We invite you to visit our website, where you can access the podcast, watch on YouTube and find all of our guests in the guest directory. Visit lifehealththeuniversepodcastpageio. Now let's get stuck into this week's episode. What does peace mean to you? Do you think flower power? Or maybe the absence of war? What if peace was actually a modern life skill that you could learn? Our guest today, reba Parker, author of the Peaceability Mindset, is a sociologist with a peace studies lens who's here to share how we can practically make peace part of our everyday lives. Reba, thank you so much for joining us. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here, oh, you're welcome, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as I said just before we hit record, I am going to be completely led by you in this conversation because you know I have my own perception of what peace means to me, but you're bringing this into a completely new light and it's something that you've been working with for years, you're passionate about. Do you want to share a little bit intro of your background? And, yeah, we go from there.
Speaker 2:Okay, that sounds fantastic, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. My background is I've been teaching at the college level at the College of Charleston for close to 20 years now and my specialty, my focus, has been peace studies. So it's sociology with a peace science kind of studies lens, and I've been teaching this one signature course called Sociology of Peace. I've taught it now over 100 times, so it's a very popular course on our campus and so I'm going into about 16 years of teaching this course.
Speaker 2:So interesting question when you ask me, what is peace? To me it has totally evolved over the years because as I teach this course, I'm learning more and more from students and I'm seeing for peace for me and the definition of what it is has evolved over time, which led to this book. So I'm pretty excited about how my personal journey and my understanding of peace and that definition that you mentioned early on, how those things have radically changed and I'm excited to share how I believe that peace is the new frontier for personal well-being and societal good. It's this missing ingredient and the reason I feel like it's missing is because of the way we understand peace and our perceptions of peace, I believe, are dated. They're dated, they're ineffective and they're not keeping up with the pace of the modern world. And they're not keeping up with the pace of the modern world, and peace can totally do that. So I would like to challenge the audience to be very curious and to be open-minded, because I'm going to throw in some things that you've probably not heard before. Cool.
Speaker 1:And I'm excited about this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Um, yeah, I think, um, it can feel peace, can like the idea of peace, can feel like as an individual. Well, what can I do? And so I feel like although I, you know, I've only had a couple of teasers from your book and got a bit of a sense of what you do that you'll kind of share the importance and the impact that those things can actually have as an individual in our societies. All right, so tell us a little bit more about why peace does feel outdated and how are you reframing it as a modern life skill, like an actual skill, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, take us there. Great question, great question. I'm ready to dive into this one. Okay, so I started surveying my students years and years ago.
Speaker 2:I started surveying my students years and years ago, and what I found out when they entered my class Sociology of Peace they were very skeptic, right. They were like we don't know what this course is about. So I gave them a survey to kind of see where they were coming from, and what I found out is most of my students were like we don't know what this course is about, but it sounds easy. Or they would say things like I feel like this course is going to be how to stop war. Or they thought maybe it was super interpersonal in ways that we're going to learn how to meditate and maybe yoga poses or something. But remember, this is a sociology of peace course, and so it really. And the course didn't really dive into much of any of that, to be honest. But what I noticed too, is when they stepped in the course, they didn't believe that peace was possible. Okay, and so I asked them really good questions and the survey began to change over time. But these were the two core questions. Number one what comes to your mind when you hear the word peace, and what are the feelings associated with it? Okay, and the second question I asked them this really stands out to me the most and it's going to answer your question is when you see the peace sign, what comes to your mind? What's your first thought, your very first thought, right?
Speaker 2:Well, remember, if I've been teaching this course 16 years, that means 16 years ago. These students were much younger, but what I've noticed over the 16 years is their answers haven't changed at all. Wow, over all that time. The number one answer that comes to mind is the hippies. These, you know, 60s and 70s. Flower power, as you mentioned. Properties, flower power, as you mentioned, those kind of things, a vw band band with, uh, flowers on it, you know, um, those are the things that come to mind, and sometimes they'll mention things like drugs, even, right. So this is what comes to their mind woodstock. Now, these things happened 60 years ago. Why is the first thing that pops in their head when they see a peace sign, something that happened that many years ago and they weren't even alive, right, they didn't live during that time frame. So this caused me to really think this through. Now, remember, you can Google or go to AI and ask the question right what are the five most recognizable symbols in the world?
