Episode 128: Waging Peace – with Diana Oestreich

TW/CW: War, violent imagery, PTSD

Diana Oestreich is an activist, veteran, nurse, and relentless practitioner of peace. She is the founder of the Waging Peace Project, a movement activating everyday peacemakers to commit acts of courage for the sake of justice, rooted in relentless love. In her first book, “Waging Peace,” she shares her experience serving in Iraq as a combat medic and her choice to wage peace during wartime and after returning home.

During this episode, Diana shares:

• What it was like being deployed at age 23 to the “War on Terror,” as part of the Army National Guard
• What her daily life was like in Iraq as a combat medic
• The critical moment of conflict between her faith in God and her duty as a soldier that changed her forever — and compelled her to wage peace in a place of war
• How her friendship with a local Iraqi woman changed how she thought about the “enemy”
• The challenges she faced after returning home, and why she was silent for many years about her experiences in Iraq
• How she learned to wage peace at home in the face of racism, violence and fear — and how we can all wage peace in our communities to make a more beautiful world possible

You can learn more about Diana on her official website www.dianaoestreich.com, where you can buy an autographed copy of her book, “Waging Peace,” read her Waging Peace Manifesto and learn more about hosting a book club with Diana.

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The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Hello, and welcome to the beyond six seconds podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel. And today I am here with my guest Diana Oestreich. Diana is an activist, veteran, sexual assault nurse, and relentless practitioner of peace. She’s the founder of the waging peace project, a movement activating everyday peacemakers to commit acts of courage for the sake of justice rooted in relentless love. In her first book, waging peace, she shares her experience serving in Iraq as a combat medic and her choice to wage peace during war time and after returning home. Diana, welcome to the podcast.

Diana Oestreich: Thank you so much for having me, Carolyn.

Carolyn Kiel:  Yeah. I’m really excited to have you here today. So yeah. Would love to dig into your story, which you, you tell so well in the book, waging peace, which I read recently and, and truly enjoyed reading. Yeah, would just love to introduce that to our listeners. So it, towards the beginning, you talk about how you signed up to be in the army national guard. So tell me a little bit about your decision to do that.

Diana Oestreich: I think that when you’re coming of age and you’re in high school often. Just to put this out here. I am pre-internet. So when I was going to college, when I was in high school, it was just like this big book of different colleges. And, you know, w we didn’t have Google just to kind of broaden what we knew.

And so my decision to join the military, it was a lot based out of my family. I’m a third generation army veteran. My dad served. My mom served, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, and it was really a way that I was familiar with. I was more familiar with people enlisting and serving than I really was about college.

So it was a way for me, I wanted to actually go into the medical field. So it was a way for me to go to college. Cause my family had all the love in the world, but not the money to send me to college. And that was something that I had to figure out on my own. And so the national guard army national guard seemed like the, the best way for me to go to college really.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And then, so what year was it that you signed up?

Diana Oestreich: Well, I was 17 and I went to basic training right when I graduated high school in 1998.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And so you were serving there for a couple of years in the national guard. And then I understand that pretty close to, I think almost before your commitment time was up you wound up being deployed. Tell me about that.

Diana Oestreich: Yeah. I had gone to college. I was a nurse. I was pretty six months shy of being done with my enlistment, my six year enlistment, when the invasion of the Iraq war was happening, the preemptive strike. And so I thought I was, I was winding down on my military commitment. And I got called up to be deployed to the war on terror on Valentine’s day and told in 30 days report for duty.

We can not tell you when you’ll be back. We cannot tell you where you’re going, but write a will and sign over your bank accounts. And I was 23 years old when I got that call. And I just remember it was that moment where, you know, 23, You’re a baby, but you think you’re an adult, but looking back, I was a baby.

I remember when I got that phone call, it was just this seismic shift where I knew when I put that, when I put that phone down, my life would be divided into before and after. And I didn’t know what would come, but I knew I didn’t want it to come.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, because I would imagine that, you know, serving in the national guard, it seems, I don’t know about these days, but at least in certain times it was relatively not, rare or sort of less usual to be deployed somewhere. And it was still a way to, to serve and not necessarily be deployed at least not internationally.

