Peggy Sax

Black Lives Matter. Matters. Narrative Therapy has “mattering” at its heart. It has always been about helping people re-story and restore their lives according to their own deeply held values, according to what matters to them. We’ve long sought to support people in finding ways to resist the individualizing, psychologizing, decontextualizing, and pathologizing descriptions of their struggles that much of the world—and much of our field—reproduce and reinforce. But the time has come for us to acknowledge the insufficiency of our past efforts. ...

September is a time for new beginnings. We live in difficult times when we need more than ever to build communities of shared purpose,  focus our energies on what matters most to us, and to sustain our spirit in the work. A big thank you to The Reauthoring Teaching Board and to everyone' contributions in the past year to The Collab Salon, Narrative Camp & Workshops, Online Courses , Faculty Offerings. We are especially excited for opportunities to participate in so many conversations across narrative generation(s). Our hope is that our mission will continue to guide us over the coming year(s). Please join us in bringing the invigorating and community building spirit of Narrative Camp 2019 into our coming year. Read below to learn more about themes guiding what's emerging in our 2019-2020 Narrative Training initiatives.

Thank you Sasha- and to all of whom participated in Sasha Pilkington's workshop, A Narrative Approach to Therapeutic Conversations at the End of Life. This gathering was the first in our 2018019 Refreshing the Spirit of the Work workshop series of smaller, local workshops. 

A new round of customized Faculty Consultation Groups will begin meeting through Zoom in September 2018. These groups are in addition to the ongoing apprenticeship training opportunity with David Epston, Tom Carlson & Kay Ingamells. Wherever you are situated around the world, we invite you to join us in real-time for these enlivening group experiences.

Over the past several months, our website has been experiencing significant technical glitches. Our sincere apologies for any frustrations w these problems have contributed to your lives and work.  Dealing with these problems has brought forth much reflection leading to initiated some major improvements. Please join me in welcoming our new Reauthoring Teaching Team Members. And check out our upcoming Narrative Training initiatives!

We at Re-authoring Teaching hope to contribute to a richer conversation about how, as a community, we make space for useful dialogue about all the variations and emerging approaches. In a previous News Blog entitled What are Insider Witness Practices, we posted some background information in the hopes that by educating ourselves, we can each decide for ourselves about the value, ethics and possibilities for this set of practices in training, supervision and higher education. Below you will find links to the Newsletter that sparked the controversy, to a previous newsletter that ironically argued against handling differences in the narrative community in injurious ways, and to some initial responses from those who feel like the descriptions of Insider Witnessing Practices have been inaccurate and unfair, and who feel that the process by which these concerns have been aired involved questionable ethics and use of power. We also include some of our Board’s contributions as we reflect on Narrative Luminaries, Online Ethics, and our intentions to continue this conversation.  Please join us!

Some of you may be aware that in the Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy December newsletter, Stephen Madigan wrote about Tom Carlson and David Epston’s recent work on Insider Witnessing Practices in a manner that many have found distressing. As narrative therapy continues to grow and evolve, we at Re-authoring Teaching hope to contribute to a richer conversation about how, as a community, we make space for dissent, worry, doubt, and concern about the various directions that the work will go. Many of the Re-authoring Teaching Board have had a chance to learn about IWP from its creators. We encourage you to explore the work as described by its creators, and then join the conversation about the value, ethics and possibilities for this set of practices in training, supervision and higher education.