The Family – Heaven and Hell - Building loving relationships and healing the wounds - Birmingham, United Kingdom

The Family – “Heaven and Hell” Building loving relationships and healing the wounds Birmingham, United Kingdom, 23. June 2017

By Patricia Earle A Women’s Peace Meeting held to recognise the UN Day for Maureen Slattery-Marsh, our first speaker, is a Clinical and the Family, and Africa Day Pastoral Counsellor, working with Immigration and ecently, we had another Women’s Peace Meeting Counselling Psychotherapy (iCAP). Speaking on a topic

R which focused on the central importance of the family in society, and human relationships. The topic generated a lot of interest and discussion, and well over 100 women came together, as always representing the close to her heart, she outlined the various types of family we now have in our society, and considered 4 pillars of family stability, recognised universally beyond all our differences. These are Love, Trust, Respect/Honour and Understanding. vast diversity of culture, race and religion in our city of She spoke about love as the most enduring of the four, but Birmingham. about the fragility of all of them, with serious consequences following their breakdown - not just within the family, but for the wider society. Maureen mentioned Nelson Mandela as an example of someone who was able to digest his own pain and mistreatment, and then help the entire ‘family’ of the South African nation to honestly face the pain of its past, and begin to deal with the very real consequences of so many peoples’ suffering. Rana Nazir, Chair of the British Kashmiri Women’s Council, described with controlled emotion the intense pain of her own journey through a forced marriage at the age of 18. At that time, many years ago, Rana had to discontinue her studies, having no voice and ‘living in a bottle’ with no-one to understand her, subject to emotional blackmail and told that “you can study later”. Her marriage was eventually annulled, and she began the long, slow process of recovery from both physical paralysis and emotional scarring. When her mother’s

sister died, she moved to Leeds to help take care of the 3 traditions, including a beautiful rendition of ‘Imagine’ by daughters in that family, managing with time to persuade her Viola Dirnhofer. uncle to allow them to study and then enter into successful As always, we tried to have a practical outcome from the marriage relationships. At the same time, Rana somehow meeting, and this time we raised £100 for Norma to use in a managed to continue her own studies, gaining two degrees project which is helping widows in Nigeria, working in and a Masters. Focusing on peace, love and unity, she could conjunction with Shepherd Ministries there, something reconcile with and hold her own family together, as well as Pauline Anderso has spoken about previously. the family of her former husband! She explained that without reconciliation, problems easily grow out of all proportion, It was very encouraging to see the number of women and that just one person can either unite, or break a family gathered together for the occasion, including around 30 new apart. She is a living testimony to the power of love and faces, and many young women present, some of whom had commitment to heal the wounds, and to the belief that been invited along by their mothers. The safe space which we genuine peace begins in the home. have created together over the years is a unique environment to be able to freely share our hearts with one another, both for Needless to say, the topic and the contribution of the two those in need of support, and for others to be able to offer speakers provoked much discussion, with many women support, many times leading to the development of precious wanting to share their heart within the intimacy of our friendships which remove our fears and prejudice. We feel meeting. Contributions came from some of the young women this is something incredibly valuable, particularly in the present, from Christian ministers and those with pastoral present time of much uncertainty and fear, providing hope responsibilities, from a head teacher, and from and the feeling of being one human family. representatives of prominent organisations such as WAITS and HopeNotHate. We could have continued much longer, but had to begin to bring things to a close with candle-lit prayer and several songs from our different cultural and faith

Thanks to Shabnum for making such a lovely, tasty WFWP cake for us all to enjoy!