Abstract
This article seeks to continue unraveling the grandparent–grandchild relationship as an embodied, intergenerational process through which social and historical lives are carried forward. Using poetic inquiry, I attend to “bits and pieces” that connect a grandmother, mother, daughter, and granddaughter, not just as data to be collected, but also as moments the researcher inhabits through relational encounters. These fragments of memory surface unexpectedly, making generational continuity visible, felt, and unavoidable. Poetic representation is employed as both a method and memory practice, attending to how a grandmother’s stories continue to live on after death as embodied inheritances.
This article extends existing work on poetic inquiry and auto/ethnography by moving beyond representation of a single life toward an explicitly intergenerational analytic frame. Rather than treating memory as retrospective data, I conceptualize it as an embodied, relational process (Haug, 1992) that continues to unfold across generations. In addition, as Pelias (2018) notes, “performative writing recognizes that regardless of the number of possibilities one might generate, all accounts are partial, incomplete” (p. 181). This incompleteness is not a methodological limitation but an ethical condition. In this sense, it foregrounds vulnerability, invites relationality, and resists closure. Writing Granny’s stories aims to dwell in fragmentation, silence as opposed resolving stories into a coherent narrative (Pelias, 2018). In writing Granny’s stories, the article offers an original methodological contribution by demonstrating how poetic inquiry, as a form of performative writing, can trace the social and historical flow of care, silence, and endurance within families over time. The poems enact experience and make visible how histories of gendered labor and emotional restraint are carried in bodies, in language, and how these inheritances are reworked through the act of writing itself (Pelias, 2018). In doing so, the article positions poetic inquiry as an intergenerational methodology by understanding knowledge not as fixed testimony, but as something lived, embodied, performed, and continually becoming.
Writing Granny’s Stories
In 2009, I became aware that there were many stories in my family that were never shared and I began listening to and collecting Granny’s stories. It was on one particular evening in 2009 (documented in the work of Owton, 2011, 2015), where I asked, “Hey, Granny, why don’t you write down your stories?”
“Hmmm, yes, yes. Well, make sure you go to bed soon” she says. “You work so hard. You really do.”
“Yeah, I know Granny. Don’t worry!” I say, “I’ll get to bed soon.” I drift off to the faint sounds of Granny’s heavy snoring shaking her bedroom next door and think about writing her stories.
The process of writing Granny’s stories started in 2010, and this article continues work from Granny’s embodied and performative experiences through poetic representation (Owton, 2011) and vignettes (Owton, 2015; Owton & Allen-Collinson, 2017). These stories were “collected” from my Granny at her home through face-to-face informal interviews, telephone calls, emails, text messages, and Facebook chats. During the conversations, she was concerned about “babbling on a bit” and not telling her story clearly or in a linear way. In addition, Granny expressed that, “not many people would know’” what she had told me because there was “nobody around anymore.”
Granny is not alive anymore either.
After death, the participant can no longer contest representations or add nuance (Ellis, 2007). I acknowledge this ethical writing requires reflexivity and openness about uncertainty where the ethical boundaries are both intensified and blurred (Ellis, 2007). Narrative poems are not meant to be complete or authoritative but are iterative, unfinished, and situational (Owton, 2017
Introducing Granny
Granny was born “on the Isle of Sheppey in Queensburgh which I didn’t mention did I? I have now, and I was obviously a Kent girl and my parents, my father as a Baker, he had a Bakery, that’s how we moved to Upchurch cos they bought a bakery there and. . . that was all 1922 to 25, that would have been.” Granny’s story, however, does not unfold as a neat chronology of events but as remembered energy, carried forward into the rhythms of performance, youth, and late nights that surface in the following poetic representation.
Good Old Days
We never came out the theatre till 11, Like a family; whole gang, What we used to get up to, what we used to get up to, When I think of what we used to get up to,
. . .
When these people say, “Oh you, you stay up so late . . .” OF COURSE you do, that’s your day! Rehearse most of the days, Only day—Saturday, 3 shows some days, Saturdays, especially pantomime.
Night started at 11, out for a meal or something go to a nightclub . . . One in Princess Street “Havana” A “right dive” really, . . .
Every night, Back on the stage ready to rehearse - 10 o’clock next day, Not very early to bed,
3 o’clock, sometimes 4 or 
,
Usually about 3; not very often later.
