Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience

Book excerpt: Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and erase sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdom form the field of narrative therapy, this book will help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives, reclaiming and celebrating experiences in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like externalizing problems--"the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem"--and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises help readers make these techniques their own, leading them on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future. -- Publisher's description.