Pre-dinner “Happy Hour” Conversations

Pre-dinner “Happy Hour Conversations” will be hosted by various cottages on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  These conversations are solely for our own enjoyment and not for Continuing Education credit. So far, four conversations are planned with space limited depending on location. We anticipate additional “ad hoc” groups forming around emergent conversational topics.  We will post the meeting locations  at camp. You can sign up after arrival at camp.

Power & Relational Accountability: Monday, June 17, 2019

5:00-6:30 pm

Co-hosted by Ajuu Nwogu, Amanda Sidman, Guadalupe Hernandez , Greg Bodine, Akansha Vaswani &  Steve Gaddis (members of Narrative Therapy Initiative, Salem MA.)

While power is always at play wherever relationships take place, operations of power can be slippery to name and describe, especially when we recognize power as fluid and not fixed.  For our happy hour, some questions we thought might be worth exploring include:
  • How do we make sense of, notice, and name power from a narrative perspective?
  • If power is always operating, how is accountability performed in relationships?
  • What accountability practices are important if we recognize that power is linked to “language,” meaning-making, and knowledge?
    • How might “narrative language” be problematic when talking about power and accountability in relationships?
  • Who decides who gets to be at the center of the meaning-making in relational spaces at any given time?
  • If power is not inherently either good or bad, how do we establish preferred relationships with power?
    • How have you experienced or related to power in ways that you like and don’t like?
  • What ways have we witnessed narrative/modern power operating at Narrative Camp that we appreciate and find problematic?
  • Acknowledging intersectionality in identity, how do we think about accountability in relationships between members of privileged social groups and marginalized ones?
  • Does a member of a marginalized/oppressed social group(s) have any accountability rights and responsibilities in relationships with a member of a privileged social group?  Who decides?

Is Your Story Making You Sick?

Monday, June 17, 2019

5:00-6:30 pm

Film Review & Discussion

Short Film Synopsis
Is Your Story Making You Sick? is an inspiring new documentary about the science and practice of how individuals battling addiction, trauma, and depression can heal by re-examining the stories they tell themselves. The film is an intimate portrayal of people confronting difficult stories from their past over 6 months. Audiences witness participants as they rewrite their stories and transcend their pain. Director Frances Causey is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and journalist with fifteen years experience as a Senior Producer at CNN and previous work hailed as a New York Times Critic’s Pick.

 The entire film team is honored to share our 15-minute version of Is Your Story Making You Sick? with the Re-Authoring Community at Narrative Camp! We hope Story can start a dialogue, de-stigmatize the trauma within our stories, and serve as an additional tool to help you in the work you do. If you’re interested in learning more contact Nick at [email protected] or visit www.storythemovie.com.  Nick Kelso

 Nick Kelso, Impact Director of “Is Your Story Making You Sick?” will join us via Zoom to introduce the film and for a follow-up discussion.

Narrative Training & Supervision

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

5:00-6:30 pm

Co-hosted by SuEllen Hamkins and Larry Zucker

We each work in settings where we are providing both supervision and training.  We’ve become very interested in the differences in those roles, and in how best perform each. Training usually tilts at least a bit towards an expert role, as we teach people how to do narrative therapy if they want to do it in a way that lines up with the the ideas and methods of the originators and of those who have developed the work over the last 30 years. But supervision, in narrative therapy and many other models, often invites us into a more collaborative role, where–in a way that parallels theory–the supervisee’s experience of their own emerging intentions and values as a therapist, and of the constraints to their working in preferred ways are told and re-told.

This focus on the experience of the therapist attempting to implement a therapy that has become theoretically interesting to them infuses our efforts. SuEllen in her work in the mind and body world where psychiatry meets narrative therapy, and Larry, in his recent work utilizing Insider Witnessing Practice as a training framework want to share their thoughts about what’s been working lately. And we want to find out what’s been working for you.

We hope, perhaps selfishly, that the conversation will also provide us with a bit of the sort of peer supervision-of-supervision that we have each sought out in our work.  

The Tree of Life & Death

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

5:00-6:30 pm

Co-hosted by Linda Moxley & Bobbi Rood

Wednesday, June 19, 2019: 5-6:30

650 North Shore Road, Charlotte, Vermont

How have you applied The Tree of Life in your work contexts? Or have you ever wondered about exploring possibilities for Tree of Life in your work? Linda and Bobbi would like to share some ways they have adapted The Tree of Life in their practice including with children facing life threatening illness and their families, caregivers living with poverty in Burundi Africa and in response to a local tragic accident. By briefly exploring their own applications, they hope to facilitate conversation about further possibilities.