Creating Identity with the ‘Club of Life’

Through a narrative practice, Ashley Tanks and Jackie Donsante discussed their professional values through an exercise of re-membering (Carey and Russell, 2003). The discussion of their experiences revealed their shared values and placed a spotlight on their strengths in the workplace. In this essay, I will focus on Jackie’s experiences working for the Shoalhaven local health district and her value for providing a high duty of care for her patients, and how her ‘club of life’ encouraged her professionally through recognition of her strengths in the workplace. 

Jackie revealed her empathetic nature before re-membering her work experience by being an outsider witness for Ashley, recognising her identity claims as valid, noting to Ashley, “you’re a real collaborator, that sang to my heart” (Carey and Russell, 2003). Through this community of acknowledgement, Jackie validates Ashley’s experiences while also relating to the values she holds in a work environment (Carey and Russell, 2003). Jackie’s choice of words, “sang to my heart” highlights her empathetic and emotionally driven nature. While acting as an outsider witness there were several times where Jackie uses phrasing like this that highlighted her compassionate spirit, for example, she speaks of her work with helping people in need as, “authentic” and “real”. To support this expression of identity, Jackie’s ‘club of life’ validates her values (Carey and Russell, 2002).

The ‘club of life’ refers to the people in our lives who play a part in how we “experience ourselves” (Carey and Russell, 2002). We give certain people in our lives credibility that influences our self-perception, the views of those we regard highly in our ‘club of life’ will have a greater impact on our identity than those ranked lower in our club of life (Carey and Russell, 2002). Thus, the relationships we have in our lives curate our individual identities, “people become people through other people.” (Carey and Russell, 2002). Jackie shared her experience of understanding her strengths through the values she holds and how this led to her professional success in a new role. Her boss highlighted to her that she knew “how to be compassionate and kind and support people’s well-being” therefore she would be perfect for the new role. In self-reflection, Jackie recognises these values saying her “strengths are connection and being really relational.” This new position allowed her to play to her strengths working closely with people’s needs, although she notes that “it probably wasn’t until I was doing it that I realised I could do it”, she explains that the positive reinforcement and feedback from co-workers and patients allowed her to have confidence in her ability to help people. Through the validation of those in Jackie’s ‘club of life’ we may understand that “our relationships create ourselves”, the validation and encouragement of Jackie’s values as a personable, empathetic, and authentic person by others who she holds in high regard reaffirms Jackie’s own perception of self (Carey and Russell, 2002).

Her values are further reflected in her narrative practice in the process of re-membering a preferred story, Jackie shared an experience in which she helped a domestic violence victim who had become Covid positive and was displaced on the side of the road (Carey and Russell, 2003). She describes how she went out of her way to help this person by telling the bus driver to “just start driving” and by having to “make sure” they had shelter, food, and care. This situation gives experiential evidence of Jackie’s supportive and compassionate values, she describes this part of her work as “really authentic” and allows her to fulfil her desire to “care for people”. Overall, while listening to Jackie’s experiences I was able to identify that her descriptions of herself and what she valued had credibility, through her use of language, the perspectives from the members of her ‘club of life’ and her workplace experiences (Carey and Russell, 2002). By understanding how Jackie reflects on her own identity through these narrative practices I may go forward in my future work with these methods to implement my own understanding of my values and workplace identity. Through understanding myself through the perceptions of the members of my ‘club of life’ and by sharing my experiences that convey my strengths as an employee (Carey and Russell, 2002).

Reference List 

Carey, M & Russell, S 2003, ‘Outsider-witness Practices: Some Answers to Commonly Asked Questions’, International journal of narrative therapy and community work, vol. 2003, no. 1, pp. 3–16.

Carey, M & Russell, 2002, ‘Re-membering: Responding to Commonly Asked Questions’, International journal of narrative therapy and community work, vol. 2002, no. 3, pp. 23–31.