A Peace of My Mind

Growing up in East Los Angeles, in a home she describes as poor and chaotic, Gloria Contreras Edin never expected to become a lawyer. She dropped out of school at 16, became pregnant at 17, and later moved to Staples, Minnesota (population 3,000).

Gloria, who is Mexican-American, spoke both English and Spanish—a valued skill in rural Central Minnesota. She was asked to interpret for immigrants working in the area’s packing plants and farms. Those residents came to trust her in times of distress. When federal immigration agents detained a developmentally disabled 19-year-old man who was out riding his bicycle, “his mother came rushing to my office and begged me to help,” she says. “I felt helpless I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t an attorney.” She tried to intervene the best she could. But, she says, “it wasn’t enough.”

One day, Gloria was driving home from work and pulled over to cry. “If there’s a God out there and there’s a purpose for me, I completely give myself up,” she remembers saying aloud. “I’m going to use my eyes, my hands, my mouth, and my body to do whatever it takes to help these folks.”

Not long afterward, in 2002, she received a Bush Foundation fellowship that she used to attend law school.

North Star Way: Minnesota navigates a harsh winter

To read the introduction to this series, follow this link.

Credits:
Interviews and text: Barry Yeoman
Interviews and photos: John NoltnerEditing and production: Razik Saifullah, Nick Theisen
Music: Dan Rodriguez

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Hierald Osorto is the lead pastor at St. Paul’s-San Pablo Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis, a bilingual congregation in a neighborhood with a visible unhoused population.

The son of an immigrant who fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, Hierald grew up attending a Spanish-speaking Pentecostal church in Newark, New Jersey. “It was never quite the easiest,” he says of the poverty and injustice that surrounded him. “But the community always showed up for one another. And it was always done, they said, because ‘we believe in God, and this is what our calling should be.’”

North Star Way: Minnesota navigates a harsh winter

To read the introduction to this series, follow this link.

Credits:
Interviews and text: Barry Yeoman
Interviews and photos: John NoltnerEditing and production: Razik Saifullah, Nick Theisen
Music: Dan Rodriguez

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Adam Turkington is a Belfast-based creative producer, cultural organizer, and one of the driving forces behind the city’s contemporary street-art scene. Founder of the Hit the North festival and a longtime advocate for public art, he has helped transform Belfast’s walls from symbols of division into spaces for creativity, community, and shared identity. Working at the intersection of art, placemaking, and social change, Turkington connects artists, neighborhoods, businesses, and audiences through murals, events, exhibitions, and cultural projects. His work is rooted in a simple belief: great art can help people feel more connected to the places they live and to one another.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Bryonie Reid is a writer, artist, and cultural geographer whose work explores the deep connections between place, memory, and belonging. Working with her sister, Gemma Reid, as Quarto Collective, she creates community-based projects that invite people to reflect on the landscapes they inhabit, the histories they inherit, and the futures they hope to imagine together.

Rooted in Northern Ireland's complex history, Bryony's practice is shaped by listening, curiosity, and the quiet work of building relationships across difference. Through art, storytelling, and collaborative public projects, she creates spaces where communities can engage with the past while nurturing new possibilities for peace, connection, and shared belonging.

Credits:

• Interview by summer intern Kaitlin Imai
• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

**This episode includes two separate interviews.**

Hilary Lawrey knows what it means to live with invisible boundaries. Growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, she experienced a world where fear quietly shaped everyday life—determining where people went, whom they met, and how communities remained separated. Though she never carried bitterness, the divisions around her became part of the landscape of her life.

After spending fifteen years caring for her husband before his death, Hilary faced a different kind of isolation. Grief had narrowed her world, and the thought of walking into a shared space where Protestants and Catholics gathered together felt overwhelming. Yet she chose courage over fear.

That single decision changed her life.

Today, Black Mountain Shared Space has become a second home. Surrounded by friends from across the community, Hilary has rediscovered laughter, purpose, and the confidence to embrace new experiences—including traveling with women she had only recently met. She believes peace is built not by pretending differences don't exist, but by making room for one another while remaining true to who we are.

Looking at her grandchildren, Hilary sees a future she never imagined as a child: one where friendships cross old divides and young people are free to go wherever life leads them. Her journey is a reminder that reconciliation is often less about changing someone else's mind than finding the courage to step through a door that once seemed impossible to open.

