Liz Hall obituary
My friend and colleague Liz Hall, who has died aged 71 of cancer, was a psychotherapist whose work with survivors of sexual abuse helped to develop therapeutic practice significantly in that area.
Over the years Liz was involved in devising and delivering multidisciplinary training on sexual abuse, starting in 1987 when she co-authored, with me, Surviving Child Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Helping Women Challenge Their Past, which was the first book in the UK for women who had been abused as children. She was often ahead of her time, both in her thinking and her therapeutic practice.
Liz was born in Lancaster to Marcelle (nee Glyn), an accomplished pianist, and her husband, Owen Rowe, a head teacher. In her teenage years Liz was sent to a boarding school in Cumbria, and her experiences there of separation and emotional neglect deeply informed her later therapeutic practice.
After gaining a degree and then a PhD in psychology from Newcastle University in the early 70s, she married Graham Hall, who was a fellow undergraduate and later became a professor of mathematics. They divorced in 1992. Liz then trained and worked as a psychotherapist in the NHS in Aberdeen.
From 1995 onwards she spent the rest of her career in private practice in Lincoln, where she was also a safeguarder, an expert witness and a practitioner and trainer in motor-sensory psychotherapy. She never failed to inspire hope in her clients. As a colleague Liz was generous with her expertise and as a mother and grandmother she was steadfast, loving, challenging and great fun.
In her early career, Liz was a volunteer with Rape Crisis, helping with its training programme, also taking her place on the telephone helpline and supporting a survivors’ group.
She was a keen conservationist and birdwatcher, and it was on a birdwatching trip to Colombia in late 2019 that she became ill. She determinedly got herself home to discover that the cancer first diagnosed 14 years earlier had returned.
She is survived by her two children, Nick and Alison, and four grandchildren.