Evolving Narrative Therapeutic Practices in a Changing World

Marie-Nathalie directs Skills for Kids, Parents & Schools (SKIPS), a 9-month intense narrative therapy, neurobiology and mindfulness training program in California where she works with children, adults, families, and school communities. Prior to immersing herself in narrative therapy in the early 1990s, Marie-Nathalie had trained in Human Biology and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She now brings together fields that have influenced her life and work for the last 30 years, and as a result has pioneered narrative clinical practices to respond to distressing emotions and traumatic experiences. She has written over 50 professional articles and many books such as the popular The SKiLL-ionaire in every child: Boosting children’s socio-emotional skills using the latest in brain research (2010), written for parents, teachers and counselors (French, English, Spanish). She has also co-authored Collaborative Therapies and neurobiology: Evolving practices in action (Beaudoin & Duvall, 2017), and Mindfulness in a busy world: Lowering barriers for youth & adults to cultivate focus, emotional peace & gratefulness (Beaudoin & Maki, 2021). Her latest book, co-authored with Gerald Monk is currently in press with WW Norton and titled: Narrative practices and emotions: 40+ ways to support the emergence of flourishing identities. It combines her lifelong passion for the immense possibilities inherent to our bodies and brains, with novel narrative practices inspired by Interpersonal Neurobiology, Sensorimotor Therapy, and Positive Psychology. With a background in improvisational theater and dance, Marie-Nathalie is well-known for her thought provoking and engaging presentations. Her websites are www.mnbeaudoin.com and www.skillsforkids-SKIPS.com.

Sarah Beth Hughes works as a Couple and Family Therapist in Nelson, BC, Canada. She was introduced to Narrative ideas through her work as the North American Distributor of Dulwich Publications throughout the 1990s. She got the privilege of attending many of Michael White’s trainings and got inspired to do this kind of work herself. Along the way, she also met many of Michael’s colleagues and friends, including Peggy Sax, who helped her feed her passion for this work.

Poh Lin Lee, MA is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to practice from multiple locations - narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist, and film/creative consultant. She is committed to practices that involve critically reflecting on values, beliefs, and biases and actively working to eliminate systems that maintain unearned privileges and unjust oppressions. For many years, Poh has created innovative narrative therapy projects and practices regarding family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality, and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. She collaborated on the award-winning film Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018) with director Gabrielle Brady. Poh is on the teaching faculty of the Dulwich Centre, the teaching faculty & Board of Re-Authoring Teaching; an honorary clinical fellow of the School of Social Work and a lecturer for Film and Television, University of Melbourne; on the International Advisory Committee of the Latin American Journal of Clinical Social Work, the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work and a sessional facilitator for Dokomotive Collective Filmhaus Köln Attagirl DocX Archive Lab International Documentary Association, The Flaherty and The Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts.

My ancestry es Muisca, African and South European de Colombia. Como inmigrante en los United States (U.S.), I am a part of the faculty team in the family therapy and Spanglish decolonial healing programs at San Diego State University located in Kumeyay land. Mi trabajo de supervisión, teaching, research, and therapy in my immigrant English are informed by the Australasian narrative therapy and U.S. Black feminism. En my Español Colombiano y Spanglish, I am particularly interested in Andean decoloniality, decolonial feminismos and Chicanx borderland activismo as a response to Eurocentrism. I am a practicing licensed Marriage and Family Therapist en los Estados de California and Texas and Supervisor.My ancestry es Muisca, African and South European de Colombia. Como inmigrante en los United States (U.S.), I am a part of the faculty team in the family therapy and Spanglish decolonial healing programs at San Diego State University located in Kumeyay land. Mi trabajo de supervisión, teaching, research, and therapy in my immigrant English are informed by the Australasian narrative therapy and U.S. Black feminism. En my Español Colombiano y Spanglish, I am particularly interested in Andean decoloniality, decolonial feminismos and Chicanx borderland activismo as a response to Eurocentrism. I am a practicing licensed Marriage and Family Therapist en los Estados de California and Texas and Supervisor.

Peggy Sax, Ph.D. (Cornwall, Vermont), is the founder and Executive Director of Re-authoring Teaching – the global learning community of narrative therapy practitioners, teachers, and enthusiasts that is represented on this website. Peggy carries a steadfast commitment to preserving, developing, and extending the legacy of narrative therapy. She loves to collaborate with colleagues across narrative generations, co-creating quality training materials and together building a narrative learning community. Having apprenticed herself to narrative therapy since the early 1990s, Peggy also works in independent practice as a Licensed Psychologist, consultant, international teacher, and international trainer. She is the author of several articles and the book Re-authoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory. Creating this online series is a dream come true for Peggy: working with people she profoundly respects, persevering to develop excellent courses together, and thereby contributing to a field she deeply values.

Akansha Vaswani-Bye, PhD, is a licensed counseling psychologist born and raised in Mumbai and currently lives in Seattle. She is a principal faculty member in the SPIRIT (Supporting Psychosis Innovation through Research, Implementation, & Training) Center in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. Her current research and training efforts are focused on developing and supporting the family peer community who care for loved ones living with the effects of problematic psychotic states. She is also an attending psychologist at an HIV primary care clinic located in a public hospital in Seattle. She is leading and co-leading research projects that are adapting a single-session narrative therapy approach aimed at improving access to mental health care among people living with HIV and at risk for HIV in integrated and community-based care settings. As a doctoral scholar, her research focused on the ethical and medical-legal issues that arise in psychiatry due to academic-industry relationships, as well as solutions for reform. She was first introduced to narrative practices while working at Ummeed Child Development Center in Mumbai, where she was fortunate to learn these ideas from Peggy Sax, Shona Russell, Maggie Carey, and Jehanzeb Baldiwala. She has been a Board Member of Re-Authoring Teaching since 2016.

Navid Zamani, PhD, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in supporting Middle Eastern refugees dealing with domestic violence. As a Persian-American based in San Diego, CA, he integrates decolonial poststructural feminism within a narrative therapy framework. Navid is the Head of Family Therapy Services at License to Freedom, a nonprofit organization focused on helping Middle Eastern refugees impacted by domestic violence. His research and scholarship focuses on domestic violence epistemology and practice, the role of affect in narrative therapy, working with couples experiencing violence and high conflict, and linguistic justice for multilingual communities.

Larry Zucker, LCSW, presented a 2015 Vermont workshop and subsequently created the online course Escaping Blame: Helping couples develop account-ability. Larry has been practicing therapy and training therapists for over 30 years. He is a frequent presenter for- and participant in- The Collab Salon, including Tales of Integration with Lynne Rosen (September, 2016), Introducing the new online course with Peggy Sax (August, 2016) and Escaping Blame (February 2015). Larry’s background in social work and community organizing led him to see people in context, and to focus on strength and resiliency. Larry is committed to escaping blaming frames of reference in a field that encourages therapists to see people and relationships as problematic. He prefers seeing people as embedded in normal problems of living, full of untapped skill and knowledge for creating the lives and relationships they want, despite difficulties encountered, and to seeing therapy as a relationship that helps bring forth that knowledge.