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Mark Fenton is a community leader and founding member of Black Mountain Shared Space in Belfast, where he has spent nearly two decades helping build relationships across one of Northern Ireland's most deeply divided interfaces. Raised in the area during the Troubles, Mark became involved in interface violence as a child and later in loyalist paramilitary organizations, experiences that shaped his understanding of the conflict and the cost it imposed on local communities.

A strong supporter of the Good Friday Agreement, Mark became involved in community peacebuilding to help ensure that future generations would not have to experience the violence and division he had known. Working alongside former members of the republican community, he has helped build trust, respond to community tensions, and create opportunities for people from both traditions to meet in a safe and welcoming environment.

Mark is also a single father who raised two daughters after the death of his wife. He credits his work in peacebuilding with helping create a different future for his family, one in which his daughters—and now his grandchildren—can form friendships across community lines that would have been nearly impossible during his own childhood. Today, he remains committed to building safer, stronger communities by encouraging people to step beyond fear and give one another a chance.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

**This episode includes two separate interviews.**

Alastair Kilgore is a Northern Irish educator, peacebuilder, and longtime member of the Corrymeela Community, where he has been involved for more than fifty years. Raised in the Protestant tradition, Kilgore has dedicated much of his life to fostering understanding across religious, political, and cultural divides in Northern Ireland.

Inspired by Corrymeela founder Ray Davey, whose experiences during the bombing of Dresden shaped a lifelong commitment to reconciliation, Kilgore embraced the belief that "we are all the same" and has carried that principle throughout his work. As a teacher, community leader, and advocate for integrated education, he played an early role in supporting Lagan College, Northern Ireland's first integrated secondary school, helping pioneer efforts to educate Protestant and Catholic children together.

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Dot Wilson is a community-builder, peace advocate, and lifelong resident of Northern Ireland who has spent decades fostering connection across divides. Living in Ballycastle on the North Antrim Coast, Dot is a former probation officer, gardener, fused-glass artist, and grandmother of four children and several grandchildren. Deeply shaped by her involvement with the Corrymeela Community movement, she has dedicated much of her life to creating spaces where people from different backgrounds can live, learn, and grow together.

Alongside her late husband, Derek Wilson, Dot helped establish Mill Strand Integrated Primary School in Portrush during the 1980s, working with other parents to create one of Northern Ireland’s pioneering integrated schools. The effort required extraordinary commitment, including securing funding, overcoming community resistance, and even leveraging their homes to support the project. Today, she looks back on that work with pride as a tangible contribution to a more inclusive society.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

For most of the world, Nell McCafferty was a pioneering journalist, feminist, civil rights activist, and one of Ireland's most fearless public voices. For Carmel McCafferty and her daughter Muire McCallion, she was simply "our Nell."

Carmel is Nell McCafferty's youngest sister, one of six siblings raised in a modest three-bedroom home in Derry's Bogside.

Muire, Carmel's daughter, grew up knowing Nell as the adventurous aunt who arrived with improbable schemes, unexpected journeys, and endless curiosity.

This episode is a free-wheeling recollection of Nell McCafferty, the sister and the aunt, as remembered in a warm and raucous conversation.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Patricia Moore is a community activist and longtime Sinn Féin member from Derry, Northern Ireland, whose life has been shaped by the Troubles and the subsequent peace process. Raised in Derry during some of the most violent years of the conflict, she experienced military raids, street violence, and the daily realities of a divided society from an early age. At 17, she became involved in republican politics and later spent more than a year in prison after being detained during a mass arrest operation; the case against her ultimately collapsed when the key witness withdrew her testimony.

Moore describes prison as both a hardship and a place of political education, where solidarity among women prisoners and engagement with political debate deepened her commitment to social and political change. In the decades since, she has become a strong advocate for dialogue and reconciliation, working with former prisoners, loyalists, former British soldiers, and community groups across traditional divides. She has also participated in efforts to rebuild trust in public institutions and encourage nonviolent civic engagement.

Today, Moore speaks openly about the human cost of conflict while emphasizing the importance of conversation, accountability, and cooperation. She remains committed to building what she describes as “a new Ireland for everybody”—one based on equality, respect, and shared opportunity across communities.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Paul McLaughlin is an educator, historian, community leader, and lifelong resident of Derry, Northern Ireland. Growing up during the Troubles, Paul's earliest memory is witnessing the day of Bloody Sunday as a six-year-old child, an experience that profoundly shaped his understanding of conflict, identity, and justice. Rather than following many of his peers into the violence that engulfed Northern Ireland, he found purpose through sport, education, and public service.