Always went out after the show you see, C R E E P I N G in where we had to be, First job, wasn’t very old; only about 15, They were livid OF COURSE, Oxford boys; used to go out in their cars, When I think of it . . . I was only 15.
Well I did drink yes, I don’t know about whether–, nobody stopped us, Gin and tonics in those days, and cigarettes.
I’m not a very GOOD girl, really.
I don’t suppose many people know that, what I’ve just said, Working with the likes of George Formby, Nobody around anymore . . .
Oh they were great, the old days, Had a lovely time, Thoroughly enjoyed life. I still do. I still enjoy life. . .
The “Good Old Days” troubles the idea of nostalgia as a simple longing for a lost past. While the phrase itself carries cultural assumptions of sentimentality and decline (Lundgren, 2010), the poem presents memory as something lived through the body. These memories are not simply recalled by Granny, but embodied, spoken through laughter, breath, repetition, and omission, revealing how lived experience remains in the body, an embodied remembering. As Leder (1990) suggests, the body is the vehicle of being-in-the-world, and Granny’s recollections emerge not as historical facts but as bodily knowledges, late nights, alcohol, cigarettes, performance, and youth. Nights blur into days, sleep is secondary, and the body is pushed repeatedly back onto the stage. The structure of the poem mirrors this rhythm, looping and accelerating rather than progressing in a linear fashion.
Furthermore, the “good” here suggests aliveness: a density of experience, intensity of labor, social connection, and pleasure. What might seem excessive or unhealthy from an outsider is, from the performing body, entirely logical. The “day” begins at “night” and work and leisure are entangled. In this sense, “good” does not mean balanced or sustainable by contemporary standards, but right for her body at that moment in time. In this way, memory becomes a site of personal meaning offering insight not through accuracy but through lived experience (Denzin, 2001).
“Good” names a way of being-in-the-world-in-time that was intense, social, and fully inhabited, rather than morally pure of historically superior. The value of the past continues to live in the body and therefore, Granny’s body holds past, present, and anticipated future simultaneously, illustrating how bodies are socially and historically located (Owton & Allen-Collinson, 2017).
Granny’s past is still unfolding in the present, not as nostalgia but as revelation, arriving unevenly across generations. One afternoon, while chatting with my mother, I recount one of granny’s stories about how she met Grandpa. My mother pauses, surprised, “I never knew that!” The moment is small, but significant and exposes how these memories are partial, withheld, and rediscovered. Stories are still doing work; unsettling what we think we know, slipping between generations and changing shape as they are retold. The poem that follows does not narrate a completed love story, but stages memory as it is lived in fragments, interruptions, and afterthoughts.
How I Met Grandpa
Glasgow again in 1940 when I met Grandpa 1941 I was back in Edinburgh every weekend, on a Sunday, one of my dancing colleagues, she was a catholic, used to go to the church opposite, the roman Catholic Church she met up with her family their house on a, [oops excuse me],
Sunday night . . . play monopoly that was how I met grandpa one night, come home from sea he knew these people they asked him to come. that’s how I met him I didn’t take any notice of him particularly apparently he did me, he didn’t say anything then
About 3 months later I came out of the theatre one night “I’ve got somebody who wants to meet you” It turned out to be grandpa he took me out to supper he took me back to the digs of course I didn’t see him again for a long time really
That my mother did not know this story feels telling. These lives unfolded slowly, without the expectation that everything should be recorded, shared, or archived. In this moment, I can resonate with Pelias (2012) about feeling the need to cling on to these stories with our relatives, writing “in an attempt to gather, to archive what needs to be preserved” to cling on to the positive memories we have. It is unsurprising these stories evoke emotions and trigger memories of Grandpa in me. Grandpa died when I was 3 years old, and so that these stories also painted pictures of who he was. I have memories of running in, jumping up at him and him catching me and swinging me round in a circle. As Granny tells me her stories, it seems like life was much slower in those days; it took Granny and Grandpa months at a time to meet up, for example. With the fast-paced digital life, time is experienced so differently to now.
I did not hear Granny’s stories all at once. They arrived in fragments, over cups of tea, in passing comments, in laughter, from random deep thoughts that trailed off into silence. Only later did I realize that that baby she spoke of next was part of the lineage that made my listening possible.
