A Peace of My Mind

**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 landsc...

**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...

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&apo...

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...

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 No...

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 politic...

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 memb...

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...

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 sup...

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 th...

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...

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 con...

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 devel...

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, clo...

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...

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 communi...

Bronagh McAtasney is the daughter of John Bosco McAtasney , a master weaver and the last hand loom weaver in Ireland. She recalls his curiosity, his desire to learn, and his passion to instill the same in his children. When he passed away in 2018, Bronagh used her small inheritance to leave her job in administration, go back to school for a master’s degree in public history and now, in her own wor...

Aoife Moore is an independent investigative journalist from Derry, Northern Ireland and formerly worked as a political correspondent for the BBC. She calls herself a victim of England’s legacy in Ireland and says that every facet of her life has been marred by British colonialism, including the death of her uncle in the violence of Bloody Sunday. Aoife chose her path to become a journalist because...

Jonny Clark is the program manager for Public Theology at Corrymeela , often called Ireland’s oldest peace center. Born in New Zealand and married to an American, Jonny has lived in Northern Ireland for 40 years. When he was growing up, his family moved to Belfast at the heights of The Troubles. As he says, “During a time when most people were not moving to Northern Ireland.” He has spent time in...

Lisa Retezan works as a substance use disorder navigator at a day shelter for youth who are unhoused. She openly shares her story with them about her own struggles with addiction. Lisa took her first sip of alcohol at age 15 and struggled for much of her life with addiction. Her husband at the time knew, and as Lisa says, "He cleaned up my messes." Her mother knew and begged her to get h...

Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a bandleader who plays accordion and harmonica for Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots. The band travels around the world playing what he calls Afro-Louisiana music: a fusion of zydeco, blues, Creole funk, gospel and tunes from Africa and the Caribbean. But Sunpie also has a parallel career as a naturalist. He spent 32 years working for the National Park Service, much of it in...

Caitlin Carney is co-owner of Porgy’s Seafood Market in New Orleans. Caitlin calls herself the “Lady Monger.” Her business, Porgy’s Seafood Market, is a purple storefront on a busy corner in Mid-City New Orleans. It feels like a cross between a fish shop, a lunch joint, and a neighborhood bar. It’s a market with a mission: to reconnect New Orleanians with Gulf seafood. A lot of the fish sold in th...

Another bonus this week to share a behind the scenes conversation with journalist Barry Yeoman and A Peace of My Mind's John Noltner, who collaborated to produce this multimedia series of interviews and portraits for Still Here: Stories from a fragile coastline. Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow...

Darrah Fox Bach is the restoration programs senior manager at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana . Darrah cultivated her love for the outdoors in her native San Francisco, where environmentalism flourishes and Saturdays were devoted to hiking. She moved to Louisiana to study at Tulane University, and stayed for an AmeriCorps position with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL)....

Rosina Philippe lives in Grand Bayou Indian Village, a community that is entirely based in water. The homes, along with the church, can only be reached by boat. This was not always the case. “We had solid ground beneath our feet,” she recalls. “We had garden spaces. We had fruit trees. We had lots of land where you can walk for miles.” The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha are a subsistence tribe, and have l...