Speaker 2:Right, and we live in different countries, but number one is the cross, the Christian cross, the second one is the Red Cross and the third one is the cross, the Christian cross, the second one is the Red Cross and the third one is the peace sign. So if the peace sign is seen as one of the most recognizable symbols in the world and what we think about it is that dated, how can a peace sign resemble relevance? So therefore, I'm making the deduction, through numerous surveys and talking to these students and my friends and others, that if the first thing you, when you see a peace sign, the first thing you think about, is something like that and I'm not discrediting what happened back then and the value of that movement, which was very powerful and productive and it still moves on today I'm not discrediting that, but I'm saying what if peace wasn't so limited to that image? And then I asked them what are the emotions that come up around the word peace, the word peace and of course I'm going to get some positive words right, like calm and harmony and beautiful unity and, you know, utopian peace, these kind of things but surprisingly, what I got as well were a lot of notions around things that were negative.
Speaker 2:So their emotions attached to the peace sign were negative. And when you get a negative emotion brought on by an image so we see the image, we think something negative Our body is going to respond to that right internally. And how can we move toward peace when our body is saying is throwing off alarms like something's not right or it's negative? Now you might ask the question how can a peace be negative and why would they say that? Let me give you some of their answers. They say when I hear the word peace, I get frustrated, right.
Speaker 1:Because I don't think it's possible.
Speaker 2:When I hear the word peace, I get confused Because no one's ever taught me about it, so therefore I push it at bay because I don't know enough. There's enough understanding around it. Uh. When I hear the word peace, uh, I get sad because I don't have it or I don't see it happening in the world, and that makes me very, very sad. Right, and so once a lot of students actually have said the word frivolous peace is frivolous because they think of a movie with a beauty queen and then making fun of world peace.
Speaker 2:So these are the images they have associated with the word peace, challenging my students and now you folks out there how to move toward peace. We've got to unstick some of these, these notions, understandings and images which will change our feelings and emotion around it. Right, and then build new thinking around it, and then with that comes action. That's why I call the book the peace Ability Mindset, because I love the title, because we're incorporating peace with the ability, which is a paradigm shift, because we usually don't put those two together or a skill set or practical skills, and then the mindset is really critical. We've got to, I believe, begin to rethink peace for today's world so that we can then begin to move into it in so many powerful ways.
Speaker 1:Wow, you know, excuse me, it's really interesting because I'd never, you know, as I said, you're the expert and I'm going to be led by you throughout this conversation, but I have actually never you know, never really thought much beyond peace. And you bringing those things up like what does what does the symbol mean to you? And I just want to do this and I and I've envisaged, you know, pro people protesting about the nuclear weapons in the 80s, but really interesting, how peace is kind of seen as a place in history where it happened and we don't really consider it as part of our lives now. In fact, there's so much stuff, especially in the news, on social media, about conflict and that's really like feels like the focus. Peace doesn't even play a part in those areas, right, that's why we need books like yours, for sure. So how do we start reframing peace as a modern life skill?
Speaker 2:well, I think, look from a sociological angle, I'm going to start there, but I know your audience, I know your audience. I don't know them that well, let's say, but I know, I know where you've your podcast has headed all this time and I know it's a lot about wellness and transformation or transitioning to betterment, right? Yeah, I'm going to get there today, so don't worry about that. And I want to frame it around a larger context, sociological context, and then we're going to get into that personal right and how I can plan my day-to-day life. But I want to start off by saying this as a society at large, whatever your society is, we have norms, we have values, we have norms, and in my book I talk about the. You know the bell curve. So you have a bell curve, right, and the 4.8% on the edges of a bell curve out here are considered outside the norm, and that about 68%, that comes up with the bell curve. That's what's normal in a society. Comes up with the bell curve, that's what's normal in a society. Now, guess what? Who wants to be on the outskirts? Some people don't mind, but most people want to fit in, and I believe that our culture is set piece up for failure. Maybe not intentionally, but our culture is not set up to really run piece of the way it could run in so many beautiful lanes and create so much change. And so one of the first steps we can start doing is begin to normalize peace where peace is seen as a very normal part of our culture, instead of on the fringes. On the fringes we see people, the outliers, and we go. You know they're deviant. The beautiful thing about sociology one of the things we teach is positive deviance. There's something called positive deviance and that's where the people on the outskirts see something that needs to change in society and they start moving what's not seen as the norm into the norm and pushing the envelope of status quo. Right, and when that happens, things change. But of course, we know that the people in charge of the norms in a society want to keep that at bay.
Speaker 2:My number one response to your question would be how do we start moving and rethinking? We've got to start changing norms, and those start in our institutions, which is our politics, it's our military, it's our homes, it's our religious structures, it's our economics. It's all of that and more Right, and we began to talk about peace in, I would like to say practical ways, but also spiritual ways as well, right, and then that interconnection with the universe and everything else. So it's such a broad, beautiful way to live your life, and so the way you really started in your own domain is where you are doing what you do.