Diana Oestreich: Well, and, and the purpose of the army national guard is the state run militia. So we’re here for the floods, we’re here to help our communities. And the last time that the national guard had been deployed, where in Minnesota, in my, my unit was the Vietnam war and that was 30 years previous. So it just wasn’t even a possibility for that to happen until it did.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And so, wow. So at 23, getting getting that call and not even really knowing, I guess until the last moment or, or sort of at what point, when did you know, like where you were being sent?

Diana Oestreich: Well, we were watching bombs drop on TV, so it’s not like we didn’t know, but we didn’t know, you know, they weren’t going to tell us. And so we were training, we were doing all of these things, but up until a week before we were leaving, they didn’t tell us where we’re going. And I think that I think that was a, and looking back, the national guard can be really young, like compared to the active duty army. A lot of us were college kids.

So I was 23 and I was not anywhere near the youngest. And I was a, I was a medic. So I was here to take care of my my company. And there are 18 year olds, 19 year olds. And then some like pretty old old soldiers too. And so it was just like this hometown hodgepodge group is going to go over to the Middle East?

It’s just it didn’t seem possible, but there we were boarding a plane and we would land in the middle East. And I remember the oddest thing was, was they chartered a Delta flight. But they couldn’t, but they couldn’t afford stewardesses. So we had this commercial Delta flight, but we all had weapons like M sixteens, but you can’t bring weapons on a plane.

So we had to like take apart our, our, a firing pin. So we had to take out one piece of our weapon. So there we are scrunched into a Delta plane, like three seats deep with our M sixteens and nobody can sit down. It was just like this most surreal moment of like, what are we doing? And at the end of this flight, we are going to be in an active war zone.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. So then, yeah. What was it like, you know, arriving, like getting there, you know, arriving in Iraq and sort of going about your day to day there?

Diana Oestreich: Yeah. I wrote about this in the opening of the book, because it was such this jarring thing. We tumbled our, our T our plane landed in middle of the night.

We tumbled out to the tarmac. It was the hottest of the hot, like the air was so thick. It felt like you were trying to breathe a blanket. And I remember when we had gotten, we were just standing there, huddled on the tarmac in the middle of the night. And I remember watching our plane a taxi down the runway cause it was heading right back to the States.

And I remember looking in that plane realizing, you know, if, if my team doesn’t win, like if my team doesn’t hold this airport, like I will not get to go home. You know, and just that reality that war is where we kill people. We kill people until one side surrenders. And so I think there’s so much media and there’s so many movies and there’s so many

fairy tales that we tell ourselves. So I think being in the middle of the heat and the dust and at that time we really thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons, chemical weapons and would use it on us. So as a medic, my first task was to distribute these atropine injectors so that if we were gassed those would really buy by each soldier some time.

And I remember being told, you know, like you need to pass these out in the first five minutes that we land. If we’re attacked, now we need to get these in our soldiers hands. And I remember just furiously, trying to hand them out in middle of the dark, in the heat. And when I’d finished it, I just remember trembling.

I remember telling myself like you did it, like that was your very first task as a combat medic in a war. And just. Just the weight of that, that this would be my weight to carry for, I didn’t know how long until I went home.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah, such a, a somber first task to really brings that reality into, into play. Wow. So what was your day-to-day like while serving in Iraq?

Diana Oestreich: Well, I was a medic and so usually my battalion is 500 and there’s about four companies of a hundred soldiers. And so I was assigned to a company of a hundred and are usually only one or two medics. And so whatever task was the most dangerous, I’m a combat medic is kind of like your EMT that you want them like in the Humvee with you, so that they can save a life and keep them alive for the first 10 minutes and call in a medivac.

So my life was quite different than. And then many soldiers, like whatever your job was. So the mechanics, they just kind of stay in the mechanic, tent, you know, feeling out trucks and doing mechanic stuff. But for me, I was on the road and I was on a mission every day. You know, hoping to keep hoping nothing bad happens.

