November 19, 2023 Collab Salon: Letter writing campaigns: You never know what might emerge from a ‘roadblock’

We were working alongside people who had given up on hope when confronted with tragedies that they themselves had not invented on their own but had somehow blamed themselves for. Many of the persons we were working with had been convinced by the problem that death was a far better option than living…These therapeutic situations felt desperate, and many (if not most) of our clients’ bodies had been inscribed with a diagnosis of ‘chronic,’ meaning that, according to the psychiatric teams they were encountering, the problems our clients were experiencing were viewed as a life sentence. Our clients were viewed by the institution as persons who could not be helped. Letter writing campaigns were invented as a response to these life-threatening problems and our disbelief in chronic identities. The campaigns recruited the client or the person’s community of concern as re-membering, loving others who held onto different, competing and preferred stories of the client, while the client’s idea of themselves remained restrained by the problem and expert discourse.  – Anja BojorØy, Stephen Madigan & David Nylund (2016)

 Are you meeting with people who are living with Despair? Or where problem stories or descriptions have taken over a person’s identity, and/or where systemic, structural and/or institutional forms of oppression have contributed to ‘totalized identity conclusions’? (Eg. I’m a Troublemaker, I’m Too Damaged To Be In A Relationship, There’s Something Wrong With Me’). What guides your approach to conversations with people facing Despair, or where a person’s identity has been overtaken by a problem story? Amy Druker will share an attempt at a letter writing campaign with a young person who was (at the time of the proposed letter writing campaign) surviving within the carceral system, and what emerged when we encountered a “roadblock”. Amy will share a recorded interview with a friend of the young person who was surviving time inside, who participated in the project of helping her friend reclaim his life from Despair and Hopelessness.

The program will support participants to:

1. Become introduced to the intentions/theory/ethics behind letter-writing campaigns within narrative practice;
2. Have a chance to see a recorded interview (an alternative to letter writing that emerged out of a roadblock) and some of the ripple effects that emerged from this project;
3. Practice letter writing;
4.  Consider how/in what ways this practice fits and/or doesn’t fit with their own ethics/politics.