From Reflexivity to Revelations
From Reflexivity to Revelations
Unpacking a decade of autoethnography
It’s already April, and I’ve been falling behind on writing because there are so many other tasks and projects pulling at my attention. Most notably, preparations for the 2024 Dabrowski Congress.
Emma and I finally recorded a podcast episode on autoethnography, which came out earlier this week as Episode 56. It’s something I’ve wanted to discuss on the podcast since we started working together in 2021.
In February, I started using Notion, and I love it. That’s a topic for another day. But while I was putting together the history of getting to know Michael in Notion, I came across a document I wrote for him while I was at the 2016 Dabrowski Congress in Calgary. Once it was in Notion and I was reading it, I realized it would be a great way to introduce the work I did a decade ago.
At the time, he was helping me revise my paper on the inner experience of giftedness, which I shared in the Episode 56 show notes. Michael had given me feedback on a paper draft and questioned my use of the word reflexivity, which is an important part of autoethnography. He asked if what I meant was simply reflection. Not one for brevity, back in 2016, I wrote out a long document with my response.1
It seems worth mentioning that I wrote it all out by hand and then typed it up before sending it to Michael the morning of my presentation. I told him it was good because it helped me stop playing with my slides.
To Michael M. Piechowski, July 16, 2016:
With regard to reflexivity—yes, that was the word I wanted to use. Not reflection, but a process that involved many people and their thoughts, not just my own. It was much more than reflection. I guess I didn’t really show what I meant in the text. In order to help explain, I went back to the article I used to help me understand how I might make the autoethnography a reflexive study. This is based on Richardson (2000). Her third criterion for evaluating ethnographic work relates to reflexivity, and these are the questions I used to guide me—
1. How did I come to write the text?
The “text” consists of the two conference presentations.2 I wrote them out and did my best to memorize them when I presented—which wasn’t a good choice at all. In fact, I had never chosen to try and script any talk I’d ever given until Too Smart for Your Own Good.
I came to write the text because I wanted to be a better qualitative researcher. I needed to teach myself how to do research because it was clear that there would be no such opportunity through school. In my traditional degree programs I’d had great mentors—but they had taught me quantitative methods. They’d warned me against qualitative research but realized it was futile to try and change my mind.
The dissertation data collection stage seemed imminent and I felt unprepared—particularly interviewing and coding—tasks I’d never had a chance to really practice as a researcher.
The idea that I might want to write publicly about my life again was sparked by grief. A few months after we started homeschooling our son, my great aunt passed away, and I brought Jack to Connecticut with me for her funeral. I’d grown up with her daughter—we’d been close until late adolescence—MaryJo was a year younger than me. Right away at the funeral, I asked for her— to tell her how sorry I was that her mom was gone... Each person I asked averted their eyes and told me to find another cousin, Chris—that she’d explain.
Chris told me that MaryJo was gravely ill from alcoholism at age 39. It was one of the most poignant experiences of grief that I’ve ever experienced. How could she have become so ill so quickly? How did I not know about it?
But more importantly, why was she the one in a hospital? Why was I alive? How had I done it? Because everyone had expected me to be ill or dead—long before 39 or 40. It never seemed possible that I would be the one who would have the life that so many people hope for—the life that I had never dared to dream for myself.
When we were children, I included MaryJo in worldplay—but I didn’t tell her that’s what it was. We acted out characters and scenes, but I didn’t explain where the ideas had come from. She dreamed of normal things—a husband and children, a house, a big wedding. I never expected a man to marry me, let alone want to have a child with me.
My twenties had been a train wreck—how did I make it? How??
After leaving the funeral home with Jack, I had to pull the car over—there was a bad storm, and the roads were too icy to cry and drive. I made it to a nearby beach where I’d found comfort many times over the years and parked. I sobbed and sent a text message to another cousin about what I’d learned—on my mom’s side of the family—and I tried to calm down.
I returned home with Jack—I’d inadvertently traumatized him with my trauma. I wanted him to know about MaryJo, and I pulled out all my boxes of journals, letters, and photos from childhood. I found photos of us as children, a gift she gave me for my 10th birthday, pictures I’d drawn as a child, a letter to the Tooth Fairy, etc. I shared these things with Jack, and I started to sort it all—categorizing it into piles. My life story began to change.
I’d forgotten about things. Like winning the AIASA CAD competition in 8th grade. Some artifacts were heartbreaking and left me facing ugly moments from the past—like the bear that a boy gave me when I was 13 on Valentine’s Day. I threw it back at him—to accept it seemed fraught with peril. But then, after that cruel gesture, I accepted it from him because I saw his pain and knew I’d done something awful. Next, I found a card he had sent me the following year, again on Valentine’s Day. I’d kept the bear and the card for over 25 years.
