Recipes for life:

A collective narrative methodology for responding to gender violence

by Meizi Tan

Meizi Tan is a senior social worker with MWS-Daybreak Family

Service Centre, Singapore, which is a community-based social service
agency that provides casework and counselling services to individuals
and families who require assistance. Her casework and counselling
experience and interests cover issues such as financial hardship,
grief and loss, trauma, mental health, and family violence. She can be
contacted at: meizi.tan@g.mail.com

Abstract
This paper explores the use of collective narrative methodology in a two-day group
retreat organised for women who had experienced gender violence in their intimate
relationships. The women developed ‘recipes for life’ by using the skills and knowledge
they had developed through responding to gender violence. Outsider-witness practices
were used to acknowledge the women’s alternative stories of resilience and resistance
to gender violence. Narrative practices of collective documentation, externalising the
problem, and deconstructing social discourses that support gender violence, were
incorporated through the creative use of food metaphors. This supported the women in
breaking their silence and reduced the sense of isolation, shame and disempowerment
that often surrounds gender violence.

Key words: collective narrative practice, gender violence, externalising,

deconstructing social discourses, collective documentation, outsider witness

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Gender violence: Responding to
its effects on women
As a social worker in a community-based social service
agency, a significant number of the female clients that
I consult with have experienced or are currently experiencing
gender violence in their intimate relationships. These women’s
experiences of recurrent trauma, such as male dominance
and control, abuse and the minimisation of women’s rights,
leads to ‘a very significant shrinking’ of the territory of identity
(White, 2006, p. 26). This makes it difficult for these women
to ‘give any account of what they give value to in life and
know how to proceed in life’ (2006, p. 26). On top of these
effects of gender violence trauma, discourses surrounding
victimhood further promote ‘long-term negative identity
conclusions’ (Yuen, 2007, p. 4) as women internalise
shame and self-blame. Alternative stories of these women’s
resilience, skills, values, survival and active responses to
violence become further subjugated, and powerlessness,
passivity and helplessness become the ‘dominant story’:
‘their sense of agency is erased’ (Yuen, 2007, p. 4).
In responding to the effects of trauma and dominant
problem stories, White (2006) emphasised restoring a
‘preferred sense of identity’ (p. 27) by facilitating double-story
development. This includes eliciting subjugated alternative
stories of resisting the problem and ‘acknowledging and richly
describing what people give value to in life’ (p. 27). These
practices are based on the belief that ‘no-one is a passive
recipient of trauma’ (p. 28).
When I started eliciting alternative stories of women’s
responses to gender violence and their skills, values and
commitment to survival through hardship, many of the women
spoke of their love for their children as their motivation and
source of sustenance in difficult moments. Their actions
to protect their children from harm and ensure that their
children’s basic needs were adequately met contributed
to preferred identities as caring and committed mothers.
As I further consulted women about what love and
commitment to caring for their children and themselves
look like, many of them spoke about food and cooking.
Food is a key feature in Singaporean culture, its significance
is shared across the four main racial groups in Singapore.
Given the cultural diversity in Singapore, we often see
cross-cultural fusions in Singaporean food. This suggested
new meanings and identity associations. Recipes were a
representative folk culture metaphor that the participants
could closely relate to.
The idea for a group work program stemmed from feedback
from one of my clients. After reading others’ second-story
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THERAPY AND COMMUNITY WORK | 2017 | No.2
testimonies and sharing her own, my client suggested having
a support group where women could get to know others who
had been through similar experiences.
Recipes for Life and some adaptations
I used Natale Rudland Wood’s (2012) ‘recipes for life’ as
the guiding framework in my group work with these women,
and made some local adaptations to make it more applicable
to Singapore and the group. The creation of recipes for food
and for surviving hardship was used to facilitate second-story
development, and to help restore the women’s preferred
sense of identity and personal agency by honouring
their skills, knowledge and values for responding to
gender violence.
The metaphor of ‘uninvited ingredients’ was introduced to
represent and externalise social discourses that support
gender violence and victimhood and to deconstruct them.
Two different types of outsider witnesses were recruited: an
‘introduced audience’ and a ‘known audience’ (Lobovits &
Freeman, 1995). These audiences provided validation and
thickening of the women’s alternative stories of resilience
and resistance to gender violence. The participants formed
the ‘introduced’ audience. They provided outsider-witness
responses to each other’s recipes. Thereafter, the women’s
children were invited as a ‘known audience’ to the women’s
recipes. Lastly, a signature Singaporean food dish, rojak, was
incorporated as a form of definitional ceremony and collective
documentation of the women’s skills and knowledges.
The group consisted of four women, aged from 32 to 56
years. They had been receiving casework and counselling
services from the family service centre for at least six months
when they were invited by their caseworkers to participate.
Participants were only able to participate after caseworkers
had established that the women’s safety would not be
compromised by attending the two-day, one-night retreat.
The four women had diverse backgrounds in terms of the
primary language spoken, educational level, and current
socioeconomic level. They had all experienced or were
currently experiencing violence from their male partners
or adult sons.
Part one: Food and memories –
exploring positive associations
The participants were first invited to talk about their favourite
food and the memories and special meanings that were
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associated with it. The questions used to facilitate the
discussion were from Wood’s (2012) recipes for life process:
• What is your favourite food?
• What do you like about this food?
• Who cooks it?
• What is the story behind this food?
• Is there any specific person, time, place, event, family
or cultural history or meaning that is associated with this
food?
Two participants shared how their favourite food was
associated with their family history and memories of
