The Integration of Healing Rituals in Group Treatment for Women Survivors of Domestic Violence

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The Integration of Healing Rituals in Group Treatmentfor Women Survivors of Domestic ViolenceKaren Neuman Allen PH.D. LMSW a & Danielle F. Wozniak Ph.D. MSW ba Chair Social Work Department , Arkansas State University , 210 Aggie Road, Jonesboro ,AR , 72401b School of Social Work, University of Montana , Missoula , MontanaAccepted author version posted online: 06 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Social Work in Mental Health (2013): The Integration of Healing Rituals in Group Treatment for WomenSurvivors of Domestic Violence, Social Work in Mental Health

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Article

The integration of healing rituals in group treatment for women

survivors of domestic violence Karen Neuman Allen, PH.D., LMSW (corresponding author)

Professor, Chair

Social Work Department

Arkansas State University

210 Aggie Road

Jonesboro, AR 72401.

[email protected]

Danielle F. Wozniak, Ph.D., MSW

School of Social Work, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana

Abstract

This paper describes a therapeutic group for domestic violence survivors that incorporated

healing rituals and rites of passage to help participants move past a “liminal” state in which their

social identity and personal narratives continue to be characterized by the abuse experience.

Through the creation and use of healing rituals, blessings, poetry, art and music, the women in

the group establish “communitas” and support each other in the work of self-reclamation and

healing. The group, “Rites of Passage” is intended for women who have completed shelter based

crisis interventions, and uses a structured curriculum that incorporates theoretical and

philosophical concepts from anthropology, post-modernism, humanistic psychology, social

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work, and existentialism. Through the creation and practice of idiosyncratic and incorporated or

modified existing rituals, women in the groups strengthen social bonds, develop a sense of hope

for the future, reestablish an empowered sense of self and continue their healing journey from

domestic violence.

Keywords: domestic violence, interpersonal violence, group therapy, ritual, spirituality, healing

Introduction

The social and personal benefits of formal and informal rituals in group culture has long been

appreciated by anthropologists, priests, folklorists, artists, health and mental health professionals

who recognize that performance and ritual can be used to promote individual change as well as

to enhance social relations. When used with women recovering from domestic violence,

empowering performances and liberating rituals can help mediate the enduring and debilitating

effects of violence.

Shelter based counseling with women who have been abused tends to be relatively short-term,

focusing on promoting physical safety and the development of increased self-esteem (Burke et

al., 2004; Brown, 1997; Campbell & Soeken, 1999; Ham-Rowbottom, Gordon, Jarvis, &

Novaco, 2005; Shamai, 2000; Wathen & MacMillan, 2003; Zink & Putnam 2005).

Unfortunately, many women who would be considered a success by these criteria continue to

define themselves relative to their abuse history identifying themselves as “survivors” of

domestic violence, which is often presented as the dominant feature of who they are. Further, the

story of their abuse becomes the central narrative of their lives. In earlier work, we hypothesized

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that this represented a “foreclosure” in personal identify development, due in part to the

emotional and psychological impact of abuse as well as the interruption in the trajectory of their

lives which occurs with the onset of the abuse. These women, although living safer lives were in

many ways still inhibited and defined by the abuse experience (Neuman Allen & Wozniak, 2010;

Wozniak, 2009; Wozniak & Allen, 2011).

Recognizing the value of supportive group interventions in women who have been abused, we

developed a structured ten week long curriculum entitled “Rites of Passage” which attempts to

move beyond traditional models of psychotherapy and which integrates bonding, healing,

empowering rituals and rites of passage to help women reconstruct an identity and personal

narrative that is not predicated on abuse.

In this paper, we describe how the group incorporated bonding, healing and empowering rituals

to help women in later stages of recovery mediate some of the persistent effects of trauma and

transition from a liminal state to one of integration and “incorporation” in which the abuse

experience is allowed a space in one’s personal narrative but is no longer the central theme. This

cognitive shift in identity and narrative then permits women to more fully express hope for the

future and develop confidence in their abilities to achieve their goals and move from being a

“survivor” of violence to a “thriver”.

