After the first of three national workshops in which all of the women involved in the research met, I discussed with my co-researcher and executive director of the Friendship Centre, Gail Lanoie, how I had prepared for the group. My first step was to call the women together so we might discuss possible processes and content for our work. I wanted them to decide what they wanted to focus on and how they wanted to go about it.

Because I believed that the issue of abuse would be high on their list, I spent some time trying to find out where women could access counselling and other forms of help, such as short and longer term housing. I discovered that there is such a shortage of space that even when a woman is ready for help, she may have to wait for extended periods of time before she can access it.

The group made some initial decisions before we began our discussions. For example, what was said in the group stayed there; we would be supportive of each other, not critical; when someone needed to talk we would all listen without interruption; if someone became too emotional to continue we would break and continue the group at another time. The group also decided to meet once a week for a couple of hours.

The women brainstormed almost fifty possible topics. The one they chose to focus on first was physical, emotional, and sexual abuse - with a strong emphasis on sexual abuse. I asked them what they wanted to do since there were many ways we could go about discussing and learning about the topic. It happened that one of the women had made an effort to join a group that dealt with adults who had been molested as children. She could not, however, read the information given to her. When she explained her situation to the rest of the group, they decided to rewrite the information so more people would be able to read it.

We brought in a facilitator to talk to the group about clear language and plain publishing. The group then took the brochure and, through trial and error, we rewrote it. In this process of rewriting, the women not only looked at the information from an academic perspective, but also from a personal perspective. I have attached an appendix to this report that outlines the ways in which the rewriting became an academic curriculum.

On a personal level, the women discovered that many of them shared the same feelings. Or they discovered that one of them used to feel the same way, but for a variety of reasons had been able to overcome the feeling. The women offered each other guidance and counselling from a perspective that few counsellors can have. Not only does each of the women know what it is to have suffered so terribly, but each was still in the process of struggling to come to terms with it. They were truly peers. The women shared how they felt, how they still feel, and what has helped them to deal with the feelings.

After the first few weeks of group meetings, it became clear to me that every woman in the group was experiencing significant academic and personal growth. They all looked forward to "CCLOW" as the group was called. In response to their enthusiasm, we extended the group meetings to twice a week and then to every morning. During this time, CCLOW reimbursed the program for one-half day each week during which I talked about, reflected on, and wrote about what was happening in this woman-positive activity. The coordinating researcher, Betty-Ann Lloyd, came to visit the program twice and I attended three national workshops where I met with women from the other eleven programs involved.