Survive to Thrive
By Leigh Powell
When she began pioneering research on lesbian health issues in the early 1990s, Joanne Hall discovered a common thread. Many women, in discussing their use and abuse of alcohol, would stray from the topic at hand; they would begin to share stories of other abuse, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse from their childhoods.
“People emphasized that the childhood abuse was the most problematic, the hardest to get over,” explains Hall, a professor in the College of Nursing. As she began to delve into the existing research on child abuse, however, Hall discovered that as many as a third of women who were abused as children do not display psychological aftereffects of that abuse. Hall says it made sense to her to talk to these women—to focus on the successes rather than the well-known challenges.
With more than $900,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health, between 2002 and 2007 Hall gathered and analyzed in-depth narratives from a diverse group of more than 40 female survivors of abuse. Over the course of multiple interviews with each woman, Hall and her research team did a qualitative narrative analysis to determine what had worked for the women in their quest to survive and thrive, and what had not.
Joanne Hall
Traditionally, Hall says, successful recovery from abuse has been viewed in terms of “resilience,” of somehow being flexible and adapting to the circumstances. But her study revealed that these women’s success came instead from “becoming resolute,” being willful and standing firm.
Many women also revealed that a particular relationship had affected their ability to survive and thrive. Hall says a lot of these relationships could be classified in one of two categories: “saw something in me” relationships and “no matter what” relationships.
“Saw something in me” relationships often involved teachers, Hall explains, or other adults outside the family. These relationships were most valuable when the adult pinpointed a specific quality that made the women feel special and valued. These comments made in childhood had stayed with the women and marked pivotal moments that they remembered and cited. “We might suggest a sort of ‘universal precaution,’” Hall says, “and assume that all children are being abused. If teachers could be trained to ‘see something’ and give all children that praise in a systematic way, it might have lasting positive effects.”
The “no matter what” relationships, on the other hand, usually were formed in adulthood, and often were partner relationships. Hall explains that “no matter what” did not necessarily equate with “unconditional love,” but rather an acceptance of the women’s responses and actions: “No matter what, he lets me talk about what I’m feeling” or “No matter what, she listens to me vent.” “Often these were second marriages,” Hall says, “and they were egalitarian relationships where the women felt they had an equal amount of power.”
Loading ...Other commonalities among the thriving women survivors included a reliance on books and reading as an outlet. “Particularly reading that dealt with themes of justice,” Hall says, “books like The Count of Monte Cristo, where an innocent person is wronged but survives. The women drew strength from these stories. The book most often mentioned was To Kill a Mockingbird.” Hall offers another “universal precaution”: “Encourage reading, especially among girls, and give them access to books that have these reinforcing themes.”
Hall’s research has focused on what she calls “mythbusting,” particularly in the arena of women’s health, and she has completed seven studies on women survivors of abuse. Focusing on the success of women who have thrived despite their abuse proves that people can recover: “Abuse and trauma are injuries, but they can heal,” she says. “The effects can be chronic, but they don’t have to be.”
Through the combination of her training as a psychiatric nurse with her advanced degrees and subsequent research, Hall says she has come to realize that “people really are their stories, and they don’t have just one story. There are different strands to people’s lives—work stories, family stories, relationship stories.”
Continuing to research women’s health through narrative analysis is, therefore, Hall’s plan. “Stories nest within each other,” she says. “Illness is a story, and healing is a story. You can decide how your story is going to end.”
Tags: Abuse • Joanne Hall • Nursing
