Where has change ever been clean and nice? It has always been messy and painful.

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.

Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?

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

Believe in your passions and act on them.

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward.

It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it.