Lisa's legacy, an auto-ethnographic account

Abstract

The author reflects on events that unfolded more than 26 years ago. In doing so he transforms Lisa, a child receiving therapy in a children's home, to a symbol in the punctuation of the story of how he changed his methodological stance and thereby experienced an identity transformation. The author also grapples with the meaning of the research that his students were involved with over time and he comes to the conclusion that they tried to understand something of the human condition, perhaps in an attempt to make sense of their own lives too. They entered the worlds of suffering, of despondency, of courage, and of resilience and became aware of how people dealt with issues of identity as they unfolded in the contexts of time and place.