Share a Secret! Art as a Feminist Practice to Support Recovery from Violence

​Feminist research on violence has focused on explicit, physical and sexual violence with little attention on the process of healing. In this paper I develop feminist methodology for studying healing from violence and trauma. I focus on a project ‘Share a secret’ created by an NGO Women’s Line, which invited women to write their own stories under the title ‘And then I was free’. I analyze how the both the sharing and publication of the stories can enhance the transformation of feelings of shame and guilt associated with being the target of violence and discuss the relevance of the supportive community. The paper expands the limits of academic writing as it is constructed as a narrative that resonates the process of intimate partner violence. The paper seeks to continue to engage in the practice of support for the targets of violence and thus enhance the feminist research practice and writing.