Overview of the group and results

Over the course of two years, twenty four women recruited through domestic violence agencies

have participated in four treatment groups. The groups were run in three states: Connecticut,

Michigan and Montana. The groups are run using a semi-structured curriculum that includes five

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units. These are: 1) A last look back: Understanding domestic violence; 2) Reclaiming identity

and self; 3) Restoring life trajectory; 4) Rebuilding the future and restoring hope and 5)

Spirituality, ritual and change. This curriculum has been standardized into a workbook in the

hope that women thrivers may create and facilitate their own healing groups within their own

communities (Wozniak & Allen, 2013).

Because we hypothesize that repetitive disclosure about the violence and self-identification as a

“survivor” might be reinforcing, preventing some women from truly “moving on,” an important

aspect of the group was to create a space where women were not expected to routinely discuss

their particular history of abuse. Therefore, participants were carefully screened for inclusion in

the groups. Criteria required referral from a shelter based social worker; completion of shelter

based treatment; and being out of an abusive relationship for at least six months. Using

structured interviews as part of the screening process; women were also excluded if there was

evidence of an active substance abuse disorder; and serious, inadequately managed mental

illness, particularly borderline personality and bi-polar disorders.

All participants in the groups identified as white, with an average age of 35. They all indicated

they were raised in a protestant religious tradition (primarily Baptist) but expressed a willingness

to explore activities such as meditation. The majority had finished high school and slightly less

than half had some college. Half were working at the time of treatment and the other half on

assistance. All of the women except one had been out of an abusive relationship for at least six

months (average 13 months).

The groups were measured with qualitative and quantitative approaches. Although none of the

women had been formally diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in part, because

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of agency philosophies that discouraged the use of pathologizing labels, all participants reported

symptoms consistent with PTSD. Therefore, as a quantitative measure of psychological distress,

we used the civilian version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist. Pre and post-test

results of the PTSD checklist showed statistically significant reductions in disturbing memories

and thoughts; reliving the stressful experience; avoidant thoughts and feelings; feeling numb,

irritable or angry; feeling the future will be cut short; and hyperarousal. Qualitative results

identified consistent themes and stages (although not linear) in recovery. We have characterized

these stages of healing as 1) re-establishing safety and a personal space; 2) re-claiming identify;

3) resuming life trajectory interrupted by the violence; and 4) restoring hope in the future

(Neuman Allen & Wozniak, 2010). We believe that the use of ritual, guided imagery, and other

alternative healing activities disrupts preservation and preoccupation with the trauma, creating a

small of window of opportunity for some women to begin to imagine and then work towards a

new life.

Ritual in social relationships and mental health

Rituals are created and performed in all human societies. They may be performed to mark special

occasions, regularly as the calendar or seasons dictate; in places endowed with special meaning

which may be public or private; by an individual, a subsection of the group or an entire group.

Although many rituals acknowledge or express religious obligations, rituals serve many other

social purposes. All cultures have rituals that establish, confirm or revoke the status of

group members and have rituals for when individuals enter and exit the group, such as

customs around birth and death. Rituals are used by cultures to reinforce social bonds and

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group identity and help socialize the young by acknowledging their passage through

various development states through rites of passage. Rituals may be elaborate involving days

of preparation and celebration, such as the American custom of a Thanksgiving Day feast. They

may also be simple, such as kissing your beloved when parting.

The field of ritual studies has greatly expanded over the past few decades and now involves

many disciplines including social work, anthropology, sociology, theology, literature, philosophy

and the performing arts (Heimbrok & Boudewijnse, 1990). Turner (1969), a influential

anthropologist in the field of ritual studies, defines ritual as “a stereotyped sequence of activities

involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place and designed to

influence preternatural [magical] entities or forces on behalf of the actors’ goals and interests”

(p.18). It is as a codified and pattered social drama or performance that enables the

transformation, reconciliation of individuals as well as groups. Gluckman (1965) defines a ritual

as “formal and symbolic behavior that leads to the creation or recreation of an emotion in order

to obtain or maintain a correct balance in the world” (p.11).

