(Re)sourcing what gets thrown away : an artful journey of recovery and renewal

Abstract

This research was conducted with a group of middle-aged women who participated in a series of four reflective walks together over four weeks in various natural settings in an effort to reconnect them with the more-than-human world and their own natures. Adapting The Work that Reconnects fourfold framework and correlating open-sentences to guide the walks, I used an integrated methodological approach rooted in hermeneutical phenomenology and Creative Analytic Practice (CAP), to better understand the participant’s lived experiences and subsequent expressions of artwork created from ‘found’ objects along the walks to communicate those experiences. This study examines the importance of making time and space for life’s transitions – especially at a time when one might feel ‘thrown-away’ themselves and created the opportunity for these women to (re)source and rediscover who they really were and what life they were called to live.