[6]: 50  She did a three-month training, which led her to be aware of her own abuse at the hands of the father of her two young children, son Joshua "Nuku" and daughter Amber.

[6]: 81 Gbowee studied and worked her way toward her associate of art degree, conferred in 2001,[6]: 111  while applying her training in trauma healing and reconciliation to try to rehabilitate some of the ex-child soldiers of Charles Taylor's army.

[8] Gbowee gave birth to a second daughter Nicole "Pudu", making her the mother of four, as she engaged in the next chapter of her life's journey – rallying the women of Liberia to stop the violence that was destroying their children.

[10] She also received a certificate in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Training from the United Nations Institute for Training, the Healing Victims of War Trauma Center in Cameroon, and Non-Violent Peace Education in Liberia[11] Gbowee is the founder and president of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, founded in 2012[12] and based in Monrovia, which provides educational and leadership opportunities to girls, women and the youth in Liberia.

[6]: 101  At a follow-up WANEP conference in October 2000, Gbowee met Thelma Ekiyor of Nigeria, who was "well educated, a lawyer who specialized in alternative dispute resolution.

[6]: 112 In the sympathetic setting of other women hungry for peace, Gbowee told the painful parts of her life story for the first time, including sleeping on the floor of a hospital corridor with her newborn baby for a week because she had no money to pay the bill and nobody to help her.

[6]: 122 [30] Following a WIPNET training session in Liberia,[6]: 124  Gbowee and her allies, including a Mandingo-Muslim woman named Asatu, began by "going to the mosques on Friday at noon after prayers, to the markets on Saturday morning, to two churches every Sunday.

They prayed for peace, using Muslim and Christian prayers, and eventually held daily nonviolent demonstrations and sit-ins in defiance of orders from the tyrannical president at that time, Charles Taylor.

"[6]: 147  In a highly risky move, the women finally occupied a field that had been used for soccer; it was beside Tubman Boulevard, the route Charles Taylor traveled twice a day, to and from Capitol Hill.

[6]: 140  Gbowee positioned her face to be seen by Taylor but directed her words to Grace Minor, the president of the senate and the only female government official present: We are tired of war.

"[6]: 141 In her book, Gbowee reveals that Grace Minor quietly "gave a great deal of her own money... at enormous personal risk" to the women's protest movement.

[6]: 154–156  When the talks dragged from early June through late July, with no progress made and violence continuing in Liberia, Gbowee led dozens of women, eventually swelling to a couple hundred, inside the hotel, where they simply "dropped down, in front of the glass door that was the main entrance to the meeting room.

"[6]: 161  Gbowee passed a message to the lead mediator, General Abubakar (a former president of Nigeria), that the women would interlock their arms and remain seated in the hallway, holding the delegates "hostage" until a peace agreement was reached.

When the men tried to leave the hall, Leymah and her allies threatened to rip their clothes off: "In Africa, it's a terrible curse to see a married or elderly woman deliberately bare herself.

"[6]: 173 By the late fall and winter of 2003-04, "the world of conflict resolution, peace-building and the global women's movement" was calling Gbowee to write papers, come to conferences and otherwise explain the experience and views of WIPNET.

Thelma Ekiyor encouraged Gbowee to overcome her lack of self-esteem among "highly intelligent people who held master's degrees and represented powerful institutions" by reading and studying further to understand the theories circulating in the world of peacebuilding.

[6]: 174–176 In the late spring of 2004, about eight months after the Ghana-Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, Gbowee made a decision to take college-level courses in the field in which she had been working: "I'd heard about Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), an American college with a well-known program in peace-building and conflict resolution.

[6]: 179 In September 2006, just as Gbowee was embarking on her first full semester of graduate school, she went to New York City to address the UN on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the passage of Resolution 1325, which dealt with protecting women from gender-based violence and involving them in UN-linked peace efforts.

Disney and a collaborator, Gini Reticker, wanted to talk with Gbowee about their desire to make a documentary about how the women of Liberia rallied themselves to force the men to stop battling.

In her memoir, Gbowee explains that she had turned to alcohol for about a decade to cope with the loneliness of constant separations from her family, the strain of poverty and war-engendered trauma she suffered from, and the stress of never-ending demands on her time.

On October 6, 2016, Gbowee did an interview with Harvard Divinity Schools, speaking on her topic "Women as Catalysts for Local and Global Spiritually-Engaged Movements for Sustainable Peace."

After the second civil war broke out in 1999, increasing the already existing problem of rape and systematic brutality in Liberia, Gbowee felt the need for an inter-religious call for action.

Although her memoir depicts instances of loss, pain, grief, and disappointment that made her question her faith, she indicates that prayer has been an intrinsic part of her journey in  peace building.

An important role that she and other powerful women such as Ekiyor, used religion as a support tool to mother those who have been traumatized, searching for peace within their communities, their homes, and their country.

In order to build stronger communities for peace-building and promoting activism included the containment of other religious groups, which is a big part of the Women’s movement’s success.

However, for Gbowee, building a stronger community amongst women that will put them at the forefront of such a major movement for the end of wars and not limiting her beliefs to just Christianity, is a tactic she encouraged.

People whom she had helped in both Liberia and Ghana referred to her as being “Big Mama” or “Mother of Peace.”[6] Religion and spirituality for Gbowee are considered essential in the peace coalition and the healing of everyone and everywhere.

She recounts reading the bible and searching for different accounts that encourage peace and not an “eye for an eye.”[44] For Gbowee, religion and its relevance helps to teach compassion and practice forgiveness which had also contributed to the success of her activism work.

It has been broadcast across the United States as part of the "Women, War & Peace" series, which aired over five successive Tuesdays in October and early November 2011 on public television stations.

[48] Pray has been used as an advocacy tool in conflict and post-conflict zones, such as Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Africa, Rwanda, Mexico, Kenya, Cambodia, Russia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the West Bank: "The reaction was remarkably similar: no matter how different the country and the society, women recognized themselves and started talking about how they could unite to solve their own problems.