But I was the person there to keep, keep my buddies alive. To get them back to the rear. But I do remember it was only like we’d only been there like two weeks and we were going to convoy in enemy territory the next day at like six in the morning. And the Sergeant was giving us, you know, our briefing on what we’re going to do.

And then at the very end of it, I remember him saying it’s an enemy tactic to push little Iraqi children in front of American trucks and convoys in order to stop the convoy. So that they could ambush the soldiers at the end, at the back. He’s like, I hope you understand your duty to keep the convoy rolling at all costs tomorrow.

If you aren’t able to keep the convoy rolling and protect your battle buddies stand up now and identify yourself.

And the, you know, I just couldn’t even breathe. Like his words hung in the air and before I could really put together, what does this mean? That would I, whose life would I protect? Would I run over a child? Or would I protect my battle buddies? And I remember like, I, I just couldn’t even imagine having to make that choice. So before I could really decide what to do, he was like dismissed you know pack up. And we went back to our tents, but in, you know, in a few short hours that convoy was going to happen. And that was just the longest night of my life. I remember just I was like, I believe in this, soldiers take life to save a life.

These are the hard sacrifices I had signed up, but something in me was just pushing back. And I had grown up as a person of faith at a little country Baptist church. And just everything I knew about God. You know, my church said, this is okay. God said, okay, something in me just couldn’t accept this responsibility or the fact that I might take a life.

And I remember a middle of the night just doing the old pathetic prayer. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. I just remember this voice just finally came, came out of nowhere. And I just remember hearing his voice that I felt like was God just saying, but I love them. Diana. I love them too. In a minute. I just, all the tension left and disintegrated because I knew, I knew that that meant, I knew that God was love.

And I knew that God asks us to love our enemies. And so I didn’t know what that would mean for me as a soldier, deciding that I would give my life for anyone, but I would not take a life between me and God that is something I would not do. But that was kind of the night that, that shifted my perspective that put me in a no man’s land.

Like, I didn’t know anybody who didn’t believe in killing for their country or for God, or for their own their own values. But that was the night that changed my life forever and really launched my entire, I mean, that was the, that was the first month I was there over a year, 397 days, but it really just ripped the rug out from underneath of me.

And it continued to put me in different places, the entire war that I would never imagine.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. So yeah, you talk about that in your book, about that really critical pivotal moment where you’re, you know, you’re, you know, I think you talk about sort of previously, maybe always seeing the world as very black and white, but distinct and black and white, and then all of a sudden it’s like…

Diana Oestreich: Right. Everything makes sense until the minute you actually have to look at what your beliefs actually do to the person in front of you at the other end of your beliefs at the end of, the end of your weapon. Then all of a sudden things things get real and it’s different. And living with choices for the rest of your life. People don’t tell you that either, you know.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, they just saying this was within your first month, you’re there for say like another close to another year beyond that. So obviously you’re still you’re there. You, you did make the decision, you know, to, to stay, but you, there, you talk throughout the book about all of these sort of, you know, actions that you took and the interactions that you had and how this decision that you made to you know, not be in a position where you would take a life and how that kind of you know, just really shaped your experiences there. So when you, and I know you were, you were going on convoys because that was part of your role. You always had to be out, you know, supporting everybody. And and I dunno, I had just reading it and I just can’t imagine being in that situation, having, knowing what, what my, what was right. You know, what I was being told and what I felt was right. But just being in, in a, in a situation where you’re just constantly tested, like every minute with, you know, real, real, and impending dangers from, you know, all around in, from the war zone and even from, you know, within your own company and Yeah, it’s you know, it’s a really an amazing, amazing journey.

So yeah, I mean, what was, you know, in terms of your day to day, I know you also spent a lot of time sort of in, in the village and, and getting to know some of the people who lived there. So was that kind of, part of your, your, your detail or was that something that was you know that you decided to do separately?

