Beginning the Healing Journey

Storytelling is a pathway to healing for youth, families, and communities impacted by gun violence. It allows survivors to re-story the devastation and trauma into narratives that re-member the person lost and find purpose and meaning from the painful experience. Tree of Life is a group storytelling intervention developed in Southern Africa and rooted in narrative traditions that is emerging as a powerful starting point for addressing the traumatic impact of homicide in Chicago. This case study weaves together the narrative of the first author in her work at Chicago Survivors with research on gun violence, homicide bereavement, and Tree of Life in order to make an argument for its relevance in treating survivors of community gun violence in the United States. We contend that Tree of Life has potential to work across systems levels as youth and families find purpose through the pain generated from violent loss. We encourage social work clinicians to bring narrative practices and the Tree of Life approach into their practice and challenge social work researchers to develop partnerships with community organizations such as Chicago Survivors to develop a research base for this promising approach

Political science · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Medicine · Psychology · Social Work