International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> is a peer-reviewed journal for practitioners who wish to stay in touch with the latest ideas and developments in narrative practice. It is published twice a year on the equinoxes.</span></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In this issue:</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Jack T. C. Chiu and Sharon S. K. Leung's human-canine project in Hong Kong considers what is absent but implicit in the social withdrawal of young people and their preference for animal connections. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Sandra Coral draws on critical race theory to bring attention to the Eurocentric leanings in therapy spaces which often leave Black neurodivergent people unsafe. Narrative therapy can help us to create pockets of freedom - spaces free from the dominant culture's interpretations and judgements - as sites of refuge and resistance responding to the alienation imposed by colonial legacies.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Stephanie Badman's work demonstrates this in the realm of genetic counselling where the medicalised understandings often privilege professional knowledge over lived experience. Through letter writing which elevates people's own local knowledges narrative practice creates space for witnessing and re-witnessing preferred identities.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Christine Dennstedt takes us into the liminal encounters of psychedelic-assisted therapy and draws on the narrative practice metaphor of migration of identity to loosen entrenched problem stories and allow new meanings to take shape. She also examines our ethical accountability when engaging with practices linked to Indigenous knowledges and the need for humility integrity and a commitment to avoiding cultural appropriation.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Directing a narrative feminist lens on bulimia and abuse Kassandra Pedersen proposes an alternative fluid language for bulimia using the metaphor of tides. She offers a nuanced justice-informed approach that avoids replicating neoliberal discourses on food and body management in which the body is seen as a passive recipient of trauma. Instead Kassandra invites us to respect the body's capacity to notice disagree and bear witness.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In a deeply moving contribution Tanya Newman shares the voices of dying mothers who write letters for their children. These letters are not only acts of love but also portals to future re-membering enabling both mothers and children to resist single-storied descriptions of loss. Through linking lives mothers leave behind an archive of care preferred identities and their unfinished yet enduring work of raising children.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Tarang Kaur turns our attention to neurodivergent children whose skills values and acts of resistance are too often pathologised by deficit-based discourses and disregarded in the name of treatment. Through living documents we are invited to witness children as keen collaborators and bearers of unique insider knowledge. What is dismissed as problematic behaviour can be seen as a child's creative response and skilful reclaiming of agency.</span></p>