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 Noltner
Editing 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 website and 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 Noltner
Editing 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and 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 website and follow us on Instagram.