Patricia Smith Melton is the founder, first executive director, and board chair of Peace X Peace, the international nonprofit organization that multiplies the power of women by the power of the internet, connecting women across all cultures for mutual support and concerted action. The heart of Peace X Peace, the Global Network, includes women’s Circles in more than 100 nations.

Smith Melton is the editor and photographer of Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women, a book (and interactive website, www.60voices.org) of interviews and photographs highlighting the experience and wisdom of 30 Palestinian and 30 Israeli women. Released in fall 2008, this is the first book that includes Palestinian and Israeli women equally. It is published in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, and was featured on NPR's "Tell Me More" in November 2008.

Mariane Pearl, documentary filmmaker, journalist and author of the memoir A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl, has this to say about the 60 women: "In a torn land they find a common ground ... because they have walked the walk. Here they stand and speak out. If we listen there is hope.”

Ms. Smith Melton was executive producer of the award-winning 2003 documentary PEACE BY PEACE, Women on the Frontlines, which highlights the often invisible work of women around the world in building the components of sustainable peace.

In 1990, Smith Melton co-founded the Melton International Education Foundation, which brings together university students in India, China, Chile, Germany, and the United States to participate in the earliest large-scale international effort using the internet to establish cross-cultural understanding and personal and professional connections.

Ms. Smith Melton is a poet, playwright, and photographer with more than 30 years of experience in the arts. In 2008 she received the Rumi Forum's Peace and Dialogue Award, was selected as one of OneWorld's People of the Year, and was featured in Volume II of Dan Buttry's Interfaith Heroes. In 2009, she was named by Civic Ventures as a Purpose Prize Fellow.

Our Conversation:

AR: You have so much wisdom to offer young women. What are some truths that you would like to pass on?

PSM: I think that it is a mistake for young women to think that they can’t know what the primary work is going to be in their life. What is most important during this time is to become in touch with, aware of, your passions and the details of your passions. Go in there and explore them. Feel them. What concepts do you have that get you excited? What concepts do you have that leave you flat? Come to know your passion more deeply, and then bring into it your own creativity. You don’t have to follow the given path at all. Get your general direction and then start building the specifics around it. And remember, those specifics don’t have to be final. Nothing ever has to be final.

Personally, I’ve had eight different careers. My life is divided into five-year slots, including marriages and jobs and everything else. Realize deeply—and this can make people uncomfortable—that you’re still in an early stage. Nothing is really rooted, yet. For me, the rooting didn’t really appear until I was in my mid-fifties. It appeared with Peace X Peace. That’s the place where I really put roots down and said, “This is who I am when I am at my fullest.” I had anticipated that at this age I would basically be retired. For me, everything changed on September 11, 2001. I realized that everything up until that moment had been prep work.

As you’re doing your work know that it is both an end in and of itself and it is prep work for your next step. Welcome, welcome, welcome those steps.

I would like to talk a little bit about self-confidence, if I may?

AR: Yes, please do.

PSM: I think there are ways in which this generation is much more confident then I was at your age. You have the connections. You have the expansive resources. You have a place within you that that you know is yours.

On the other hand, I think it is still an issue for women to realize just how powerful they are. For most women, there remains an internal conflict that can go on for decades. The thing is to get through those decades earlier; go through that metamorphosis earlier.

I want to speak to those young women who are still questioning: Who am I? What am I? What am I going to do? Am I an extrovert or an introvert? Am I a poet or a pragmatist?

You’re all of it. Get comfortable with it. Just, get comfortable with the immense diversity of who you are. Think of those questions as resources and gifts.

I was recently talking with a friend. She was a part of the original circle of women that I called to my house when I made the transition from a writer and photographer to being an activist. We talked about how women of all ages still don’t realize the bounty that is inside of them. Women don’t realize their own capabilities. We ask: What is our degree in? What is the extra-special knowledge that we have, that other people don’t have?

When, really, the questions are: Am I a good neighbor? Do I know how to be a friend? Am I working continually with love in my heart and generosity in my being and skills of forgiveness? When I meet a crisis, do I go forward? Or, do I try to retain what I had before? Do I want to go back to the comfort of what I had—whether that was a relationship, or job, or physical location—or do I accept that I have arrived in a new place?

AR: What is this biggest lesson you’ve learned from this?

PSM: Well, let’s get real—life is the biggest gift! Being here is the miracle, but within in that there is a huge gift. For me, it came through Peace X Peace. It is the gift of being in the company of, conversing with, and becoming beloved sisters to an international peer group.

You may be sitting there and thinking, “Whoa, this woman is so much more amazing than I am,” but you’re still absorbing the amazing. And then, through absorbing, it becomes a part of you.

