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

of the other research participant’s stories, there is inherently a distancing on the part
of the researcher from the storyteller, the research participant. As much as possible,
this was mitigated by particular methods, such as including my body in the text, and
using longer quotes that ensure authenticity and immediacy, rather than distancing, of the
research participant’s voice and meaning. By locating myself and my position as researcher,
student, and professional in the field, I entered into the discourse as a participant, not as
a disembodied other. I narrated the stories as heard by me, the narrator. My story enters
as a presence, a filter and as a context provider. The story is re- and co-created within
the relationship among the teller, the research participant, and the listener, the research
investigator. I have, in this dissertation, created my own story, and it is my own story that
contextualizes their stories.
A concern with a narrative approach is that while story and story telling, grounded in
narratives, is a powerful method because it can respond to complex issues, the complexity
of our structure of patriarchy is embodied in the story. Bloom suggests that by telling her
story, she may replicate the structure she is immersed in, possibly re-creating the underlying
cultural practice of patriarchy, hegemonically reproducing “structures of domination rather
than liberate women from cultural silence.” 64 I addressed this concern as much as I could as
one who lives in the same structure of patriarchy, by being mindful of the risk throughout
the research process and by considering the stories, and my analysis of the stories, in light
of a feminist framework. It was this process that led me to consider Bloom’s discussion on
the endings of the women’s narratives from the perspective of the master narrative.
An example of the hegemonic reproduction of the structure of domination is reflected
in a challenge I experienced with the notion of ownership of the sexual abuse experience. In
my work, many of the women I worked with who were sexually abused, and the professionals
who supported the women who were sexually abused, referred to the experiences of sexual
abuse possessively, for example, “Her abuse is interfering,” or “I want to heal from my
abuse.” The question of who owns the acts of sexual abuse emerged as an important
consideration in the research. In the process of writing up the findings and in my discussion
about the findings from the research, I found myself having to watch what I wrote, in order
to ensure that I did not write statements like “because she wanted to heal from her abuse”
or “she felt her abuse in her body.” There were times when I felt, physically, the difficulty
of enunciating in written form, ownership of the abuse that occurred. It was as if, in the
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