By early 2007, Dove Pressnall had been working for nearly two years as a trainer and field supervisor of Liberian counselors and social workers, working directly with war survivors including women survivors of targeted sexual violence, male and female torture survivors of all ages, and conscripted child soldiers.
The horrors that they experienced are only eclipsed by the courage with which they endured starvation, physical torture, mutilation, and seemingly unbearable psychological pain and the determination with which they persevere in moving forward with their lives.
Very often, when listening to a survivor speak about their experiences or reading an assessment of a community member by a Liberian colleague, Dove noticed that there was a great detail of information about what had happened to the person—the rapes, witnessed killings, slavery, beatings, and terror they were subjected to—and very little information about how they survived those experiences. Often, after a litany of traumatic events that a person had endured there would be a brief comment such as “and then she left the fighters, went to live with her aunt, and has been living with her ever since.”
Such comments intrigued Dove and compelled her to ask more. How long was she with the fighters? How did she come to leave? How was she able to locate and get to her aunt? Asking such questions often elicited amazing accounts of psychological strength, ingenuity, compassion, and helpfulness.
The Concept