Freud and Reik’s recognition of ritual as comforting and stabilizing is prevalent in the

psychoanalytic literature with respect to repetitive behaviors and rituals associated with mental

disorders as well as other normative family and social processes (Campbell, 1949; Gay, 1975;

Kirmayer, 1999; Reik, 1958). For example, the practice of holiday and consumption rituals has

been positively associated with parenting and marital satisfaction; stable family roles and

processes; and overall family health (Denham, 2003; Fiese & Thomcho, 2001; Fiese, et.al, 2002;

Markson & Fiese, 2002). In a study of individuals infected with HIV-AIDS, rituals promoted a

sense of strength and control, eased the emotional burden of the illness, and offered social

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support. Rituals have also been found to be therapeutic with refugee families traumatized by

war, torture, and civil conflict and to help reconnect individuals with communal life (Walsh,

2007). They open a pathway for forgiveness in human caused tragedies (such as 9/11) and can

“reaffirm identity, relatedness and core social values of goodness and compassion” (p. 207). All

cultures have death rituals and memorial rituals to honor the dead and publically

acknowledge the individual and shared loss. These customs and rituals have been found to

be important in helping to resolve grief (Castle & Phillips, 2003; Romanoff & Terenzio, 1998;

Romanoff & Thompson, 2006).

Rituals also mark transition points and developmental stages in the lives of individuals; help

maintain group equilibrium and solidarity; create a sense of control over fate and destiny;

promote emotional and physical healing; and provide a protected time and space for the safe,

cathartic discharge of intense emotions (Bell, 1997; Csordas, 1987: Csordas, & Lewton, 1998:

Driver, 1998; Koss-Chioino, 2006; van Gennep, 1960; Malinowski, 1997; Rubenstien, 1984;

Turner, 1969; Wallace, 1966). DeFlem (1991) suggests that the act of performing a ritual itself is

transforming and that the “the handling of symbols in ritual exposes their powers to act upon and

change the persons involved in ritual performance” (p.3). Turner (1969) and Van Gennep (1966)

find ritual particularly prominent in times of individual and social uncertainty, anxiety, and

disorder as they dramatize messages of continuity, predictability and tradition. Thus, they are

inherently stabilizing and serve to integrate the self with itself during times of change; the self

with culture through the sharing of common symbols, language, objects and performances; the

self with others in relationship (communitas); and the self with divine or natural forces believed

to influence fate.

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The use of rituals in recovery and self-help groups has previously been studied (Bell, 2010;

Hammerschlag & Silverman, 1997; Herman, 1992; Levy, 1976; McGuire, 1987; Neu, 1995;

Scott, 2010). Herman (1992) Jacobs (1989; 1992) both used rituals in groups with women who

had been abused; rationalizing that ritual could be used to help women overcome the feelings of

helpless and powerlessness which occur as a result of violence. The rituals Jacobs used typically

involved three separate stages of participation. The first part involved acknowledging the abuse

by having women write the story of their abuse and purge it through some symbolic act, such as

tossing it into a fire (cleansing ritual). In the second stage, women wrote the names of their

abuser on an egg, and then smashed it, resulting in a cathartic and powerful release of anger. This

was considered an “empowering” ritual. The final act involved guided meditations in which the

women envisioned themselves in forms of the goddess that was meaningful to them

(revitalization ritual). In examining the results of the group through participant observations,

surveys and extensive interviews, Jacobs found that the participants reported a reduction in fear,

relief in the expression of anger, and an increased sense of power which improved the overall

mental health of the women with respect to the trauma of victimization.

We found Wallace’s (1966) nomenclature for classifying rituals to be useful framework. He

identified five general categories which are: 1) technological rituals designed to control nature;

2) therapeutic and healing rituals; 3) ideological rituals which reinforce group norms and bonds

and which include rites of passage, joining and intensification; 4) salvation rituals which include

cleansing and empowering rituals; and 5) revitalization rituals which are designed to control

destiny (pp. 107-166). We adapt this conceptual framework to describe the various forms of

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ritual incorporated into our group for women survivors of domestic violence in a subsequent

section of this paper that follows.

