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Resilient Southern Women

ABSTRACT Using stories from Southern women, fictional and real, this article explores early life experiences and maltreatment in birth families, placement in out-of-home care, and outcomes. The method is qualitative, using unstructured interviews with two sisters, the creation of stories, and identification of patterns throughout the women's lives. Their experiences are compared with the experiences of resilient Southern women as presented in popular fiction. Patterns include resiliency, multiple episodes and types of maltreatment, lack of protection, shame, repetition of relationship patterns and intergenerational transmission of trauma, abandonment, scars and ghosts from the past, and mixed success in adulthood. Recommendations for research and practice to improve child and family well being conclude the article.