significant persons in their family. One participant shared
how her favourite dish, Hainanese chicken rice, reminds
her of her father’s commitment to and care for her and her
siblings as her father used to buy Hainanese chicken rice for
them for breakfast every Sunday. Another participant spoke
about how her favourite food, biryani, is usually served in
wedding banquets back in her hometown in Sri Lanka and
the special meaning of community bonding and togetherness
that is represented by this food. The participants spoke about
how recipes for these foods have been passed down from
one generation to another as a family legacy, and said they
would like to continue the family tradition. These valuable
stories created meaningful and rich linkages with family and
cultural traditions and further supported the participants in
easing into the next section on in which the participants’
skills, knowledges, values and beliefs were ‘interwoven with
the stories of others’ (Morgan, 2000, p. 15) as they started to
trace their source or history.
Part two: Recipes for our own lives
I started this section by sharing a ‘recipe for getting
through hard times’ by Anita Yap, Lanny Santoso and
Lena Low from Singapore (in Wood, 2012) to facilitate a
better understanding of the use of recipes as a metaphor.
Participants were then invited to create their own recipes
for life in the context of responding to gender violence and
surviving hardship. Wood’s elements for recipes for life
are ingredients, sourcing, methods, tips and serving.
We introduced a new element, ‘uninvited ingredients’, which
was introduced after the participants discussed the methods
used in preparing their dish.
Ingredients
Participants were asked about the key ingredients that
supported them in getting through difficult times. These
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included their skills, beliefs, hopes and dreams, and what
they turned to (Wood, 2012) to get through the domestic
violence experience. The ingredients listed by the participants
included:
• bravery
• support from friends and family
• patience
• positivity
• hopes and dreams for their children.
One participant shared about the key ingredient, ‘hopes and
dreams as a mother to the children’, which had supported her
in getting herself and her children out of a domestic violence
situation. She spoke about her hope that her children would
grow up in a safe and secure environment, and how this
fuelled her determination and bravery to end an abusive
relationship and enter a new living environment. Another
participant described the support and encouragement she had
received from her friends and family, which had kept feelings
of self-doubt and isolation away and motivated her to pursue
her hopes and dreams.
The participants were asked about what made these skills,
values, beliefs and hopes special. This helped them to
connect with special memories and meanings that these
ingredients represent. The group work facilitators employed
double listening (White, 2007) as the participants’ shared
stories and actions that they had taken, and more absent
but implicit (White, 2000) ingredients were elicited, including
determination.
Sourcing
The participants were asked to trace the history of the
ingredients they had listed. This was an invitation to make rich
linkages with family and cultural traditions. As White (2007)
explains, richly tracing the histories or storylines of people’s
skills, knowledges, hopes and dreams can contribute to a
renewed sense of identity. This is based on the idea of identity
as ‘an association of life’ (White, 2007, p. 129). The following
questions were used to guide the participants:
• Where did your ingredients come from?
• W
 hat is the history of these skills, values, beliefs,
knowledges, hopes and dreams? This could include
important people, cultural history or identity, family
history, spiritual beliefs, or folk culture.
• H
 as someone shared the ingredients with you? Do you
share them with others? (Wood, 2012).
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Most of the participants traced the history of their skills to their
parents and other family members, including those who had
passed on. One participant shared a story of how she learnt
the value of love and care from her grandmother and mother,
including specific times when they had shown love and care
towards her. The facilitator engaged in a re-membering
conversation with her, using the following questions:
• W
 hy do you think your grandmother taught you the
value of love and care?
• W
 hat do you think your grandmother noticed or
appreciated in you to share this value of love and care
with you?
• H
 ow do you think you have contributed to your
grandmother’s life?
• B
 y spending quality time with your grandmother,
showing your love towards her by hugging her and
being a ‘respectful girl who listens to your grandmother’,
how do you think all that contributed to how your
grandmother saw herself as a person?
As the participant purposively revisited the history of her
relationship with her grandmother (see White, 2007), she
was able to see herself in a new position as someone who
has contributed to her grandmother’s life and identity as a
loving and caring person. This provided an opportunity for
her to reconstruct her identity (White, 2007) in relation to
significant members in her ‘club of life’ and to further thicken
her alternative story.
Methods
The participants were asked to talk about how they would use
and bring out the best in their ingredients. They were invited
to share how they had used these ingredients to manage the
difficult situations they had faced. The identification of these
unique outcomes provided an entry point to re-authoring
conversations that helped to thicken the alternative stories
that were beginning to emerge. Guided by the re-authoring
conversations map (White, 2007, p. 78), participants were
asked the following questions:
• A
 s you shared with me about this [particular action] that
you have taken when [particular incident] happened,
what does that say about what is important to you or
what you value?
• A
 re there any other times when this [particular value]
has made a difference in your life?
• W
 hat steps did you take at that time to prepare yourself
for that? How did you do that? What sort of skills does
it involve?
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• Is there a name you would like to give to this [particular
action or skill]?
• A
 s you think about the steps that you have taken, what
does that say about you as a person?
• W
 hy is [particular value, skill, hope or commitment]
important to you?
• If you were to carry [particular value, skill, hope or
commitment] with you into the future, what steps would
you be taking?
Through these questions, events were mapped through
time according to a theme or plot (White, 2007), supporting
the processes of meaning-making and preferred identity
development.
Uninvited ingredients
According to White (2007), ‘externalizing conversations can
provide an antidote to internal understandings by objectifying