Diana Oestreich: So one of our, one of, I was part of a combat engineers. That was my battalion and one of our first tasks w because we, the U.S. declared war, actually, we invaded before we declared war. And it was on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. While we were there, they found no weapons of mass destruction.

So now you have a hundred thousand troops in the country. And what are we going to do now? And instead of telling people to go home, there aren’t weapons of mass destruction, we’re just gonna put them put them to work. So my, my battalion, we. There was a village about like 10 miles from where we were tenting and their school needed a new culvert.

And so we’re an engineer battalion. So one group built some roads. We were building a culvert. So we, I ended up spending quite a bit of time in this village and I, so my task was there with my soldiers. And, but you get bored. Everybody was bored. I think that’s kind of the thing nobody wants to talk about with war.

It’s just you know, people make jokes about the army all the time, hurry up and wait. Like 90% is just waiting. And so since we spent the whole, all of our days there, I started walking through the village and I had a medic bag on my back with just basics. And so I would go house to house, to house and meet people.

But. The w it was, we were always supposed to be in pairs. And I remember the first time that I met an Iraqi woman, like met met, I was walking through the village and it was the heat of the day. Everybody was taking naps because the heat kills people. At like, at the zenith, the hottest part of the day, like it is survival.

You won’t hear a single bird, you won’t see an animal or a human, like it is just take cover. And I remember I was walking through the village and all of a sudden I heard this door squeak open. And then I saw this woman in head to toe black. It was the modesty cloak, the chador that most women wore there.

And I remember. Like seeing it open all of a sudden, I see the universal hand gesture, the like wave where you’re like, Oh no, like, you know, she’s not waving at me. She’s telling me to come into her home. And I remember in that moment, my feet just froze and I realized that I didn’t have another soldier with me.

And I didn’t have a battle buddy that no one knew where I was. And part of the hard part of the, about this war is you never knew who was who, that it was a guerrilla war. And you know, if someone wasn’t wearing my uniform, it was just assumed that they were the enemy until proven otherwise. But I remember in that moment, I knew like everything in me said, stick to the script, act like you don’t see her, walk by, because if you go in that door, she could be a sweet old lady or the enemy could be hiding behind her door and nobody would ever hear from me again.

And soldiers were getting taken and they would find pieces of them places. Like it was just one of, one of the ways the warfare was happening. And so at that last moment where I was like, I’m going to ignore her because survival says don’t do it. But I just felt like there was just like this explosion in my chest.

where I just kind of felt like, no matter what, like there was something happening, you know, like don’t miss this Diana. And so in a moment I decided. I was going to do it. And so I walked straight into her door and she hugs me and she kind of grabs grabs me and brings me into her home and introduces me to her grandchildren and her daughters.

And from that moment on they were a little bit like my family. And so that family was the first person to choose to trust me first, before they knew if I was trustworthy, and choose to care about me as a person, not just the uniform that I wore, and like the very people I was being told were my enemy, they were inviting me in for tea.

And the same time people were in my uniform were committing acts of torture that were against our honor code. And so I was 23 and I was seeing the people I was told was my enemy were actually treating me as a human being. And then I saw people wearing my uniform, doing bad guy things. I didn’t know what to do with that.

Like, it was no longer black and white. The good guys weren’t the good guys and the bad guys weren’t really the bad guys. And that was part of this tension. That really was a rebirth for me. Like it was a freedom to interact with my Iraqi friends and to see them as just somebody who has cares, just like me, who has daughters, just like me, who wants good things and is scared.

So that that friendship with Om Hassan was her name. That was, that was a life-changing friendship for me. And I never really got to say goodbye. Our, we got a new task and we, and I moved and I never ever, I never, I didn’t know that the last time I saw her would be the last time that I saw her.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And it’s, you know, and I should say that this was not just like a one-time thing. This was the very first time that, you know, it it’s like a mutual trust. Like you know, she trusted to bring you into her home and you trusted her that you would be safe and that, you know, it w it was, you know That w it was a safe and and loving and an act of care to invite you in. And this was something that sounds like was a daily occurrence and not just with Om Hassan, with the other groups of women and children in the villages as well.

