The Green String Network is a regional organization based in Kenya supporting healing-centered peacebuilding local organizations to develop and design trauma-informed programing across the region, including in Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya. We use storytelling, watercolor illustrations, and embodied practices to help people articulate the traumas they have been through, and recognize how these experiences shape their behavior. GSN fills the gap between peacebuilding, mental health, and development, drawing on evidence of what works in each of these fields to deliver an approach that is unique. All of this adds up to the process of collective social healing. It is the missing piece that allows us to build the foundations for well-functioning and cohesive institutions, communities, countries. This is what makes peace work.