I’ve Always Wanted a Girl
Pregnant; another saga, I was in bed for sooo long, I had to lie in bed otherwise I might have lost her, I had this urine poison, That’s what they told me had to do, A bed pan; never got out of bed to go to the loo.
60 what years ago now, I don’t suppose any of these things would happen anymore now; that was then, A bed downstairs, They didn’t have to keep going up and down.
Also, the war and the raids, Just after Christmas grandpa came, While he was there, they let me get out for a little while, In bed for about 3 months, She wouldn’t be alive when she was born, otherwise.
I just did as I was told, Sister, she was glad to have me there, I started to think things were happening . . . I went in to see my mother, “I don’t know what’s happening” Don’t really know the first time, do you . . .
Rang the doctor; the same doctor who brought me into the world, He came and had a look at me, “I think you’d better come, I’d better take you up to Hospital”
I remember going to sleep, Me; I’ve always been asleep, Telling the nurses, “He produced me into the world, now he was producing my daughter into the world” I just went; I don’t remember her being born.
Woke me up, A little mark on her forehead, I’ve always said, I wanted a girl, I was going to have a little girl, I wanted a little girl with dark red hair, Born on the 1st of April, I was going to call her . . .
. . . my mother. Like Sparkes (2012), I attend to the generational “bits and pieces that experientially connect” (p. 174) my grandmother, my mother, my daughter, and me. These “bits and pieces” do not just arrive as data to be collected, but as moments I find myself inside of. They surface unexpectedly through relational encounters through which generational continuity becomes visible, felt, and unavoidable. Like Pelias (2012), I struggle to archive in an attempt to hold time steady and cling to the fragments that speak of grandmothers, granddaughters, mothers, and daughters. As Pelias (2012) notes “it is more than debris, wreckage, waste,” these stories hold who we are.
* * * * * *
My mother and daughter both came to visit me together at Christmas this year (2025). I greet my mother and 20-year-old daughter with a warm smile as I walk into the house from work. They both get up from the table and walk over to meet me for a hug. My daughter spent the day traveling with my mother and after a long 6 hours on various trains, they have arrived.
“Hi Mum!” “Hi darling!” “Hi Mum!” “Hi Helen!”
The chorus of hellos echo as I see my daughter towering above my mother as they stand side by side waiting for a greeting. The care my daughter shows my mother reminds me of the care and patience I showed my Granny. I notice that my mother has visibly shrunk with age and wince as I feel myself stoop slightly more than the last time to embrace her. This year, she has traveled to Vietnam, Vienna, Thailand, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and took various river cruises. I joke calling her the “Backpacking Granny” proudly showing photos of my mum to people who, “Can’t believe she’s 83—she looks 64!” I don’t want to admit that she’s getting older, like my Granny got. Despite her zest for life, she’s walking slower and slower, needing to “hang on to your arm” and tells me more stories about “tripping and falling over with a lucky escape in Hong Kong” still refusing to accept the help of a walking stick.
Equally, she complains about “old people” who are “too slow” when going on her daily shopping sprees. One day she told me about standing at a bar waiting to be served when a man, who was about to be served before her, turned and asked, “Are you waiting?”
She gave a witty retort, “Well, I’m not an ornament!”
I admire her determination to not become invisible.
It is becoming harder and harder for her to hear in crowded and busy places; she is reluctantly admitting that she must rely on her hearing aids, which she took years to accept she needed. As much as she struggles with the idea of getting older, clinging on to memories of her famous dancing past, I too worry about the inevitability of losing her one day, like we lost Granny.
Every year at Christmas, my Granny would say, “I wonder if I’ll be here next year.” This year, my mother said the exact same thing which gave me sudden pang of fear, but instead of replying, “Don’t worry, mum, Granny made it to 97!” I ignore the comment and hide my dread that she might not be here next year. Thus, I recognize the same anticipatory grief I once carried for Granny now settling into my relationship with my mother. But I’m far too scared to even think about this possibility and I’m pleased at least that there is longevity and resilience on the women’s side of our family.
This resistance to aging is just Mum’s way of trying not to be a burden just like my Granny used to say, “I try not to be a nuisance as your mother says. She’s going to put it on my gravestone she says [laughs] cos I’m always saying, I must not be a nuisance [laughs] ahhhh dear. She says she’s going to put on it:
You’re not a nuisance now
. . . I think it’s quite good. I’d be quite happy. It would make people laugh as they walk by, wouldn’t it?”
