Community Mothers and Vicarious Resilience: An Exploration in a Colombian Community

Participants

The participants were 21 low-income community mothers, female and heterosexual identified, between the ages of 24 and 58 years working for the Wellness Community Homes program in the city of Cali for an average of 39.9 years; 14 identified as Afro descendants and 2 as Indigenous descent, and 5 identified as Mestizo. Fifteen identified as Catholic and six as Christian. They held high school degrees and resided in the communities they served and their average salary was $400 per month. In the Colombian context, the geographic location of their homes, jobs, and salary amount are indicative of a low-income population.

Procedure

The sample was purposefully selected according to intensity, chain, and politically important sampling (Patton, 2002). In this process, selection occurs with the intent of obtaining “information-rich cases that manifest the phenomenon intensely.” Participants were identified through Fundación Corficolombiana’s resilience training program madres resilientes-hijos resilientes (resilient mothers, resilient children). Potential referral sources were contacted by phone. The purpose of the study as well as its potential benefits and risks were discussed. A letter of invitation and a consent form was sent to all potential participants. A semistructured interview with an open-ended format was designed and conducted in person or over the phone by the authors. The interview questions were similar to the ones used in previous resilience studies by the authors with editorial modifications to adjust the content to this population (Acevedo & Hernandez-Wolfe, 2014; Hernandez et al., 2007). Interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes (see the appendix).

Data analysis was guided by second-generation grounded theory (Morse et al., 2009) and the Consensual Qualitative Research methodology (Hill, Thomson, & Williams, 1997) involving the researchers’ discussion and tracking of their biases and views in relation to the subject studied by using logs and field notes before and after the study was completed and after each interview; coding of transcripts for each individual interview into domains that were agreed on by consensus; auditing the development of domains; constructing core ideas for all material within each domain for each individual case; and cross-analysis developing categories to describe consistencies in the core ideas within domains across cases. The consensus process involved each researcher’s review of each other’s analysis and a back and forth discussion until agreement was reached. Questions and disagreements where marked and submitted to the independent auditor for feedback. Data triangulation consisted of case summaries developed by each researcher for each interview with participants, separate coding, and discussions to develop consensus on the coding process and the categories selected. A consensus process was built into the analysis when new categories emerged in the coding (Hill et al., 1997). Researcher triangulation included an ongoing data analysis review by an independent auditor. After each interview was transcribed, each researcher developed independently a case summary which was later reviewed by the auditor to address differences, similarities, and offer feedback to the researchers.

Solidarity (N = 21)

In this context, solidarity refers to the coping processes that occur in reference to and dependent on a social context filled with economic and safety challenges. Solidarity for these women involves to rebuilding and sustaining social relationships to heal the wounds interpersonal trauma and other traumas due to displacement and loss; to coexist with the many of religious, ethnic, and cultural differences, and to find hope for the next generation. Leidy stated as follows:

When you start to work with the community, you begin to feel how they all feel, you begin to see how similar and different we are . . . we are all poor but we have different religions, some of us are Mestizos, some Afros, some Raizales, some Indigenous . . . and some have suffered more than others; I see how they suffer and I see that I am not alone in this earth, I am too a person who needs of others to make something out of me. I became more humble and able to put myself in their shoes to help out and to ask for help because I can’t do it alone.

She added that the role of the community mother is hard and challenging because a lot is expected from her. For example, she is expected to help children who come from violent environments and integrate them in homes where there is love and physical nurturing while helping the caretakers change their ways. At the same time, she acknowledged that the community sees her as a leader and shows their appreciation in many ways. She has made it a point to introduce people and encourage them to bond. She states that her work is possible because it is done with her community.

Empathy (N = 20)

The women spoke about developing an ability to sense other people’s emotions and imagine what the children and their families might have been thinking and feeling. They spoke of the feelings they felt in response to others’ emotions. Empathy is a first step to compassionate action, which is also a part of the women’s narratives. Miriam explained as follows:

I feel the pain that they feel; when they are going through a difficult time, I put myself in their shoes and try to do my best for these children. I pay more attention to them because they need me more in that moment. I try not to let the parents feel bad about themselves because I put myself in their shoes.

Reassessment of One’s Problems (N = 20)

Responses in this domain referred to developing the ability to contrast and compare their own personal situations with that of the children and their families to gain perspective. All but one participant discussed having been affected in their ability to reassess their own personal and/or work-related issues. Diana’s statement illustrates how many of them were able to understand the relative dimension of their problems:

In the past I used to see only my problems and see them as intractable, I would wonder “why me” “poor me.” Over time I learned that my problems are a lot smaller and manageable than that of others. There are people who have more needs than I do. I have changed. I have learned to value myself, my environment, those around me.

Sandra spoke succinctly of how children have helped rethink her problems in her life:

I have to problem solve with the children all the time. I have to find ways to get them to do what they are supposed to do. In my work with them I forget of my own problems, but most importantly I use the same attitude in my own life. There has to be a way!

