Voices from the Frontlines
Voices from the Frontlines are first-person reports on what is happening around the world, how it impacts women, and how women are building cultures of peace. We encourage submissions from everyone, including YOU!
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Why I Take Baths in Lightning Storms
After Frida Kahlo’s ‘What the Water Gave Me’
By Sarah D. Lawson
It is hard to know how much time has passed
inside this well. There is no minute
hand, only palms and the pruning, the nails
peeling away from their fingers
like old paint-
the love lost on the ocean floor
the flowers you left in the water by my bed-
each bloom, the happiest little death.
These are the pieces of me the water gives back.
Every molecule every thorn every dead
skin cell shedding a new opening.
sadness is its own kind of submersion,
a …
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Amal*
Syria
“The fire was getting closer and everything that was in this house, from memories, pictures, life, was fading away in front of my eyes.”
***
It is six months into the revolution. It is too cold…there is fear, anxiety, and panic on every face and I do not know what is happening. Is this the sound of thunder or the sound of shootings, the sound of women weeping together with the cries of babies?
Things I hear but do not see, searching for safety, security, and for the end of fear and sadness. In …
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Connection Point Director Yasmina Mrabet interviewed Tiffany Easthom, Country Director at Nonviolent Peaceforce, about strategies and challenges in peacekeeping work. Her answers are below.
Can you share with us a little about your personal background, and what encouraged or inspired you to work in peacekeeping?
I was a “social justice” kid – I always had some cause or another that I was engaged in from a very young age, so arriving into an adult career doing this kind of work has been a natural path. My undergraduate degree is in Justice and …
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Karin Kemp
United States
“What [the attacks] confirmed to me was that as a member of any immigrant community, you can not live on the periphery of society. People cannot speak on your behalf or defend you if they do not know you,” she said.
***
In 2012, when insurgents were unleashing a string of attacks across Iraq, who would have dared take on the task of bringing warring religious factions together in face-to-face talks?
That would be Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, an immigrant to the U.S. from the Middle East and founder of Kommon Denominator, a …
