Sharing Our Experiences:
Snapshots of Our Lives

As part of this project, we sent requests for short stories that answered the question, "How has violence affected your education?" to individual women and women's groups all over Canada. We asked women to describe how violence affected their education, and if relevant, to tell us what they did about it. The following stories are the result.

We appreciate the courage of the women, who shared their experiences and their stories. Each of the women whose stories form part of this kit is a survivor. Each of us can learn from them.

We learn about how constantly seeing your mother beaten affects your self-esteem, how incest denies a child a safe home, how violence engendered by racism denies a girl an education, how sexual abuse by a teacher haunts a woman in further education, how safety must come before education. Some of these women have been able to carve new lives with the strength they developed in order to survive, some are still trying to solve the daily problems that violence created for them. Their stories tell their realities and the realities of many women; we must all listen and learn from them.

All of these women had the courage to share their story with us. We know of others who were not yet ready to share. We had phone calls from women who wanted to write a story and who were able to talk about their situation to us, but who were not yet able to write about it or to have us write it for them.

It is interesting to note, as well, that few of our authors felt safe enough to use her real name. We offered all authors the option of using a pseudonym and fears for safety demanded that most chose that option. Some of the names they chose are symbolic; Grace Anne's story about a woman's struggle to get a university education is named in honour of Grace Anne Lockhart, the first woman in the British Empire to receive a BA from an accredited university.

If you are a teacher, tutor or literacy worker, you might want to share some or all of these stories with your learners. For women who are living in violent situations, or who have survived such situations, reading the story of another woman may be helpful. If you share these stories with your learners, you may trigger memories of abuse. You should have a plan to help women who need an immediate safe place or someone to speak with. For safety reasons, you might want to consider using these stories in a women-only class, even if you normally teach a mixed group.

You might want to use the stories as writing prompts for a life writing session, as described in an article by Sharon Ferguson-Hood elsewhere in this kit. We hope these stories will inspire other women to share their story, to seek healing, to seek an education. Sharing is a way to dismantle the barriers.