A lesson from an ordinary Irish family feminist

Two years ago during a visit with Bill to Northern Ireland, I shared a pot of tea with Joyce McCartan. A Belfast mother who had lost her youngest son and more than a dozen relatives to sectarian fighting, Joyce was determined to bring Protestant and Catholic women together to work for peace and a better future for their children. At the end of our visit, Joyce gave me the teapot we used because I was impressed by how it had kept our tea so warm.

Not long after we met, Joyce passed away. Last week, I took that teapot, which I use every day in the private kitchen at the White House, back to Northern Ireland when I delivered the inaugural Joyce McCartan Memorial Lecture at the University of Ulster. I took it with me to remind the women of Northern Ireland that the issues all women discuss over a pot of tea and the issues that matter most to families -- how we care for and protect our children -- are the issues that unite us all. Joyce liked to call herself "a family feminist" because strengthening families was at the root of her efforts.

I have been privileged to travel widely on behalf of our nation. In these travels, I have had the opportunity to meet many of the world's leaders. Yet it's often in small groups -- sitting around a kitchen table, sipping tea with women like Joyce, sharing concerns and talking about our families -- that I've learned the most valuable lessons. And one of those lessons is that an extraordinary power is unleashed when ordinary women reach out to their neighbors and find common ground -- when they begin working together to lift up themselves, their families and their communities.

In Northern Ireland, countless women like Joyce McCartan have endured the loss of loved ones to the Troubles -- and then moved on, refusing to give in to bitterness or dwell in the past. Joyce started the Women's Information Drop-In Center, a safe place where women of all backgrounds and beliefs could come together. Other community organizations, like the National Women's Council of Ireland, are working toward the same end.

These straightforward efforts to share grief across sectarian lines have blossomed into dynamic alliances to end poverty and violence. When the women of Northern Ireland have come together, they have spoken out and demanded political action -- to advance not the interests of individual groups but the issues that affect all the people of Northern Ireland: health care, education, job training and peace. These women recognize that while the violence that plagues Northern Ireland has ancient roots, it is fueled, in large measure, by a lack of economic and educational opportunity.

On this visit, I saw how peace can and must be Northern Ireland's destiny I had the chance to see many of the same women I met two years ago. Though they may attend different churches on Sunday, they all say the same silent prayer for a child to return home safely from school or for a husband to make it back safely from work. Though they belong to different religions, seven days a week, their families struggle with the same deep-rooted causes of violence -- poverty, limited education, unemployment. For the women I met with, love of family and hope for the future run deeper than calls to hatred.

I felt this same commitment when I met with a group of young people. We gathered in Belfast's beautiful new Waterfront Hall, a state-of-the-art cultural center that had been built by Protestants and Catholics alike. They had come together for a province-wide forum to discuss ways to empower young people. For them, widening the circle of economic and educational opportunity was the key to peace and stability. As one young woman said, her generation was determined that their children would not have to "grow up in an environment where you were afraid to walk on the wrong side of the street."

Joyce McCartan, I imagine, would feel warmly about those words. After all, it was courageous souls like her who showed the young people in the audience the way toward better, more peaceful future. To be sure, no one should have any illusions about how hard the road to peace will be. But as I told people in Dublin, Belfast and London, my husband is committed to standing by those who take risks for peace. Joyce McCartan was a risk taker. So are the men and women gathered around the table at the peace talks today. I hope they are not only talking about serious political issues but also sharing quiet asides about their lives and relearning how much they have in common. And I hope they are doing so over a cup of tea.

-- Creators Syndicate