Podcast Episode 4: Whose Story Is It Anyway?

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

00:00:04:22 – 00:00:18:15

Dawn

Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast, where we explore how a creative approach to life story work can help children and young people who have been in care make sense of their past and build a brighter future.

 

00:00:20:04 – 00:00:33:22

Dawn

A new model for life story work is being rolled out in the north east of England, and this podcast shares the latest learning and investigates how it could improve the lives of care, experienced children and young people across the country.

 

00:00:35:00 – 00:00:54:00

Dawn

My name’s Dawn Williams and I am an associate at Blue Cap and one of the partners on this exciting work in the region. Today we are asking the question Whose story is it anyway? And discussing it will with me will be Dr Dennis Edwards and Lisette Orton.

 

00:00:54:18 – 00:01:16:20

Dawn

I’m really pleased to have you two in the room today with us because both of you have been working on different projects for Blue Cup in the list that is about to start working as an associate artist on All About Me, delivering works with children and the important adults in their lives.

 

00:01:17:04 – 00:01:43:18

Dawn

And there’s a Dallas if you’ve just almost completed, we are almost finishing a research project looking at impact of COVID on children and young people who are meeting as children in care councils and also some children who are thinking about access that people had during contact time during COVID.

 

00:01:44:00 – 00:02:01:13

Dawn

So two very different parts of the program, but you’re both writers and you both tell stories. So we thought and so excited because I know you’ve not met before, and I’m going to hand over to you to do your own introductions to describe yourselves.

 

00:02:01:13 – 00:02:19:19

Dawn

But I would. one of the things that I really like is that I’ve learned from this that is a way of just of introducing ourselves might be in the form of an audio description. So I wondered if, Liz, that you would go first and and then I’ll go next so that Dalek can have a think about how

 

00:02:19:19 – 00:02:23:16

Dawn

you might describe yourself to the people listening to this podcast.

 

00:02:23:19 – 00:02:37:07

Lisette

I’m Lisette, and I am white with freckles and long brown hair, and I am sitting in my little tiny study at home, which I share with a sometimes bulky dog and the airing cupboard.

 

00:02:39:05 – 00:03:03:07

Dawn

Thank you, Lisette. So I’m dawn and I have. When it was brown hair, it’s been many colors. It’s now mainly gray, but it’s slightly damp because I have been for a swim this morning. I also in a makeshift office and potentially will have a barking dog if the postman comes death.

 

00:03:03:09 – 00:03:05:08

Delyth

I’m in Dallas and follow in the.

 

00:03:05:20 – 00:03:06:22

Speaker 4

Theme and.

 

00:03:06:22 – 00:03:09:15

Delyth

I’ve got a short and brownish bob.

 

00:03:10:00 – 00:03:10:14

Speaker 4

And I’m.

 

00:03:10:14 – 00:03:29:07

Delyth

Sat in my four year old daughter’s bedroom. This is my makeshift office for the day. And rather than having barking dogs, my both of my children are home, so I have a four month old son. So you might hear those so that they’ll probably be the sounds of kids crying and shouting in the background.

 

00:03:29:07 – 00:03:29:18

Delyth

Today.

 

00:03:31:00 – 00:03:37:05

Dawn

I wondered if you would like to, in your own words, describe what’s the starting point for your stories.

 

00:03:37:19 – 00:03:58:05

Delyth

So, yeah, so my background. So I’m a sociologist. That’s what my doctoral research is in my Ph.D.. And in terms of writing, my starting point is people, that’s what I’m interested in. I’m interested in researching and writing about people’s lives, about their stories.

 

00:03:58:14 – 00:04:13:01

Delyth

So I see myself as helping the people write their stories rather than writing a story. I help people. We could construct a story together. And so my stories always start from people from people’s lives.

 

00:04:13:01 – 00:04:31:01

Lisette

Basically, I say that I do stuff with words, so I have two hats on that combine, and I started life as I went to Bretton Hall, part of Leeds University, and I did a course called Device Performance, which was basically make it up as you go along acting.

 

00:04:31:01 – 00:04:47:14

Lisette

And I love the storytelling side of that. And then I loved people too. So I went and did a masters in youth work and community development. And so those two kind of collide in my storytelling. So I do when I write novels, they always begin with character.