the problem’ (p. 9). This allows people to feel safe and free
from blame when talking about the problem, as it has been
separated from their identity. White and Epston (1990) further
spoke about how ‘as persons become separated from their
stories, they are able to experience a sense of personal
agency’ (p. 16) in working towards their hopes and dreams.
Many women who have experienced gender violence in
their intimate relationships experience an internalised sense
of blame that appears to be a product of social discourses.
White (2007) argued that ‘the habit of thought that constructs
... internal understandings of people’s lives is significantly a
cultural phenomenon’ (p. 25). When the participants were
asked to list common cultural beliefs about women’s roles
and family violence, many of them spoke about how society
has certain expectations of women as ‘good wives’ and ‘good
mothers’ who should spend their time at home taking care
of children and attending to household needs. When women
‘fail’ to meet these expectations and responsibilities, they are
negatively judged by others as ‘lousy mothers’ or ‘bad wives’.
Perceptions of ‘womanhood’ and ‘motherhood’ appear to be
fused together. Some of the participants talked about the
control that men exert over women, and how women are often
expected to submit to men in their culture. Failure to submit to
their male partners would result in the use of gender violence
and feelings of fear, self-blame, powerlessness, and shame.
One participant spoke about how women are not given equal
rights as compared to men and are often restricted in their
freedom of choice.
Extending the recipe metaphor, I suggested ‘uninvited
ingredients’, such as bacteria, as a way to externalise and
personify the problem, and help participants see the problem
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as separate from their identity and their recipe for life.
Bacteria cannot be seen with our naked eyes and often enter
our food without our conscious awareness. Social discourses
similarly enter and influence our perceptions of our lives and
identity without our conscious awareness. By externalising
social discourses that support gender violence as food
bacteria or uninvited ingredients in our recipes, participants
were able to see and safely discuss the effects of harmful
social discourses on their skills, values, hopes and identities.
With reference to Greenwell’s (2016) ‘troublemaker cards’
and McPhie & Chaffey’s (1999) work with women survivors of
sexual assault, we listed five social discourses that had the
greatest influence on the participants’ lives:
• ‘own-her-ship’
• insecurity or jealousy
• defensiveness
• victimhood
• secrecy
• motherhood and womanhood.
We then gathered the participants into pairs to work with
facilitators to deconstruct a specific social discourse
or uninvited ingredient. One group chose to work on
defensiveness and the other worked on ‘own-her-ship’. With
reference to White’s (2007) statement of position map 1, the
following questions were asked:
• When does [name of uninvited ingredient] appear?
• W
 here have you seen or heard it? or, How did you get
this idea?
• W
 hat might [name of uninvited ingredient] say to you or
advise you to do?
• W
 hat sort of effects does [name of uninvited ingredient]
have on how you see yourself as a person?
• W
 hat sort of effects does [name of uninvited ingredient]
have on your recipe/dish?
• W
 hat does [name of uninvited ingredient] get in the way
of, for example in terms of what you hope for?
• W
 ho benefits when [name of uninvited ingredient]
pushes you around?
• W
 ho stands to gain from [name of uninvited
ingredient]’s influence?
• A
 re you happy with [name of uninvited ingredient]’s
plans? Why?
• W
 hat might you be doing if you resisted [name of
uninvited ingredient]’s advice?
• W
 hat does resisting [name of uninvited ingredient]’s
advice say about what is important to you?
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• W
 hat does resisting [name of uninvited ingredient]’s
advice say about you as a person?
Participants wrote their responses to these questions on large
pieces of paper and presented their points to the large group.
Participants identified their male partners, society, friends
and relatives as the sources of these uninvited ingredients.
The selected uninvited ingredients affected the lives of
participants, and their recipes and self-identities, by evoking:
• a sense of helplessness
• a sense of isolation and being alone
• a feeling of being unable to achieve hopes and dreams
• a sense of powerlessness
• a feeling of blame
• lowered self-confidence
• increased self-doubt.
The participants were invited to take a position on whether
they liked the uninvited ingredients’ plans for their lives. All
the participants were firm in saying ‘No’, and they shared their
plans to resist the uninvited ingredients’ influence on their
lives. Planned acts of resistance included:
• building a community of support
• seeking help
• s haring experiences and knowledge with other women
who are in similar situations
• ‘women-ship’
• sharing words of encouragement
• ensuring the safety and protection of self and children
• looking forward and being hopeful
• persevering with work towards hopes and dreams.
The participants recognised that approaching the family
service centre and attending the recipes for life group were
efforts to build a community of support. One participant
highlighted that having support from the other women built
a sense of togetherness that provided courage and strength
for managing with the challenges in their lives, including
standing up against the uninvited ingredients’ influence and
effects on their lives. By sharing their experiences, knowledge
and words of encouragement with other women who had
experienced similar situations, the participants hoped that
they could help someone else get out of a difficult situation
and perhaps even save someone’s life. Seeing themselves
as capable of helping someone else gave them hope for
their own lives.
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One participant described her preferred identity in direct
response to ‘own-her-ship’. She disagreed with the idea
of women as men’s property, which results in women Chef Karen’s
being disempowered. She stated her belief in women’s
capacity to achieve what they hope for in life and shared her Recipe For A Good Life
determination to work towards her preferred identity. She
had already taken steps in this direction, including raising
Ingredients
two young children on her own without seeking maintenance
support from her ex-husband. Such acts of resistance • Support from my father and friends – 25 kg
and preferred identity development illustrate double-story • Hope for my children – 100 kg
development that focuses on women’s responses to gender • Dream to be a good mother – 100 kg
violence and moves away from a single dominant story of the • Desire to learn – 100 kg
effects of gender violence and victimhood.
• Smiles – 100 cups
• Strength and independence – 100 kg
• Care and protection – 25 kg