At another point, I looked over the “withdraw or be expelled” letters from high school and decided to write to my PE/health teacher from Lauralton to say hello. More than that—I needed to explain myself to her. If I couldn’t find the kid from 8th grade, at least I could apologize to someone else I’d been an asshole to when I was young (there were many choices).
I wrote to Marcia. She is still a teacher, and she was glad to hear from me. The more I tried to explain to her what had happened back in high school, the more complicated it became. In less than a week, I’d sent her over 26,000 words, trying to make sense of why I’d been the way I was and what sort of person I’d become.
Around that time, I ran across mention of autoethnography. Maybe in a Creswell text? I’m not sure. But I used the references from a research methods textbook to find more information. Autoethnography struck me as an ideal way to make meaning of my life while giving me an opportunity to grow as a researcher.
2. How was the information gathered?
The process evolved many times, but the initial plan was not to begin an autoethnography. I wanted to practice coding, so I pulled old Facebook messages together into a document—including conversations I’d had with Laura, who’d done hypnotherapy with me in Las Vegas.
As I continued sorting documents, the journals begged to be coded. And I wanted to code them, but they were handwritten in notebooks of all shapes and sizes. Each holds a distinct bit of my life. I found myself reading the one from spring 1998, knowing it would lead into the time when I did hypno with Laura during the summer before K-State.
I decided to try Atlas.ti—I was eager to start coding—and scanned the journal with my phone—transferring the images into PDFs. It took forever—a painstaking process that had to be repeated with a real scanner, eventually. About a year later, I ended up typing the damn things into Word docs…because I had to do a content analysis in QDA Miner/WordStat, and there was no alternative.
Scanned, the decade of journals had been about 1,200 pages. The typed PDF version is about 800 pages.
One month after my great aunt’s funeral, I began using the Day One app on my phone to record quick notes—thoughts and such. The autoethnography started to take shape during the initial scanning process.
I started recovering data from floppy disks I’d saved from the 90s, even sending several of them off to be recovered when I couldn’t do it myself. The two I was most excited about were unrecoverable.
I sent No Guarantees off to be scanned by a company that offers bound book scanning services.
I contacted the Menninger Clinic, inquired about records from my two admissions there, and paid them for a copy of all available data.
I found several plays that I’d written during 1993-1994, including one from my first inpatient psych admission (involuntary) in 1994. I had forgotten about that play—in my journal, I’d mentioned writing something I refused to show my doctor. It was a play!
I found two copies of the book I attempted to write in 1996-98—Beyond Repair. It was a terrible second book—even worse than No Guarantees. I could barely stand to read the words. If NG made me uncomfortable, BR made me feel a little sick. Two of the floppies also contained BR, with comments from my friend Glenn.
I received the records from Menninger in the mail and scanned them in—roughly 130 pages. I scanned all the other medical records.
I scanned report cards and deficiency slips. Standardized test scores. The AIASA CAD stuff.
Then, I went to Las Vegas and did what I considered a field test. I met with my former doctor/super-important-trusted adult, Sam, and his ex-wife, Laura.3 Separately. I was afraid to ask him if I could record it and have no audio from it. I surprised him at the hospital where I’d spent the first weeks after returning home from K-State in disgrace.
I cried, apologized, and thanked him for everything. I asked him questions, and he readily answered. He couldn’t get over my grades since returning to school in 2002 and asked if I knew what a B looked like. He said that he was proud of me—I could see it was true. He told me that he had wished he could do more at the time… I couldn’t imagine, in 2014, what that would have looked like, what more he could’ve done…
It was an unbelievably euphoric day. I went back to the hotel and felt lucky. I put $20 in a slot machine and won $5,000. It felt ridiculous. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes I struggle with what I call “privilege guilt.” Which is helped by giving to others. I invested most of the money in my friend and his landscaping company and used the rest to pay for travel.
I took a trip to Kansas to return to K-State for the first time since 1998 and interviewed my friend Katie. We had known each other for two weeks while I attended KSU and somehow managed to still be friends in 2014… In 1998, the first time we ever hung out together, I nearly died from an asthma attack at Hays Medical Center.
I brought Jack along on the trip, and he swam in Wilson Lake with Katie’s daughter, who is just a few months older than him. In 1998, Katie was 18, and I was 25—her maturity and ability to live in the world were light years ahead of mine at the time.
