A group of friends, who hosted the Summer Institute of Psychosocial Trauma with a special focus on victims of war through Columbia University in Missouri, invited me to a fire ceremony one day before the training began.

The facilitator, Bishop Green, a tall African-American man, spoke about the meaning of fire in different communities, and the affinity of the rituals from around the world pertaining the fire in which he had participated.

Around the fire we had people from different parts of the world. Two young ladies gave us some pieces of wood and ask us to write down our prayers.

We all did. Many languages, one same message, all of our prayers were set on the fire. We sat there and watch how small particles of light rose to the sky. Then, a child Psychiatrists from Iraq asked me “excuse me for asking but I need to know that I am not having a psychotic perception, are the sparks now all over the field?”

I look at the field and found small lights going on and off, and smiled. “Light bugs” I told him, then asked him to come with me. We walked a few steps and I got a-hold of one of the little creatures and showed it to my friend. He smiled and said, “I have never seen one before!” Then we looked all around us and marveled at the event. Lights, all around us. My friend had been making a prayer for peace. He told me that half of the populations of Iraq, 12 million people, are under the age of 17, and that many of them suffer from trauma of war. We looked around again, and the little lights seemed like prayers, perhaps all of these children claiming for the childhood that has been taken away from them.

The following morning I spoke to Sohaila, a medical doctor from Afghanistan, who with Nadjia, a social worker from Pakistan, provides some medical and psychological relief at a refugee camp. They have one clinic for a million refugees.

Nadjia tells me that this is the first time she has been out of Pakistan. There, she is not allowed to be alone in public with a man, not even her cousin. Here, when she arrived to Saint Louis, Missouri, a man from the conference had gone to pick her up, and drove her for two hours to Columbia, where the conference was taking place.

“I have had many adventures just to get here,” she tells me. Sohaila’ s journey has been even more challenging. She had been in airports for six straight days, and after enduring extra security inspections, she was now finally at Columbia University, in the United States.

“Salam o alekum” the Arabic greeting, allows me to salute a wide range of participants. It is a spiritual saying, and I imagine it resonates with them in the same way that “May the peace of God be with you” does with me. I learn that while there is a wide range of languages in the Middle East, all of those who practice the Islamic religion study the Koran in the Arabic language.

Dr. Arshad Husain, the leading authority in trauma of war in children, shows us some pictures taken from his visits to different parts of the world afflicted with war. Children from Kosovo, from Bosnia, from Afghanistan. I realize then that the language of the eyes is universal, laughter and tears convey the same message. I then understood how an American Psychologist from Detroit, listening to his radio heard an interview with a young girl who had been kidnapped and forced into a world of sexual exploitation, responded to this universal language. The interview was cut short by the authorities in that part of the world, but this man could not stop thinking about it. He had responded to the call of distress from the other side of the world, because where there is love, there are no boundaries for the heart. He quit his job and saved many and finally saved the eight-year-old girl who had changed his heart forever. For ten years he has been working with the International Organization against Sexual Exploitation of Children, and as he received a special recognition of the Trauma Institute, his daughter was standing beside him.

And I asked myself, how many more children are out there calling our name? Their call makes us feel pain, our heart breaks, but that means we are being called for action. To work towards the wellbeing of all of these children puts our heart back together.

I was then given the privilege to address the healers of the world as the keynote speaker. I shared with them words that I had learned from them, and the feelings that many of them had awaken in my heart. Then, seeing Charlotte in the audience, a Lakota Indian sister, I shared with them what one of Charlotte’s ancestors had shared with some European settlers over 400 years ago, the hand sign “V” which in Lakota it means “Cuate” “You are my other me.” If I look at others through this perspective, then the ground for conflict resolution and reconciliation is always there. We know that the requirement to kill someone is to murder them first in our heart, to see them as alien to ourselves. My friends then turned to each other, people with a wide diversity of cultures, religions, languages, and clothing, and they said, “You are my other me!” And we found our common unity, that same light –like the one of the fire ceremony- that lives within us all.