Digesting a life: embodying transformation through creative writing

ABSTRACT

What does essential transformation entail? How does the caterpillar become a butterfly? What supports transformation inside the cocoon? This paper considers these questions alongside embodied struggles, experiences and insights of living a life – including situations of darkness and waiting amongst elements of depression, grief, and loss. In this piece, contemplative and creative storying generates sparks in the soupy darkness, offering catalysts for dialogue, and resources for supporting de/composition and re/emergence.

KEYWORDS:

• Story
• life writing
• lived experience
• transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alison L. Black is a narrative and arts-based researcher. Her creative and scholarly work seeks to foster connectedness, community, wellbeing, and meaning-making through the building of reflective and creative lives and identities. Ali is interested in storied and visual approaches for representing lives and co-constructing knowledge.

ORCID

Alison L. Black http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0515-6456