I started sending packages to people from the past—letters, “timelines” I’d crafted from the journal scans. To Dave (called “Ben” in the autoethnography), Ron (former vice principal), Bob (friend from Narcotics Anonymous), Evan (former therapist), and Linda H. I began sending packages to Sam on a regular basis—sometimes including a simple response card that he could use to tell me to stop sending him stuff if that’s what he wanted.
I carefully documented the process.
I went to Connecticut and conducted several interviews. I visited my cousin MaryJo, who was in the liver transplant unit. Her dementia reminded me so much of my father’s. I reminded her that he had died at 52. She couldn’t believe it. Me neither.
She died about six weeks later.
I continued on that path, eventually presenting part one in October 2014, seven months after my trip to Las Vegas.
I found myself writing in reflective journals, asking people questions, and sounding off ideas, never feeling alone in my work.
3. Ethical issues?
The decision to undertake the study was informed by what I had already been learning for my dissertation. “Issues of trustworthiness” were now making sense from my real experiences.
First, I questioned whether or not it would be okay to do the study simply because I wasn’t sure if my mom could handle it. I’d written a third autobiography in 2010, which I regretted deeply not because of its content but the harm it had caused my mother.
She had perceived it as a violation—I had told a story (again) that I had no business telling. Implicating other people’s transgressions in my enthusiasm to share my own. Could I find a way to tell my story while protecting her from harm?
Yes—as long as I kept her in mind and checked with her before telling stories, I believed it would be okay.
Other ethical concerns included potential harm to my husband and his career. I was not trying to sabotage Jason by coming out as his mentally ill, former drug addict spouse. We decided that was not a real concern—fortunately—and if it had been a concern, we weren’t sure we would be okay with living that way. We would not shy away from the truth.
I became aware of the need to constantly consider ethics and keep them in mind.
The Day One app and reflective journals both contained ethical concerns. I also wrote to people about them directly, including Sam. I asked him to share any concerns about the stories I wanted to tell, about using excerpts from his old chart. I gave him every opportunity to share more information and let me know if I was causing him harm.
Dave was open and honest about feeling overwhelmed at times. During one phone conversation, he said I was as intense as I’d been as a kid. More intense, even. I asked him if I had been more intense than other kids, and he said, “Yes! You were intense. On a scale of 1-10, you were, well, a 10. And other kids were… well, they weren’t. That’s how it was. That’s how it is. But it’s okay.”
“Is it okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. He sounded certain. “I’ve decided that it is.”
He let me know when it was okay to resume sending documents. He received about 800 pages of scanned journal entries. And other documents—sometimes annotated, sometimes not.
I annotated one document that served as a sort of comparison between Dave and Sam and sent it to them both. Letting them know that they were both receiving it because I wanted them to see how similar their experiences with me and my intensity had been.
4. How has the author’s subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text?
I think the above answer addresses this to some extent. I maintained an awareness of my roles as self and other. I took care to make every effort to be explicitly aware of things that I—and other people—might take for granted.
I kept in mind that I was taking many mental pictures, as well as real ones and that I had to keep looking past the immediate focus of whatever was happening at the moment. I engaged in a tremendous amount of reflection and introspection, especially using reflective journals—I filled 3 or 4 notebooks before the first part. Day One was very helpful as well—it records not just text and photos, but geotags entries with location and weather data and allows for tagging.
6. Is there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?
It was hard to judge until I had read the presentation texts. It seemed like I had been as self-aware as possible, given the information available to me. It didn’t seem possible to expose any more truth than I had. In retrospect, I believe this area was adequately met.
7. Did I hold myself accountable to the standards of knowing and telling of the people I have studied?
Through consistently checking with other people—participants and nonparticipants—I held myself accountable. No decision had been entered into lightly. After the second presentation in January 2015, I talked with two women who attended my session. We discussed ethical concerns and the process of autoethnography, and their feedback was helpful as I tried to decide whether or not I’d met these criteria. I believe that I did—that it was a reflexive process.
Reference
Richardson, L. (2000). Evaluating ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(2), 253-255.
I’m not sure how this post will read to anyone else, but it captures well the process I went through in 2014. There was a marked difference between how I approached studying my life and the past through the lens of autoethnography compared to the three attempts I’d made at autobiography.
I still feel slightly overwhelmed by how much I’d like to share about autoethnography here on Substack because there’s so much information available. I’ll do my best to align the sharing with what I learned about Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration along the way.
Here’s a paper that will help you understand reflexivity, along with what I’ve described in this post.
These conference papers are available on ResearchGate, and I’ll talk about them here eventually.
This post contains some real names and some pseudonyms. The names of all clinicians have been changed.