No Mud, No Lotus Flower: the Process of Posttraumatic Growth

Abstract

Although past posttraumatic growth has made significant strides in improving our understanding of the factors associated with posttraumatic growth in the past two decades, less effort has been made to understand the process of posttraumatic growth. Specifically, how the process of posttraumatic growth unfolds overtime and what facilitates and inhibits this process remain a puzzle. To address this oversight in the literature, we investigated the process in which religious mothers (the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Days Saints—LDS) reach the state of posttraumatic growth from the onset of trauma—discovering that their child is an LGBTQ individual, which means a potential eternal separation with their own child according to their religion’s teachings. Narrative interviews of 45 mothers with strong LDS backgrounds were collected following the tenets of narrative inquiry. The analysis of these narratives provides a process theory of posttraumatic growth, which highlights what facilitated or inhibited the process of posttraumatic growth for these mothers. By providing a process theory of posttraumatic growth strongly rooted in empirical data as well as the rich descriptions of this understudied phenomenon, our study expands the current scope of posttraumatic growth literature.