method would be appropriate and effective for 30-year-old trauma experiences. At this stage of the research, our discussions and the current events had confirmed something I already knew: that there was an unofficial socio-political system in place to deliberately marginalize and suppress the people from Matabeleland. In addition I had become wary of programs that encouraged victims of violence to “forgive” their perpetrators in order to heal, but fail to deal with the systemic causes of the violence. Such an approach, I now felt, left people vulnerable to further abuse by the state, as such a process simply served “to heal lambs for the slaughter” (Wessells, 1999, p. 6). As I pointed out to the participants during the workshop review: ...I have been a bit concerned that I did not want to do something that will make you forget that there is a system that still needs to be dealt with. That we would say ok, fine, let’s get healed and let’s go on with life, whereas there’s a system that is out to actually continue to destabilize... I was therefore concerned that the TOL workshop would be a tonic for continued suppression of the traumatized communities because of a reckless push for a “forgive and forget” type of philosophy, at all costs. We will return to this question below. Results and Discussion During the dialogue sessions participants indicated that a lack of healing carried negative consequences for them as individuals, their community, and the country in general. They felt that it was important to explore available approaches that could contribute to the healing of their past hurts. This study sought to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of group therapeutic approaches on survivors of historic torture (that is, violence committed over thirty years ago) through the use of the Tree of Life healing methodology. Nine out of the twelve participants attended the workshop which was conducted by two of the TOL facilitators in a secluded environment that allowed for maximum interaction between participants and nature. Effectiveness of the TOL Workshop in the Context of This Study The workshop’s effectiveness was evaluated by tracing and comparing some of the sentiments expressed by the participants before and after the workshop in a process of qualitative induction. This paper discusses the contents of the workshop evaluation meeting and the follow up interviews that took place about eighteen months after the workshop with some of the participants. When we met on 28 June, 2012, to analyze the workshop, the atmosphere created by the retreat was still present and people were still excited about their experiences. The first question was, “What had been helpful and what had not been?” While the entire process had