I would advise all young women to really look for a mentor. Study some of the women who inspire you. What do they say? What is their wisdom? What have they done?

Women are accessible. If they are not accessible, you shouldn’t bother with them. If they’re not accessible, then they are not someone you want to emulate. It’s really that simple.

The trick is for you to realize that what you are giving is also a gift. Like right now, as you sit here with me, I am receiving a gift. I am seeing your youth, your beauty, your passion. I am hearing your goals. And I am thinking to myself, “The world is going to be safe. Look at this young woman. Look at what she is doing. Look at the women rising, at how they are taking responsibility.”

I can know that there is not just a hand-off to be done—it is already well, well, well underway. That, to me, is such an immense gift. Because this work can be difficult, and so the more connection that you have, the more you realize the power of women rising.

AR: As a woman, when you feel like you’ve found a work that sustains you, what do you do when those moments of insecurity creep up? When the work can be frustrating, or you feel isolated, or you feel unsure—what do you do to move yourself to a new moment?

PSM: There are big things and there are little things; you learn all kinds of tricks. The little things might be to buy yourself flowers or soak in the bathtub. You know, take a walk and get your exercise. Make sure you get to your yoga class.

But there are bigger ones too, and I want to discuss two of them. One of the things about the women who do incredible things is that they’ve had real breakage in their lives—and I have had real breakage in my life. Colossal. This is why it is so important to establish friends, and vet them well. Vet them very well. You can have friends that take more energy then they give, but know what you are doing. Understand what you are doing and why you are doing it because, ultimately, until you are very, very strong, you need to be receiving in as much as you are giving out.

I woke up just this morning thinking about how blessed I am because of the women in my life. We may be scattered, but we are here for one another.

Another big thing that I have learned—and I really learned it through Peace X Peace—is to know what my limits are. I know how far I can stretch and how big I can make my circle before it is going to hit something. This is when I start to get really uncomfortable…feeling tired, or pressured, or depressed.

That’s when I learned this trick: It is not that you can’t do it, it is that you think you can’t do it. Your self-definition is as someone who doesn’t know how to do those things. You change your self-definition and it is like shedding an old skin. You expand, there is a slightly precarious stage, and then you grow a larger skin. That happens again. And it happens again. And it happens again. It is your perception of what you can do, not the reality of what you can do that holds you in.

AR: You have a community of female friends and a lot of those friendships span across the globe. How did you accomplish this? And what does it mean to you to have that female connection, that thread of familiarity, with other women?

PSM: For me, it all came through Peace X Peace. As the Executive Director I get a mega-dose of what Peace X Peace does, which is connecting women across cultures. These women talk to me—and we all connect—I just happen to have it on a larger scale. So my friends are not just Westerners. Rather, they are from Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank, and different nations in Africa.

However, underneath it all we are all exactly the same. The personality may be different, the look may be different, and the style may certainly be different. But it’s all the same. The power of communication to just be able to listen to the women is so valuable.

AR: What has it meant to you, and how has it changed you, to be able to know so many women so well?

PSM: I wouldn’t be who I am without those connections. It has given me a sense of being a woman beyond borders. There is no place that I can’t go. My whole sense of self, who I am, is gigantically larger then it was—and I was never an incapable woman. It’s all about the connections.

AR: Why and how would you encourage women to seriously band with the Global Sisterhood?

PSM: You need it. It gives you energy and passion. It changes your concept of the world and of who you are. It gives you tools. It gives you power. It gives you connection. It informs you so that you can influence. It gives you a lever for changing the world—and that feels good.

Do not be afraid of power. Not ever, not ever. This is the time of women taking over the power and it is a time for women to do this together. That tipping point has already happened. Now it is just about scaling it up.

AR: What do you think it means to be woman?

PSM: It means to be wise. It means to be identified with all of the parts of being; with your feet on the ground and your hands tending the children. It is your sexuality. It means to live with your heart at its fullest—at its most passionate and most forgiving. It means being whole and having all of the skills of life integrated, which is a process that goes on forever.

AR: We’re coming to the end of a year. So, in closing, is there any inspirational advice that you would love to see young women take into the New Year?

PSM: Clean out your physical, emotional and psychological closets. Ask yourself, “What is it that I want to have accomplished by my mid-thirties to make a change in the world?” Then do it.

And, we can’t forget that we always have to be a little bit wild. Everything is possible. We can’t forget that, because that is about the play. That’s the joy of it. Bring in the creativity; bring in the wildness.

We have a right to happiness. We have a right to joy. Learn this, and quickly.

Women, I urge you to log onto Peace X Peace. Patricia has been an invaluable mentor to me and her work is worth your attention.

For more inspiring conversations, like the one you've just read, check out my blog Women Rising. Look for fresh, invigorating content in the New Year.