Degree Name

Education Specialist (EdS)

Semester of Degree Completion

2001

Thesis Director

Charles G. Eberly

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to learn how six mid-life women who had been sexually abused as children perceived the way in which that early experience had impacted their life to date. Using a phenomenological qualitative life-history approach, each participant was interviewed for a period of from one to three hours. Content analysis of the interviews and member-checking with participants who volunteered to do so resulted in eight major themes emerging from the data: memories, family, career, addictions, depression, boundaries and embodiment, counseling, and synchronicity. The last theme, synchronicity, very closely related to the concept of spirituality and a Higher Power, was an unexpected outcome of the study. Yet, that theme of synchronicity and spirituality seemed to be the essence that leavened these women's lives in much the same way that air suffuses the world.

Integrating the voices of these women with feminist literature facilitated an understanding of what the participants were saying about their life and experience on both a personal and a professional level. Their experience was then related to selected literature on women's development in college particularly with regard to the impact of child sexual abuse on the college experience.

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