Paper
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Renewing: A Process of Family Health Promotion After Leaving Abusive Male Partners
Marilyn Merritt-Gray, RN, MN1, Marilyn Ford-Gilboe, RN, PhD2, and Judith A. Wuest, RN, PhD1. (1) Faculty of Nursing, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, (2) School of Nursing, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
| Learning Objective #1: Articulate how intimate partner violence affects how women and children experience emotion |
| Learning Objective #2: Discuss how women and children with a history of intimate partner violence develop ways to regain emotional and personal freedom |
Purpose: To discover how single mothers with a history of woman abuse promote their individual and family’s health over time. Without this understanding, it is difficult for nurses to know how to draw upon and support the family’s natural health promoting activities. Design: Feminist Grounded Theory Method: Repeat semi-structured interviews conducted with a community sample of 40 single-parent families in two Canadian provinces analyzed using constant comparative methods. Findings: We discovered that the core process of health promotion for these families was strengthening capacity to limit intrusion through four sub-processes. This discussion will focus on the sub-process of renewing. Renewing involves mothers and their children gradually regaining emotional and personal freedom, investing in caring for themselves and each other, and finding ways to counteract compound losses and injustices that affect long-term prospects for personal growth and happiness. Leaving the abusive situation promises freedom to fully experience their emotions, needs, and desires. However, the past abusive environment leaves mothers emotionally on-guard and questioning the legitimacy of her feelings, undermining her capacity to care for herself and her children. Families engage in renewing both by finding emotional release from oppression and by more proactively working toward realizing their own and each other’s potential. The process of renewing reinforces a sense of hope for a future of personal fulfilment and gives family members energy to redefine themselves as more than survivors of abuse. Implications: These findings offer new insights regarding the ways that the oppression of intimate partner violence affects the ways women and their children to experience emotion, respond to perceived barriers personal growth and comfort and care for themselves. This knowledge offers a new clinical focus for nurses attempting to intervene in a more timely and constructive fashion to support health promotion processes in families with an abuse history.
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Back to 15th International Nursing Research Congress
Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004