From Violent Past to a Life of Peacemaking

My first experience of violence occurred when I was a young boy. The first hard hit from my father’s hand exploded in my head as the tears ran down my face. Up until this turning point I’d received only love and care from my parents. Now everything had changed, and I realized life would never be the same again. Perhaps that is when the rage began building within me until it became a volcano ready to erupt. It built steadily over the years each time I was hit, and each time I saw my mother beaten by my dad.

Years later my own rage erupted as violence against my wife, the woman I loved. I realized with horror that what I hated in my father was now emerging in me. It was like a cancer inherited through the genes. I felt great shame and self-hatred that I’d become like him, and was really afraid that this cancer might be incurable, since I was in my forties at the time.

With great trepidation I began the long journey to defuse the time bomb inside me and learn new behavioral skills. I invested a fortune in therapy and workshops. For more than a decade I learned violence prevention and nonviolent communication skills. I became a mediator and worked with gang kids in school programs and inside juvenile detention centers. Later I was a mediator in the juvenile justice systems in Australia and the United States.

Jump forward to February 2007, when a full circle was completed for me in Washington, DC. Bitter arctic winds blasted the nation’s capital that month, but my heart was warm as I leaned into the gusts and hastened to Capitol Hill to promote the Department of Peace Bill. This truly was a day to remember and a personal achievement for me and my very supportive community.

Seven hundred of us paid 220 visits to senators’ and representatives’ offices in this well-prepared national campaign to wage peace. We passionately shared our desires and arguments for the peace bill, stating that thousands more like us back in our communities have been saying no to war with increasingly loud voices. We cited the Global Alliance for Departments of Peace in 20 countries, as evidence of a tsunami of peace-minded global citizens, an evolution occurring in the hearts and minds of millions worldwide.

We reminded our politicians that the bill would establish a cabinet-level department of peace and nonviolence to give much-needed assistance to efforts by communitiesand state governments in coordinating existing violence prevention programs, as well as to develop new programs based on best practices nationally. These practices include teaching violence prevention and mediation to America’s schoolchildren; effectively treating and dismantling gang psychology; rehabilitating the U.S. prison population — the world’s largest; building peacemaking efforts among conflicting cultures both here and abroad; supporting our military with complementary approaches to peace-building; and creating a U.S. Peace Academy — a sister organization to the United States Military Academy at West Point.

I tell this story for a number of reasons. I’m not proud that I have been violent with women. I’m ashamed and horrified that I hurt a living soul, let alone the ones I most loved. I am proud, however, that I have done much to embrace a personal culture of peace and nonviolence and I’m glad to have broken the cycle of violence passed down within my family.

I’m equally honored to be involved in bringing this nationwide campaign of peace to the U.S. government. Amazingly, while waiting in the lobby to meet with our senator, it emerged that most in our group (from Oregon) had come from violent families and some, like me, had been violent themselves. It gave me hope that the wound of violence could drive such a powerful movement for peace.

Grace Gawler, in her book Women of Silence, says, “The strength that harmed you could ultimately be turned into a different strength that could heal you.” My journey to Capitol Hill was exactly that — a journey of self-healing, while, at the same time, a powerful step to reduce violence in the United States and the world.

Significantly, the Department of Peace Bill would support the good work carried out by organizations such as the Men’s Resource Center for Change in Massachusetts and Mediation Works in Medford, Oregon, where I am a volunteer. Essentially the Department of Peace (DOP) would be a funding and coordinating body expanding on existing expertise and best practices all across the country.

I’m also very excited that within the DOP campaign there is a fast growing body of students for peace. The Student Peace Alliance chapters are organizing at community colleges, liberal arts colleges, universities, and high schools across the nation. By integrating efforts with local communities, SPA groups build strong partnerships with those outside school walls. SPA chapters support the Department of Peace through grassroots organizing, lobbying, and working to support cultures of peace on their campuses and in local communities.

I’m sure that I would have joined a movement like that when I was young, and perhaps the violence that emerged in me many years later would have been healed and nobody would have been hurt.

I feel good about supporting an organization like Voice Male’s publisher, the Men’s Resource Center (MRC), that is dedicated to healing the rage and potential violence in men. In alerting readers to the possibility of a Department of Peace, we make real a source of funding and coordination for many organizations like the MRC.

It is wonderful to be partnered with thousands of similar groups worldwide who are working to prevent violence through a holistic approach. This excites me because a holistic method is more effective than the reductionist approach we have been using. Preventing or ending one war is great, but to treat the causes of all wars is more powerful.

Similarly, we need to treat the root causes of domestic violence, gang violence, and international terrorism — we need a whole systems approach, and that includes seriously working to improve ourselves. Just as we can prevent disease in ourselves by addressing the deep causes, so we can treat the disease of violence in ourselves and in the world.

I find it useful to remember that the men who implement war policies are probably deeply wounded as I was. My inner work is to create a psychological bridge to them, to hold them as brothers who can heal the pain behind their beliefs and policies. Meanwhile, I am continuing to leverage my violent past and have chosen, among other peace work that I do, to throw my efforts behind the global groundswell of people campaigning to create Departments and Ministries of Peace worldwide.

If you are a man or woman with a background like mine or simply want to support a national and international people’s movement with a very concrete plan to establish a lasting culture of peace, then please visit the websites listed below:
US Department of Peace site: The Peace Alliance Campaign to Establish a U.S. Department of Peace
The global site: The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace

Voice Male contributor Pip Cornall is a mediator with families, couples, and young offenders and their parents in the Juvenile Detention Center, and with other programs for Mediation Works in Medford, Oregon.
See www.communitypeacemaking.com.
Pip’s other area of interest is gender violence prevention and he is a speaker, writer, and workshop facilitator in this area (see Pip Cornall - Peace Educator).