* * * * * *
The concern with not taking up too much space, of managing one’s own decline so as not to trouble others, has long structured the women in my family. I think this stems from being brought up with a sense of independent responsibility which I have installed in my own daughter. Granny’s stories sit alongside, and in tension with, a lifetime of care work given freely to strangers. Granny’s fear of being a “nuisance” cannot be separated from the years she devoted to easing the suffering of others, nor from the losses that eventually returned that labor home.
In the early 1980s, Granny and Grandpa moved to the southwest where “He thought it was paradise” (Owton, 2011), but tragically, within 1 month he was ill and passed away from bowel cancer. I cannot imagine how cruel that must have felt for my Granny after 20 years of working for Cancer Relief. I have vague memories of visiting Granny and Grandpa during this time; my mother standing in the lounge and a vague memory of sneaking a peak in the back room where Grandpa was lying on the bed tucked in with his Scottish rug. No matter how much devotion she spent to the life of others with cancer, it did not spare our own family. A reminder that cancer does not care about goodness, service, love, or effort.
When Granny joined MacMillan, the charity was known as the National Society for Cancer Relief and she worked there for 20 years in the clerical office helping to develop Macmillan Cancer Centers, before being appointed as Assistant General Secretary where she was eventually awarded the Sir Hugh Dundas Medal for her exceptional contribution to Macmillan Cancer Support.
Photo of Granny Volunteering for MacMillan.
My mother spoke about Granny:
Mum never stopped supporting Macmillan and she was passionate about her work and the charity, holding Coffee Mornings well into her nineties. Dad died of bowel cancer in 1983, before Coffee Mornings were started and I know this also inspired Mum to be such a big supporter of Macmillan Coffee Mornings. I was inspired to support the charity too, and when Mum didn’t feel up to hosting any longer, she would come and support the Coffee Morning I was hosting at The Hotel in the New Forest that I owned and would sit at the reception collecting the money for us.
In my mother’s telling, Granny’s commitment to MacMillan becomes less a biography than a lineage. Support for the charity moves across generations, reshaped by circumstance but tied to the same loss. What begins as institutional work in Granny’s hands becomes voluntary labor in my mother’s, and later a shared embodied act between them.
The C Word
The name cancer wasn’t allowed to be mentioned, Not then, It is now, but not then.
Medical profession, not us. We had to be very, very careful about it . . . That we didn’t say anything.
If somebody rang up, Enquiring for a friend or whatever, My mother . . . or my sister or whatever.
Trying to find out Never say anything. Never say that we already knew that person We probably did.
Explain—there’s no way We would look into the matter, We never dealt directly with the patients, They do now, cos I mean, it’s all changed.
All this information, Doctor’s, GPs, health visitors, district nurses, red cross societies, red cross offices.
I dealt a lot, Oh there was a lot, there was quite a lot to do in this job. Children, of course, we had children.
It’s very much more known now, It really was anonymous, Now it’s not, MacMillan advertised all over.
MacMillan nurses have to be a sister status, They have to be at the top. They’re not just junior grade, the top grade.
I went in at the bottom really, I knew everybody’s job, When anyone left, I got shoved over to run that department, Or do this department [laughs].
I always felt that I could tell anybody what to do, I’d done it myself, I always think that’s a good thing myself.
People, when they go in at the top, The staff are bound to think, “what do they know about it?” I never got cross.
I just made my point. I made it and stuck to it, I was strict about time keeping, I think it’s important. It certainly was as far as I was concerned.
Listening to Granny describe her work, I began to understand silence not as something to be frustrated about, but as a complex method (O’Keeffe, 2025). As a qualitative researcher, embracing “awkward silences” can be key to successful qualitative research (Averill, 2023). Cancer was everywhere in her daily life, yet nowhere in speech. What could not be named was carefully managed. Silence, here, functioned as protection for patients, for families, and perhaps for the workers themselves.
These silences feel inherited. In this family, not speaking is not always the same as not knowing. Sometimes, there is a sense of wisdom and self-preservation in silence (Kawabata & Gastaldo, 2015). It is a form of care learned through wartime, medicine, and gendered emotional labor. Bodies are regulated repeatedly by doctors, institutions, and expectations of endurance and Granny narrates this regulation without complaint. Silence becomes a way of holding pain without allowing it to overwhelm daily life (Frank, 1995).