Within our group, we encouraged the inclusion of rituals that emphasized a shared narrative and

language, symbology, and performance (McGuire, 1987). These included group identification

and intensification rituals such as rites of passage; healing rituals; salvation or cleansing rituals;

and transformational or revitalization rituals which were designed to empower the women to

imagine and achieve their desired future. We noted that two processes were involved in how

each group came to integrate specific rituals. The first involves creating and ritualizing behaviors

and performances that emerged often spontaneously or through the group process. We called

these “iatrogenic rituals” as they arose from the group and were unique to it. The second type of

process involved modifying a known existing ritual for integration for use by an individual or the

group. We called this “incorporation”. Both processes occurred at both individual and group

levels, but were typically shared with others,

However the ritual emerged, it was quickly codified, ritualized and incorporated into the regular,

predictive patterns of group behavior which were endowed with meaning and value by group

participants. One example involved the selection of a “totem” that represented the individual

character of a woman. Using art therapy, the women created a collage representative of this

totem. We then noted they often referred to themselves in relationship to this totem, for example,

describing oneself as “free as an eagle, but powerful enough to prey on any threat.” The women

then began to collect these symbolic objects, and would come to group displaying them as

jewelry, tee-shirts and other items that included their “totems” Other rituals included the creation

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of symbolic objects such as woven necklaces with knots representing seminal events, future

directed collages (images of things they hoped for) and future directed journals (goals and

dreams for the future). Performance rituals also occurred. As an example, one group created a

short song that was sang at the beginning of each group sung to the tune of the old round “We

are one in the spirit”:

We are here for each other

We will listen to what’s said.

We will strengthen each other

And will live for today.

Other rituals included letting go rituals; writing stories with new characters, chapters and

endings; and creating shared prayers and blessings which reflected the culture of their group and

its shared purpose. Women also described their own personal, individual rituals such as looking

in the mirror and saying “I’m beautiful and worthy of good things” every time before leaving the

house.

Ideological rituals that reinforce identification and bonding

Since the women who entered our groups were often understandably guarded and anxious when

forming new relationships outside their immediate support circle (which was often limited to

themselves and their children), we utilized folklorists understanding of performance and

storytelling as a way to create relationships between group members to change the experience

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and understanding of the social world (Bauman, 1975; Csordas, 1987; Csordas & Lewton, 1998).

Recognizing the importance of food and consumption rituals in social bonding, each week we ate

dinner together and shared casual social conversation which allowed women to re-learn and

practice social skills with other women. This helped to reduce social isolation and build a

trusting community through which changes could take place. Before the group formation, none

of the women had eaten together or gotten together socially even though in two of the sites they

lived in the same transitional housing complex. Instead, they regarded each other with suspicion

and sometimes-outright derision and were wary of any group interaction. Dinner was followed

by breathing and relaxing exercises and a guided meditation. Guided meditations allowed

women to experience creation and agency relative to their own healing.

Each group created a blessing or prayer, which was used to open each meeting. Group members

later shared that the blessing had developed special meaning for them, and that they said this

blessing throughout the week and at times of difficulty. One woman wrote the blessing out and

stored it in the glove box of her car. She said "a part of me thinks it's silly, but I was sort of

hoping it might protect me out in traffic!"

Women who were initially shy about sharing, shy about using their voices, shy about asserting

their own vision of reality, grew in delight at getting the group’s attention. As women shared,

their facial expressions, voices, word choices and phraseology became more expressive and drew

their group mates into the drama being enacted. Activities began with a modest scope focused on

self-reclamation and progressed to more assertively challenge victim-thinking and abuser-logic.

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Salvation, cleansing and empowering rituals

In a cleansing and empowering activity, women were asked to work towards “silencing

the negative chatter” in their heads by dividing a piece of paper in half. On one side they wrote

the self-sabotaging messages they heard (often the internalized voice of the batterer) and on the

other side of the paper “answered” the voices with a counter argument that asserted their inherent

value, perfection and worth. The positive list was decorated and pasted into their journals, and

the negative side torn up and scattered or burned.