Speaker 2:Nadine, your podcast is reaching a lot of people and this is your gift, one of your gifts to the world. This is a way you could open the floodgate to what peace could look like, so we could get this thing going Right, but I'm a teacher and a speaker and a writer, so these are the modalities I'm going to use. But people in the environment, there's so many, there's so many good avenues that we can use to begin to talk about peace. So begin to talk about it and then learn some things that you can do to begin moving it forward. Start there and when people see it in their classrooms like kids, forward, start there and when people see it in their classrooms like kids, learn the tools of peace in their classroom or in our places of worship and even in our politics. People are going to go, oh, and it becomes normalized. I would start there, cool.
Speaker 1:A word that popped up for me was fear, and I think that a lot of the stuff that we learn, even the environments that we're in, it's all, it's a lot of it's fear-based, isn't it? And we want to change it to peace-based.
Speaker 1:So, you know fear-based about. You know not having enough money. Fear-based about protecting yourself as a child when you're in school. You know having to look after yourself. What if we could change all of those things to peace-based? It would be like if we could just, yeah, picture that for a minute. Yeah, oh, my God, wouldn't that feel good all around.
Speaker 2:Yes, my body just felt good when you said that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it felt great. The nervous system just goes.
Speaker 2:That's right, and I'm glad you brought that up, because, man, I tell you what science is doing some amazing things with quantum physics, but neuroscience and the microbiome and all of these things, right, and we're learning that we are so interconnected. But that piece that you just said, our nervous system, you know, when we're in that sympathetic state, we cannot really rest in peace because we're hypervigilant, right? So I would like to turn the conversation here a little bit, okay, and I'm going to leave with what you just said, because you mentioned something very important, and it's like can you live in cultures of peace, whether that's your home or your inner self, or your neighborhood or your nation? Can you live in cultures of peace if you don't feel safe? Okay, now what I came up with to help my students and now you folks understand peace in a simplified way, right, I want these to be very honed down, practical tools and steps that you can take. But it comes with understanding, a very complicated topic, or maybe it's not that complicated, right, but how can we pare it down into parts that become easy to remember, that are powerful, and then we can use those parts to activate action. So I came up with a formula for peace, okay, and Nadine, you brought up the first part of it is number one.
Speaker 2:Let me give you the three ingredients to peace, right, and then we can talk about them just briefly. Yep, the first ingredient is safety, and when I think of safety, attached was safety, and when I think of safety, attached it's that need to survive, right? Yep, safety. Second. So think of safety plus, put a plus sign.
Speaker 2:I love the second one Well-being, well-being-being, well-being-ness, well-being-ness. So well-being is moving toward thriving. So if safety is surviving, well-being is growing, it's growing, it's expansion, it is thriving. The third ingredient in the piece of equation is interconnectedness. I love that, because that is when we reach states of transcendence or moving beyond ourselves, and that's that notion, of course, that we're all interconnected, all of us and all living things and all planets, everything, and with that I use the word provide. So we provide the universe and the soil, and our air and the animals they all provide us so much. And our dogs, right, and our families, they provide. And then we provide back because we are interrelated, interlinked, interconnected Me helping you, you're helping me, along with the universe, et cetera, and we're all coming in at this together, yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you have safety and well-being, that could be a very selfish path, right? Oh, I'm going to keep myself safe and I'm going to grow and be the best version of myself. But when you don't connect that third piece, then it's the point. What's is the point? So this is the equation I like to share with my students to help them understand that when you have this place of safety, which is lack of fear, and you're not that sympathetic anymore, right, then you can calm your nervous system and be open to who you are and the beautiful gifts you've been given, and all of this is flooding your body and you're feeling being alive and what brings you joy and happiness. You're feeling that and you can't.
Speaker 2:For me, you can't help, but once you are just bursting with well-being, you can't help but want to give that away. You can't help but want to revere the environment. I can't. It's all in one package. So to me, that's the fullness of peace. That's the fullness. Safety is important, well-being is important, but the three of them together, uh, these three ingredients can help us really move into these levels of a fuller peace do you see that as linear or cyclical or?