 

00:04:47:14 – 00:05:02:23

Lisette

Some people begin with plot. I always begin with the people and then I do lots of work working alongside people and people who sometimes haven’t had the best experience with words, maybe in school, things like that. And we work however they want.

 

00:05:03:02 – 00:05:13:04

Lisette

To use words, and I took some tools, we make stuff up, it never ends up how I thought it would begin, and that’s that’s wonderful because then it’s theirs, not mine.

 

00:05:13:16 – 00:05:33:01

Dawn

I love your description, Lizza of I Do Stuff with words. Sounds like the writer. And so already we’ve got points of connection between people working, you know, in very different arenas might be about the starting point being people.

 

00:05:33:12 – 00:05:47:05

Dawn

And I wondered about in when you’re reading stories, how do you make the decision about who gets to tell the story? Who’s the narrator? Is there any sort of decision making process that goes on there?

 

00:05:47:12 – 00:06:14:05

Delyth

I think when it comes to research, it’s kind of who the narrator is a very complex. There’s so many different levels to telling a story. So for example, with my research, the narrator is the participants. Those are the people that are sharing their life stories with me, their experiences they retell in their lived experiences, in a in

 

00:06:14:05 – 00:06:31:09

Delyth

a narrative for me. So where they the narrator of it, but we’re constructing it together because I then take what they’ve told me and I put it down into words like his, Lizette said. You know, you put words on a page, somebody else’s words.

 

00:06:31:14 – 00:06:53:22

Delyth

But then part of my story kind of comes into that as well in the sense that I interpret for my very unique position. The story that somebody has is is given me. But in terms of who the narrator is, and I suppose it can be both of us as well as say it’s a co-production, it’s a co

 

00:06:53:22 – 00:06:59:09

Delyth

narrated story that I present. And in my research.

 

00:06:59:09 – 00:07:18:21

Lisette

Yeah, it’s it’s so interesting to hear that does not knowing your tools, but kind of ending up with the same product, but from completely different kind of ways of looking at it. So I have two hats on. So when I write fiction the narrator, I nearly always write in first person.

 

00:07:18:21 – 00:07:34:13

Lisette

So it’s the voice of the person telling the story. And I’m a disabled person and there’s not enough disabled people on bookshelves. So if you’re a disabled person and especially if you’re a disabled child, because I write for young people, finding those characters is really, really hard.

 

00:07:34:20 – 00:07:52:04

Lisette

So I write those stories, and I always have a diverse cast of characters. But if the person isn’t me, then they’re not the narrator because I don’t feel that that’s my story to tell. And then when I’m working with people, I do things that I’ve I’ve made up a title.

 

00:07:52:04 – 00:08:11:12

Lisette

I don’t even know if it’s a thing. I call them lyrical essays and will work together, and we talk and I frantically scribble and I make notes, I guess, like how you work with your research. And instead of coming out with a document at the end that tells the people wonderful stuff to learn about the world.

 

00:08:11:20 – 00:08:23:05

Lisette

And I just have like a snapshot of time. And so I never change the meaning and I never misinterpret the words, and I always do them verbatim. But then I’ll play with them and put them in a different form.

 

00:08:23:05 – 00:08:27:16

Lisette

So they end up as a lyrical essay that hopefully sums up our time together.

 

00:08:27:20 – 00:08:46:13

Delyth

Because I think they’re kind of restrictive thing about research and writing something like a deal, writing an academic piece of research and the process of storytelling. It can be very restrictive in that they want you is the academic to to interpret people’s stories.

 

00:08:46:13 – 00:09:07:09

Delyth

And what does this tell us about society? How do these personal autobiographical stories fit into larger structures or stories that we have in society? And what you tend to find in a lot of research is that you snippets have taken of people’s stories and then a big analysis and interpretation is applied on that.

 

00:09:07:20 – 00:09:28:09

Delyth

But what I did in my doctoral research, which I think was quite unusual, but I think my examiners obviously quite liked it, is that I had huge, huge chunks of the beetham from the people that I interviewed. And so I so my area of expertize is an identity.

 

00:09:28:11 – 00:09:43:03

Delyth

That’s what I’m interested in people’s identity. How do they construct their identity? How do they understand their identity in relation to wider society? And I use biographical methods, so I use that tell me your life story. Sometimes that works.

