Listening is one of the most powerful tools we have for restoring peace. I first learned about its power in my childhood. Growing up in post-war Germany in the 1950s, I felt the heaviness of many unspoken words and the hidden emotions locked away. It was a society still carrying the invisible weight of World War II. Adults spoke in fragments about the past, but more often, they said nothing at all.
I didn’t yet know the term “trauma,” but I could sense it – like frozen energy lingering in the air, disconnecting people from themselves and from one another.
Maybe you have experienced yourself a trauma: a loss, violence, abuse, a natural catastrophe or something else. Maybe you still experience related emotions to it?
Years later, as a Naturopath and Counselor in Berlin, I found myself listening to countless personal stories that circled back, in one way or another, to the war. Sitting with people in their pain, I came to see that unhealed wounds ripple forward in time. They don’t end with one generation; they find ways of being carried.
In 2002, my understanding deepened profoundly. I was invited to join a Jewish-German Reconciliation Project. Thirty-six of us gathered for ten days: Holocaust survivors and their descendants, alongside descendants of Nazis Germany. The air was thick with grief, courage, and raw truth. Stories that had been hidden for decades were shared alongside with lots of tears. And so did healing. What unfolded was not through arguments or solutions, but through the simple, courageous act of compassionate listening.
That experience changed me. Since then, I’ve been part of many programs where compassionate listening was at the heart of peacebuilding. In Poland, my husband Brian and I spent over a year supporting Ukrainian mothers and children and joined international programs at Auschwitz, a place where listening became an act of collective healing. In Japan, we met Toshiko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing who had remained silent about her story for most of her life. In her seventies, she found the strength to speak. Her words needed to be heard as they carried decades of silence.
Compassionate listening is more than a technique—it is a way of Being. Gene Knudsen Hoffman, the Quaker peace activist who pioneered this practice, put it beautifully:
“An enemy is one whose story we haven’t heard.”
Her turning point came when she walked past a London church and saw a sign: “Listening to Perpetrators.” Until then, she had worked mostly with victims. That simple phrase changed the course of her life’s work—and inspired a movement of compassionate listening that included all sides of conflict, even those most difficult to face.
This approach has become central not only in my professional practice, but also in the Comm-Unity Listening Circles that Brian and I facilitate. After the Thomas Fire in California, during the isolation of COVID, and in many international online gatherings, we have seen how powerful it is when people come together simply to listen and be heard. Participants join from around the world: New Zealand, South Africa, Afghanistan, Europe, North America, and though our circumstances differ, our hearts meet in the same human longings: to be heard and understood, to be seen, and to belong.
In those comm-unity listening circles, there is no debate, no fixing, no advice-giving. Instead, there is presence, respect, and silence wide enough to hold whatever is spoken. People leave lighter, more connected to themselves and to one another. What was once heavy begins to release. Compassion grows. Peace takes root.
The guidelines are simple:
- Speaking from your own experience.
- Listening without interrupting or judging.
- Honoring confidentiality.
- Welcoming silence as a form of sharing.
- Co-creating safety together.
The effect is profound, and I’ve seen how this practice transforms lives, including my own.
Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote:
Deep listening is not just hearing someone’s words
but being present to their suffering, joy, and humanity.
This is where transformation happens.
Compassionate Listening is exactly that: a path to transformation, peace, and healing – one story, one circle, one heart at a time.
