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Dear daughter, you have asked what peace means to me, and I have spent some time thinking about it. ...

You have not lived long enough to fully understand this and it may be easier if I tell you what my experience has been. I come from a country that has lived with a conflict for over 40 years. Life in the surface goes on as usual, but we can’t be fooled. Peace is not the absence of war; it is the absence of fear.

Peace is the way things should be. Usually in a country where there is no peace the farmers have to abandon the land with terrible consequences, sometimes everyone from a small town has to leave in a rush taking only what they can carry in their hands. As conditions worsen doctors, engineers and journalists or artists have to leave the country because they cannot find a job or they are forced to leave. If there is no peace whole families may need to abandon their country, to find better future somewhere else.

There are thousands and thousands of people that have been kidnapped; most of them have been kept away from their families for years. Peace would bring them all home to see their mothers and fathers or their own children.

Peace is to travel without fear, to be able to hop on a bus and visit aunt Nina who lives far in the country without being afraid of being kidnapped. It's being able to visit any part of the world without having the words "nine eleven" in the back of our minds. After the years pass, peace is to be able to come back home and visit a father's grave. Is to be able to bring a child to visit the grandparents or just to show proudly what beautiful country you are from, the mountains, and beautiful shades of green that you can see in the distance as you look on acres and acres of coffee plantations.

Peace is families growing old together without anyone missing because there is fighting to do. Finally there is that kind of peace that grandma talks about, the one in our hearts, it's a state of mind that comes from feeling calmer and wiser
Mom