Women's Narratives of Healing from the Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

Voice is linked to intellectual and ethical development. Voice is also linked to silence.
When a child is sexually abused, the child’s physical, mental, social, and spiritual self is
silenced. If a woman is to heal, the silence will inherently be broken, because healing
requires making the abuse public. If the silencing is of the physical, mental, social, and
spiritual self, then healing involves breaking the silence, or developing voice for, or in, that
self.
2.3 Narrative Research on Healing from Child Sexual Abuse
Therapy is about change at the personal level. To heal from sexual abuse is to heal
from something the body experienced sometimes decades earlier, something that is not
just physically and personally violent, but also socially and politically violent. Herman
contends that “the study of trauma in sexual and domestic life becomes legitimate only
in a context that challenges the subordination of women and children.” 15 I suggest that
similarly, the study of healing from abuse in sexual life can only be done in a context
that challenges the subordination of women and children. Without consideration of the
relationship of abuse to the broader structural relationships of power, there is the danger of
perpetrating structural violence by uncritically replicating power inequalities and practices
in the research process.
There is research in the medical, nursing, social work, psychology, sociology, anthropology,
women studies, feminist, and massage therapy literature on therapy, recovery and
healing, and on the health impacts of child sexual abuse. Little research explores the
experience or meaning of healing from child sexual abuse, particularly with the use of
narratives, as the women tell it. Two recent qualitative studies on healing from sexual
abuse and maltreatment that use a narrative approach have been published. 54,55 Although
both studies assume a trauma discourse, and neither takes the body into consideration,
the findings are interesting. The first study, written by Thomas and Hall, was written
from a nursing perspective, and focused on healing in adulthood from maltreatment in
childhood. 54 The second, written by Anderson and Hiersteiner, was written from a family
therapy perspective, and focused on recovery from child sexual abuse. 55
The first study is a narrative study on how thriving adult female survivors of childhood
maltreatment achieved success. The authors approached the narratives from a life
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