 

00:09:43:10 – 00:10:02:06

Delyth

Sometimes it doesn’t. And because it’s quite a big ask for somebody to tell you their life story. And so for my doctoral research, it was about my experience and it was about adult care leavers. I asked them to tell me their life story from beginning to end, however they wanted to.

 

00:10:02:18 – 00:10:19:03

Delyth

I didn’t want to impose a structure on how they construct their stories, because that’s not my job, that’s not my position to do that. And when I just had some really, really wonderful stories and it was really hard to separate.

 

00:10:20:17 – 00:10:42:07

Delyth

Their story, storytelling to me, then having to package that EP into Adobe to a piece of doctoral research, and I really struggled with that tension. And then what I ended up doing is I’ve got pages of two sides of A4, which is the participants words, which is really, really unusual in an academic piece of research.

 

00:10:42:07 – 00:10:45:18

Delyth

You usually have little chunks that you kind of fit into.

 

00:10:46:03 – 00:10:46:15

Speaker 4

And.

 

00:10:47:00 – 00:11:05:03

Delyth

Text that you’ve written in yourself in your own words. But for me, it was really important for these women’s stories. You know, these are women who grew up in cave in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. And so, you know, they were telling this story much better than I ever could.

 

00:11:05:19 – 00:11:21:20

Delyth

So I had yeah, some sometimes some of the quotes were two pages long, and that’s really, really unusual to see in a piece of research like that because it’s usually broken down to fit into a larger story. But for me, that was really, really important to do.

 

00:11:21:20 – 00:11:39:14

Delyth

You have to have that story in their own words, and it was transcribed by myself and it was verbatim, as you were saying, is that that you that you do? So it had all the M’s and R’s and, you know, the trailing off that people tend to do when they sort of telling stories about themselves.

 

00:11:39:23 – 00:11:45:02

Delyth

So it’s really interesting to see. It’s a it’s a process that you go through as well.

 

00:11:45:06 – 00:12:07:13

Lisette

It’s about power. That’s what I that’s what I think. And that’s really interesting how in a really structured field, you found a way to kind of hand that back. And I think there are a lot of people who are writers and there are a lot of people who are creative practitioners and work together.

 

00:12:07:13 – 00:12:25:07

Lisette

And it’s finding that that boundary of safety and who has the power and there’s no way I’m going to charge into something and go, Thank you for all this delicious, heartbreaking material that you’ve given me. And now I’m going to stick my name at the top and I’m going to change it up like this.

 

00:12:25:07 – 00:12:36:08

Lisette

I’m going to chop these bits off and I’m going to turn it into this. And there are books like that on shelves. And that’s not right, because it’s not my story. I’m hunting the power to somebody else. It’s not mine.

 

00:12:40:20 – 00:12:58:04

Dawn

I think one of the things that we learn from working with you and the other researchers was you talked about at the starting point, always being the ethics of of how you talk to people, share stories and make agreements.

 

00:12:58:13 – 00:13:15:15

Dawn

And that was a huge big learning for the Blue Cabin team. We’d never really had that conversation in that way before, and I wondered if that was something that you wanted to share with Lisette, because often what Lisette just said is kind of at the heart of what you were talking to us about.

 

00:13:15:15 – 00:13:31:23

Delyth

Absolutely 100%, you know, when you’ve hit the nail on the head, this idea of power, you know, because that comes into my field of research 100% and I do a lot of research with children and young people. And how do we empower them to tell their stories?

 

00:13:32:06 – 00:13:44:05

Delyth

But yeah, for me, you know, as a researcher, before any research can take place, the first point of call is ethics, which for me has kind of a dual role. So it’s about.

 

00:13:44:19 – 00:13:45:07

Speaker 4

An.

 

00:13:46:09 – 00:14:06:06

Delyth

The need to have due care and regard for everybody who’s involved in your research, making sure that they’re OK because sometimes you know that storytelling can be can can retraumatize people. And so that’s the first sort of part of ethics.

 

00:14:06:07 – 00:14:26:13

Delyth

And then the second part is about it’s about the process throughout. So not just about looking after participants, but when you have somebody’s story, what do you do with it? Then you know, how do you present that? How do you write that up in an ethical way and how do you analyze it?

