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Collective Stories

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Abstract

This chapter draws together themes from five of the parental narratives which underpin this book. The author’s struggles with dispersing certain narratives whilst retaining others as complete are discussed and an imperfect resolution is found in Richardson’s notion of ‘collective stories’. Drawing from this concept the key themes described in the chapter are linked to form a collective tapestry. Parallels with psychosocial processes which locate individual experience within wider cultural contexts are also uncovered. The themes explored within this chapter include temporality, professional intervention and meaning-making. All these themes and others are explored in depth and animated via direct quotations drawn from the original narratives. The threads identified within this chapter are then woven through the following chapters, which retain three narratives in entirety.

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Turner, D. (2017). Collective Stories. In: Perspectives on the Experience of Sudden, Unexpected Child Death. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66017-2_5

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