I wasn't planning to launch this book today.

In fact, The Weight of Peace was scheduled for January. I had other projects to finish, other lists, other promises. And yet, this morning I woke up with a strange, calm, strong desire: to finish the final edit. As if the novel was calling out to me.

And we worked. Hours. Non-stop. Without realizing it.

When I made the final changes and pressed Publish, It was almost midnight. And then I saw the date. November 30. St. Andrew.

I don't think it's a coincidence. St. Andrew is the one who brought the first steps of Christianity on our earth. And there is something deeply symbolic in the fact that this novel, a story about faith, identity, wounds borne in silence and meeting the true God, is born on his very birthday.

This novel is, in a way, an homage. And to my name, and to my roots, and to the way faith changes as we pass through the world with our eyes open.

How the story of this book actually begins

I probably started writing The Weight of Peace long before I knew I was writing it.

But the moment it really opened up - the moment something cracked for me - was eight years ago, when I read Adults in the Room, the book by Yanis Varoufakis.

For those who don't know him: Varoufakis is an economist, author and, briefly in 2015, was Greek Finance Minister, during the most tense phase of the European economic crisis. A man who went down in history not just for his position, but for saying publicly what very few politicians have the courage to admit: what is really going on in the negotiating rooms of the European Union.

His book is not just a political memoir, but a confession:

about cynicism, about fragility, about pressure, about the fear of telling the truth and the price of not telling it.

For someone who graduated Romanian Diplomatic Institute, accustomed to elegant texts, sterile treatises and the calm language of diplomacy, that reading was a blow hard to put into words.

I had never read anything like this, neither in school, nor in official cabinets, nor in reports:

• raw vulnerability
• rooms where people play out their future with impassive faces
• decisions affecting millions, taken between coffees
• silences worth more than any speech
• and especially: humanity lost behind the procedures

Adults in the Room it hurt. He made me nervous. It haunted me. Still does.
How can you live in peace in a world where so many do not?

That's been the question that's been nagging me for years.

How can you afford peace of mind when you read daily about shipwrecks, conflicts, injustices, violence disguised under diplomas and protocols?

How can you live in peace without feeling like you are betraying someone?

And perhaps more painful: How can you have peace in a world where we, the good children, the good children, have learned that we must not disturb anyone?

• Let's not raise our voices.
• Let's not be a problem.
• No offense.
• Let's not ask.
• Let's not disturb.
• Let's not be „too”.

We unwittingly confuse peace with the absence of conflict, tranquility with resignation, faith with obedience.

And that's where Stella comes in.

Stella is not just a character. She is the echo of thousands of women - and many men - who have worn peace on their shoulders like armor. She brings to the world the peace she was forced to keep as a child.

He becomes a diplomat - not by chance - because trauma has a very ironic way of turning survival into a vocation.

Behind the negotiations, behind the conferences, behind the calm tone, Stella carries the same question:

When does peace stop being a virtue and start being self-abandonment?

The Weight of Peace is a story about:

• diplomacy and faith,
• trauma masquerading as performance,
• love of people,
• and that silent moment when a woman realizes that she can no longer live just so as not to disturb the world.

Why I wrote it

Because in writing it, I realized that I, too, carried the same weight for years. And I still bear its traces, in gentle and stubborn ways. Writing this novel was, without exaggeration, a spiritual moment for me.

If it will move you, it will be because there is an unspoken truth inside you that demands its space. A part of you that wants to be seen, validated, released.

It is your own weight of peace.

Where to find it

The Weight of Peace is now available on Amazon and on meleti.ro, in English.

If you read it and it strikes a chord, even a single sentence left in the review section means more than you can imagine.