“So I got to understand her thought. I calmed down when I had the clear understanding."Two stories of significant change (Curran 2009) also illustrate how CCMT KASH empowered families to promote their own well-being. In the first, the peacebuilder found her relationship with her sister transformed.
#39.In a second story, an aunt was able to transform feelings of ill-will for an errant nephew to feelings of love and hope.
My younger sister had stomach surgery but even before that she was always losing her temper, finding fault with me, and having a lot of expectation that when I came home from work I would spend a few hours cleaning and washing despite having a pretty intense full-time job. I longed for personal time but I could see that my sister feels that she can’t manage (and shouldn’t have to manage) all the chores at home and I’ve gotten better at accepting that this is part of my responsibility at home. I am now much more aware of others’ feelings than before and less tempted to judge my sister and dismiss her as lazy but rather try to be fair and generous and kind because I love her.
#43.However, it should also be noted that commitment to family members is often associated with saving face and, in certain contexts, can be a weakness. Especially when resources are limited and parties are disempowered, commitment to maintaining relationships at all costs can trap family members within destructive relationships.
It is difficult to love my nephew and before the Peace Bridges training, seeing so much as his foot print would make me have negative feelings. I really can say that I hated him because he is rude and arrogant and embarrassing. I want to talk about the [Judeo-Christian theology of peace] lessons we had. Right after we had that lesson I became determined to get closer to him and I realized that my desire to just get far away from him would do nothing to help him. I decided then to use him as my moto-dup and try to influence him by loving him. Because he wanted the money he agreed to take me around (though I must say that it was even culturally embarrassing that he would ever take money from his aunt!). He was dismissive and would say things like “if the police arrest me for driving crazy, I’ll just call one of my big friends to get me out”, but I persevered and kept on trying to help to influence him and to love him. Recently he got a job in Koh Kong but he continued being rude- complaining that he had no girls to flirt with. He made me be ashamed but I maintained my determination to remain calm and just kept telling him that we’re Christian and we should be the light and salt, just like we learned from Peace Bridges. I made the decision like Jesus- whom the world would reject and he knew this and still he agreed to die. Just so, I was given no indication that my nephew would change. I was raised to think that I should get away from all things that don’t seem good but I will stay with my nephew in hopes that one day he will feel my love and have a change of heart.
“Sometimes I chose to divorce with him, but our elderly relatives always helped with the intervention and encouraged us not to get divorced.”Holding this caution in awareness, this cultural value is a major resource for peacebuilders, since family members have a high motivation to stay together.
Cases also identified areas of continued need in order to support well-being of each spouse. Two particular issues raised were: sex education (“how to make a healthy sexual relationship, how to express need of sexual relationship to each other, how to deal with problems of dysfunction sexual relationship”) and marital fulfillment (“Marriage life which shows how to fulfill each other (true love)”).
***Notes1) Cecil (2005):86-87