A passionate student of history, Paul devoted his career to helping young people understand the past while building a more hopeful future. As a teacher, youth football coach, and community advocate, he has worked to create opportunities for cross-community engagement and reconciliation. Having lived through decades of division, military occupation, and political turmoil, Paul witnessed firsthand the transformative power of the Good Friday Agreement and remains committed to fostering peace, understanding, and dialogue.

Today, he shares his story as a reminder that even in societies marked by deep conflict, hope, education, and human connection can help create lasting change.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Mark Durkan has spent much of his life navigating Northern Ireland 's difficult path from conflict to peace. A native of Derry, he was deeply involved in the negotiations and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, later serving as Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and as a member of Parliament.

Throughout his career, Mark has championed the idea that peace is more than a political settlement. While agreements can create the conditions for change, he believes reconciliation is sustained by the everyday work of communities, artists, educators, and ordinary citizens who choose connection over division. Drawing on decades of experience, he speaks about the challenges of addressing painful histories, building trust, and creating shared spaces where people can re-imagine a common future.

Today, through his work with the John and Pat Hume Foundation and other civic initiatives, Mark continues to encourage dialogue, understanding, and the belief that lasting peace is built one relationship at a time.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Martina Anderson is a lifelong Irish republican, former political prisoner, and veteran political leader from Derry’s Bogside. Arrested in the early years of the Troubles, she spent nearly fourteen years in prison, including a decade in England, before her release under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Following her release, Anderson unexpectedly found herself in public office, serving as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, a Junior Minister in the Executive Office, and later as a Member of the European Parliament for Sinn Féin, where she represented Northern Ireland for more than seven years.

She was also among the first Sinn Féin representatives appointed to the Policing Board, helping oversee reforms aimed at increasing accountability and human rights protections in post-conflict policing.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Chris McDonough is a community development worker based in the Fountain/Bishop Street interface area of Derry, where he works to bridge divides between Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods through peacebuilding, regeneration, and youth engagement.

Raised in a family shaped by both nationalist and republican traditions, Chris combines deep knowledge of Northern Ireland’s history with a practical commitment to reconciliation and social equity. His work focuses on addressing the lingering trauma and tensions of the Troubles by fostering dialogue, shared understanding, and cross-community relationships—especially among young people. Passionate about justice, identity, and democratic change, he believes lasting peace comes not from suppressing differences, but from learning to respect and understand them.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Shelley Cowan is a disability advocate, speaker, and founder of Justus, a community organization creating inclusive social spaces and opportunities for adults with disabilities across Northern Ireland. After becoming severely ill at age fifteen, Shelley spent more than a decade confined to bed, unable to walk, eat independently, or continue her education. Through years of determination, family support, and rehabilitation, she gradually regained mobility, returned to school as a mature student, and earned a master’s degree focused on accessibility and inclusion.

Today, Shelley is known for transforming personal hardship into community impact. Alongside her close friend and caregiver Tracey Farry, she advocates for accessibility, disability awareness, and connection across social and cultural divides. Together, the pair have become known for their humor, honesty, and deep friendship—building spaces where people of all abilities feel seen, welcomed, and celebrated.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Martina Byrne is a community builder and quiet changemaker rooted in Hilltown, County Down. Originally trained in marine biology and business development, Martina’s path shifted after becoming a mother, when she experienced firsthand the isolation that can exist in rural life. Rather than wait for connection, she created it.

As a co-founder of a local women’s group that has now thrived for more than a decade, Martina has helped cultivate a space where women gather, learn, and grow—often in unexpected ways, from coffee mornings to creative workshops. What began as a simple effort to bring people together has evolved into a powerful platform for community development, cross-border collaboration, and grassroots peacebuilding.

Guided by the belief that real change happens in small, consistent steps, Martina works to bridge divides—social, political, and personal—by building trust one relationship at a time. She is especially passionate about elevating the role of women in peacebuilding and creating opportunities for voices that have too often gone unheard.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Vincenta Leyden lives in Hilltown, County Down, Northern Ireland, near the Mourne Mountains. Born in Northern Ireland and raised partly in the Republic of Ireland, her life has unfolded along the border between two places and identities. Growing up during the Troubles, she experienced the conflict not through dramatic moments but through the everyday realities of living in a divided society. Those experiences shaped her curiosity about history, identity, and the ways communities understand the past.

