Stories that Heal: How Storytelling Aided Child Trauma Recovery in The Space Between Before and After
Item
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Title
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Stories that Heal: How Storytelling Aided Child Trauma Recovery in The Space Between Before and After
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Description
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This article traces the plot of children’s novel, The Space Between Before and After, to examine how storytelling and the use of metaphor enabled the 10-year-old protagonist, Thomas, to heal from the traumatic experience of losing his mother to depression. Before encountering storytelling, Thomas is lost in a narrative of victimhood and lacks hope, imagination, and agency. When his neighbour, Mrs. Sharp, introduces storytelling to him to cope with his anxiety, he begins to process his trauma through metaphor and develops an intimate relationship with the elderly lady. Using Bradley and Mendoza’s (2021) model of storytelling as a framework, I interpret Thomas’s recovery journey as a process in which his feelings were first voiced through metaphor and imagination, which were then able to be processed and bridged to reality as he gained confidence and control. Furthermore, I recognise the importance of Mrs. Sharp as a secure attachment figure throughout, especially when Thomas’s father, Mr. Moran, disapproves of his storytelling, causing tension in the father-son relationship and hardship in Thomas’s healing process. Nevertheless, by the end, Mr. Moran comes to be supportive of the storytelling and asks Thomas to share his story at Helen’s memorial, symbolising community healing. The exchange between father and son after the fact reveals that agency, hope, imagination, and collective healing have come to replace the initial narrative of victimhood and hopelessness. I conclude this article with an analysis of the butterfly motif presented throughout the novel to recapitulate on the power of metaphor for children’s healing from trauma.
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Creator
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Zhang, Rose
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Subject
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Storytelling
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child psychic trauma
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trauma recovery
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agency
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children’s fiction
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Date
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2024-12-20T12:34:32Z
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2024-12-01
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Type
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Article
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Format
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application/pdf
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Identifier
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https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/377841
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https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.114530
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Language
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eng
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Rights
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Attibution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DEED)
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/