Diana Oestreich: So she would bring me to the next house and I come in and we’d do the pleasantries and we’d drink tea. And then I’d asked them, you know do you have any medical needs?

And pretty soon I started noticing I’m like, why do all of them have the same smile as Om Hassan? So they were all her family members. So she was like the matriarch and then almost every home. She was related and this went on for half of the year and her husband came home and I got to be part of that celebration.

There’s a baby who was sick in the village and we actually got to bring bring that baby into medical care, which was a miracle because nobody wanted Om Hassan who is in head to toe black robes. Like she could have hidden a microwave underneath there. Like nobody wanted her to go through a checkpoint, but we couldn’t, I couldn’t bring that baby who was so sick that he might die without her.

Like she just had to come so that if things didn’t go well, she would know that that we tried, and she would be the one to take the baby Mohammed back until and care for him and care for whatever happens. So we had some incredible adventures that I still look back and I’m like, that sounds like a movie, but I was there and it was real.

And we got to bring the baby in and actually the baby lived. And we got to bring him back to the village and it was kind of those biblical celebrations where there’s this little girl is like putting she’s spraying perfume on my kevlar and my uniform. And another girl is like pushing a plastic ring on my finger.

And I’m like, what is that? Why is someone like doing my hair? And then I remembered from Sunday school back in the day that this was part of these like celebrations. They would perfume David and they would put rings on him and give him a new cloak. And I was like, Oh my gosh. So I was actually closer to the place of my faith

than I had ever been, even though I felt farther from home than I’ve ever been. It was just this this coming home in such a weird way and beautiful way with these relationships.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And, you know, there’s so many many of those amazing stories are ones that you, you talk about in your book and just the, you know, the incredible bonds that you had with with all the women and the children in that village.

And you know, such a contrast to be in a place of war where that’s, you know, the main reason that you’re there and you’re building, you know, really, I think the, really the first times that you started, as you say, waging peace and just growing that, that trust and that peace and, and helping people medically and yeah, that, that’s incredible.

Yeah. So, so you were there for, I guess, a little over a year. And then, and I guess throughout that, so you’re still, you know, going out like through convoys, and I’m assuming that you, you were never really in a situation where fortunately you, you had to take a life but you were able to kind of trust and build those you know, kind of built trust.

Diana Oestreich: And that, and I was a medic and medics don’t carry the traditional M 16. We have a tiny nine millimeter side arm. So our purpose is not to do like, we’re not, like that is not our purpose. And we’re supposed to take care of where we protect life, limb or eyesight of anyone and everyone on the battlefield, which is also interesting that my medic code extended to civilians and the enemy, which if I would have been a traditional soldier, that would not have been the case, but as a medic that was my new standing order was that I would preserve and protect every single life that I came across.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. So you. You know, and, and so many great stories that people can read about in your book and how that whole, you know, year and year and some time went through. And definitely encourage everybody to, to get the book and read all of those amazing stories. So, you know, I kind of want to flash forward to when, you know, when it’s time to go home, when you find out that, you know we’re, we’re going back It’s interesting.

Kind of thinking of, you know, getting there and the shock of first landing there and the heat and just it being such a different environment. But even going home, it sounds like it’s almost like when you’re returning home, you’re, you’re kind of, not exactly the same person that you were when you left there. So what was life like for you once you were back home?

Diana Oestreich: It was really bewildering. And I was, I was, we were the first wave of the first soldiers to come back. And so this is back in 2004. And so they really, weren’t talking a lot about PTSD. They weren’t talking about decompression or mental health.

And so really we had spent a year being in a war zone. And then when we came home, we weren’t even, we turned in our gear and processed for seven days and then all of a sudden, you know, we went from Baghdad to like back on our block in our families and neighborhoods. And I know that leaving was hard, but many soldiers will say coming home is is harder and lonelier.