Affect Regulation (N = 19)

The women spoke about their ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience such as breathing, reminding themselves of their role as caregivers, taking a time out for themselves, changing activities, smoothing difficult conversations with parents with their voice and choice of words, and prayer. They coincide in stating that they learned to diffuse or moderate negative emotions as a result of their training and work with children. This in turn made them less reactive in their own personal lives. Ingrid stated as follows:

Sometimes the children first arrive showing aggression, lack of attention and it is like they are unable to see you and see how all is organized in the home for the benefit of all. Overtime I learned how to approach and talked to them. When they speak ill, I speak with sweetness and gentleness. If my words are harsh like theirs, I hurt them; when I have had conflicts with my adult children I learned to stay calm and wait to explain who things occurred so we can talk.

Changes in Interpersonal Relationships (N = 19)

Community mothers coincided in stating that after years of working with children and families in this community-based ICBF program, their interpersonal relationships changed (N = 19). They spoke of becoming more compassionate in relationships overall, better at raising their own children, and better equipped to deal with conflicts involving caretakers and community members. Celina spoke of how Maura a 4-year-old who suffers from a skin allergies in addition to being curious and active embarked her in finding out how to help her with the allergies and handle her insatiable curiosity. Celina learned to be attentive to her rashes and scratching by bathing and medicating her. She also figured out that giving her responsibilities and making her a leader was helpful in keeping her busy. Celina discussed her successes with Maura’s frustrated mother and over time the women became close friends, something Celina did not anticipate due to their differing personalities.

Milena explained that some parents “are not respectful of others and try to instigate conflicts by criticizing and arguing.” She stated that she lost her fear and now approaches them calmly and speaks with them about respecting each other values and preferences, coexisting in the community, and listening to different points of view: “There is not one way of doing things, people have different ways of doing things, if you value them, they will value you.”

Client-Inspired Hope (N = 18)

The women spoke about how hope emerged in their work as they became open to be influenced by the children’s joy, creativity, honesty, and ability to forgive and forget. Ana lost her husband when their only son was 4 years old. She felt desperate and struggled to put her life together as a single mother with little skills and no income. She became a community mother through the encouragement of a cousin who helped her see how she could take care of her son while being of service to the community. She related:

The children came into my life at a very difficult time, I was sad and stayed at home all the time unless I had to leave. However, the children filled me and overtime I had to let go of my pain to pay attention to them. When I saw a child crying because their mother left, I consoled them, I learned to give them love and nurture them. They learned to love me and learned to love them. Overtime, I fell in love with my job and I felt hopeful and alive again.

Expansion of Relational Skills (N = 17)

A total of 17 out of 21 community mothers coincided in having had to face unexpected challenges in their community homes involving children’s misbehavior (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity, lack of attention). This forced them to expand their repertoire of relational skills. They related that through experience they learned to first create a calming and soothing environment to then interact more actively with the children, provide care, and promote positive development. They had to pay attention to developing emotional connections with the children especially the most deprived. They were able to build an emotional and behavioral structure in their homes by showing acceptance, understanding, and patience while creating new expectations and appropriate consequences for misbehavior. For example, Beatriz explained that before being prepared to work as a community mother, she used to focus only on rules and understanding. Overtime, she learned from the children about how to communicate with them by using the everyday language of their homes and communities, changing her body posture, tone of voice, and eliminating punitive interventions. Instead, she learned to use reinforcement, reframing, activities, and music to help them both relax and center their attention. These mothers also developed skills to reach out to caretakers and developed relationships that affected the children’s home environments. While not always successful, they had to expand their relational skills to engage reluctant parents and invite those who also needed help in parenting at home. Ingrid stated as follows:

A child needs love to overcome these conditions. . . . I became a mediator, a guidance, a person who gives them love to heal their wounds. I became a model to them and I saw them changing. They become good people in spite of their problems, and I became a better person too.

Perspective Taking (N = 14)

Participants discussed how the challenges they experience in their lives and later in their work fostered a desire to learn more about how to change the way they raised their own children and help the families and children in the community. In a rudimentary but clear fashion, all the women who identified having suffered child abuse in addition to the impact of severe poverty, stated that they had a desire to break the chain of abuse, began taking steps prior to becoming a community mother, and experienced a profound change with the ICBF and Corficolombiana Foundation trainings and the actual hands on experience with children. They made changes in their relationship with the children and their caretakers involving use of strengths-based perspective while keeping in mind the challenges that these families have. Their perspective taking specifically refers to understanding how their own issues came into place with the children and their families, figuring out where children were coming from and addressing challenges at hand. Nubia explained her process as follows:

I am thankful to God because my desire to give my children something different from what I got has been fulfilled. I suffered from hunger, humiliation; sometimes we did not have a roof on our heads; I am grateful for how much I have learned because this has allowed me break the chain, because I was raised with a club, my mother was fearless . . . so my first daughters experienced the same thing . . . but after I learned how to raise my children differently I stopped it and now I have stability and security to be a good mother to them.

