Beyond sides: Where reconciliation becomes possible

I am from Colombia, a land of immense beauty, joy, creativity and diversity.

It is also a land that carries the pain and grief of brothers and sisters in conflict.

A heart-breaking conflict that has been going on for more than 60 years.

The following is a story that changed my relationship with the shared history of my country, and that opened a path of personal healing and reconciliation with my belonging to this land.

It is an experience that gives me a sense of possibility, amid what feels like an almost impossible dream: living in a peaceful country where we all can flourish and thrive.

About 10 years ago, I attended a social responsibility forum in representation of the company I used to work for. During that time, Colombia had just signed its latest peace agreement; an agreement that intended to put an end to 50+ years of an extremely painful and violent conflict with the FARC guerrilla.

A group of women, ex FARC members, who called themselves the Ladies of the White Rose, asked for a space in this meeting. Their intent was to share their story and ask for forgiveness. I remember this part of the agenda being polarizing; the peace agreement itself was and continues to be a polarizing topic in Colombia. For some people, opening spaces for those who had caused so much harm and pain was a way of validating what they had done, of letting them off the hook instead of making them pay for the unspeakable horrors we had all gone through during the many years of that conflict.

I was not opposed to them having this space, yet I felt cautious about it; something in me could not trust them and felt unsafe in their presence. I remember a woman sitting next to me, sharing that nothing they could ever say would allow her to forgive them for what they had done; her family had been victim of kidnapping, as many of our families had been. Participation was optional, yet most of those attending stayed for their talk, including the woman who was sitting next to me.

When they were about to start, the room felt filled with tension, it felt cold, it felt like thick invisible defensive walls were standing between the stage and those of us attending, the silence was such that you could hear a needle falling to the floor. The women came on to the stage and sat down; they looked nervous, tense. One by one, they started sharing their stories. They all came from rural areas in the country and shared how they had been forced to join the guerrilla as little girls; some of them were taken from school, others from their homes, as young as 10 years old. They shared the sexual abuse they survived, all the times they were forced to abort, how they saw their family members being killed when they tried to rescue them, how they were trained and what they had to learn to survive. As they shared their stories, the room started to change, the defenses started to fade, the coldness started to turn into warmth. The silence turned into people crying, it felt like we could all feel their pain, their grief, their shame, their guilt; it felt as if in that moment we had begun to sense that pain and hurt were present on all sides. They shared their stories not as an excuse for what they had done, they acknowledged their actions, they recognized nothing justified the pain they had caused, they asked for forgiveness.

By the time they finished their sharing, there were not sides present in that room anymore; there were not victims and perpetrators, there was a group of brothers and sisters crying together, feeling each other´s pain, grieving together, allowing the tears wash through all the defenses that were present before, and turning those defenses into a standing ovation. An ovation not as a validation of the horrors we have all lived through, an ovation that stood for the reconciliation of our hearts.

To this day, when I close my eyes and remember that moment, I feel chills running through my body and often tears run through my cheeks; it was a profound experience.

An experience that changed me and, I believe, touched all of us present, in some way, shape or form. It changed the woman sitting by my side, it changed the women who shared their stories; I felt that somehow part of the weight we were all carrying lifted that day.

My country is still in conflict, the horrors of this internal war happen every day, people continue to be displaced from their homes and girls and boys continue to be forced into the conflict.

Yet that day taught me something I´ll never forget; it taught me what is possible, the potential we hold to reconcile when we find ways to create space to be with our differences and listen from the heart.

That day I learnt that our shared history carries pain and trauma that lives in all of us, and that healing is possible when we find moments where love emerges over fear, where shared vulnerability opens space for curiosity and compassion, and where we can listen to those we consider to be on the other side.

That moment was my first connection to what I know today to be collective trauma. Our violent history carries deep wounds; wounds that live in our culture and systems, which express as polarization and that continue to manifest in the reenactment of our past.

That moment showed me a different possibility than the one we often know, one that does not arise from fighting each other – through words or arms – one that opened a door for reconciliation and peace building.

That experience invited me to contemplate how reconciliation becomes possible when we begin by growing the capacity to acknowledge the pain and hurt of our shared history, when we can choose to listen to how it lives through all of us, and from this place hold and feel each other´s pain in our own bodies and hearts.

I did not know then, but today I see how that moment was a glimpse of a deeper purpose and the work I feel called to do.