Powerful Women Changing Mindsets and Forging Political Forgiveness

A Message to You

The theme for this year’s International’s Women’s Day is “Inspire Inclusion.” Identifying and celebrating the achievements of women globally and empowering them will require changing mindsets. Overcoming divisiveness and changing mindsets is also an important step in the political forgiveness process. In this month’s newsletter I look at women who are making important contributions to political forgiveness and what it takes to permanently shift mindsets and effect change in our communities and nations. We all want to be heard, valued and seen, which is what inclusiveness is all about. What will it take to combat divisiveness and polarization in our country? It starts with us — inspiring inclusion on International Women’s Day and every day.

What Can You Do?

The next time you feel hopeless at the state of polarization and inequity, try being more aware and self-reflective. How can you adopt an attitude of inclusion towards someone whose background and experience are different from your own? Our attitudes and actions can create either polarization or inclusiveness.

Powerful Women Changing Mindsets and Forging Political Forgiveness

COMMEMORATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Gloria Steinem, a world-renowned feminist once explained: “The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” This is what International Women’s Day (IWD) commemorates. March 1911 was the birth of IWD, which was to be a day of collective global activism and celebration belonging to all those committed to forging women’s equality. It calls for breaking down barriers, challenging stereotypes and creating environments where all women are valued and respected. It encourages everyone to recognize the unique perspectives and contributions of women from all walks of life, including those from marginalized communities. And it celebrates women from around the world who are powerful change agents making this world a much better place for all of us.

Marina Cantacuzino and The Forgiveness Project

To celebrate IWD, I’ve written about some extraordinary women who not only understand what inclusion means but who work toward countering divisive attitudes — an important factor in a political forgiveness process. One only needs to think about what took place on October 7, 2023, when the world woke up to the horrors of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel to witness “us and them” rhetoric. Marina Cantacuzino is founder of The Forgiveness Project. She has interviewed the families of terrorist victims and survivors of domestic violence, and through the project provides resources and experiences to overcome their unresolved grievances, helps people bear witness to the resilience of the human spirit, which acts as a powerful antidote to narratives of hate and dehumanization.?

Aware of the pain people were feeling, Marina reached out to a friend, Israeli filmmaker Yulie Cohen to make sure she was OK. As recounted in the Forgiveness Project article, Clinging Onto Hope, Yulie replied, “Your? email is very meaningful for me; many people whom I know and know me well through the years and my films didn't write a word and it says it all.”? Marina understood the importance of reaching out and she understood through her own work how important it is to know others and change mindsets towards those we once considered “an enemy.”

Yulie Cohen Meets Her Attacker Years Later

Yulie Cohen has her own remarkable story about changing mindset as she was able to forgive a Palestinian who tried to kill her. In 1978 Cohen, while a student at Tel Aviv University, worked that summer as a flight attendant. In one of her flights to London Yulia was getting off the bus in front of her hotel when she saw a man across the street looking quite hatefully at her. He was Palestinian. She started to get some distance from him and in a matter of seconds saw the man pull out a machine gun and started to shoot people around him only to be followed a few moments later with him throwing hand grenades, killing one person, wounding another, and leaving a small piece of shrapnel in the arm of a very traumatized Yulie.?

Years later, after receiving a master’s in communication arts, Yulia started working on films in New York City and Los Angeles. One of her films involved filming a Palestinian man who she found very interesting and intelligent. Getting to know him brought back the trauma of what happened years earlier when Yulie feared for her life. This man she admired so much was of the same age and from the same political group as the man who shot at her. Yulia realized that the Palestinian man she had such respect for could have easily been the person who tried to kill her, yet instead he was her friend. This sparked a desire in Yulia to look for the man who shot at her, her own “terrorist” and asked a British colleague to look for him in England. Two weeks later he was found in prison. Yulia wanted to meet him and decided to write a letter asking about himself and his childhood and told him that she was a sixth-generation born Israeli, never thought of Arabs as people she should hate, nor thought of them as “enemies.”?

Then she asked: Why did he join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)? And why did he shoot at Israelis? He answered her right away, full of remorse, wanting to talk to her, and said how grateful he would be if Yulia would continue to write to him. He then asked Yulia if she would be willing to meet him in prison. Nervous about entering a prison Yulia marshaled bravery to visit him, and with her first encounter recognized this man as a human being, just like her, a man who only yearned for a good life and to have a family.

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From My Desk

VIDEO: Hawaii Friends of Restorative Justice

The Huikahi Re-entry Circle process is pioneering work organized by Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, designed by executive director, Lorenn Walker, JD, MPH. About 600 people have participated in these circles for imprisoned people and their families. The process addresses the need for reconciliation for all participants, and research shows the circles reduces recidivism for the incarcerated, and raises healing for everyone. Walker is a health?educator and restorative lawyer. She uses public health?approaches, including restorative justice and solution-focused approaches, to help prevent?and address injustice and crime.

ARTICLE: Mother Established Memorial Foundation to Help Bring Peace

When Marie Fatayi-Williams lost her 26-year-old son to the Tavistock Square bus bombing in London in 2005, she transmuted her grief into action. First, she gave an impassioned speech, then she wrote a prayer for those responsible for her son’s death. Finally she founded an international organisation to help to end violence, The Anthony Fatayi-Williams Foundation for Peace and Conflict Resolution. “If my appeal stops just one potential suicide bomber then I will be happy,” she said. “Then I will say, yes, Lord, take Anthony's death as a sacrificial lamb for peace to reign in the world, because we need a turning point."

ARTICLE: The Mothers of La Candelaria Continue Their Search for Colombia’s ‘Disappeared’

Founded by Amanda Gallego, Teresita Gaviria and Maria Dolores Londo?o, Madres de La Candelaria has helped recover over 111 missing persons, and have personally lead search groups through mass graves in the Magdalena Medio region. All three women have lost family members to massacres or forced disappearance. Their reconciliation activities include meeting with ex-combatants in prison and hearing stories of their childhoods and the difficulties they endured.

VIDEO: Facing the Past to Liberate the Present

“As I felt my way into my grandfather's situation, the easy familiar black-and-white narratives of good–bad, perpetrator–victim, winner–loser became more nuanced,” says Angela Findlay in this TEDx video. Her unflinching quest for the truth about her grandfather, a decorated German general on WWII’s Eastern Front, breaks through the silence?surrounding the perpetrators?and also the victims. Findlay has written a book called “In My Grandfather’s Shadow,” and lectures about communication and creativity as ways to bring about change.

Deeper Moment

Cultivating Forgiveness by Pema Ch?dr?n

“There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel — shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don’t have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we’ll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we’ll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness.”?

Read more: Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion by Pema Ch?dr?n