 

00:14:26:21 – 00:14:44:00

Delyth

And so you can have a study that the design is very, very ethical. But then when you get to the later stages of writing somebody’s story, we present in it some way it can be extremely unethical. So for me, ethics is about the whole process from start to finish.

 

00:14:44:10 – 00:15:00:04

Delyth

And as researchers, we have sort of ethics protocols that we that sort of guide us. So I’m a sociologist of the British Sociological Association set out. I think they’ve got about a protocols. If you know you should do this, you need to do this.

 

00:15:00:11 – 00:15:14:10

Delyth

But these key ethical responsibilities around voluntary, making sure that people know that, you know, telling your story is voluntary, it’s not required. You don’t have to tell me your story. If you want to tell me story, please do.

 

00:15:14:11 – 00:15:23:22

Delyth

I would love to hear it. You know, it’s about informed consent. So making sure that people are aware of how their stories are going to be used, what you plan to do with them.

 

00:15:24:03 – 00:15:24:08

Speaker 4

And.

 

00:15:24:10 – 00:15:36:04

Delyth

So that they consent to them. So they’re happy to say, yes, you know, I’m happy for you to light up in a journal article or to take it to a conference and present my story and on my behalf.

 

00:15:38:05 – 00:15:47:08

Delyth

And you know, yes, this idea about harm making sure that your participants are OK telling their stories, you know, because I’ve had very difficult experiences.

 

00:15:47:19 – 00:15:48:17

Speaker 4

And in.

 

00:15:48:17 – 00:16:07:07

Delyth

My research, so my doctoral research, one of my oldest participants was a calm, experienced woman who is in her seventies at the time. And when I asked her to tell me her life story, it was no, no. You asked me questions because I just don’t know where to start.

 

00:16:07:08 – 00:16:24:21

Delyth

She just couldn’t find a starting point for a story. So I just said, Oh, you know, let’s just start at the beginning. Do you know where you were born? So we kind of did it chronologically. But there was a point where she talked about something that traumatic that happened to her, and she went back to that moment

 

00:16:24:21 – 00:16:40:19

Delyth

. She talked about how she got slapped across the face by an and who was looking after her. And she grabbed her face like this in the middle of the interview and just broke down. And I immediately knew then that this this story just couldn’t be told at that time.

 

00:16:41:06 – 00:16:58:04

Delyth

So we stopped the interview. We took back and we stepped back and we just had to, you know, I ended up staying there for about five hours and just because I was really worried about it. And so her well-being was more important than me getting a story that I could tell later on.

 

00:16:59:18 – 00:17:15:09

Delyth

But it was just it was just really difficult as well because she had so many absences in her stories. And this is something that I have to deal with in my research. When I research came, experience is those absences and how to care for people who struggle with those absent absences.

 

00:17:17:02 – 00:17:37:19

Delyth

So this participants, again, you know, she had so many missing gaps in her story that she clearly wanted to put together. And then me being this super naive doctoral researcher, I was like, Hey, you know, there’s an archive that has your K file, so you know, you can go into that and find out why you were taken

 

00:17:37:19 – 00:17:58:10

Delyth

into case. She did because she didn’t know why she was taken into care. She didn’t know who the name of their birth father. So I volunteered to go and do this for her. And then I went back to my supervisors and my supervisor and my second supervisor pointed out how extremely an ethical that would be for me

 

00:17:58:10 – 00:18:19:07

Delyth

to do. Because I’m not a trained social worker, I can’t go into a file and open that with the with her and help her find out parts of her story because I’m not trained. And then this was a huge ethical learning point for me that I was trying to control.

 

00:18:19:07 – 00:18:20:15

Delyth

I was trying to be helpful.

 

00:18:21:04 – 00:18:21:18

Speaker 4

And.

 

00:18:21:21 – 00:18:31:22

Delyth

I was trying to control and this this participant’s story, this woman’s story. And you know, it just wasn’t my place to do so.

 

00:18:32:00 – 00:18:33:00

Speaker 4

So, um.

 

00:18:33:09 – 00:18:36:04

Delyth

So things for me, you know, making sure that.