And buildering because you’re not the same person. And you don’t know if. And nobody who knows and loves you knows you’re not the same person. And so you’re almost like playing this role of like, if they knew, I don’t know if they’d be okay with me, because I know that I’m different. And everyone’s life just kind of, you know, they watch CNN for 30 seconds on the couch and, and we lived, I lived this entire, entirely different like unexplainable experience.

And unlike, you know, you can’t just bring someone and be like here, see this. And also we are still in middle of the war. You know, this was just year one of, you know, the Iraq war turned 18 this year. So now people can fight in it who weren’t even born when it started. And so I think it was lonely it was isolating.

And once you’re out of this situation, I think that’s the time when your head and your body can kinda like decompress and then you deal with all of these things. So I think that laying down my weapon and becoming a peacemaker in middle of war was one thing. But to do it at home was so much more confusing and I feel like it was harder to wage peace

in my neighborhood, in my faith and my family and my friends, because I came from a very rural patriotic, you know, there’s really only one way to vote and way to serve our country and one way to love God. And so I knew what people from my background said about peacemakers. You know, there are some hippie dippies who didn’t understand sacrifice.

And so I knew it was not going to go over well to say that. I think that as often as you talk about war, we should be talking about peace because every soldier believes in peace. They wouldn’t go to war to get more war. We go to war because we think that peace is possible and it’s worth fighting for.

And so at this time I’m like 24. I have all these conflicting experiences and I really don’t feel like I can tell anybody about it because I just really need to feel safe. And I know that if I really talk about what, what changed for me that I will probably lose belonging and I will lose acceptance in places that I dearly needed.

Like I needed to heal and I needed a soft spot. And I also think that most of society doesn’t want to hear soldiers talk about how it’s not what they see on CNN and they don’t want to hear it. And so I got silenced enough. And I got asked really awful questions. I was a nurse. So I went back to the hospital and people would be like, “so you know, you kill anybody?

And we got to get those blankety blank keys.” And like I would just just have to leave the room. My heart would pound cause these are scars on my, in, on my soul. These are people that I know and love. They’re not taglines, they’re not. I won’t trash talk people like that. And so it just really was this disconnected, painful experience until I stopped really talking about it because I didn’t, I didn’t know how to handle the pain of what people were doing when they didn’t even know what they were doing.

It worked for them, but it was traumatic for me and they didn’t see me. And I am five feet and I’m, and I’m a female and I’m rather smiley. And so I think if I looked like GI Joe, maybe they would’ve treated me with more respect or just decency. But they didn’t. And so I was quiet for about five years. I was quiet about my experience,

Carolyn Kiel: So, what steps did you wind up finally taking in order to, to heal and, and move past that trauma and then truly start your work in, in waging peace in the civilian world?

Diana Oestreich: Well, I came home and then got married to the guy who I fell in love with right before I left. And he waited for me. We had two kids in two years. And so I think when you and two boys and it’s, I think when you’re raising boys they were so safe and I love them so much. And when they would ask me what about war mama and what the DUNS do, and you know, like if you can explain it to a toddler.

Then you really know what you know. And so I think I spent a couple of years with them just figuring things out and knowing what I believe about peace and knowing the limitations of violence and knowing what I wanted for my kids for the world. And so. I ended up connecting with a group. They were doing work in middle of Iraq.

And so I was like, Oh my gosh, you guys, this is life giving as a soldier. You guys are unmaking violence in a place that I waged war. And so they were like, you should work with us. So I jumped on board with them and that was kind of the first place that I really unpacked my war story, that really became my peacemaking story.

And it was so healing for me to be part of unmaking the violence in Iraq as a soldier. And so I think that’s where I really got to like tell my story and I really got to own the fact that peacemaking is worth giving my life for. Like that was what I saw in Iraq mattered, you know, loving people first could change the enemies to friends in Iraq and I knew it could work here in my own community

that’s divided by politics and violence and racism. So I think that deciding to be peacemakers as a family, we just really like blackmail ourselves to show up in our community. Anytime there was violence, any time a minority said we’re scared or something happened. Like we would just, we had already given our yes.

