Attending to experience in narrative care: Contemplating forward looking stories

Over the past years, attention has been drawn to how narrative ideas could be integrated in care practices. For many years, we have inquired into, challenged, and stretched the concept of narrative care. For us, narrative care is more than to acknowledge or listen to people's stories. We see care itself as an intrinsically narrative endeavor. We think of narrative care as an active and relational co-composition of experience - a way of making sense of the world together, with or without spoken words in imaginative ways. In that sense, narrative care is forward looking rather than only dwelling on past experiences. Within this understanding, narrative care does not depend solely on the ability to tell or listen to stories, rather it depends on the ability to engage in and become part of experience, and to imagine the unimaginable. In this autobiographical narrative inquiry, we think with our experiences alongside older adult family members, as we look both backward and forward to continue to learn. We show how narrative care is about an opening to learn, to imagine the unimaginable, and to live with agency. It is in these moments that we can find ways in which we can retell and relive our lives in ways that allow us to become otherwise and to create forward-looking stories.