We are what we read. People read for many different reasons and outcomes. We may read for information, affirmation, escape, or inspiration. We may read to get in a better mood. Various studies have shown that readers are more apt to be empathetic, to understand that their experience is not the only experience. Through Scholarly Personal Narrative, I trace my own evolution of reading and my curious preference for Young Adult (YA) literature. Contemporary YA literature offers a unique combination of viewpoint, emotion, and transportation which allows for a deeper understanding of diverse backgrounds, and I explore whether a program of purposeful choices can influence perspective.

In sixth grade, I did an art project where I painted a self-portrait. I decided to paint myself looking in a mirror. On the right-hand side of the canvas was the back of my head. On the left-hand side was a reflection of my face looking back at me in the mirror. During one session with my art teacher, she looked at my painting and paused before asking, “what happened?” She paused again before continuing that at one point the painting was on the right track, implying since that point, something had gone terribly wrong. I mean what was looking back at me in the mirror was quite scary. It was a girl with sharp, angry brows who was grimacing like that emoji with clenched teeth. By the end of the project the painting only got uglier and unfortunately lived in my family’s home for years to come. My mom once told me that “interesting” isn’t necessarily a good thing. It was said right after I proudly shared with her that I received a certificate that read, “Most Interesting Art Project” for a paper doll I made to look like myself in eighth grade. Since that subtle comment, I’ve always been careful about how I choose and use words. I didn’t dare challenge my mom’s comment. Instead, I recall being mad at my art teacher. How could she call my paper doll interesting! What did she mean by that? I’ve always been better with paper than paint and I knew that unlike my self-portrait that I had painted two years prior, this doll I constructed, complete with my ponytail and 空手着 (karate uniform) actually looked like me! It’s been over a decade since these two “art incidents” but oddly enough these stories are quite telling about my current self-perception. This is the power of storytelling. Not only does it help me to connect with people beyond small talk but writing and reflecting on my past has helped me understand who I am now. Today I am an educator, supervisor of students, and a young professional in higher education. More than titles or positions I hold, I find meaning in the relationships I build with my colleagues, students, mentors, and community. What I have learned and hope to share to all educators, staff, students, and leaders by way of writing this thesis is the value and necessity of exploring, unlearning, and challenging yourself to understand who you are, how you are who you are, and why you are who you are. While recognizing that I have changed and will continue to change through growth, learning, and time, I find security at this intersection of past and future where I am present in this self. As someone who is empathetic, I am sensitive to other people’s feelings and emotions. With context, I attempt to understand how someone else may feel still while recognizing I may never truly know their experience. On the contrary, I’ve discovered that to be empathetic with my own self is quite challenging! This insight has created inner chaos and has helped me understand how I do and don’t process my own feelings and emotions regularly. As someone who has made it a priority to serve others, I am fueled by keeping busy as a way to have a purpose in all of my actions. I want to be useful. Through this grind, I’ve lost a sense of who I am and valuing myself beyond my work and what I am capable of. I don’t believe this is a unique experience. I have taken responsibility for burning out and running on empty. I am shifting gears. I have taken this opportunity to write my own experiences in hopes that there is something to be learned from it for anyone who has ever taken on too much, has run away from themselves, or been uncomfortable with who they are.

Transformation events can be a change in a person's work, a change in philosophy, a sudden insight, or a break in a relationship. According to David Hufford and Marilyn Motz, narrating these experiences are ways in which people perform, construct, and communicate belief systems. The narrators within the context of this thesis experience their transformation through a career transformation. The narrators rediscover their initial passion and transform that desire into actions that results in a shift of career. Sometimes seen as inexplicable, nevertheless the narrators provide analysis and reflection on the influences that led to their change. Some of the actions or thoughts that the narrators incorporate in their stories demonstrate not only the progression of events but also the alterations narrators experience in their worldviews. The context in which these changes occur is essential to interpreting and understanding the experience. Narrative components are filtered through an interpretive process that includes personal meaning, contrast with social norms and cultural beliefs and the impact on the receiver to enable narrators to justify their experience. It is the reflection on these experiences through which people gain insight and establish relevance to events that seem sometimes beyond their control. Stories from pop culture to ordinary citizens who change their lives daily demonstrate the pervasiveness of the transformational effect of states of crisis through which people journey. People's lives are turned upside-down through these experiences which place the narrator out of their normal element. There are two levels to these story types: external and internal transformation. At a superficial level there is the journey to change careers but at another level there is a relationship to opening up cultural expectations or acting generatively, as role-models. Narrators are effecting change through their positive attitudes and acceptance of the trials they encounter during their transitions. Narrators discuss specific actions that create transformative life changes or philosophical shifts. My investigation studies how individuals are involved in transitional events in which they experience a disengagement from a previous life, spending some time in liminal space where they transition or regenerate into a new place in society. Part of my approach to this subject matter used theories introduced by Victor Turner (pilgrimages) and by Arnold Van Gennep (rites of passage). Regina Holloman proposes that rites of passage can occur not just as physical/material transformation but can occur psychically as well. Some of the narrative patterns that narrators use to construct these tales are identified within the context of folk belief and folklore scholarship.

In the late 1960s, personal narrative became popular in high school and college writing classrooms as the expressivist and process movements emerged. Since then, personal narrative has recently lost its significance and it is no longer in our writing curricula. In this paper, I discuss the necessity of teaching personal narrative in the secondary composition classroom as it serves an important role in argument. In addition, I will argue for the use of digital spaces to engage students in a critical conversation through narrative.