After Grandpa died, she lived independently in a bungalow in the Southwest up until aged 95 years old. In 2019, my Granny had a fall and I remember my mother calling with the news,
I’ve been telling Mum for years to get rid of that chair by the phone! I knew this would happen. She went to sit down on that chair while she was on the phone, and it had rolled away so she fell on the floor and now she’s broken her bloody hip!
When Granny broke her hip, it was a “turning point” in her later life (Lincoln & Denzin, 2003). Suddenly, my mother was confronted with the possibility of losing her which evoked mixed feelings of guilt, anger, and shock. My Granny never recovered properly from her fall and had to go into a care home.
In October 2019, I went to visit my Granny in the temporary care home with my daughter to celebrate her 97th birthday. I asked if the care home took them out on trips and was saddened to hear that my Granny had not left the place for months. With their permission, we managed to get my Granny into the car and drive to the seaside nearby, watch the birds, listen to the waves, inhale the sea air, absorb the sun, feel the wind, and eat ice creams together. After this, she was moved to a care home nearer to my mother. At Christmas 2019, my daughter and I visited my Granny again, visibly noticing her rapid decline just after a few months, and I think we both knew we were saying goodbye.
Shortly after this, 2020 was a challenging time because rules during COVID meant that my mother could not visit her in the care home as often as she had wanted to, even after my Granny experienced a stroke. Many loved ones died without proper goodbyes during this period (Gill et al., 2025). On 1 April 2020, I received a phone call from my mother saying tearfully, “Granny passed away last night peacefully, but it’s typical that it’s my birthday!” It all felt so unfair even though we knew it was coming. I felt her grief pour down the phone and reflect on the way she frames events through her own personal lens.
Over the years, my mother has often marked significant days by connecting them to her own memories. For example, every year, on my birthday, she reminds me, “Today is the day I sold the hotel!” The hotel that was central to her life for over 40 years. A place where the full weight of those years, both good and challenging, continues to linger in my mind throughout the rest of the day.
* * * * * *
“Faulty towers is on!” I call to my mum and dad.
“I’m coming, I’m coming” my mum replies. Mum and Dad worked 24/7 in the hotel where they were always around though not always fully present. But “Faulty Towers” was like a ritual for us as a family. We always joked that we were the “real” Faulty Towers. They both come running in and out of the lounge stealing a moment to laugh at the program on our large boxed sized TV while dinner is being served to all the guests.
Growing up in a hotel exposed me to a variety of experiences that any other “normal” upbringing would not (Owton, 2012). From the age of 7 years, I would cook breakfast with my dad, carefully take “breakfast in bed” to various guests, waitress in the dining room, serve up desserts at dinner from the dessert trolley, dress up as Santa Claus at Christmas, and wash up the dishes in the kitchen where my Dad would tell me not to make such a clatter of noise putting away the plates. Later, playing “spy games” where I would sneak around the lounges and write down what guests were ordering, wearing, and talking about.
As mum stands there by the door, hiding “backstage” poised to run back to the dining room “the front stage,” desperately negotiating the minutes between work (public) and family life (private), she’s called to deal with some emergency going on in the kitchen and announces, “The show must go on!” And leaves the room dancing and singing, “Always look on the briiiiiight side of life! Dada . . ., dada dada dada.”
* * * * * *
It was equally cruel for my mother that she lost her husband at aged 45 years not long after to a sudden heart attack. At 83 years of age, she has also worked and lived independently. Before, she sold the hotel at the age of 75 years, my daughter waitressed under the watchful eye of my mother much to the delight of the older guests at Christmas. I saw my younger self reflected in my daughter, stepping into something that shaped me: discipline, timing, reading people, holding the room, keeping things moving when others rely on you. That kind of performative work does “entertain the troops” like Granny did in the 1940s (Owton, 2015) and my mother did as a Tiller Girl in the 1960s; whether that’s hotel guests, theater goers, or soldiers. This embodied inheritance gives me a sense of quiet pride and continuity where I think, “Yes! She’s living it too.” Instead of trying to save my daughter from my past, I let her learn its strengths, not just its costs.
