That expressive writing can be a beneficial response to trauma or grief is well-established in the literature. Grief research also shows that the majority of people are resilient in the face of the death of loved ones. That said, traditional rituals around loss are no longer ubiquitous, well-known phase models of bereavement are contested, and ‘unfinished business’ can create difficulties in the face of loss. Increasingly, bereavement scholars speak of a need for individuals in western society to make meaning of their own grief through narrative construction, though little is said about what constitutes a beneficial story. The author takes an autoethnographic approach to write and reflect on her spouse’s illness and death and explores through a multi-voiced expressive dialogue a personal issue around her bereavement. In an analysis of her writing, using Dialogical Self Theory, she identifies markers which may be indicative of the development of a beneficially constructed narrative. The model of writing-for-transformation is used to describe the overall intent of the process, while the dialogical markers show how progress may be identified. Reinekke Lengelle (2020) Writing the Self and Bereavement: Dialogical Means and Markers of Moving Through Grief, Life Writing, 17:1, 103-122, DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2020.1710796
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Higher education is tasked with preparing students for a culturally diverse and globalizing world. Additionally, western nations have an increasingly diverse student population and know the success of their students will depend in part on being able to navigate diversity. There is therefore good reason for institutions of higher learning to promote and facilitate the development of ‘global citizens’ – people who can work and relate across borders and boundaries, both real and perceived. However, teachers are not necessarily equipped to foster this learning. Many teachers are used to a reproductive way of teaching while the learning that is needed here is identity learning, directed at dialogue, internally as well as externally. This chapter proposes the potential of creative, expressive and reflective writing as a way in which personal development – a form of a reflexive internal dialogue – can be fostered to promote cultural healing and global citizenship. The writing method will be described and a case study on cultural healing in the context of Canada’s reconciliation efforts with Aboriginal people will be used to illustrate the learning process involved. The processes of writing the self and re-narrating identity has several promising benefits for both students and teachers in higher education. First it allows us to learn more about ourselves and what blocks our learning (i.e. promotes self-reflection). Second, it allows us to change our story and our identifications and therefore choose differently (i.e. self-direction). Third, it is a companion on the road of life where we literally learn to talk and listen to ourselves and articulate the tacit knowledge that can be unearthed through narrative, journal, and poetic writing. Fourth, the method is playful and creative and although tears are frequently shed in the process, students report a great enjoyment in writing and sharing their stories with others. It is a meaningful dialogue about experience and also has the potential of promoting cultural (Lengelle, Jardine, & Bonnar, 2018) healing in the context of a very diverse student body (Banks, 2015). It also has the potential for creating new bonds in the classroom and allows teachers in higher education to engage in the difficult work of facilitating global citizenship learning. The internal dialogue described here also allows us to ‘clean up’ judgements and become aware of the need to reach out to others. Not only the actual sharing of vulnerable writing in a class or online setting shows us we are not alone, but ‘writing the self’ focuses deliberately on where we have become fearful about our own and others’ identities and allows us a learning process to unearth those things, heal them in order to reach out to others.
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In this chapter, we propose that the democracy we wish to see out in the world is influenced by the quality of our own “inner democracies”—that is: the quality of the democracies among and between the selves or voices in the landscape of the self. We must find ways out of the I-prisons we experience and perpetuate. With this in mind, we propose that ”writing the self,” a method whereby creative, expressive, and reflective writing is used to cultivate an internal dialogue and construct a new identity narrative (Lengelle, 2014), can assist in reshaping our stories about ”the Other and ourselves” and can contribute to personal and cultural healing and reconciliation. The inner dialogue reconciled is foundational for the external dialogue at the heart of global citizenship within education. Indeed, as Schellhammer argues, we must cultivate the self in order to become inter-culturally competent, and this includes facing shadow aspects through truthful dialogues with the self and caring for the self. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62861-5_6 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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What do a grandmaster Jedi and a grandfather have in common? The answer will become clear in this story of two sisters who used the Career Writing method to identify career questions, life themes, and tapped into the wisdom of their childhood heroes. Lengelle, R., Haggerty, E. (2022). Career Writing and the Tale of Two Sisters: The Family Project, Heroic Drive, and How No Sibling Has the Same Parents. In: Schreiber, M. (ed) Narrative Ansätze in Beratung und Coaching (pp. 163-172). Springer, Wiesbaden.
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We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.
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Higher education is making increasing demands on students’ learner-agency and self-directed learning. What exactly are learner agency and self-directed learning? Why are they important? And what does it take? The aim of the five questions and answers on this poster is to support a common language and to be used as conversation starters when you want to discuss learner-agency and self-directed learning.
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Writing as soul work refers to the active engagement of students in transformative writing activities in a group setting with the aim to enable students to develop new, more empowering narratives. This article explains how soul work through writing can be used to foster career adaptability, expressed in the form of increased awareness and self-direction. We summarize the labour market realities that underlie a need for more narrative approaches and introduce writing as soul work as a potential method to respond to these contemporary career challenges. We define what is meant by soul work and writing, illustrate its use with several stories from practice, and make recommendations for teachers and implementation in institutions. “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in "British Journal of Guidance and Counsellingon" on 04/16/2016 available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2016.1169366 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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In november 2018 overleed Frans Meijers; onderzoeker, lector, en levenspartner van Reinekke Lengelle. Reinekke en Frans werkten en schreven samen en hebben de narratieve methode Career Writing (loopbaanschrijven) ontwikkeld. In haar onlangs verschenen boek Writing the Self in Bereavement beschrijft ze haar leven met Frans. Ze vertelt ook over haar verdriet en combineert eigen ervaringen met huidig wetenschappelijk onderzoek over rouw. In dit artikel reageert ze op een aantal vragen die ze in eerdere interviews werd gesteld.
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This study investigates whether creative, expressive, and reflective writing contributes to the formation of a narrative career identity that offers students in higher education a sense of meaning and direction. The contents of writing done by students who participated in 2 two-day writing courses before and after work placements and of a control group were compared. Employers were also asked to evaluate students' performance. Writing samples were analyzed using the Linguistic Index Word Count program and an instrument based on Dialogical Self Theory. Work-placement self-reports were gathered, examined, and used as anecdotal evidence presented in the form of case studies. The results show that career writing can promote the development of career identity and holds promise as a narrative career guidance approach.
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In this chapter we propose that writing dialogues in creative, expressive, and reflective ways can foster more awareness and self-direction among those who aim to start, build, or rescue their careers. In the first section of the chapter we sketch the societal issues for which narrative counselling is a response; we subsequently argue that more independent methods, like career writing (Lengelle, 2014) are needed as they are more time and cost effective as compared with one-on-one narrative counseling approaches. We explain what dialogue writing entails, explain the learning theory that underlies its use in career learning, and provide case studies and personal stories to show its potential. We close with several practical exercises and suggestions for those who would add it to their practice.
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