Speaker 2:neither of those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I've been toying with that. I've been toying with that and I love to think of it. Circular, right, but I also realize that life moves with ebb and flows as well, so I think of that as well. That piece is a process, it's not a state of being that we get to. And you know, what's interesting when I ask my students is I just I just find this so fascinating the roadblocks to peace. They have these roadblocks to peace and I ask them what's holding you back? And there's certain things they say. For example uh, what is the one of the roadblocks for peace is, well, we'll never have peace. And the reason why is because we all won't get there together. We have too many opinions, et cetera, and we're different people, so we'll never all get there. And I'm like, why don't we all have to get there universally for peace to happen? There's this weird thing about peace, the word peace.
Speaker 2:When I ask my students do you believe peace is possible? On a survey, you know what a lot of them say. Here's what they say they say no. And then the reason they give is because they will say we will never have world peace. I did not ask them is world peace possible? I asked them, is peace possible? But their head automatically went to utopian visions of this static peace that will all come together one day. Why is the word world attached to their understanding of peace? And then I like to respond well, what about love? Can you love your partner? Can you love your dog? Can you love your neighbor? Oh, but we're not getting there all together. Oh, but we're not getting there all together universally for love to happen, for it to be real and present, and it's not static and going like it's ebb and flow. Right, sometimes we're not feeling as much love, but it doesn't mean love's not there. And the same with peace. So these one of the biggest roadblocks is this notion of we all can't agree, so we'll never get there one day.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you, can have it right now, just like you can have love right now, and it's not based on what another country's doing no, well, we've got completely distracted with that, haven't we?
Speaker 1:just? With the access to so much information beyond our every day, like, and we see all of these things which can lead to, um, confused emotions, feelings of lack of control, probably because we're so focused on, yeah, all of those things that are going on everywhere else in the world, we forget that we can have, yeah, yeah, that we can have an impact in our own environments, in our everyday lives. Right? How do peace and love differ? How would you define that?
Speaker 2:that is a great question and I've never been asked. No pressure, no, I love the question. I think I mean let me give you my definition of peace for my own life. Okay, the definition for me and I offer it in the book as well is when you're at that place where you can say it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul, so it's this deep, rich state of being where you feel content, or and I have a hard time with that content, I'll come back to that but this place where everything's going to be okay, or you're okay in spite of everything that's going on around you, so it is well with my soul, Even when there's turmoil happening around you, are at a place where you are feel calm, content and resolute, that it's going to be okay. And I think love is this deep feeling of sincere appreciation for something or someone. So I think that's just a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess love you might also see as personal self-acceptance. For sure, because the people in the environments around us can be a mirror, can't they? Yes for sure. So peace, although that's also, in your perspective, something that all is well in my soul, with my soul, yeah, but it's kind of like how that. Oh yeah, it's a fine line, isn't it actually, between those two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, they are. It's pretty fine line to be yeah, to be for sure. I really want to dive into that more and think about it, okay, but Not now. Yeah, and the definition. By the way, the definition I gave for peace, is that more internalized?
Speaker 1:peace, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my book. It does talk about those things because it's not just about the societal levels of peace and I think people really want to bring it in to the personal. So I talk about the five habits of peace the five steps to inner peace.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite chapters is peace in the environment and that connection. A lot of people and I say a lot of people that I've talked to, but also my students they are blown away. There's a connection between peace and the environment. So, um, there's so many layers to this. So it is well with my soul. Is that more personal inner peace, kind of understanding? And then again, peace is not limited to one definition, right, and so there's so many layers to it, but in my view they lead to the same place. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lead to the same place. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to get into um some of the factors that you can use in daily life, and also the peace in the environment that you've just mentioned. But before that, can we talk about um you'll know what I'm talking about, I'm sure the butterfly effect. Do you know that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. I think that the notion of peace in your own life you begin, you can't help but want to pass that on and then that begins to affect others right over time and there's a rippling effect that just keeps moving out and forward, change the bell curve. Change the bell curve. And that's why when my students say what, I'm just one person, how can I change this big notion of peace? It, uh, it is by daily actions and steps and attitude changes and perceptions. And look, when I, I'm married and we have three kids, uh, what we're showing them in our home. And two of our kids have moved on and they're grown now but they're watching how we play out life every day and they're learning this and these tools and these skills and these practices of how we resolve conflict in a home, or the atmosphere in our home, or the atmosphere in our home or the habits we have. And then sometimes we don't even label those as peace actions, but they are. And then they're going to take that into their families and their homes and into their careers. Yeah, it just keeps building from there, but I really believe there's got to be OK. Let me just say I would hope there would be an intentional kind of let's do this thing where we get on board and say it's time. I think we treated peace as a noun for too long and it's really now we can't see it as a noun, but we can just see it as a verb. It's really now we can't see it as an animal, we can just see it as a verb.