As community mothers described their trajectories, they identified learning to analyze situations from multiple views, relying on strengths rather than deficiencies, tolerating negative affect longer, and becoming more pragmatic. These mothers described moving from a place of lack knowledge and skills with stereotyped ideas about children to exploring new ways of thinking about child development and relationship building relative to their role in the lives of these children/families. The women’s change in perspective occurred not only relative to their work but also their own attitude toward life. Carmen explained as follows:

I have become a lot more grateful for who I am and what I have, I enjoy more every day and I am less prone to be running around doing something. When I lived fast I learned less and I think that many problems came my way just because I would not stop to figure things out.

She also offered a view about coping with her environment: “I learned to live in this neighborhood, this is a dangerous place but I have learned to coexist with my neighbors; I learned to keep safe and teach my son how to do so.”

Methodological Issues and Limitations

We were aware that our findings are shaped by selection of the participants and the choice of interview questions. Participants were all committed women who had chosen to participate in ICBF programs with economically deprived children and families, and from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. As mentioned before, questions were adapted from a previous study on vicarious resilience with teachers in Cali, Colombia (Acevedo & Hernandez-Wolfe, 2014). We took into consideration the level of community mother’s low level of literacy, and cultural meanings embedded into the questions. The authors attempted to account for our own biases by using triangulation techniques. It is still possible that our expectations influenced the findings and that other dimensions of the phenomenon remain undefined. In addition, generalizability is limited. Future research can further explore the components of the vicarious resilience phenomenon, the dynamic process through which it affects and empowers these community leaders working with underserved populations, and what specific practices could help professionals benefit from vicarious resilience processes.

Finally, it seems that the development of community settings involving attunement and reciprocity fosters a mutual history of recurrent interactions in which the adults and children involved may develop congruency and mutual impact for the benefit of all.

Implications for Practice

Edelkott, Engstrom, Hernandez-Wolfe, and Gangsei (2016) posited that the concept of vicarious resilience must be explored in more depth outside the field of torture treatment where it was initially conceived. This research builds on the work of Acevedo and Hernandez-Wolfe (2014) within the Colombian social context and specifically with community mothers.

We believe that is especially important to strengthen communities who have historically faced a variety of adversities in order to promote empowerment and self-determination. A focus on community mothers, educators, and other leaders’ own experiences of overcoming adversity, and the positive impact that children and adolescents may have as a result of overcoming adversity, may be covert, subjugated stories that have the potential to significantly influence the use of self as a lens that balances the painful and difficult aspects of work in communities who have suffered trauma with those that bring hope and promote growth. This is especially important in the context of hope that the Colombian peace process has generated.

Further efforts at integrating and refining the themes that emerged in this study may involve addressing the parallels between the helpers’ life trajectories and their desire to help others and children and adolescents whose life trajectories involve both traumatic experiences and active and sustained efforts to help others.

Those who conduct training using as a frame the concept of vicarious resilience must be careful to avoid minimizing the impact of working with complex traumatic stress and continued exposure to trauma. This study suggests that it is possible to undergo positive and negative psychological processes as a result of exposure to trauma in those whom we work. Helpers can be potentially transformed by their clients’ trauma and resilience in ways that are positive as well as not pain-free.

In the Colombian context, communities and relationships are at the heart of the social fabric, and despite the presence of overlapping forms of adversity, what sustains social coherence and cohesion is a network of social valuing mechanisms by which citizens relate to each other (Hernandez, 2002). A key aspect of community resilience is the construction of collective meaning, coherence, and purpose to create a foundation for collective mobilization, especially in communities where “we” takes precedence over “I.” Oppressed communities have historically developed resilience from the tests that social, political, and natural disasters have brought to them, as is the case of Ferguson’s (1994) work with African American youth.

Implications for Research

Future research should continue to privilege local knowledge about aspects of vicarious resilience that may be play a key role for specific communities (Ungar, 2008), and that may signal the need for new areas of intervention. For example, Acevedo and Hernandez-Wolfe (2014) found that Colombian educators were aware of the need to attend to the ways in which race, class, gender, and sexual orientation played a role in a child’s coping with adversity. This was not a theme present with the community mothers that participated in this study. Exploring the need or lack of thereof with the latter population will provide insight in to how they construct with each other what community means to them and who belongs to it. Ungar (2008) posits that evaluating the influence of specific aspects of resilience on health outcomes within context is essential to generate the greatest impact. In this case, it is necessary to expand and refine the themes relevant to community mothers: solidarity, empathy, reassessment of one’s problems, affect regulation, client inspired hope, expansion of relational skills, changes in interpersonal relationships, and perspective taking.