Lesbians in alcohol recovery surviving childhood sexual abuse and parental substance misuse.
Narratives of lives disrupted by abuse are essential data sources for understanding women's survival and healing in contexts of childhood sexual abuse. In this qualitative, feminist study of lesbians recovering from alcohol problems who have histories of childhood sexual abuse, a multiethnic sample of 20 women narrated their life stories in a series of three in-depth interviews. The purpose of this paper is to focus on parental substance misuse as it affected these women when they were growing up. Conditions and consequences of surviving childhood sexual abuse and parental substance misuse are analysed using narrative strategies and described using excerpts from the women's narratives. Loss was the overarching core theme that integrated participants' storied descriptions of parental substance misuse. They incurred severe losses in the absence of basic necessities for safe and healthy passages through childhood. In their abusive homes, they were not allowed innocence, and protected from violence, nor nurtured, guided, and loved. As many said, they lost their very childhoods.
Hall
J M
JM
School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 5320, USA.
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology*; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*