A creative thinker and lifelong learner, Vincenta is drawn to poetry, music, and art as ways to explore emotions and open conversations across differences. Inspired by poets like Seamus Heaney, she writes and reads poetry as a way to reflect on personal and collective stories.

As a mother, she encourages her children to engage with a wider world through music and cross-border cultural experiences. Vincenta believes creativity and curiosity can help people challenge assumptions, connect across communities, and imagine a more hopeful future.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Nula McNulty is a lifelong resident of North Leitrim, Ireland, who returned home in 2003 after years working on Ireland’s east coast and two years in China as a food technologist. Raised on a mixed farm near the Northern Ireland border, she grew up during the Troubles with a father from the North and a mother from the South. Her upbringing instilled in her a strong sense of inclusivity, social conscience, and respect for others regardless of religion, politics, or background.

Living near the border deeply shaped her understanding of conflict. As a child, crossing into Northern Ireland meant passing through multiple military and police checkpoints—an experience she accepted at the time but later recognized as extraordinary. She recalls both the deep divisions and the gradual healing that followed, particularly through integrated schools, cross-border initiatives, and community-based projects.

Nula believes peace requires communication, acknowledgment of harm, and sustained relationship-building. She has seen healing happen when people work side by side—through women’s groups, cross-border arts projects, and community campaigns. For her, the process of collaboration matters more than the finished product; shared work creates understanding and dissolves “othering.”

Nula sees prejudice as an ongoing challenge but insists the work of peace is never finished. True progress, she says, comes from listening, acknowledging pain on all sides, apologizing where necessary, and respecting both people and the natural world. Ultimately, she believes respect—for oneself, for neighbors, and for the environment—is the foundation of peace. Love, she says, is easier and more sustaining than hate.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Two stories again in this episode:

Carmel Loughlin grew up in the Republic of Ireland but spent time crossing the border frequently to visit family in the North, until the Troubles broke out when she was about 12 years old. She has spent much of her career in mental health, helping people navigate the ongoing challenges and lingering effects of the violence.

Lauri McCusker works in community development in an effort to make life better in County Fermanaugh. And while he becomes frustrated by “watching people find reasons and excuses for not creating positive change in our society,” he is driven forward, looking for the next — sometimes small — win for his community.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

In this episode we share two conversations with people we met in Manorhamilton in the Republic of Ireland, just across the border from Northern Ireland. Like so many things, conflict and tensions are not confined within a political line that is drawn on the map.

Gerry Creamer is the youngest of five children. He grew up in a traditional and devoutly Catholic family in the Republic of Ireland, close to the border with the North. Although he has several family members who have been active in politics, Gerry is more interested in community work and spends his time trying to find funding for programs that can make his community a better place to live.

Elaine O’Hara has spent most of her life in Manorhamilton with short stays in Cork and Belfast, just after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. She is active with a women’s group in Manorhamilton. Although life has taken some unexpected turns, she says she knows who she is, she holds her head up high, and she is immensely proud of the three sons she has raised.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Israel Eguaogie was 17 when he left Nigeria and relocated to Germany as an asylum seeker. A decade later he moved to Dublin and soon after that, shifted north to Belfast. It was a decision that horrified his mother back in Nigeria, who had heard news reports of the sectarian violence in the country. But Israel said that he experienced the calm and the peace of Northern Ireland and recalled it was the first place since living in Germany, where someone said hello to him first.

Israel has also experienced racism in Northern Ireland, and in recent public protests and violence directed at immigrants, Israel says he is concerned that previous rivals in the Protestant and Catholic communities will find unifying common ground in their backlash against newcomers, and that the rocks they once threw at each other will now land on the immigrants instead.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.

Lewis Lyttle is an ex-Loyalist prisoner. He was sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder during The Troubles and was released early, with the signing of The Good Friday Agreement.

Now Lewis works to facilitate cross-community groups with Black Mountain Shared Space, a community center built on the site of a former peace wall and designed to bring people from both Protestant and Catholic communities together to get to know one another and build relationships and trust.

Stay tuned toward the end of the recording for some generational insights from Lewis’ daughter Roxy, a high school student, who is engaged with programs at Black Mountain Shared Space as well.

Credits:

• Photos and text, John Noltner
• Field production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
• Audio Engineering, Razik Saifullah

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our websiteand follow us on Instagram.