At the conflict's end, with the disbandment of the RUF imminent and with the guns gradually falling silent, returning to a civilian existence became an ever-increasing reality for the child soldiers in this study. However, given the profound meaning that holding a gun roused, disarmament and returning from the bush was an invariably complex and sometimes conflicting experience. As indicated by the participant in the above quotation, for some children, putting down the gun often meant relinquishing power and protection, renouncing a part of their identity and losing a sense of belonging. For others, it meant a newly found freedom and relief from a militarized world that they had longed to escape. For most children, it meant each of these realities (and others) simultaneously. As discussed in the book's introduction, there has been a tendency to assume that in the post-conflict period, former child soldiers are destined to a life of pathology, disorder and deviance. Although the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration may be highly challenging, for both the child soldiers themselves and the communities that are expected to reabsorb them, such assumptions are overstated and premature.