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

The participatory and group nature of the second study provided some interesting
findings, in particular the challenge by the group for the researchers to set aside their
“assumptions and metaphors about a healing trajectory spiraling forward into health.” 55
The researchers concluded that recovery is possible, but that healing is not; that disclosure
provided some of the pivotal moments for the research participants; and that the process of
making meaning was important, for example by “reading other people’s stories to figure out
who they were and how to position themselves in their life stories.” 55 Research participants
indicated that the realities of recovery were such that their lives did not have a storybook
ending. The core theme that emerged in this research was that recovery from childhood
sexual abuse is possible, but that healing is not possible. Recovery includes the achievement
of a life where sexual abuse remains a part of who the person is, but it no longer defines
them. 55
The discussion on recovery and healing is relevant to the focus on healing in my study.
Anderson and Hiersteiner found that recovery from sexual abuse was important for healing,
but that recovery did not necessarily include healing. 55 Recovery was described as the
integration of diverse self-concepts, such as victim/survivor, and traumatic events into a
unified whole. Healing was understood to be unachievable, because there was an association
with being cured and ‘whole’. By using the word ‘cured’ the authors meant that the effects
of the abuse no longer interfered in the participant’s lives, and the word ‘whole’ meant that
child sexual abuse was no longer a part of the person’s identity. 55 I agree with the authors’
definition of the word recovery as a term that refers to recovery from trauma. I do not agree
with the use of the word recovery when considering women’s narratives as they relate to
child sexual abuse, because the reference to trauma pathologizes the research participants.
2.4 Memory and Child Sexual Abuse
How a woman determines that she was sexually abused as a child is related to her memory
of sexual abuse. Without some memory of abuse, she would not consider herself someone
who was sexually abused as a child. Memory and remembering sexual abuse from childhood
is a broad topic that includes much discussion on how memory works. In their research on
the subjective experience of forgetting and remembering childhood sexual abuse, Fivush
and Edwards conclude that we “must move beyond dichotomizing women into those who
22