The Secret Keepers

Book excerpt: Keeping the stories relating to childhood sexual abuse and violence secret within families seems core to the traumatic effect such abuse has on the lives of not just the person who has been abused, but also on their children and even their children’s children. This book demonstrates the uses of narrative practices both as a means to explore, through a collaborative research process, the effect of this traumatic legacy within families, and also the use of narrative as a dynamic therapeutic process which finds creative ways for people to break through the silence and live beyond being defined by abuse and violence. The contributors to this volume range in age, background and experience, but are linked through the common theme of inter and transgenerational trauma.