Diana Oestreich
Diana Oestreich is an author, activist and Soldier-turned- Peacemaker.
She’s a nationally recognized speaker at the intersection of peace, faith and justice. Showing up right where we live is how we disarm violence and fight for justice and joy.
She teaches how we can show up right where we live to wage peace across the lines that divide us and unmake violence. She’s a combat medic and Conscientious Objector. Faith fuels her anti-war activism. She served on the battlefield of the Iraq war and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal. She is an RN, formerly working with hospice and cancer patients before becoming a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner connecting healthcare to justice by advocating for victim survivors in the courtroom.
Her book Waging Peace: One Soldier’s Story of Putting Love First was Amazon’s #1 new release in war and peace.
Waging peace exposes the false divide between loving our country and living out our higher call to love our enemies–whether we perceive our enemy as the neighbor with an opposing political viewpoint, a religion that is different than ours, or the person born across our borders. By showing that us-versus-them is a false choice, this book will compel each of us to choose love over fear. Diana’s determination and courage to cross divides and wage peace is an inspiration to many and is on display through her work challenging our acceptance of violence and empowering us to find our own story to change the world through storytelling, justice and joy.
Diana is a trusted guide to help us understand the violence tearing apart our churches, communities and country. She empowers us to identify our own rural, urban, political or religious divides to cross our own “enemy lines” in order to remake the world and heal all that’s tearing us apart. Waging peace led her back to Iraq working to empower refugees to reclaim their lives from violence, to Syrian refugee camps and the shores of Palestine and Israel. From her son’s middle school to the middle east, to her local courthouse lawn for homeless rights or to Iran with a team trying to heal the divides between our countries by performing lifesaving heart surgeries for kids, peace means showing up.
Diana is the founder of Waging Peace Project, a movement activating everyday people to commit small acts of courage right where we live to wage peace because Justice and Joy cannot wait.
She has appeared on The King Center’s Beloved Community Global Symposium, news channels, and award-winning podcasts to challenge the narratives of our most divided issues: gun violence, racism, christian nationalism and injustice. Her work has appeared on the award-winning Sharon Says So podcast, the Webby winning For the Love podcast with Jen Hatmaker and conferences discussing Justice, faith, peacemaking, activism with kids and how her posture of love shapes how she parents and shows up for her neighbors.
Diana, her partner Jake and two sons live along the shores of Lake Superior on Ojibwe land. They are an Ethiopian-American family woven together through adoption and a shared love for bad jokes, Bocce ball and competitive card games.
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