Tips • Bravery – 100 cups

• Prayer from God – 1 pinch
Wood (2012) wrote about how food mistakes can be turned
into opportunities for new learnings and discoveries. These
Sourcing
discoveries can be included as ‘tips’ in participants’ recipes.
We used the concept of uninvited ingredients such as bacteria • My family and friends
resulting in ‘mistakes’ of fermentation, leading to the creation • Counsellor
of new foods such as cheese and yoghurt. With this as an • Sons
illustration, participants were invited to think about mishaps in • Own learning experience
their lives that had generated positive learning outcomes.
• My colleagues

One participant had learnt to be more independent and

develop confidence and trust in her own capacity to support Method
herself and her children as she left the abusive relationship. Pour in 5 cups of Hope. Add a pinch of Prayer from
Another participant shared about not dwelling on the effects of God to reduce burning. Add another pinch of Sup-
violence by looking forward to her future hopes and dreams. port from father and friends. Mix 3 cups of Smiles
Two other participants shared about learning not to give up for my two sons. Add Strength and Independence.
and to believe in their own strength even if they felt defeated Add 3 cups of Dream to be a good mother. Add
after a mishap. They also shared that they had learnt this another half cup of Smiles and 2 cups of Bravery.
spirit of not giving up from their family. All the participants Mix and stir all together.
shared tips about learning to make friends, connect with
others and build a community of support to reduce the sense Tips
of isolation and loneliness that they often experienced in Tell myself that I can make it
domestic violence situations. Give and help others
Make friends
Tell myself that I am a strong mother
Serving who loves my children

The participants were asked to think of a name for their recipe Serving
for life and with whom they would like to share it. All the My children
participants said they would like to share their recipes with My parents, brother and sister
their children. Some also wished to share their recipes with
People who have been through similar situations
their friends and other family members, including siblings and
parents. One participant wanted to share her recipe with other
women who had been through similar situations.