Speaker 2:And I would like to tell a little story, if I can. Yeah, please, okay. My mother. When I told she's not here with us anymore, and my dad either. But when I told my mother years ago I was going to teach a class on peace, she said I'll never forget it. She said, reba, that's ridiculous. Thanks Mom, that is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. And I'm like, okay, now, that didn't feel very good because you want your parents to be proud of you. And my dad, who's my hero. He was kind of sitting on the sidelines not saying much, but he's my dad was a professor and he was my role model through life. He's just wonderful. But my mom was like, just flat out, that's ridiculous. And the reason she said she said we'll never have peace until Jesus comes. Jesus comes, right. So I'm like, ok, I believe my mother thought this is all leading to political sides of some sort or something. And I'm like no, there's.
Speaker 2:And so I had to come up with a pitch. At least I thought I did come up with a pitch to sell my mom that the idea of a class on the sociology of peace was needed and important and not ridiculous. So I came up with a pitch and here was my pitch, my little one-two Senate pitch. I pitch, I said, mom, we can either move toward cultures of peace or cultures of violence. Think of a spectrum. You have a culture of violence here, a culture of peace here. I said, every day we're moving toward one or the other.
Speaker 2:What if I could teach my students how to move toward the culture of peace in their inner life, in their family, in their community, if I can help them to see skills and tools here we are back at the skill base that help them move their action-based steps they can take, and it gets them closer there.
Speaker 2:Isn't that progress and isn't that wonderful? Well, my mother still wasn't buying it, but my dad, he sat there and took it in and I started using that in my courses and I think it's a good way to understand that peace is a process and when we have political policy, when we have policies, right governmental policies, they are either moving this way or that way. Why would we have a policy in our country that's moving us away from optimal peace, right? So it's it's, it's this idea that we can always be moving toward most of the time move toward peace if we know how and understand that that's possible, and then have some skills and tools to get there, that that's possible and then have some skills and tools to get there. So do I believe peace is possible, absolutely. I do it every day and I have evidence of flow, like everyone else in life but yes, it's possible and let's get going.
Speaker 1:I love that you've put it on that spectrum as well, because conflict and peace I mean for want of a better word you know, conflict can mean so many different things, but it's almost like the negative and the positive. But you almost can't have one without the other either, can you?
Speaker 2:It does have an inflow, it does. And that's the beautiful thing about a paradox flow, it does. And, and that that's the beautiful thing about a paradox. And you know, I mentioned this idea of a paradox of peace, where a lot of people, when they think of peace, they think of a still pond right a still pond of water where it, the water, is barely moving and it's just calm and relaxing and ironic and just amazing.
Speaker 2:And then some of your audience that are growth mindsetters right, growth mindset they're going to see, maybe peace, more like a river, and it's flowing and it's moving and it's full of life and there's growth and expansion and we're progressively moving to better ways of living and better societies and better ways to take care of our environment. And that's moving us toward this culture of peace, right, and we're excited about it. And you're filled with peace because you know that you're doing something that's getting you and other people there closer, closer, right. So there's a paradox because I want both of those that you're doing something that's getting you and other people there closer, closer, right.
Speaker 2:So there's a paradox because I want both of those. I want them both and I can have them both, and you can too. Right so to put them in boxes and say peace is only this pond, this still pond, we're missing so much. But to say it's about action and movement without having embodying that place of it is well, with my soul right, and having that space, that beautiful space where we connect with all things, that is is so beautiful and we need both. And peace is the absence of war. It is and it is what happened. It is protest, it can be seen through protest, but it also can be other things as well, like taking care of the environment, working toward human rights, like taking care of the environment, working toward human rights, respect for all people. All of these kind of things are helping us move that way, and the word I use for that is peaceability. Peaceability is the ability to do peace Another way.
Speaker 1:I explain it is it's peace plus a growth mindset.
Speaker 2:So you take peace and you attach a growth mindset to it. And now we're on our way, because a growth mindset says well, we might not have peace right now, here, here and here, but how can we and what tools can we use? What skills or how do I need to understand the other in order to get there? There's ways to it, let's figure it out. A fixed mindset, of course, says this is how things are. People will never change. I have students all the time.
Speaker 1:They will say we'll always have tyrants in the world, bad actors in our communities and therefore we'll never have peace.