 

00:18:36:14 – 00:18:37:01

Speaker 4

And.

 

00:18:37:03 – 00:18:42:19

Delyth

My research is done with due care and regard to participants is really, really important.

 

00:18:42:20 – 00:19:00:10

Dawn

It does chime with what Lisette was saying before. About. The power and who at the title of I think, whose story is that anyway and what what do we need to have in place in order for it to be safe for those stories to be shared?

 

00:19:00:16 – 00:19:17:06

Dawn

When I was reading, reading about things some people use them was about collecting stories and I just thought, Oh no, that that’s all shades of wrong, like taking a thing. And so that’s when you set the power lines that I thought, Oh, yeah, that’s that’s what that’s why that felt so wrong.

 

00:19:17:06 – 00:19:21:14

Dawn

That word about people collecting stories. No, that’s not right.

 

00:19:21:16 – 00:19:24:09

Lisette

Now that sounds like people going out within that.

 

00:19:25:01 – 00:19:51:14

Dawn

Yeah, exactly. Fishing, bringing in, bringing in laws that I wanted to pick up on something that you said before about a bear being a writer, a disabled writer, a writer with the disability. And I wondered about something there about where you find or how you find the spaces to share your stories because I know that that’s something

 

00:19:51:14 – 00:19:56:01

Dawn

that you are particularly interested in making more visible.

 

00:19:56:02 – 00:20:25:13

Lisette

Very much so. My path to storytelling has been an easy one compared to other people because randomly along the way, I have met incredible allies and mentors and people who were in positions of power, who are willing to either share it with me or hand it to me or to open gates doors for me.

 

00:20:25:19 – 00:20:35:11

Lisette

Not even to just do that, to tell me that they existed in the first place. I think that’s one of the things about power and other people having it. You don’t know what it is or what it looks like.

 

00:20:35:11 – 00:20:47:18

Lisette

So how do you know what questions to ask? I’m a working class lass. I live in Dallas. I don’t have anyone in my family who does this creative stuff. So it was all a mystery of just kind of scribbling in books.

 

00:20:47:18 – 00:21:04:14

Lisette

And then how would you turn those scribbles in books into something else? And it was just it was serendipity and chance and meeting people. And I don’t believe it should be serendipity and chance and meeting people. So I have a big continuing project called Writing the Missing.

 

00:21:05:10 – 00:21:24:02

Lisette

And I suppose it can be set in in two ways you’ve got writing, scribbling it down and writing, making it right, making it proper. And 25% of people in the Northeast are disabled, and I don’t see 25% of people’s stories out there.

 

00:21:24:21 – 00:21:46:16

Lisette

And when you do, it’s either inspirational. Wow. They took a breath. They they they went up that hill. They did this well. Yet that’s just our lives or it’s or the people inflicting story on disabled people or it people choosing the narrative, Oh, you are the the best friend, or you’re the person who solves the mystery, but

 

00:21:46:16 – 00:22:10:11

Lisette

doesn’t get to have any of the adventures and to me in 2021 for that still to be the case. And especially having lived through this pandemic and the invisibility of disabled people and how terrifying time has been, there have been do not resuscitate orders placed on disabled people without their knowledge and learning disabled people proportionately of the

 

00:22:10:11 – 00:22:22:08

Lisette

people who have been the people who have died the most. Through this time, and so for me, it’s about I don’t know if I can get a story out there that I can pass on that information that I’ve had.

 

00:22:22:16 – 00:22:38:18

Lisette

And I can say to other people, this is possible and this is how then we might have more stories out there. I feel and I feel it’s quite hard and there’s a lot of pressure. I’ve got a novel coming out in February with Penguin and it’s got a cast of disabled characters, which is awesome and exciting, and

 

00:22:38:18 – 00:22:54:22

Lisette

I’m really excited about it. But I’ve put it the book. I’ve put a note on language because I’m really nervous that because there’s not loads of stories out there and this is my point of view. Maybe people expect me to do everything and I can’t do that in one book, so we need more people doing stuff.

 

00:22:55:05 – 00:23:01:08

Lisette

So there’s more everything so we can write what we want, not like what we feel we have to do to fill a gap.

