The Essence of Hope in Domestic Violence Support Work: A Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract

This study explored the lived experience of hope for domestic violence support workers. A hermeneutic-phenomenological approach was used to collect and analyze the experiences of six professional women, aged 37 through 69. Four themes, each with subthemes, emerged from the findings: Hope is visceral reveals the phenomenology of hope as experienced through bodily sensations, reactions, and emotions. Hope is contextual describes how experiences of hope are enhanced by personal perspectives and social environments. Hope is mutual reveals how interactions with other people inspire hope. Hope is a journey illustrates how hope evolves over the years to reveal new understandings of what it means to live hopefully. The article discusses implications for counseling, counselor education, and service provider organizations and presents suggestions for future research.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.