As women shared this activity, they groaned, laughed, commiserated with each other; they

digressed, and bolstered each other up when they had to confront especially painful internalized

messages like, “you are a bad mother,” or “you are a failure.” Their sharing took the form of a

performance which allowed women to challenge the legacy of thought and action established

through patterns of abuse (e.g. I am not lazy; I work hard for our family and my children. Or, I

am not a failure. I am a successful teacher and mother). Through the performance story teller and

listeners reconnected to and developed a personal sense of agency and self-efficacy that had been

truncated through violence. As they recreated themselves in the context of the group, they were

in essence, confirming their strengths, and reclaiming their freedom, creative abilities, and joy.

Through this ritual, they claimed power in the form of confidence to enact that same

performance of liberation in the larger social environment. In the process, group mates initially

regarded with suspicion were converted to a helpful chorus and an appreciative audience as

women worked through lingering artifacts of violence to create solidarity or communitas.

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By the third week the women’s dinnertime sharing changed from casual sharing and talking

about the struggles of the preceding week to asking each other about the week’s triumphs.

Stories in which agency and communion were central themes were triumphant, instructive, and

comforting. They were stories in which good vanquished evil and in which “justice” prevailed.

Women greeted them eagerly since they were new, exciting and fed their nascent belief that

“good”’ and “right” were possible. For example, in a one group a woman used this sharing time

to inform the group of her grandfather’s sudden death. While the text of the story was of loss and

bereavement the subtext was agency in the face of loss as she regaled the group of her efforts to

negotiate with a florist for a lower price on an exotic plant her grandfather loved, build a small

shrine to her grandfather with the plant and invite a group mate and her children to come and see

it. Through her dramatic and humorous story illustrated with the difficulties of trying to find the

plant and then trying to barter on the price with four children in tow, her group mates shared her

triumph, and identified with her victory.

Symbolic performance not only offered a way to empower women and shift relations between

themselves and the abuser, it also offered women an important opportunity of redress for the

violation they endured. Most women exiting an abusive relationship simply flee and never have

the satisfaction of confronting their abuser or challenging the legitimacy of his dominance,

control and violence. While we consider women who are able to leave alive the lucky ones, there

is something enormously disempowering about not being able to challenge the abuser’s right to

inflict pain. However, through ritual and performance, the women created new power relations in

which they had the power, they had the ability to determine their life course; they could undo the

hold the abuser had on them. In essence, they were challenging the abuser and his hold by

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talking back and taking back the agency and generation they had lost. Consistent with Turner’s

description of ritual as “social drama” in which participants symbolically violate social norms

and expectations, enact redress and then create new social norms, the women shook their fear by

defying the abuser and creating a world in which neither he nor the abuse had power over them

any longer. This was effective, as Kwan (2007) suggests, through “its dynamic, diachronic, and

physical characteristics. In other words, ritual efficacy lies in the manner of performance; not in

any rational discursive argument” (p. 747).

This type of performative social drama also occurred through a “power mantra" activity in which

women read together this affirmation: I reclaim my power from all those who have tried to take

it. I reclaim my power from the universe that held it for me until this moment. I reclaim my

power and will never let it go again. I feel my power re-enter my body, mind and spirit. I am

filled with the power of love and joy. Women then created a personal gesture that accompanied

the mantra. This gesture would be used as a sign for each woman and for her group mates

indicating that she had embraced and reclaimed her own power. As each woman showed the

group her sign as she recited the mantra the women collapsed into giggles, laughter, and

imagined scenarios where they ran into each other at the store and in the check-out line at the

grocery and gave each other the secret power sign. Women acted out these possibilities to more

laughter and continued to envision scenarios where this would be funny (double dates,

restaurants, library, etc.). Women ended the evening by making plans to give each other their

gesture should they see each other during the week. In and through this joy and the association of

women’s power with joy, they reclaimed a sense of their own abilities and agency. By imagining

and then acting out potential uses for the power sign, they created a new reality in which they

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were not frightened, scarred or depressed women but on the contrary were joyful, powerful,

agentive women. By performing this new reality, they created a space in which their abuser

simply failed to exist and thereby no longer posed a threat. And by enacting that reality socially

they transformed the environment in which they lived.

