Doing hope ... together, in everyday living and in counseling research

Abstract

This chapter describes the practices of doing hope together in a kaleidoscope of personal and professional narratives woven into and between people’s lives. Narrative therapy practices such as compassionate witnessing and narrative documents are called on to story small steps of doing reasonable hope in everyday life and in counseling research. The chapter draws on the witnessing of a farewell ritual between a grandmother and grandsons, witnessing diners at a café and excerpts of narrative documents to produce, acknowledge and richly describe practices of care that contribute to the doing of hope together. These small and ordinary, yet significant, incidents take place in the entangled spaces of discursive and material, between humans and humans, as well as between humans and matter-materiality. The chapter also weaves vignettes from everyday living and counseling-research data.