Grief, loss and critical autoethnography: The Father's Tale

Abstract

Difficult personal losses can be regarded as both frightening and unasked for. They irrevocably disrupt the anticipated flows of our life stories, influence how we see ourselves and change our plans. As we struggle to understand, we are forced to consider alternative ways of being in the world and to construct a new life narrative. Thus, survival and transformation beckon us to re-visit the bright vision of our pre-crisis stories and expectations, to scavenge what remains and to start to build again. Through this challenging reconstruction, we find ways to safely relocate our pain and losses into another story. This chapter presents my personal experience of traumatic bereavement. It demonstrates my interest in storytelling and counselling, and my growing understanding and use of autoethnography. At its centre is a written account of a very specific incident that powerfully transformed my life. Like many stories of unexpected loss, it leaves a wound that remains fresh even after two decades of careful self-reflection and objective analysis. However, by accepting its cruel reality, the event ceases to hold the wicked power it once did for me. This has enabled me to return to my original written account of the experience, to re-examine and capture the essential qualities of the event that radically transformed my life. By bringing together my biographical account, and subsequent autoethnographic treatment through a counselling lens, this chapter presents a critical autoethnographical analysis of both. I introduce competing voices and positions of myself as author and storyteller, as researcher and survivor, protagonist and critical audience, to reflect upon the impact of the experience for myself and shed further light on the experiences of others.