(Re)Reading and (Re)Writing Disruption through Gratitude: Personal Narrative as a Method of Inquiry and Discovery

ABSTRACT

Through a phenomenological, hermeneutic lens, this autoethnography examines natural disaster as a meaningful rupture in the often taken-for-granted surface ‘texts’ inscribing everyday experience. Such ruptures elicit a call to the human conscience to acknowledge and render through writing life's embedded riches—to encounter, embody and express meanings of gratitude. Summoning gratitude through narrating first-person accounts of a derecho storm, I demonstrate how reflexive, hermeneutic practices shape the ontology of a grateful disposition. I then explore how such practices, particularly in highly uncertain circumstances, create opportunities for resilience by probing life's qualitative depths and values.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• hermeneutics
• phenomenology
• narrative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Laura D. Russell is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Denison University. Her teaching and research foci situate narrative as a mode of reflexive inquiry. She centers particularly on how embodied, ethical understandings evolve and take shape through relational storytelling.