The Power of Poetic Representation
As Claire Keegan (2007) pointed out, “The thing about poetry is that you can write a poem for somebody. But with fiction, you wind up writing it about someone.” This insight makes poetic representation an appropriate way of writing in Granny’s memory. Poetry allows for “showing” rather than merely telling (Sparkes & Douglas, 2007) aiming to reconnect the listener with the deep rhythms of the body (Eagleton, 2007) and to evoke “empathy and emotional responses which provide us with different ways of knowing” (Sparkes et al., 2003, p. 154). I chose poetry to re-tell Granny’s stories, particularly because poetry allows the heart to guide the mind (Butler-Kisber & Stewart, 2009; Owton, 2017). This mirrors the relational ethical requirement for “researchers to act from our hearts and minds” and “to acknowledge our interpersonal bonds to others” (Ellis, 2007, p. 4).
In this work, I employed a poetic form described by Prendergast (2009) as “Vox Participare” (participant voiced poems) where the words from the interview transcription are transformed into the poetic form (Owton, 2017). When done well, poetry has the power to produce representations that resonate more closely with the lived experiences of others (Owton, 2017; Richardson, 1995) creating evocative and open-ended connections to the material for the researcher, reader and listener alike (Sparkes, 2020). Poetic representation invites multiple interpretations, allowing readers the interpretive freedom to make their own conclusions and integrate this understanding into their lives (Rapport & Sparkes, 2009; Sparkes, 2020; Sparkes et al., 2003).
Poetry is a practical art. It is as good as a knife for cutting through the day’s rubbish, and better than a folding umbrella for those sudden bouts of private rain that douse the body out of nowhere. (Jeannette Winterson, The Times, 13 January 2007)
Granny often reminisced and drifted off into thought when telling her stories. There were many silences, which I sought to preserve in the gaps of the poems. Indeed, “silence can in itself be a means of expression and a valid communication resource” (Müller et al., 2024). As Granny is no longer here to clarify these narratives, I rely on recordings, memory, and the ways her words and voice live on in me, my mother, and my daughter. While I considered adjusting the order of words to allow for rhyme, I only did so when it did not alter or distort the meaning of her experience (Owton, 2015). Through this process, I realized that I am not simply recovering her voice; I am acknowledging how it continues to shape my own.
The poems highlight the cultural significance of the female performing body during the war, exploring the (female) communicative body as a form of theatrical and personal expression. Poetry merges the ways in which these two representations are shared (Owton, 2015). Granny’s narratives also reveal the interplay between the “front regions” and “back regions” of life, emphasizing the dramaturgical discipline required to maintain appearances in public while attending to the private self (Goffman, 1959).
Reflecting on my conversations with Granny from 2009, sitting plump in “her chair,” I notice how much weight she had gained since Grandpa’s death. I remember, as a child, her tall, slim, poised and commanding presence when we were growing up. I recall her sharp exclamations:
“Did you hear what your mother said?” Despite making a screwed-up face behind her back, she would retort, “I saw that!” Moments like these carried a wash of embarrassment. “Now sit down and eat your tea like a good girl!”
I think about how that discipline and respect shaped my upbringing; qualities that seem to be disappearing in the next generations.
Granny often reminded me that the war was “always there in your mind” (Owton, 2015) and how dance and performing “stays with you” (Owton & Allen-Collinson, 2017
Humans continually reinvent themselves, finding ways to express the old in a new form or the new in old questions. Poetry allows us to explore these perspectives, using language, form, and art to illuminate universal human themes. Through this process, we recognize that the unity of human experience often outweighs our perceived differences (Owton, 2015). This article continues to explore the grandparent-grandchild relationship and the multi-layered ways embodied memories are socially and historically entangled, tracing the rhythms of history as they flow, often unconsciously, through families (Owton, 2015).
Since Granny is no longer here to contest or confirm these poetic representations, sharing them with my mother and daughter offers a different opportunity for reflection, dialogue, and the continuation of her memory through the perspectives of those who carry her influence (Ellis, 2007). While I cannot give Granny the poems to read as I might have in 2011 or 2015, I can pass her stories to my mother and my daughter, allowing her voice, and the embodied histories she represents, to live on across generations.
My Mum’s Responses
“I’ve sent you through some of Granny’s stories.” I say, “Just take your time with reading them, sit down, have a cup of tea, and just write down or call me with any thoughts you have on this Mum”
“Okay, I’ve got George coming over in a bit and he’s JUST A FRIEND!”
I laugh!
“Your daughter keeps teasing me saying there’s something going on!”
I laugh again!
