Re-Authoring Mentoring Experiences: Counter-Mapping Untold Stories

• In Event: Mapping the Long Haul: Cartographies of Mentoring Journeys

Abstract

Objectives / Purposes
The Tree of Life (ToL) is an African centered model for psychological interventions (Ncube Mlilo, 2006; 2024) which represents interconnectedness, awareness and wisdom. Using this framing, our stories are anchored in our roots (our origins), which feed key mentoring moments, to enhance our skills (trunk). Our stories of lessons learnt (branches) are characterized in the relationships with our mentors (leaves) signaling the ways in which we populate and support the hopes and dreams of others. Our agentic skills are deployed in practices of inter and intra advocacy (fruits) in the areas of education and mental health. Our ToL are sometimes situated in soil that may be arable or barren, standing within harsh or inviting conditions. Through this project, we aim to articulate a counter narrative (re-authoring) to arrive at a deeper understanding of our fealty in relationships with our mentors.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Narrative Therapy (NT: Marnie, 2024) is a community based narrative methodology used in the psychological field to support clients with the re-authoring of their experiences. NT privileges us, as story-tellers and experts capable of examining our issues (the experience of mentoring) through the re-positioned lens of on-lookers rather than characters. Combining NT with practices of counter-mapping, we disrupt and resist dominant power structures that may be perpetuated through our stories (Ingamells, 2016) in order to conceptualize alternative endings or actions (Tadros, Presley & Ramadan, 2024) as we continue on, in our professional and social spaces.



Fig 1: Narrative Therapy (Phillip, 2025)

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Using counter-mapping (Duggan, & Gutiérrez-Ujaque, 2025) we resist the performative influence of told stories (Blázquez Sánchez, 2018) and revive untold stories of mentoring. As Caribbean women, counter mapping allows us to define new frames through which we contest deficit positions which may seek to limit our potential for meaningful growth. Through our collaborative counter-mapping, we resolve these conflicts (Oslender, 2021) to arrive at deeper understandings, which can shape our future professional actions as mentors and mentees.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
We respond to the key question of:
1. How do we make sense of our being and becoming through mentoring?

The following outlines the data generation:
1. Creating mentoring maps using the ToL image as the geographical points (layering).
2. Switching between storyteller and therapist.
3. Meeting via Zoom (n= 45-60 minutes each).
4. Writing reflective memos (reauthoring) to explain actions, feelings and memories.
5. Excavating pieces using either fire, digging or tearing.
6. Sharing results, and interrogating new epistemological and ontological meanings (recognition of similarities and differences).
7. Writing other reflective memos based on the excavated pieces (attending to the new or unexpected).
8. Analyzing data using content and thematic analysis.

Results and/ or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/ points of view
Preliminary findings suggest that counter-mapping combined with narrative therapy enhances researcher reflexivity, (Boatcă, 2021). The approach provides new individual and community perspectives through which familiar mentoring stories of identity roles, challenges, leadership, risk taking, ‘paying forward’ and service can be examined for alternative forms of emancipatory actions.

Authors

• Ines Gill Grill, Colleague of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago

• Tamara Phillip, The College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSTAATT)

• Laurette Maria Stacy Bristol, University of the West Indies - Cave Hill