Working mothers are stressed, juggling various roles and responsibilities both at home and at work, which can result in life imbalance. Writing has the potential to help working mothers to more effectively manage the challenges that cause this imbalance. Previous research and studies have shown that engaging in personal narrative writing can have physical and psychological healing effects, enhance problem-solving, lead to self-discovery, and build social connections, all factors that could potentially provide support to working mothers. This qualitative study explored the specific effects that personal narrative writing could have on the lives of working mothers. Initial data collection included autobiographical samples from each participant, in which she described her current issues as a working mother, her coping methods, and her previous experiences with personal writing. Over the next five months, participants were asked to write at least two times per week, at least 20-30 minutes per session, or longer if she felt compelled or simply chose to do so. Participants were interviewed four times: once before they began the study writing, once during the five-month study period, and twice during the post-study periods, during which each participant was also invited to share some of her personal writing as data sources. Analysis of the collected data enabled five themes to emerge: 1) writing can relieve stress; 2) writing can impact problem-solving and memory; 3) writing can impact concepts of identity and self; 4) writers desire to control writing practices; and 5) a relationship exists among motivation, perceived value of writing, and stress relief. From these themes, five recommendations related to establishing balance within the composition classroom were made: 1) balance personal and social elements in composition research; 2) balance personal and social elements in composition instruction; 3) balance personal and social elements through online networks; 4) balance mind and body in composition instruction; 5) balance writing with elements of personal value. From this last recommendation, a Linked Value Balance Model was proposed, which can have applications both for working mothers and within the composition classroom. / Dr. Jeannine M. Fontaine Dr. Ben Rafoth Dr. Lynne Alvine

This master's thesis is an autoethnography. According to Denzin and Lincoln, an autoethnograpic piece "works to hold self and culture together, albeit not in equilibrium or stasis," (207). This thesis, presented in story form, tells how I was educated into and came to follow the "Good Path" in becoming a member of Santo Domingo Pueblo, and more specifically, a contemporary Santo Domingan woman. My story is framed within a Puebloan paradigm of remembrance as articulated through oral tradition, narrative and text, and the social and natural environments of my Santo Domingan world. Through introspection and reflection on the narratives, I elicit what I believe to be the foundational core values of Santo Domingo culture. I identify and reference these core values as Breath, Corn, Hair, and Family. It is through my stories that I have also come to understand the strength and power of oral traditional narratives and teachings.

I opted to write a memoir about my personal experiences in yoga, rather than a traditional research-based thesis. A key distinction between memoir and autobiography or auto-ethnography is that it’s not linear—much like my yoga journey. Often, experiences, particularly around healing emotional trauma, are more circular in nature, perhaps even more of a spiral. According to Carl Jung, “The spiral in psychology means that when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth.” (Jung 5, p. 21). In his book Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains, Louis Cozolino, PhD explains that coherent narratives, such as Joseph Campbell’s “the hero’s journey”, are an important part of psychotherapy and provide a way for individuals to make sense of and heal from complex trauma. To illustrate this point, I will be employing the Jungian-inspired “heroine’s journey” model developed my Maureen Murdock, PhD—a similar framework to the “hero’s journey” but through a feminist lens. Personal narrative can also be a form of (svādhyāya) self-study. I chose to organize my eventual memoir into three sections: Divine, Liberated, and Love. On their own, each word represents a crucial part of my yoga journey: Divine represents my invitation to the practice through isolated mystical experiences; Liberated represents the therapeutic benefits that kept me coming back to the mat, as well as my initiation into the depths of my shadow work and ultimately individuation from my saṃskāras, or “conscious our unconscious patterns of though, communication, and behaviors” (Yoga Therapy Foundations, Tools, and Practice 2021, p. 285); and Love represents my integration, a union of the paradoxical nature of divinity and individuality. Combined, the phrase “Divine Liberated Love” has taken my initial intention of integration to a much deeper level, helping me to remember who I truly am and what matters to me.

Transformation events can be a change in a person's work, a change in philosophy, a sudden insight, or a break in a relationship. According to David Hufford and Marilyn Motz, narrating these experiences are ways in which people perform, construct, and communicate belief systems. The narrators within the context of this thesis experience their transformation through a career transformation. The narrators rediscover their initial passion and transform that desire into actions that results in a shift of career. Sometimes seen as inexplicable, nevertheless the narrators provide analysis and reflection on the influences that led to their change. Some of the actions or thoughts that the narrators incorporate in their stories demonstrate not only the progression of events but also the alterations narrators experience in their worldviews. The context in which these changes occur is essential to interpreting and understanding the experience. Narrative components are filtered through an interpretive process that includes personal meaning, contrast with social norms and cultural beliefs and the impact on the receiver to enable narrators to justify their experience. It is the reflection on these experiences through which people gain insight and establish relevance to events that seem sometimes beyond their control. Stories from pop culture to ordinary citizens who change their lives daily demonstrate the pervasiveness of the transformational effect of states of crisis through which people journey. People's lives are turned upside-down through these experiences which place the narrator out of their normal element. There are two levels to these story types: external and internal transformation. At a superficial level there is the journey to change careers but at another level there is a relationship to opening up cultural expectations or acting generatively, as role-models. Narrators are effecting change through their positive attitudes and acceptance of the trials they encounter during their transitions. Narrators discuss specific actions that create transformative life changes or philosophical shifts. My investigation studies how individuals are involved in transitional events in which they experience a disengagement from a previous life, spending some time in liminal space where they transition or regenerate into a new place in society. Part of my approach to this subject matter used theories introduced by Victor Turner (pilgrimages) and by Arnold Van Gennep (rites of passage). Regina Holloman proposes that rites of passage can occur not just as physical/material transformation but can occur psychically as well. Some of the narrative patterns that narrators use to construct these tales are identified within the context of folk belief and folklore scholarship.

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