“Hahaha, ahhhhh okay Mum!” I say laughing uncontrollably. “She’s just teasing you!”
“I’ll read it later, anyway.”
“Okay Mum!”
That evening we chat about the stories.
“I really enjoyed it. I mean it was sad, because it brought it home about my age and I’m just so conscious about it. I mean I do think about whether I’m still going to be here.”
“I’m sorry mum,” I say feeling guilty, “I knew you’d find that hard.”
“No, that’s ok, you’re being honest, but it just makes me so aware of my age. Oh, and I’m 83, not 84!”
“Oh yes, sorry, mum!” I say, “83. I’ll correct that!”
“I mean, when I go to physio for my knee the women there are so lovely and they can’t believe my age!”
“I know, mum. I keep telling you,” I reaffirm, “You do look so young, and you’re so fit too with all that you do, you’ve just got to get back to fitness with your knee.”
“Oh yes, I will get back to fitness” she says, “I mean Granny didn’t have to do much in her later years because she had a cleaner. I keep myself fit!”
“Yes, you’ve got to get yourself fit for your backpacking trip to Thailand!”
Both laugh.
“Oh yes, and don’t forget that along with all those other places I went to Shanghai as well!” She adds.
“Oh yes, sorry, I’ll add that to the list of destinations”
“But otherwise, I don’t think anything else needs correcting. Actually, I didn’t realise that she had to lie in bed all that time when she had me. I mean Granny was 18 when she had me. In those days, you got married young because if you got to 26, you were sort of left on the shelf. I got married at 22 and was pregnant with your sister at 25. You did have children younger then. Most women now seem to wait until they’re in their 30s. When I had you, I was 36 and I remember coming home from a doctor’s appointment because they told me I had to have an amniocentesis as there was a risk of miscarriage and I was in absolute tears about it. It’s different now.”
“Well I popped out ok,” I joke.
“Well yes, well, you didn’t pop out because I had a caesarean”
“Yes, that’s right”
“I think it’s sad really, because Granny got married so young and then 7 months later, she had me, but she had to lie about it. And it always made me sad that she had to lie about it all her life. She did let it slip out once that she broke her mother’s heart, and I think that’s because she fell pregnant.”
“Things were different then” she continues, “partly because of the war of course. I can remember running if we heard the sirens. I wonder if that’s why I’m such a nervous wreck”
“Yes, she said you used to scream” I say.
“Did she?” She asks.
“Yes, I mean it stays with you and I’m sure a lot of people feel the same growing up in the war.” I say reassuringly. “It’s hardly surprising.”
“Yes, I suppose so” she replies pausing,
“Of course, I know what it was like after shows . . . you couldn’t sleep, so you did go out at 3am! We went out for drinks, for dinner, just to try and unwind really. We couldn’t go straight to sleep, so we went out.”
Reading the poems, and reflecting on her life and our own, even in Granny’s absence, the stories and events are continually reorganized around endurance, loss, resilience, and humor. I feel slightly guilty for bringing all this to the forefront for mum. I invited her into a space she may not usually occupy consciously. Academic framing provides me with a degree of distance, so she’s responding from inside her own story. But I cannot help but feel guilty for being the one who opened the door to a painful and confronting realization.
“I’m sorry, mum.” I say again, “I didn’t mean for it to be upsetting. But I did want you to read it if I’m getting it published”
“No, don’t worry” she repeats, “Oh, where you are going to publish it?”
“I’ll publish it academically, in a journal” I say.
“Oh an academic journal, that’s ok then”
I remind myself that if I had written something that left her untouched, unreflective or comforted only, it would likely to have been dishonest, and pain is not the same as harm. I hope that I have written ethically by accompanying her at the edge of a truth she is already approaching. Even though my mother and daughter read the same words, they are not reading the same text. While my mother reads from inside the narrowing lineage, my daughter reads from inside the expanding one. She seemed to be able to hold the tenderness without the threat.
My Daughter’s Reflections
“I enjoyed it, mum. I thought it was really sweet” she says. “I mean, I did feel slightly sad for you in a way. Reading about when you were young and knowing that that was all taken away from you”
“Oh,” I say thinking about my father passing away at the age of 11 years. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that. It’s not meant to be sad; it’s supposed to be about the good things.”
“Yeah, now I’m working with children I’m starting to remember so many things when I was younger. It’s weird. I think I’ve got a good memory because I always asked why, why is this happening to me? I used to just remember all the sad things, but I think I’ve got to the point where I remember all the good things now too.”