Revitalization, healing and transformative rituals

Rituals as anthropologists remind us are performative and iterative. They concretize and bind

meaning and allow participants access to the layers of meaning in understanding our social

world. As Seligman (2010) suggests, “Participants practicing ritual, act as if the world produced

in ritual were in fact a real one. And they do so fully conscious that such a subjunctive world

exists in endless tension with the real world of lived experience” (p.14). Healing rituals are

primarily performed to heal wounds and promote health, but also can involve forgiveness and

reconciliation. Transformative rituals are performed with the intention of altering the self

(rebirth, renewal) and world in order to achieve a desired outcome.

One transformational ritual involved the women creating a personal collage of images of thriving

in a future they were imagining for themselves. In another activity, they created a self-symbol

from clay that illustrated a perfect aspect of themselves (magnification). In still another, the

women envisioned and described their perfect future. Next, they were asked to create and share

new self-stories in the form of a picture, a poem, a reflection, an art project, and/or answers to a

guided activity all of which turned on creating a desired self and future that did not perpetuate of

the experience of violence. After each activity women shared with the group what they created

and what the experience of creation was like for them. It was this simple sharing that became an

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unexpected component of ritual and an important piece in women’s healing journey. This was

evident in the index card activity, in which the women wrote about and illustrated the steps of the

journey from victim, to survivor and thriver they had undertaken. The final index cards marks

the women as healed or as “thrivers” in spite of their own acknowledgement that they were not

quite there and had a few steps yet to take.

One woman created a serpentine trail on the floor using index cards that were three different

colors to signify discreet stages of her journey. As she read the life events she explained to the

audience, her fellow travelers and group mates, what the events signified, why they were

important, and why they lead her to take the next step on her path. While she had not yet, in her

own reckoning reached thriver status, she projected what this status would look like: She was

finished with school; she owned her own bookstore. She lived in a Victorian house with her dog

named Princess. She was happy. Her group mates shared with her the trek and she, with them,

created the social space for her eventual next step: herself as a fulfilled, healed woman.

By calling attention to the journey and by bracketing it through a public performance, the women

collectively defined an intentional trajectory of meaningful and purposive events that lead to a

positive outcome. As women narrated their journey for the group they created a story in which

they were the heroes. Group mates were called to identify with that heroic element through

each performance, supporting it, appreciating it, trying it on before or after they presented their

own story. Each index card recorded evidence of the women’s ability to overcome, grow and

heal. This helped reframe some of the activities the women were ashamed of and kept secret, like

long bouts of drinking, drug use, or debilitating depression since these events allowed women to

get to their next stage. By seeing them as part of the progression of events that led to a positive

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outcome rather than simply evidence of failure, lack of character, or moral weakness the events

were detoxified and some of the shame and guilt lifted. Each woman’s journey became part of

the collective victory narrative of the group.

Performance was also a dress rehearsal for healing where group members could “try on” or act

“as if” healing had already occurred to see what it felt like to be healed or victorious and to see

how the social world in that moment responded to them. This is another area where performance

and ritual in the Rites of Passage group intersect. As Seligman (2010) suggests, “through its

emphasis on action, on the performative and its creation of a subjunctive universe, ritual creates

a world, temporary, fragile to be sure, but not false – a world where differences can be

accommodated, tolerance enacted (if not fully understood) and openness to the other maintained”

(p.15).