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Part 3: Presenting and re-presenting
the recipes
Outsider witnessing: Participants
and group work facilitators as an
introduced audience
After the participants completed their own recipes for life,
they took turns presenting their recipes to the group. They
were heard by an outsider-witness group consisting of a
reflecting team (Morgan, 2000), made up of social workers
who were the group work facilitators, and the other group
work participants. All the members of this outsider-witness
group were unknown to the presenters prior to the group
work. They constituted an introduced audience (Lobovits &
Freeman, 1993).
The participants were first briefed on the rules of listening
and responding to one another’s stories. They were told to
respond personally, by speaking about why something caught
their attention and the impact on their lives, and not to make
any personal judgements or give advice or opinions (White,
2007). One facilitator interviewed the rest of the group using
questions guided by the four categories of enquiry in outsider-
witness practice (White, 2007, pp. 190‒191):
1. Expression: What caught your attention as you listen to
[person’s name] sharing?
2. Image: What image or picture came to your mind? What
does this tell you about this person’s values, beliefs,
hopes or commitments?
3. Personal resonance: What is it about your own life that
accounts for why this sharing caught your attention?
4. Transport: What difference has this made for your life?
What will you do differently in your own life as a result of
hearing [person’s name] sharing?
When the outsider witnesses were invited to share what
stood out to them, different things resonated with each. The
diversity of responses among the eight outsider witnesses
provided a variety of acknowledgements of the presenter’s
alternative story. When a significant number of other group
members resonated with a response, this provided a richer
and ‘louder’ voice of acknowledgement and validation of the
presenter’s skills, knowledge, values, or commitments.
The second category of enquiry, eliciting images, seemed to
leave a lasting impression on the women. A range of images
that reflected differences in culture, religion and age were
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THERAPY AND COMMUNITY WORK | 2017 | No.2
evoked. During the process of re-telling the re-telling (White,
2007), the presenters were interviewed about what they
had heard from the re-telling and what stood out to them the
most. Most presenters commented on the images that were
evoked and where in their lives these images took them to.
One participant shared the image of Wonder Woman, which
reminded her of independence, confidence, strength, and
the great capacity of women to overcome challenges in life.
This image further inspired her to take the next step towards
getting her own place to stay and having faith that she would
be able to overcome potential challenges independently
without depending on her mother for help. Another participant
shared about the image of the Japanese cartoon character
Doraemon, which stayed with her because it reminded her
of drawing on her own resourcefulness and creativity when
facing challenges in life. She reflected on her own strengths
and how they could be used in her life.
When the outsider-witness group members were invited
to consider the last category of enquiry, on transport, most
members in the group talked about how the sharing reminded
them about their commitments and what they would like to
continue doing in their lives, rather than what they would do
differently. This got me thinking about rephrasing the question
on transport to further scaffold the conversation with the
participants:
• W
 hen you mentioned that Selene’s sharing on
Women-ship and independence caught your attention,
how does that encourage you to do something different
in your own life?
• H
 ow do you see yourself using the ideas of Women-
ship and independence in your own life? What would
you want to do instead?
The responses from this relatively large outsider-witness
group enabled the participants to experience a sense of
katharsis (White, 2007, pp. 194‒195. They were able to
gain a new perspective on their life and identity, and to
identify knowledge and skills that they were previously
hardly aware of.
As the participants were interviewed about how the outsider-
witness responses had made a difference to their lives, there
were some pleasant surprises and new discoveries about
their skills, knowledges, values and beliefs, which had been
elicited and acknowledged by others for the first time. As
White (2007, p. 183) wrote, ‘it is the audience response to the
stories told and performed in these forums that is verifying of
these stories’. Preferred identities are authenticated by ‘the
audience’s acknowledgement of the identity claims expressed
in these stories’ (p. 183).
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Rojak of life: A form of definitional
ceremony and collective docu mentation
Rojak is a traditional fruit and vegetable salad, and one
of the signature Singaporean dishes. Rojak means
‘mixture’ in Malay (Tan, 2014). More significantly, rojak
is also a colloquial term used to describe our multicultural
society and the mixed languages that form a unique
Singlish language that represents a sense of unity in
diversity or communitas (Turner, 1969/2008). The different
recipes for rojak also served a metaphor for our lives, in
which we decide on the specific ingredients that we prefer
to use, according to our own preferred taste or ways of
living and sense of identity.
The participants were invited to select the most significant
or representative ingredient from their own recipe for life
to present and contribute to a collective document: ‘A rojak
of life’. Each selected one actual rojak ingredient to represent
their significant recipe for life ingredient. They prepared the
food ingredient and shared a story with the rest of the group.
The following questions were used to guide the participants
in sharing their story. These questions were based on David
Denborough’s (2008) article, ‘Collective documents as a