And I think once you start to show up where violence is, you actually get to wage peace. And I would say that waging peace is committing acts of courage for the sake of justice rooted in a relentless love. And that’s the world i, I think we can all do. And one thing I learned about war and I also know about peace is that you have to show up for them both, but you cannot do them if you don’t show up and I’ve already waged war, and I know what the limits of that are, but peace builds peace unmakes violence.

Peace makes the more beautiful world possible. And I, I think we’ve got more in common with our enemies than we know that we do. And I think we want more of the same things and we’re all going to give our life for something. And so peace peace is the thing that I most want to give my sons and give my community and give my world.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, and I, I, that is so powerful saying that, you know, for war and for peace, the importance of showing up, because I think, you know, especially with the, certainly within the last year, more and more of us are being called on to show up to fight these acts of racism, acts of, you know, just terrible aggression and injustice.

And I feel like more and more people are starting to show up and And yeah, and of course all these things were going on in the world before, but now the attention and the call is really to a much wider audience and people who maybe would have ignored it or just it didn’t, wasn’t on their radar now, you know, now, now I think everyone’s aware. So now is the choice of, well, what are you going to do about it?

Diana Oestreich: Yeah. That’s just, and I think, I think that everybody wants to be invited to change the world. And I think we’re just not giving our kids, we’re not giving each other great invitations. Like they’re kind of shallow. And they’re limited.

And I think that waging peace says exactly who you are. There is a wrong that you were born to make right. And I have a friend who she says that, and I’m like, it’s so true. And that can be small to big. But I do think that we each have something unique to give. And I think that too often, we’ve been told to sit on the bench that only the big people, the famous people.

The elected people. And it’s, and it’s never been like that in history. It’s always been a committed small group of ordinary people who have changed the world. And I think that war showed me that completely average people, but you get to S we don’t get to decide what our world is or what a war is like, but we do get to decide what we will do when we show up in it and what we won’t do.

And my decision not to harm another human being was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it gave me this life-changing invitation to do it where I live, to do it as a mom, to do it everywhere I go. And the more and more I talk to people, the more and more other people want to do it too.

I was just in a book club with some ladies. I think they’re all over 80. And they are passionate and they have things to offer right where they live. And so that’s what I get really excited that I think that we all get to offer something. We all get to show up for each other and that’s what ending racism is going to take.

And that’s what we’re looking around and I’m like, we can do this. This is our time. Every generation has work to do. It’s just whether or not we will accept that we have courage. You know, I think it’s easier. People are always like, well, how did you do that? That is so much courage. I’m like, it was not courage.

It was, it was staying alive and for my soul to stay alive for my humanity to stay alive, I had to make a different choice than what my parents parents’ culture told us to do. And I see people doing that today. They aren’t experts. They don’t really know what they’re doing, but they’re showing up and they are changing their communities.

And that gives me so much hope.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, as you talk about courage, I think it’s also an important point to say that, you know, you, you made these decisions and, you know, even though you, you knew what the right decision was for you, that didn’t make it easy. And that didn’t mean that you were without fear in, in doing it living the way that you had to. So that’s important that the fear and you act in spite of the fear.

Diana Oestreich: I was scared every day, every day. And every day when you start there’s roll call and they always read off the names of the soldiers who were killed the day before and where, and it’s partly intelligence to like tell us where to be very just aware and second it’s to honor those soldiers who have died.

And so imagine starting out breakfast every day. Hearing the names of somebody just like you, maybe who’s going to travel the very same road I’m going to travel, that they were killed yesterday. And in some ways I think having the idea that you could be killed by lunch just makes things really clear.

You know what you’ll do and you know what you won’t. And I think it’s harder here, especially in our country because people are, I think that belonging and I think feeling ostracized by people they love and respect is a really hard yes for folks to do it. But I also know that if you don’t, you won’t and you’ll regret it, you know, like I think we have courage and I think the more we see each other standing up for the right things and for our vulnerable neighbors, like we are going to be so proud and our kids can be proud.