Speaker 2:Not true, not true. So get this With awareness right. With awareness, we can say, okay, there's bad actors over there and there's horrible people leaving these countries, whatever, and it's a mess. But do I have peace in my home right now? Yes. Do I have peace in my relationship right now? Yes. And what else can I do? Oh, my company. We can start having training sessions on empathetic listening. And is our company now becoming more peaceful? Yes, so is peace possible? Yes, is peace happening? Absolutely yeah. Is that country over there still having vicious war? Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And that's the paradox of peace, but sitting still and hoping that peace will come, or sitting still and wishing for peace? It's time to be active and to change our, I believe, to rethink peace. And if peace isn't working for you, why and how can we crank it up and get it moving so it not only impacts your life but those around you and then spreads out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing. You mentioned your own home life, your family, your three kids and how peace can play a role in conflict resolution or the way that you deal with conflict. Can you give an example of a less peaceable versus a peaceable in that kind of situation? I think those kind of things, those real life things, are really helpful For sure.
Speaker 2:We brought up the notion of safety early on, right? Can you imagine a home where the spouse comes home, or the child and they don't feel safe, where they're walking on eggshells because they don't know if their parent is going to be present, or neglectful or violent, are neglectful or violent? They never know. There's no consistency, and so they're fearful because they don't know what's getting ready to come down, right? Or they're afraid their parents might get into another conflict and start arguing and yelling those kind of things. So how can you begin to think in terms of well, this is our domain, this is my haven, my home. How can we have a place that feels safe? Let's go back to the three ingredients. Right, my home feels safe. I'm speaking for myself. My home feels very safe. Number two my home is so filled with well-beingness, like when I get a crazy idea because I want to grow as a human. You know my family's on board. They're going, okay, here she goes again, but they're like she wants to stretch and grow and let's do it and they support me, right, and then you have that interconnectedness too, and I think that's important in a home and a family. But, to answer more specifically, what do we do in our home I would on that spectrum of peace. I have another spectrum and it's optimal peace and fragile peace. Okay, fragile, here in a home you have fragile peace or optimal. I want to move toward optimal in my home. So I would give our home right now 9.3 or something like that. It's high up and guess what? We don't yell in this house and it's not because that's a rule, but it's just not who we are, so we don't yell and there's a lot of respect for each other's privacy or their need to have a quiet space or time. So there's a sense of respect and also that notion of well-being.
Speaker 2:But I think another thing's important is to live nonviolently, and I offer that up as one of the five habits of peace and so things we do to live in our home nonviolently. For me, this is for me personally not all my family's on board with this, and that's okay because they have their own journey but for me to live nonviolently, I switched from meat eating I'm a text, I grew up in texas to, uh, I'm a vegan now, and part of that was for my body wellness as I learn and grow. But the other part is because of that notion of killing animals. I don't want to for my food. Now, that's a personal decision and, like I said, my whole family's not on board with that, but I am. That's where I want to be.
Speaker 2:But what we watch on television, it's not going to be filled and riddled with violence, and the music that we play in our home doesn't have violent lyrics, because that goes against the very motto of who we are in our home. So, but I think one of the most important things is how we. You mentioned this notion of resolving conflict. So we have, we are very skilled, and I say very skilled, we have skills. As I said, we have skills in resolving conflict and so when that happens, we give each other space sometimes to kind of work through our feelings and see them, address them and feel them, recognize the anger or whatever it might be, and then come back and then we know, we understand what the triggering parts are. I'm more avoidant, my partner's more anxious, and we work toward that secure place through rupture and repair and making up when there's a mishap.
Speaker 2:And it's really important that when you have a wound, that you come back and repair that and that creates a safe place because you know that if there's another disruption in the home guess what we're going to figure this out. We got each other and we value and respect each other enough to deal with it, even when it's hard, and so these are just some things. So nonviolent communication or compassionate talking or communication is really important. Empathetic listening or skills we use in our home, very, very important. These are tools and skills, right, and we use them and they work and we live in a peaceful 90 point something percent of the time.
Speaker 2:But I want to say this, and I know I'm kind of going on a little bit but I want to say this in contrast, cause this is important Nadine, uh, about 13 years ago or so, uh, I was in a partnership that was turned very violent to where I was physically thrown against the wall, to violent language, to things that were very dangerous. I needed to call the police. I slept with my keys in my pocket in case I needed to escape and have the right things in my car. I know what it feels like to be in a violent home and to lay in bed scared, and I even had to go to the hospital a few times because my blood pressure was so high, because I was so fearful. All of that to say that I've been there where the language was violent and the actions were violent or not caring and kind or were not consistent. You never knew what was going to be the trigger that blew things up.