response to collective trauma’:
• W
 hat is the name of the special skill, knowledge or
value that sustains you or your family through the
difficult times (domestic violence)?
• W
 hat is the story of this skill, knowledge or value?
Share a story about a time when this made a difference
to you or to others.
• W
 hat is the history of this skill, knowledge or value?
How did you learn this? Who did you learn it from?
• Is this skill or value linked in some ways to family or
cultural traditions? Are there proverbs, sayings, stories,
images from your family, community and/or culture with
which these skills and knowledges are linked?
Finally, the participants took part in a ceremony where they
put in and mixed all the rojak ingredients together to form a
rojak dish, which the participants and their children feasted
on. The skills, stories, history and collective traditions
(Denborough, 2008) that were represented in the rojak
ingredients were then recorded to form a collective recipe
(see Appendix I).
With this collective document, we aimed to address the
effects of both trauma and isolation (Denborough, 2008),
which are often experienced in the context of gender violence.
The process helped participants to see gender violence as
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a social issue that requires social action, and to move away
from internal understandings and self-blame. This recipe will
be displayed at our centre and perhaps shared with other
social service agencies in Singapore. It serves as a form
of public education and social action, and outsider-witness
responses will also be invited to further thicken these stories
of resistance and resilience.
Master Chef: An outsider-witness
practice with children as a known
audience
The children of the participants were invited to be a known
audience (Lobovits & Freeman, 1995) to their mothers’
‘cooking’ and preparation of their recipes for life. The women
selected craft materials to represent their various ingredients
and symbolise their skills, knowledges, values and hopes.
Cooking utensils were set up and the women dressed up in
chef outfits with aprons and chef’s hats to fit the theme of the
Master Chef cooking show.
The main group work facilitator doubled as the cooking show
host and introduced all the participants as master chefs of
their unique recipes for life. While the participants prepared
their dishes, the host went around interviewing the chefs
about their unique recipes, ingredients, methods of cooking,
and with whom they would like to share their recipe. As
the children watched, they started cheering their mothers:
‘Go, go, Mummy!’ It was a heart-warming scene. When the
participants were interviewed after the cooking show about
how they felt about the experience and the effect of their
children’s responses, all of them said that they felt touched,
encouraged and motivated to work towards their hopes and
dreams.
When the children were interviewed by the host as outsider
witnesses to their mothers’ recipes for life, the children mostly
reflected that they liked their mother’s recipe simply because
it was prepared by their mummy. The following simplified
questions were used to facilitate the children’s outsider-
witness responses:
1. Expression: What do you like about your mummy’s
recipe?
2. Image: Why do you like this ingredient/recipe? Did any
picture come to your mind?
3. Personal resonance: How do you use this ingredient [for
example Hope] in your life, for example when you face a
difficulty? Is there any story that you want to share about
this ingredient?
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4. Transport: How do you want to use this ingredient in
the future?
The women handed their completed recipes for life document
to their children as a representation of passing on their skills,
values and knowledges to their children as a form of legacy
and sharing. This helped the women to further experience a
sense of contribution to others’ lives.
Each certificate recorded specific acts of resistance against
the influence of uninvited ingredients. The certificates not only
served as another form of definitional ceremony, in which the
women’s preferred identities were elaborately acknowledged
and honoured; they also served as a form of therapeutic
documentation. According to David Epston (as cited in White,
1995, p. 200), ‘a good therapeutic document is worth
4.5 sessions of good therapy’.
Considerations for further group work
This group work program was limited by the lack of cultural
diversity and ethnic minority representation among the
group work facilitators, as all the staff at my agency are
Chinese. Hence, certain expressions and experiences of the
participants may not have been adequately represented or
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THERAPY AND COMMUNITY WORK | 2017 | No.2
Certificate of special culinary arts
in surviving difficult times
Special certificates that documented each woman’s
skills, values, beliefs, knowledges, hopes, dreams and
commitments were given to the participants at the end
of the group work.
translated, especially in the case of participants from minority
groups who did not have English as their primary spoken
language. In subsequent runs, I will explore collaborating
with other agencies to engage their staff or volunteers from
minority groups to ensure greater cultural sensitivity.
During the Master Chef segment, the outsider-witnessing
questions need to be shortened and simplified significantly.
The children did not seem to understand the last two
questions on personal resonance and transport. Perhaps
the questions could to be simplified even further:
• Personal resonance: What do you think this [specific
ingredient, e.g. Hope] looks like? How has it appeared
in your life? What did it say to you? What did you do
with it?
• Transport: What do you think you will do with Hope
in the future? How will you use it?
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Due to the lack of funds and difficulty in securing a Halal-
certified kitchen venue and cooking utensils in time, we had to
change our initial plan to have the participants each prepare