You know, and there’s costs, but we’re all paying costs. I just think that that easy cost looks a little easy. But being afraid doesn’t ever have to stop you. And you’ll have to be like really courageous, like one day out of seven, like the other days you can feel like there’s no hope and you can be tired and be depressed by the headlines.

But when that day comes, you just show up and it gives more fuel. Because change action is the antidote to despair. And so when we act, we actually, I think it’s the best mental health thing you can do. It actually regenerates you. It actually puts energy and hope back in your spirit.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. That’s an amazing point. So what advice do you have for us just sort of your everyday average person to, to embrace hope and act to make a positive change?

Diana Oestreich: I think that I’m just going to say it. I think you should get my book because people across every spectrum of faith and politics and age they I’ve always heard two things after people read it.

They say that they feel more connected to people who they are unfamiliar with. And they feel more hopeful. And so if you could read any story today that made you feel more connected to people who are different from you and more hope, do it, you know, like I need a little bit of fuel. And then the second thing I would say is show up in your community.

It can be so paralyzing to read headlines, but there are really good people in your community. And there are people that actually really need your help. So even if you think it’s too little, it’s not. So I would say pick, watch, they’ll be people in your community who raise their hands and say, we need help.

We need help in our schools. We need help in this, just show up. And I think that that first step, you can’t win a marathon without that first step. So oftentimes I think your first step is actually your finish line. And so I just want to encourage whoever’s listening that there’s a place for you that people actually need you.

And people are invited, like you’re invited to make a difference in your community and just do it once. I just double dog dare you do it that first time. And and it’ll change. It’ll, it’ll change your story for the better and you’ll feel more connected and you’ll feel more hope.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s important to take that first step, no matter how small, because I think sometimes we feel like the problems in the world are just so big and intractable, and we can’t really do anything about fixing like these huge issues, but you’re right.

It really does start with taking one step and, and getting involved and connected and yeah. Absolutely. So you know, how can people, you know, either get in touch with you to learn more about your work or to get a copy of your book?

Diana Oestreich: Either place. If you go to my website and it’s WagingPeaceBook.com you can, if you order the book from me, you will be supporting an author in a time when small businesses and individuals need all of our love and support, and storytellers.

I also think that it’s important. You can definitely get it on Amazon or all the places books are sold. And so do whatever you need to do. But if you come to my website, you can buy a book directly from me and I’ll autograph it and mail it to you. And you can also, I have just a four step it’s called the waging peace manifesto.

So if you sign up for my newsletter, then it’ll come directly to your inbox. You do not have to scroll through Instagram or Facebook in order to get some helpful. I always tell people, I give you three practical ways to wage peace. We don’t need big ideas. Sometimes we just need really small steps because it’s the small things that really put life in our days.

So I would love to hear your story. I’d love to connect. And I also do book clubs, so you can sign up for that. There I’ll zoom in with you.

Carolyn Kiel: Awesome. That’s fantastic. Yeah. And I’ll put a link to your website in the show notes so that people can just click on it from there. Wonderful. Awesome. So, yeah. Thank you so much, Diana, for being on my podcast. As we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Diana Oestreich: I really do you get encouraged by people on social media. I have found in the past year since I’ve launched my book I’m on Instagram and Facebook, just people from all different places who say keep going.

And yeah, I care about that too. So I just don’t want you to ever think that your notes or even your comments don’t matter because I think they really, they really, really do. To me. And so I just want to thank everybody for listening, and I think that everyone has a story to tell. And so I encourage people to tell their story.

Tell it to me, tell it to a friend, write your book. I’m behind you, whatever it is. I think I just want to cheer you on and say yes, whether that’s you telling your own story of peace. Or a podcast or how you’re raising your kids. I think raising kids is really powerful right now. Just keep going and I’m absolutely in your corner.

Carolyn Kiel: Wonderful. Well, thanks again. Diana, it was really great talking with you.

Diana Oestreich: Thank you so much, Carolyn.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help us spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend. Give us a shoutout on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of our episodes on our website and sign up for our free newsletter at www.beyond6seconds.com. Until next time.