Reflecting on Autoethnographic and Phenomenological Experiences: A Caregiver’s Journey

Reflecting on Autoethnographic and Phenomenological Experiences: A Caregiver’s Journey theorizes the layers of autoethnography. It explores components that may be not only melancholic and empirical, but also emotionally painful. The book searches phenomena in autoethnographic happenings that make them redolent. Through a phenomenological lens of an insider that includes self- and other-hood, marriage, career, fatherhood, suicide, despair, double grief, loss, caregiving, housekeeping, advocating, mind reading, and encouraging, a narrative that illustrates self-reflection on particular experiences is constructed and result in experiential and didactical understandings. Individual, personal, and subjective interpretation of relational happenings are explored. Laid out through positionality are the individual, personal, and subjective interpretations of a season of daily caregiving in the life of a marriage, as well as some introspections revealing meanings of phenomena within the context of particular settings. Reflective journaling and observations of the marital season seek to understand if and how shared experiences transcend multiple contexts and help the reader understand experiences of dementia.