an actual dish and share a communal feast. In Asian cultures,
be they Chinese, Malay or Indian, communal eating is a key
feature, as numerous conversations are exchanged and it
promotes community bonding. In subsequent programs, it
would be preferable to have a larger group of participants
and have them each cook a dish for communal eating and
sharing. This would further add to the cultural resonances in
the Singapore context.
Responding to gender violence also requires that men who
have enacted violence cease to do so. Most of the time, men
are involuntarily referred by the courts under the Mandatory
Counselling Programme when violence has been enacted
and their partners have made a Personal Protection Order.
Although various social service agencies in Singapore
try to engage these men in individual counselling, few
agencies have developed group work practices with the
men who are less forthcoming. There is still ample room for
the development of group work practices with men. More
community outreach and publicity projects could also be
developed to raise community awareness and responsibility in
breaking the silence and ceasing violence.
Applying narrative principles to group work with women
who had experienced gender violence supported the
overall objective of achieving self-empowerment by bringing
forth the women’s insider knowledge and resources while
decentring facilitators’ ‘expert’ knowledge (White, 1997).
References
Denborough, D. (2008). Collective narrative practice: Responding
to individuals, groups, and communities who have experienced
trauma. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Greenwell, R. (2016, June 24). ‘Troublemaker Cards’: Externalising
and responsibility in men’s domestic violence groups [Video
file]. Retrieved from dulwichcentre.com.au/troublemakers-
cards-externalising-and-responsibility-in-mens-domestic-
violence-groups-by-ryan-greenwell/
Lobovits, D., Maisel, R., & Freeman, J. (1995). Public practices:
An ethic of circulation. In S. Friedman (Ed.), The reflecting
team in action: Collaborative practice in family therapy
(pp. 223‒256). New York, NY: Guilford.
McPhie, L., & Chaffey, C. (1999). The journey of a lifetime: Group
work with young women who have experienced sexual assault.
In Dulwich Centre Publications (Ed.), Extending narrative
therapy: A collection of practice-based papers (pp. 31–60).
Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? An easy-to-read
introduction. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THERAPY AND COMMUNITY WORK | 2017 | No.2
Collective narrative practice allowed participants to better
recognise and respond to gender violence collectively as a
social issue (Denborough, 2008). This furthered a sense of
solidarity, reduced any sense of isolation or self-blame, and
assisted in moving away from internal state understandings
(White, 2004). Bringing women together in a group setting
allowed them to hear more varied outsider-witness responses
generated through group interactions. This enriched
alternative story development. Enabling participants to make
a contribution to the lives of others (Denborough, 2008) by
providing outsider-witness responses increased their sense of
personal agency and empowerment.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the group work participants and
other MWS-Tampines Family Service Centre clients who
contributed to this project, especially the collective document
‘Rojak of life’. I would like to thank Natale Rudland Wood
and Ryan Greenwell for sharing their inspiring work with
me. Thanks to my co-workers at MWS-Tampines Family
Service Centre for co-facilitating this group work. I would
also like to thank the following people who have given me
key ideas and feedback: David Denborough, Cheryl White,
Manja Visschedijk, Shantasaravanan K, and Jocelyn Lee.
Special thanks to my colleague and friend, Jocelyn Lee, for
her generous support and encouragement in making the
collaboration between Recipes for Life and My Happy Ending
group work a success.
Tan, B. (2014). Rojak. In Singapore Infopedia. Retrieved from
eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_392_2005-01-06.
html
Turner, V. (2008). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure.
In D. Denborough (Ed.), Collective narrative practice:
Responding to individuals, groups, and communities who
have experienced trauma. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre
Publications. (Original work published 1969.)
White, M. (1995). Therapeutic documents revisited. In M. White
(Ed.), Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays (pp. 199–213).
Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
White, M. (1997). The ethic of collaboration and de-centered
practice. In M. White (Ed.), Narratives of therapists’ lives (pp.
192–214). Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
White, M. (2000). Re-engaging with history: The absent but implicit.
In M. White (Ed.), Reflections on narrative practice (pp. 35‒38).
Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
White, M. (2004). Narrative practice and exotic lives. Adelaide,
Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
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White, M. (2006). Working with people who are suffering the
consequences of multiple trauma: A narrative perspective.
In D. Denborough (Ed.), Trauma: Narrative responses to
traumatic experience (pp. 25–86). Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich
Centre Publications.
White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York, NY:
W. W. Norton.
APPENDIX I
Rojak of life: A recipe for surviving gender violence in
intimate relationships
This document describes the key ingredients of what sustains
women in Singapore who are dealing with gender violence in
intimate relationships. It is hoped that this document can be
shared with and be of assistance to other women who have
been through similar experiences, in other parts of the world
as well as Singapore.
Mothers’ love and care for children
Every mum loves her children. Our children are most precious
to us. No matter what happens, our children are our priority.
When times get tough, we focus on keeping our children