Speaker 2:I was fearful for my job. I lost my friends, my bank account got drained, my credit score went down. My relationship with my friends, my bank account got drained. My credit score went down. My relationship with my children was in harm's way because I didn't want them coming over and having to be a part of that. Even my dog was traumatized and still is to this day.
Speaker 2:It was the lowest part of my life is to this day. It was the lowest part of my life and what's even happened even more so, is that my personal well-being but my you mentioned earlier your, your love for yourself, right, was at the bottom. I didn't trust myself for making that kind of decision, to be in that relationship so many things. So I had to rebuild and for me to get back into I say get back for me to find a new relationship that is not day took a lot. You know therapy and other things. I had to work through that, but I know what it feels like and I know some of your listeners are at these rough spaces where they don't feel safe at home, right, and yet you want peace in your life, but if your home's not safe, ooh, that's going to be tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so there's things you can do to begin to build a way out or through it and that resilience, but also, you know, find safety. That's critical. Find safety, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. I was you kind of answered it. I was thinking what does someone do in that circumstance, like when they are striving for peace but they're in an unpeaceful environment and I don't know whether peace in the environment works into this actually, or whether you're talking more about the environment at large but how does that if you've got someone who is on that polar opposite end of where you're trying to get? It's tricky, isn't it? Because you can't fix everyone, like we've talked about that knock-on effect that you can have, but sometimes you just can't fix those circumstances.
Speaker 2:Right, sometimes you cannot. In that particular situation, we did seek counseling as a couple, but then that fell short. It never happened. That was one of the kind of conditions that we set up and I realized over time that I needed to remove myself from that situation and I even ended up moving out of the state Wow, yeah, up moving out of the state Wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:So sometimes and that's why I want to be real careful here and disclaimer that you know, sometimes you need to make the best decision for yourself and that's to remove yourself from from violence. Of course, if you, if you can't see a way out of it together, and so I had to remove myself, now you might some of your audience might be in a situation where they know that the person they're with could actually, with help, change right, then move forward with that the best you can. But if you see your life's in harm's way on a continuous basis, seek professional help, seek professional help and friends and family that you trust and find your way out. And then I had to go through EMDR or therapy to work through my trauma, which I did, which I did, which I did, and so now that trauma is more like a memory of wisdom versus it triggering fear and alarm. Yeah, when I think about it now because of the work I did so.
Speaker 2:So I think healing yourself, or working on yourself, or self-help, or, you know, taking care and loving your own being, is a peace movement. Yeah, it's a peace movement. Yeah, and a peace movement doesn't have to be protest signs. It can be you doing those kinds of things and leading yourself to that place where you can go. It is the will of my soul.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can you share with us? We're getting close to the end of our hour, but we did mention previously the peace and the environment and I think you sort of said that for your students that was a real eye-opener. Um, can you share a little bit about that with us?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, okay, uh, let me give you a little story as a context, right? So I also, when I taught at the Citadel and if your audience isn't familiar with the Citadel, it's one of the premier and one of the oldest military universities in the United States and so I taught at the Citadel with 35 cadets in a room, all in uniform, and I taught this class sociology of peace. And they were like, oh, my gosh, we just came out of class on strategies of war and now we're coming to a class where there's strategies for peace that really work. And I'm like, yeah, my gosh, we just came out of class on strategies of war and now we're coming to a class where there's strategies for peace that really work. And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. But I remember one time we were talking about peace in the environment and a student stood up and the student was red faced, in other words, angry, and the student said, okay, this environment discussion, I'm going to keep driving my gas guzzling truck because it's mine and I want to, and I want to keep the lights on in my house anytime I want, because I pay the bills and it's my house, and if I want to put something in the creek behind my yard. I can, because it's on my property.
Speaker 2:And the student was frustrated that I was bringing in new ways to look at our relationship with the environment. Right, and the way the student saw this relationship and it makes sense because our cultures teach us this is we have domination over the environment and if we want to do something with it, we can take it whatever we want. We can go ahead and just use up for our personal gain, with no reflection on how it's going to affect the environment at large. Right so this mindset. Right so this mindset.
Speaker 2:So I said what if, instead of us having authority over the environment or something that we use, what if it's a relationship that's community-based, in other words, you know this notion of land ethic where everything is a part of the community the trees that I'm seeing out my window right now, and our animals and the insects and the microorganisms under the soil. We're all in this together. It's that interconnectedness. What if we see the environment like that and see it with a new lens? And then he said well, if this is a hugging thing, I don't want to have anything to do with it. And I said, and we began to have dialogue I think that's important instead of debating, and so we had dialogue around these notions of you know we're all in this together and I think peace in the environment starts with reverence for the environment when you revere the environment. One thing I love about the environment starts with reverence for the environment when you revere the environment.
