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Revealing Grace: The Lived Experiences of America's Post-9/11 Military Caregivers

Hunter, Jennifer J.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1505240652588097

Abstract Details

2017, Ph.D., Antioch University, Leadership and Change.
This research focused on the lived experiences of fourteen military caregiving wives whose husbands were wounded, ill, or injured in a post-9/11 combat theater of war. All wives in this study had been vetted by and appointed to the Elizabeth Dole Military Caregiving Fellows Program and were either actively involved in the Fellowship or had become recent alumni of the two-year commitment at the time of this study. The purpose of this study was to provide a platform for their voices, understand their hopes, struggles, successes, and failures, and to give honor to their stories of military caregiving through the qualitative methodology of narrative inquiry. The stories as data were analyzed in two distinct ways. The first was using a plot analysis that exposed the story lines of the caregivers from the moment of their husbands’ final deployment home to the present day, ranging from three to 13 years post onset. Using eight plot line elements, the arc of the story lines revealed one continuous story that was consistent among all caregivers, yet highly nuanced and unique. Thematic analysis was conducted as the second way of looking at the data. Moving dynamically along the flow of the story line, topical themes and their subthemes deepened the understanding and sense making the caregivers expressed at each stage of their evolution, providing the thematic road map of each journey. It was within this roadmap that a holistic picture emerged of the wives’ journey through the emergent themes beginning with hope, to their own unraveling, to disillusionment with self, other, and the system, to the factors that eventually allowed them to turn toward a more empowered self, and finally, to the paradigm shift that ultimately allowed for transformative, inspired action. This dissertation is accompanied by the author’s MP4 video introduction. The electronic version of this dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu
Elizabeth Holloway, PhD (Committee Chair)
Tony Lingham, PhD (Committee Member)
Deborah Johnson Hayes, PsyD, LCSW, MPH (Committee Member)
181 p.
Families and Family Life; Mental Health; Military Studies; Psychology
military spouses; caregivers; PTSD; TBI; family members; polytrauma triad; secondary traumatic stress; veterans; narrative inquiry; lived experiences; Elizabeth Dole Foundation; Hidden Heroes; posttraumatic; wives; brain injury

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hunter, J. J. (2017). Revealing Grace: The Lived Experiences of America's Post-9/11 Military Caregivers [Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1505240652588097

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hunter, Jennifer. Revealing Grace: The Lived Experiences of America's Post-9/11 Military Caregivers . 2017. Antioch University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1505240652588097.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hunter, Jennifer. "Revealing Grace: The Lived Experiences of America's Post-9/11 Military Caregivers ." Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1505240652588097

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

antioch1505240652588097
943
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Antioch University and OhioLINK.