War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff without knowing where you will land.

My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point.

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.

Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.

I don't have a child, so Women for Women is like my child. But I always said I would step down after 20 years. I didn't want to be a 60-year-old woman holding on to something I created when I was 23.

It is the diversity of views that stems from different experiences and different backgrounds that lead to healthy decision-making and not the unified experiences and unified views.