We go on to chat about the writers she’s been reading, Mary Shelley and Jane Austin, and how much she’s enjoying her university degree.
“I’ve already read 10 books this year!” She brags.
“10!” I exclaim, “It’s only been 3 weeks into the new year!” As she tells me all about Mary Shelley and why and how she wrote Frankenstein, I can hear the excitement and thirst for knowledge in her whole body. Her tutor has been recommending extra texts for her to read, “I really like her!” She says about her tutor, “But others don’t like her that much. She doesn’t just give the answers, and other students get cross about this. She sits there in silence, and nobody really likes that, but I think that’s good!”
“I think we do look to read things that resonate with us” she continues, “Honestly, I just love learning about their backgrounds and the lives of the authors.”
“Me too, darling.” I say smiling resonating off her energy, “Me too.”
Taking Risks
Here, the shared recognition, “me too” is more than agreement. It is an alignment across generations, in curiosity, in love of stories, in the desire to understand the lives behind the words. Like Pelias (2012), I reflect on my own need for archiving family stories as a way to cling to what remains. I question whether archiving my family history is a way of rebelling against disappearance and invisibility, but this moment with my daughter shows something else—archiving invites response and connection. Sharing drafts, inviting responses, and listening to silence became part of the method. My mother and my daughter actively interpret, feel, question, and connect these stories to their own lives which enables the archives to breathe and to stay alive.
Involving family members in research introduces emotional and ethical risks, as intimate stories are shared and sometimes exposed (Ellis, 2007). Yet, without these risks, such deeply personal narratives might remain untold (Owton, 2011, 2015; Owton & Allen-Collinson, 2017). The interplay between Granny’s past, my own memories, and my mother’s and daughter’s reflections enrich the data, creating multi-layered texture and emotional depth (Oakley, 1981). Family members are not simply participants, they are co-interpreters, sometimes collaborators and sometimes witnesses. Their responses altered not only what could be written, but how it could be written. This reflexive engagement acknowledges the Granny’s life is entwined with my mother’s, my own, shaping how I interpret, represent, and pass these stories to the next generation.
This is where rigor resides. Rigor is enacted through sustained reflexivity across my shifting positions as granddaughter, daughter, mother, and researcher. Also, it is enhanced through transparency about interpretive choices, and through ongoing dialogue with those whose lives intersect in Granny’s story. Ethical accountability does not conclude at publication. It continues in family conversations, in moments of discomfort or recognition, and in the evolving meanings attached to these stories.
This process highlights how social and historical rhythms flow through kinship, shaping values, practices, and modes of expression across generations (Finch, 2007), particularly for women (Oakley, 1974). Even in Granny’s absence, her stories reorganize themselves around relational meaning, demonstrating how the past is carried forward, (un)folded into everyday life, and transformed into something resonant. Both my mother and my daughter responded in ways I was not necessarily expecting. This emphasizes the importance of understanding that once released, a story is no longer singularly yours. In autoethnographic work, as Ellis (2016) argues, researchers do not write about themselves in isolation; they write within webs of ongoing relationships. When writing, autoethnographers have to assume that everyone who is written about will read it and this can unsettle, affirm, expose, or reshape familial bonds. Relational ethics, as articulated by Ellis (2016), requires attentiveness to consequence: Who might be hurt? Who might be seen? What might shift once private memory becomes public text? These questions unfold over time, just as relationships do. A story that feels honoring Granny’s memory in one moment may feel exposing in another. In this performative written piece of work, I took risks by presenting Granny’s embodied stories, embracing the uncertainties of interpretation and the fragility of memory, and sharing them with my mother and daughter. Here, risk lies in the vulnerability of involving those we love in knowledge production and each risk must be navigated within the specific ethical and relational terrain of a researcher’s circumstance. Without this vulnerability, the archives remain closed, and the stories remain still.
When we invite our families into our research, we do not simply document inheritance, we participate in it. We discover that stories are not possessions to safeguard, but relationships to tend. And if we are attentive, reflexive, and accountable, the risks we take do not fragment or fracture archives or relationships, they keep them alive.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge Kitrina Douglas and David Carless for their relentless work on re engaging with the body which helped open up reflective spaces for memory, story, and embodiment to meet.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