safe and ensuring their wellbeing. We take good care of
them. Seeing them grow up well makes us happy and keeps
us motivated in life. I learnt this value of love and care for
her children from her grandmother and mother. They have
shown love and care towards me and my family since I was
a child. They have taken good care of us. Whenever I saw
my grandmother, she would hug me and when I was not
feeling well, she took care of me and stayed by my side till
I recovered. This love and care makes me feel safe. When
my grandmother passed away, I missed her so much. I miss
her love and care, her cooking. Although she is no longer
alive, I feel that she is still present with me. Her belief in love
and care is something that stays with me and I want to pass
on this belief to my children. I hope my children will continue
passing on this love and care to their own children in time.
‘Women-ship’: Bravery and independence
As a mother and a woman I can do everything. I don’t need
to depend on my husband for money to support my kids.
I work hard to earn money and bring up my children on my
own. I learnt how to be brave and strong from my mother
and grandmother. They are like super mothers who are very
strong. They are my role models. I would like to be a role
model for my children. I want my kids to be brave and strong
and help other people. I want to tell other women they don’t
have to feel scared or shy or ask permission from others
before doing what they want. For instance, if they want to
work or upgrade themselves, they don’t have to ask for any
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THERAPY AND COMMUNITY WORK | 2017 | No.2
White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic
ends. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Wood, N. R. (2012). Recipes for life. International Journal of
Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (2), 34–43.
Yuen, A. (2007). Discovering children’s responses to trauma:
A response-based narrative practice. International Journal of
Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (4), 3–18.
money from men. They can just do it themselves.
There is nothing that women cannot achieve. We don’t need
men to be strong. We can work, clean, cook, and take care of
the children. We can multitask. Ladies are very strong.
Apples: Thinking positively and moving forward
Apples have both sweet and sour tastes, like the life that
I am going through. But no matter what, I still need to move
on with my life. I learnt this positive thinking from my friends,
family and children. In my Indonesian culture, people believe
in moving forward in life and, to do that, you need to have
positive thinking. There are a lot of ups and downs and risks
that you take in life. We have to be strong and move on.
I share this positive thinking with my friends who go through
similar experiences and sometimes my friends share it
with me.
Pineapple: Not giving up on learning and developing
strength through helping others
Pineapple is very hard on the outside but sweet on the inside
and I think this describes my life. I face many problems on
the outside and it is tough. But deep inside me is love and
sweetness. My family and sons know this about me but
my husband does not. When I first came to Singapore,
I didn’t know anything. My husband would bully me because
I couldn’t speak English. But I never gave up. I started to
learn English. Back in my hometown in Sri Lanka, my family
encouraged me to learn new things, to go overseas to learn.
I studied social work and I like to help others. Through the
problems that I have faced, I have developed strength.
I started to know more about myself, who I am as a person,
and the skills that I have. And I give to others. Love is about
helping and giving to others. When the tsunami happened,
I collected food and clothes and sent them back to my
hometown to help.
Self-motivation and confidence
I used to see myself as a timid person. During my school
days, I had a friend who always fought for her rights and what
she wanted. I learnt from her. I have also learnt through my
own experiences that to achieve what I want, I need to be
confident. I have a medical history and I always tell myself
that I’m normal like everyone else. Just because you have
a medical condition does not mean that everything stops
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moving. You have to keep moving. By telling myself that I will
be able to provide for my kids, I keep moving. I have learnt
self-motivation from my mother because, since we were
young, we have seen her go through a lot but she has never
given up. She did part-time cleaning to feed and educate us.
She had to give the best to me and my sister. So I learnt to
persevere and provide the best for my children as well.
Persevere and never give up
I never give up, no matter how hard it is. When I was at
risk of losing my kids and my house, I kept appealing to the
authorities and sought help. I know that nothing is impossible
or unachievable as long as I keep trying. From the time I
was young, I felt that I wasn’t loved by my family. I don’t want
my kids to experience the same thing as me. I have done
all I could to provide for them. I depended on myself and I
persevere. When times get tough, I have a good cry and still
stand up on my own and continue trying. I learnt that through
my own experience.
Pineapple: Hope
I see my life as a tough life but I believe that at the end of it,
it will be a sweet one. My life is like a pineapple. From the
outside, it’s hard and thorny. But I believe that I have to get
through the tough layer first before I get to the sweet flesh
inside. I still live in the hope that my son will get better. Even
though I have 50% fear that his behaviours might worsen,
I still choose to have positive rather than negative thinking.
There is still hope because there are people who are able to
help, like my daughter and siblings. I will try my best to help
my son as a mother to him. I like this quote:
(Heaven never cuts off a man’s means; there is always a way
out), and I believe that a rainbow comes after a storm.

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