ABSTRACT
Every week for three months I quietly made tea, replenished the plate of sweet biscuits and listened as each woman recounted some aspect of her experience of violence, fear, betrayal, loneliness, pain and shame as part of her story of sexual abuse. The abuse may have happened up to four decades before and for some of the women this was the rst time they felt safe and uninhibited in speaking of their traumatic loss of trust in adults and sense of self. It was a rural area, sparsely populated, and some of the abusers had been leaders in the community. Resources for the women were extremely limited. The meeting place was a small, secluded holiday cottage that had been made available to the town’s social worker. I had passed some unscripted test in my rst meeting when the social worker leading the group asked the women to allow a student to sit in on their meetings. It was distressing to hear their stories, which were expressed with deep sadness, pain and anger. When the three-to four-hour gatherings were over, I’d get back into my car physically, emotionally and spiritually drained. One day, overwhelmed by the pain and suffering I’d heard, I realized I could not complete the 45-minute drive back and turned off the road. I drove a few minutes and found myself unexpectedly at a small inlet on the coast. I sat for a long time allowing the expanse of sea and the beauty of this spot to soak into my being. I needed to consciously remember that the world was vast and beautiful too. Each woman was more than her pain and suffering and I was privileged to witness to this fact. The encounters with the natural world and the stories of traumatic loss described by the women allowed me to integrate the pain and brokenness into a world that transcended the darkness. Thirty years later the experience still helps develop my spiritual life.1