 

00:23:02:00 – 00:23:08:02

Delyth

Yeah, sort of in relation to what you’ve been saying, I think with the experience community, I think we’re seeing a shift.

 

00:23:08:16 – 00:23:09:04

Speaker 4

In.

 

00:23:09:10 – 00:23:25:13

Delyth

More experienced experience, people writing themselves about their own story rather than people like myself. Research is coming in. Is the academic, you know? Oh, you know, tell your story. You know, we want to get your stories out there to represent the care experience community.

 

00:23:26:10 – 00:23:46:11

Delyth

And I think what’s quite interesting and what how what I’m quite lucky about, but you know, this is the starting point of why I research what I do is that base camp experience in my family. So my mom grew up in care and my career started from her stories that she would tell me about her childhood.

 

00:23:46:11 – 00:24:10:22

Delyth

And I was like, Wow, this is so interesting. So. Different to what my life is like, and this is what prompted me to go out and listen to other stories like my men. So I think that we lucky in that I’ve been really taken in by my experienced family and friends who understand why I do what I

 

00:24:10:22 – 00:24:24:23

Delyth

do. I’m not just somebody who has no experience in the field so of coming in trying to get stories. But what I’m seeing now is the shift in camp experience, people doing it themselves, which I think is really, really important.

 

00:24:25:08 – 00:24:50:07

Delyth

You know, in fiction, you know, Kirstie cases a careless book, you know, absolutely brilliant. So I think we’re starting to see again. Yeah. So fantastic. And I think it’s really important that we saw starting to see that and even in academic writing as well, you know, they so many experienced and academic researchers who are writing stories about

 

00:24:50:07 – 00:24:56:09

Delyth

claiming they came experience, but also the experience of editors as well. So it’s really great to see.

 

00:24:57:12 – 00:25:14:15

Lisette

That handing off power, isn’t it? Again, it comes back to that. It’s who do these stories belong to. And I think that we can step in to assist people and we can step in to say with care and kindness, this is what you would like to do.

 

00:25:14:23 – 00:25:31:14

Lisette

I have some of these skills. How may I help you to tell it your way and what you want to do? And I think that’s my role and working is as an associate artist with Blue Cap, and I’ve wrangled in my head a lot about what is my place, how is my place?

 

00:25:31:15 – 00:25:47:22

Lisette

Should it be my place? Where does my role begin and end? And and the work that I’m going to do? Looks at story because I’m a writer, so we will create books together and we’ll create a big story box where we’ll fill this book.

 

00:25:48:13 – 00:26:03:21

Lisette

But I can. I can pass those tools on. But then if they choose to just say no thanks, don’t want to, then that is absolutely fine. They’ll be some plasticine in the kit. There’ll be some doodles, there’ll be all sorts of stuff because it’s not my place to say.

 

00:26:03:22 – 00:26:11:08

Lisette

Now you have to do this now. And I think that was maybe once upon a time it was like that, and I’m hoping we’re moving away from that now.

 

00:26:11:16 – 00:26:26:02

Delyth

Yeah, no. I think that’s really, really important. Yeah. Completely agree about putting those demands on people. Do you need to tell your story now? You know, that’s not OK. That’s not an OK for me. That’s not an OK way of doing research.

 

00:26:26:08 – 00:26:37:19

Delyth

And then that comes back to the ethics, you know, of making sure that you’re not doing those kind of things of, you know, making people tell you their stories when perhaps they’re not ready or they just don’t want to.

 

00:26:38:05 – 00:26:42:01

Lisette

Yeah, yeah. It’s that power of no thank you to be respected.

 

00:26:42:15 – 00:26:50:01

Delyth

Oh, it’s so nice to have somebody who agrees with, you know, you can see your vision and you’re like, Yes, yes, I said, yes.

 

00:26:50:16 – 00:26:54:14

Lisette

Yeah. And from two completely different angles as well, it’s really interesting.

 

00:26:54:19 – 00:27:12:12

Dawn

We are coming almost at the end of our time together in this room today. So I wondered as both of you, as writers, if you had anything to say about crafting endings and where you might start. I’m interested to know if there’s differences or similarities in your thoughts on that for me.