The women’s rituals often contained themes of rebirth, renewal, and connection and included

symbolic releasing activities that gave way to reclaiming a new identity or social self. Within

these rituals, women moved symbolically from one world or one state of consciousness to

another and marked their shift in social identity by a change of clothes, hairstyles, dress or

physical position or activity. For example in the concluding rituals, women dressed up in their

nicest clothes, put on make-up and wore high-heeled shoes. In other groups, women used the

final ritual to announce they were moving out of the transitional housing units in which they

lived. Potlucks at the new house including blessings were incorporated. Several groups opted to

go out to dinner as a final ritual symbolizing their place in society as women who are no longer

victims or survivors—members of a subjugated, demoralized or dominated class-- but women

who are able to partake of abundance, luxury, and ease. Women burned qualities they no longer

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wanted in a fire that cleansed and relieved them of those qualities and embraced others through a

walk that symbolized their future selves.

Rituals of rebirth and emergence also contained an ephemeral substance like water or smoke,

symbols of the Divine, or of the ubiquitous nature of positive energy. In the Michigan site as

women planned their concluding ritual they shared how they had lost all their personal and

family photographs when they left the abuser and thus symbolically had lost their who they were

and their ability to see their past juxtaposed to their future. In order to create a visual record of

transformation, the group began taking photographs of themselves and their family and on the

last night created a scrapbook for the photos. Photos were anchored in their scrapbooks using

calligraphy, blessings women had authored for the start of each group, wishes, aspirations,

meditations and reflections that had been ritualized throughout the group process. One

participant called this the ‘scrap book for her new life’ or the “scrapbook for her future” rather

than the past. This group had also adapted a Native American smudge ritual for use in beginning

each group meeting in which white sage was burned with participants walking through the

smoke, purifying and cleansing them in preparation for the group. Evoking this activity in their

concluding ceremony ritual, the women again burned sage, this time passing their scrap books

through the smoke to “cleanse” the books and “purify” their hopes for future as they began their

life as “thrivers.”

One concluding ritual involved saying a blessing and tossing a small vile of water, which

symbolized found the newfound wisdom and energy of self into a stream. This intervention was

premised on the idea that women can continue their journey away from abuse toward healing in

sequential stages that involve an interpersonally and socially recognized transition, and tests the

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efficacy of intervention designed to facilitate these steps. In this ethnographic moment, women

take the two oppositions around which the group coalesced, healing and woundedness, and use

their final ritual to contextualize both as a universal human phenomenon that no longer isolates

them from others, but instead actually connects them to all of humanity. Standing on a bridge,

women announce their own healing and then opt to send a message of healing down a river, a

clear metaphor for their own journey and ultimate rebirth, a connection with others who are both

healing and who are in need of healing. The ritual ends with hope as they impart a prayer that

asks their messages to form a connection, to bridge a gap if you will, between their past selves as

wounded women— selves who can recognize others who are wounded, and themselves as

thriving women, whose social position is concretized through their walk across the bridge.

Healing and joy are seen through the ritual of rebirth as they reach out to connect with a universe

that is now benevolent, and full of uncontainable joy.

Conclusion: Meaning, Transformation and Community

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the

human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it

back” (Campbell, 1949; p.11).

For those looking to help women heal from the ravages of violence, the creation and enactment

of a new self-text can be facilitated through performances and rituals in which women are

socially marked as whole, strong and competent. While transformative rituals do not “cure”

women or mark them as healed once-and-for-all they do position women to clearly see what

comes next on their healing trajectory and to see how they, as members of a community, might

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get there. Looking back, one woman summed up her transformation this way, “It was difficult to

admit I was just a survivor. As one point, we were fighters just to stay in the game. Now, healing

is within my reach. I see my life getting easier. I am where I want to be.”

Further, a word on the transformative effects of ritual, performance and healing as it intersects

with the role of the therapist. We recognize the many limitations, issues, biases, lack of controls,

etc., when this work is viewed from a scientific, logical positivist paradigm. We have

acknowledged these in a previous article (Neuman Allen & Wozniak, 2010; Wozniak & Allen,

2011), and continue to explore them as our research evolves. Recognizing that the traditional

researcher/therapist boundary is modulated to some degree in this kind of participatory research

model, we wanted to engage fully with the women in the group as co-creators and equal

participants. To that end we participated in the rituals with the women, co-creating our own

futures along with them. That being said, we recognized our position of relative power within the

status of the group and were very careful around issues around personal self-disclosure,

especially as it might relate to our own experiences with interpersonal violence

In an effort to standardize the core content in the curriculum and modules of the group,

we recently published a participant and/or facilitator’s guide to the group (Wozniak & Allen,

