My memoir's subtitle is A Woman's Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother and Her Polish Heritage. Inner peace is my personal daily practice.  Peace is that hummingly alive place where I don't fight. I don't do mental violence to myself for looking crooked in my clothes, I don't do emotional violence to my mother for not being a feminist like me, and I don't do verbal violence to myself and my people by telling ethnic jokes.

Peace is the still center within, the place I go to in yoga class, in meditation, and this afternoon with a cup of tea, looking out my window at the slant of sun in the woods. From this place, I can go out into the world again, renewed, and speak up against physical violence everywhere. I can refuse to participate in verbal attacks. I firmly believe that peace will reign on our planet when most of its people are at peace with themselves.