Speaker 2:One thing I love about the environment, nadine, is this the environment gives us safety, doesn't it? Does it give us well-beingness the food and the trees and our shelter, well-beingness and is it part of this large interconnectedness? It does all of it. So the environment on the earth, but also beyond the earth, it leads us to this place of peace. So another notion I use in my class is this idea of seven generations out and with the peace studies lens, you're looking seven generations out and thinking about people that are going to come, to come past you, and what you can do to help set up cultures of peace for them ahead of time, and that's by taking care of, loving, appreciating environment and connecting to it.
Speaker 1:Lovely, I love that, yeah, lots of things going through my head when when I first I had my children late in life so I was 40 when I had my first child and 42 with my second. But one of my, one of the things that I've often said is that, like in my younger years, I didn't want to have kids because I thought the world's messed up, I don't want to bring children in. You know what a place to live kind of thing, and it's just going down the down the pan. And then, when I did have my children, I'm like these are the, these could be the change makers. And with you know, when you're talking about seven generations down the track and setting those things up, I feel like there's a lot of things, including your book and the movement that you're part of, that is in preparation for that. And and the way that we learn, evolve and teach our children, those that, those new ways of being, are the things that are going to have those knock-on effects.
Speaker 2:Sure for sure, absolutely. There's so many places where we can move into peace, and so, as a teacher or speaker or whatever, I still want to take precious care of the environment, right, and I still want to work toward human rights and the dignity of all people in the social groups I'm a part of, and I could go on and on. So I want to touch all these different facets, and peace is a framework too. It's a framework, it's a value, it's a framework, and the framework is all of these sectors in a society can do their part toward peace.
Speaker 2:Transparency of media is a peace action, right, and so when we, we can tap into a lot of them, and that's how we live our life and live through a peaceful home. But I think we all have these gifts, and that's where we want to put a lot of focus and attention. And so what is that gift that you have, your listeners have, that they can offer up in your own unique way to help people see that your actions are creating a movement toward culture, peace in there, wherever you live, right? Yeah, yeah definitely.
Speaker 2:Don't lose hope. Peace is possible. It happens every single day and it happens through the way you listen, the way you talk to someone. There's so many not talk to someone but speak with them. It happens in so many ways and we can get empowered by that and move it forward. So peace ability is the ability to do peace. So let's get doing. We've got some work to do and it's exciting.
Speaker 2:And can you imagine if just a small portion of our society began to see peace differently, and not in such a limited way, but an expansive, unlimited way, where we can hopefully one day live in better places in different countries? And there are countries that Iceland is the number one most peaceful country in the world and it's measured and so you can measure peace. The United States falls 128. Australia falls 18 out of 163 countries. Bad, not bad, fantastic, fantastic. So what? Why is Australia 18 and Ireland, Iceland 1 and the United States 128 and Russia's at the very bottom?
Speaker 2:Why? It's because look at what they do and their policies, et cetera, and how they're taking care of their people well-beingness, right and interconnected dignity of all people. You start putting all the pieces together safety, well-beingness toward their citizens, interconnectedness of their citizens and you're starting to move toward cultures of peace. You take those things away safety, you take away well-beingness, health care, et cetera. You take away their ability to connect through the Internet and other things or countries around you and you move toward cultures of violence. This is measurable, yeah, and it's a roadmap and it's doable. We can do these things.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it if there was one tip that you could share with our listeners today for how they can start to take action with peace in their own lives. Yeah, I don't know how simple it is, but it sounds like it's pretty, pretty simple if we're conscious of making those choices. What would one thing be that you'd say this is the top. Do you have a?
Speaker 2:favorite. I think yeah, uh, I want to. I'm going to go with today. I might change it up down the road, but I would say what my students are taking away from my class the most that impacts their life as they leave my class is I teach two, two uh tools non-violent communication, or compassionate speaking, and empathetic listening or deep listening. I think there's two sides to a coin. So if you don't know what those are, a good place to start is learn about those and learn how to implement those and use it with your own personal life. Speak to yourself kindly, with compassion, and listen to yourself and your felt sense and your body. That's a good place to start. Okay, so I would start there, but there's so much more.
Speaker 1:Yep, wow, thank you so much. We are going to share your profile in our guest directory so everyone will have a link to the book um, so that we can we can find that and start making peace part of our everyday lives. Thank you so much for joining us, reba. It's been really insightful and I've loved the conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you thank you so much and to all your audience. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.
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