2013) which presents the overall structure of the modules in the group and a variety of exercises,

activities and rituals which can be included. Now that this has been accomplished, we plan

additional studies to measure the groups’ effectiveness. We also envision a time when women

“thrivers” facilitate their own Rites of Passage group, creating new communities of mutually

supportive women who share a common bond that is reinforced through the creation of shared

rituals.

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Perhaps the most significant way in which ritual contributes to women’s transformative healing

experiences in the Rites of Passage group is through the creative, redressive play that it incites

for women as they negotiate a new reality (Turner, 1969; pp.13–14). This in turn allows women

to create a new sense of self and to create a social world compatible for a changed self.

In order for the healing process to continue, women must continue to develop stories about

themselves and the world around them founded on hope and possibility that can simultaneously

compel them into the next stage and narrate it.

This is an important point we wish to underscore. In Turner’s work whole communities

embraced and accepted as changed, initiates who returned from their rites of passage. That is to

say, the communities Turner wrote about received the newly changed initiates and incorporated

them into society in their new roles and positions because it was members of the community who

invoked the transition and who shared its meanings. This raises an interesting question about

how the women who “graduate” from or leave our group fair when they enter a society or

community that does not invoke the transformation and who may not recognize or understand it

and who may not understand or know what a “thriver” is. Within Western culture major social

position, role, or identity changes can be difficult to effect and integrate into one’s sense of self

when there are neither institutionalized or formalized rites of passage and when the transition is

not one necessarily marked by observable physical change or ceremony. In response, some

mental health interventions turn on developing an artificial cultural community like that

developed through Alcoholics Anonymous or through support groups like bereavement support

for SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) or even in some residential treatment facilities. But

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none embed intervention within a sequential rite of passage based on facilitating and recognizing

a social and personal identity change, or a healing.

In our experience, we have witnessed women handle this potential disjuncture in the following

ways. First, we have witnessed and heard about ways in which women educate their families

about the changes they are making in the group. We have also seen how women have enacted a

changed thinking and a changed sense of self within their communities, for example their church

or their circle of friends and seen ways in which communities have responded differently to

women, reinforcing women’s changed position. But we have also observed women shift their

friendships and communities because those groups could not support women’s changed thinking.

Using what we termed in the group the “positive law of attraction” we encouraged women to

find other like-minded women with whom they could associate.

Thus as women are reincorporating themselves into their communities in a new and different role

and educating their communities about the nature and scope of that role many times the

communities are responding to them in that role. When they do not, women move on to find

other women in a similar stage of life and development. Several women have expressed the

desire to start their own groups and thus enlarge the communities who can recognize and respond

to them as healed or healing or thrivers. Perhaps the hallmark of women’s changed social

position however is the absence of “victim” or “survivor” from their lexicon and replacing those

identifiers with strengths based identities. This too allows women to create around them a

community that recognizes them differently even if these reference groups don’t recognize that

this represents a shift. Finally, one other way we have seen women negotiate the absence of a

community with a shared meaning of the ritual change is to bring their families to participate in

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the group and participate in the rituals. For example, in one site a woman came back to the

second group meeting with her mother and two sisters. On the fourth group meeting she brought

her teenaged daughter. Women frequently gleaned material from the group that they translated

for their children suggesting that not only did they want the family to change together but that

they were also making a community that could recognize the changes that each other had made.

Finally, we believe there is a need to create a community based rituals where women not only

proclaim their new status but have an opportunity re-establish themselves in their respective

communities, acknowledging their work and growth. It is worth exploring for the future.

However this exploration is balanced against a sense that women’s healing rituals are uniquely

their own and take on an aspect of the sacred, personal and intimate.

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The Integration of Healing Rituals in Group Treatment for Women Survivors of Domestic Violence

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