Healing: Sexual Violence and Trauma Survivors’ Stories is an oral history project that explores, discovers, and highlights the stories of sexual violence and trauma survivors in the United States. Our cultural, political, and societal norms reframe the narratives about trauma that we hear and see in the world. What so many of us do not know is the unspoken stories about trauma, memories, suffering, and survival. Sexual violence survivors have limited space to share their stories. Even if they choose to, legal cases most often exhibit their stories, which do not represent survivors’ and victims’ narratives organically. In fact, our political framework of what is considered “credible” and “valid” silences them.
When people talk about rape, they do not explore nor display the narratives about destruction and fractured memories. Instead, there are more narratives about resilience from survivors, which construct unrealistic ideas and expectations of healing to victims and survivors. These misrepresented stories about rape in our cultures and politics do not acknowledge how healing is a process, which takes a lifetime for survivors and can change over time based on their personal and individual experiences. Although there has been an increasing number of research and literatures that discuss trauma and memory—specifically in the field of oral history—there has only been a handful of narratives about healing. What I have observed, as an activist, is that survivors’ stories wilt over time because people do not recognize the healing process. The process is a life-long journey that takes survivors on different phases of control, understanding, and aftermath experiences. Because the process varies from person to person and it revolves around life history, oral history is more than an appropriate medium that can help us better discover and listen to survivors’ stories.
“There were travelers, cyclists, photographers, runners, and security guards on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was humid and windy. The smell of traffic fumes wafted across the bridge. I had not eaten anything that day. I was caffeinated but tired from insomnia. As I walked over the bridge, I could not stop myself from revisiting the past. “What in the world have I gone through?” I thought to myself. When I crossed the bridge, I was a step closer to a new path. An uncertain path. A path that had never occurred to me. I crossed the bridge to see a therapist for the first time. The Brooklyn Bridge became my personal symbol. A symbol of bridging the gap between brokenness and healing.”
Kim, Eunice. “Healing: a Bridge with a View,” Columbia University, 2019.
For more information and to read an excerpt of the project, please visit this link here.
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