 

00:27:13:04 – 00:27:29:13

Lisette

Am I quite often right my end first? And quite often I know where I’d like to end up. And that’s the only way I can write is by knowing that there’s an ending. Otherwise writing is terrifying, and it just goes on forever, and I’d really just prefer to have a nap, quite frankly.

 

00:27:29:21 – 00:27:43:16

Lisette

So if I have an end to work towards, then that’s wonderful and an f amazingly, that mirrors the beginning. Then there’s that beautiful symmetry, but quite often I get to the end and then I start again, and the end becomes completely different.

 

00:27:43:21 – 00:27:47:12

Lisette

But I have to know I’m heading towards somewhere. Otherwise, it all goes a bit wonky.

 

00:27:47:17 – 00:28:12:15

Delyth

Well, OK, I guess that’s interesting and I can understand that, but I suppose yes, with my writing. And yeah, we never start with the end. And because, yeah, there’s just no idea of what that end would be. You know, in any sort of effective way, how I write and end is cut off.

 

00:28:13:00 – 00:28:30:18

Delyth

So and so this is a toughie, a tough one to think about. And I suppose in the end, always comes back to the beginning. For me, it is like you say that symmetry, it says, have to return to the start.

 

00:28:31:05 – 00:28:48:07

Delyth

So with my book and which was about my doctoral research, you know, the opening chapter starts with my familial memory of, you know, my mom’s care experience. That’s where it starts, you know, and I have a photograph of my mom in introduction.

 

00:28:48:15 – 00:29:06:05

Delyth

And then the end of my book, rather than it just being a this is a conclusion, I actually return back to that and I reflect on why I started this research process. It’s about my about my personal story and my biography.

 

00:29:06:06 – 00:29:19:06

Delyth

This is where this research stemmed from. And then I kind of pick up on points that people have perhaps commented on throughout the research. Oh, this must be really difficult story for you to tell because of your mom’s experience.

 

00:29:19:16 – 00:29:40:13

Delyth

And actually, no, it wasn’t. So, yeah, know for that particular piece of writing anyway, because of my personal and stake in it, it’s kind of started with family and then ended with family as well so that I brought it right back to the beginning, if that makes sense, that mirror.

 

00:29:41:04 – 00:29:54:06

Lisette

Yeah, yeah. I think for me, an ending has to end with hope. And it also has to end on the possibility of beginning. So an end for me is also a start as well.

 

00:29:54:07 – 00:30:14:05

Dawn

Sadly, that is the end of AUTORIT√â quickly. I always go and look at some authors quotes and see what they say just when I’m thinking about what might happen in these podcasts. And so one of the quotes I want to tweet is from actually an author, the ice-free lot as a child, C.S. Lewis.

 

00:30:14:05 – 00:30:33:14

Dawn

And he said, you can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. So I offer you that today or the other one is just from Lewis Carroll because it made me laugh and Liz that this is for you, begin at the beginning and go on till you come to

 

00:30:33:14 – 00:30:35:07

Dawn

the end, then just stop.

 

00:30:36:22 – 00:30:38:14

Lisette

Perfect. Thank you, Don.

 

00:30:39:18 – 00:31:03:05

Dawn

Perfect ending for our podcast! Jay, thank you so much. Allison, is that it’s been an utter joy to listen to your conversation today. And I really look forward to continuing work. Creative life story. Work with you, Lisette and Dallas, to reading the final reports on campus and time together, which we can find on the blue COVID website

 

00:31:04:08 – 00:31:16:18

Dawn

. So whether you’re a foster carer, someone who has experience of the care system or you work with children and young people, we hope this episode has given you an insight into how we could make life story work better for young people.

 

00:31:17:08 – 00:31:29:17

Dawn

You can find out more about our show at We, our Blue Carbon Dot Com Forward Slash podcast, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. You can record and send a direct question or message to the show via the website.

 

00:31:30:01 – 00:31:48:00

Dawn

You can tweet us at We Are Blue Carbon or if you one of the 15 hundred people taking part in our Creative Life Story Work Learning program, you can always get in touch through the online learning platform. If you’d like to listen to future episodes, remember to subscribe.

 

00:31:48:05 – 00:31:58:17

Dawn

Wherever it is, you usually get your podcasts, and if you’re using Apple Podcasts, please do leave us a review as it really helps others to find our show. Bye for now.