ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the final stage of therapy with the child survivor, wherein the child has metabolized the traumatic story and faces the future without new events triggering past associations. The child or teen may ask existential questions about the meaning of their lives and deal with issues of forgiveness of self and others. Some survivors can reach a level of posttraumatic growth where they choose to use their experiences to help other survivors. Survivors at the final stages of healing are more capable of experiencing mindfulness, tuning in to the current moment, and withholding judgment, and experiencing “flow”—an experience where they feel truly integrated in mind and body. Healing the child survivor provides an opportunity to interrupt the transmission of intergenerational trauma.
