Narrative gerontology has been a recognized discipline for at least two decades (de Medeiros, 2014; Kenyon, Clark, & deVries, 2001). Narrative gerontologists have conceptualized life as storied (see Kenyon & Randall, 1999) and human beings as makers of meaning (Randall, 2013). The assumption that “life is a biographical as much as a biological phenomenon” is fundamental to narrative gerontology (Randall, 1999). Consequently, one assumes that we can learn about the personal experiences of aging and the social nature of aging from the stories people tell. It has been noted that narrative gerontologists share a passion for life stories and for the life-as-story metaphor (Kenyon, Randall, & Bohlmeijer, 2011). In the research field of narrative gerontology, older adults are invited to tell stories of or from their lives, usually within the context of research interviews. This implies that the empirical approaches in narrative gerontology are fundamentally dependent on the narrative willingness (Blix, Hamran, & Normann, 2015) of those whom we want to learn more about. Perhaps there is a natural narrative willingness. Perhaps human beings are inherently storytellers (Andrews, 2000) and are a storytelling species (Atkinson, 2007). However, Baldwin (2006) has noted that narrative agency is a matter of both being able to express oneself in a form that is recognizable as narrative and having the opportunity to express oneself narratively.

I occasionally think about myself as an academic parasite, subsisting on other people’s stories. So far, what I have accomplished as a narrative gerontologist has been completely dependent on other people’s willingness to tell their stories. At times, this fills me not only with a debt of gratitude, but also with a narcissistic shame, insightfully described by Josselson (2011) as “shame that I am using these people’s lives to exhibit myself, my analytical prowess, my cleverness. I am using them to advance my own career, as extensions of my own narcissism, and I fear to be caught, seen in this process” (p. 45). However, my greatest concern is not my debt of gratitude to those who have generously shared their stories with me. Over the years, I have become increasingly concerned with those who for some reason do not tell their stories, because they do not want to, because they are never invited to tell them, or because they are never listened to; in other words, those who find themselves as narrators “dispossessed” (Baldwin, 2008). What if Hannah Arendt (1969) was right about the world being full of stories just waiting to be told? Further, what if these stories are waiting and waiting but are still never told? Or maybe worse: what if these stories are told but never paid attention to? And what if these are the stories from which we could potentially learn the most?

With reference to my own and others’ research, I will dwell on some of the restlessness and discomfort I have felt lately regarding my own field of research: narrative gerontology. For some time, I have been wrestling with such questions as: Does narrative gerontology favour certain types of stories, people, data, and analyses? Could narrative gerontology’s conceptualizations of narrative and narrativity contribute to the narrative dispossession of people (see Baldwin, 2006)? And if it does, what are the consequences?

My interest in stories that are left untold was triggered several years ago, while I was a PhD student planning to do life story research with older Sami adults in Norway. The Sami are indigenous people who live in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. These national states have made substantial efforts to assimilate the Sami into the majority populations, through residential schools and strict regulations regarding the use of the Sami language. The assimilation process was paralleled by individual experiences of stigmatization and discrimination (see Minde, 2003).

I had distributed information letters about my PhD study and was waiting impatiently for people to return their written consent letters. I was thrilled every time I found an envelope in my mailbox, and I eagerly phoned the senders to make appointments for interviews. Even greater was my disappointment when some of the people I contacted chose not to participate after talking to me on the phone. Given that they had sent their written consent, I was surprised by such responses, but I politely thanked them for their interest and hung up the phone. However, after experiencing this several times, my level of frustration rose. I started to wonder if there was something wrong with the way I presented the study, or worse, that something about the study was fundamentally flawed. I discussed the matter with my supervisors and they encouraged me to inquire into the matter if it happened again. They suggested that I should ask, in a gentle manner, why the person did not wish to participate in the study after hearing more about it. And so I did, on three occasions. On all three occasions, the people who had second thoughts about participating were women. One of them responded that she was so inspired by our talk that she had actually decided to write her own story and consequently did not want to “give it away for free” to me. Of course, I could not argue with her about that, so I just wished her the best of luck with her writing. I sincerely hope that she eventually wrote her story. However, the two other women stated quite different reasons for changing their minds. They both expressed concerns that their stories would not be interesting because they “had not accomplished much in life,” as they had spent most of their lives “in this little village,” “at home,” raising their eleven children. They encouraged me, rather, to interview persons with “more exciting” stories to tell. When I assured them that stories about life “in this little village,” “at home,” with children were the type of stories I was interested in, they reconsidered and chose to participate after all. These experiences made me realize the importance of believing that your stories will be of interest to someone. If you do not believe that they are, you simply do not tell them.

In the book The Stories We Are: An Essay on Self-Creation, narrative gerontologist William Randall (2014) notes that “of the countless stories we could tell of ourselves, there are comparatively few we do” (p. 281). He discusses several reasons stories are left untold and suggests that the reasons fall into two broad categories: things we fear and things we lack. In the following, I will reflect on the reasons Randall suggests for keeping one’s stories to oneself.

A core assumption in narrative gerontology is that identity development and meaning-making do not cease at any age, but continue throughout life (Bohlmeijer, Westerhof, Randall, Tromp, & Kenyon, 2011; Kenyon et al., 2001). In my opinion, this necessitates a perspective on meaning not as something that is inherent in stories, as the coherence paradigm and Synnes’ (2015) statement that nostalgic stories offer “no insight into the narrator’s development” suggest. Rather, we need perspectives on meaning as something created in the interaction between a teller and her or his audience. Furthermore, identities are not reflected by people’s stories; rather, they are created and negotiated through the act of narrating in specific contexts. As noted by Phoenix, Smith, and Sparkes (2010), “Narratives are not understood as a transparent window into people’s lives as they age, but rather as an on-going and constitutive part of reality” (p. 2). People can project multiple and even incompatible identities, depending on context (Norrick, 2009). This necessitates analytical perspectives that allow a focus on the act of narration in the here-and-now, for particular purposes, within the frames of broader discourses.

I would like to mention one article that demonstrates this point quite clearly. In “Confabulation: Sense-making, Self-making and World-making in Dementia,” Örulv and Hydén (2006) demonstrate the productive aspects of confabulation as it occurs spontaneously in dementia care. Martha and Catherine, both diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, have just had their afternoon coffee in the living room of a dementia care unit. The living room is a common space in the dementia unit, but Martha has another understanding of the situation. She claims that although the TV and the radio in the living room belong to her, she and Catherine are in fact visiting a lady called Violet. Throughout the conversation between her and Catherine, Martha struggles to make sense of the fact that they are sitting in Violet’s living room surrounded by Martha’s possessions. Martha is obviously confabulating. Throughout the article, the authors contextualize Martha’s story and thereby demonstrate that her “confabulation” is an active and creative meaning-making or sense-making process. Furthermore, they demonstrate that Martha’s confabulation is an active self-making process. It gives her an opportunity to establish and maintain a preferred identity during her interaction with Catherine. Additionally, the confabulation is not merely a way of representing the world as it appears to Martha; it is also an active world-making process in the way it organizes joint actions and legitimizes the speaker’s conduct. The authors not only demonstrate the significance of seemingly meaningless or incoherent stories; they also demonstrate the importance of contextualizing stories, both in the here-and-now and in broader contexts.

Analyses in narrative gerontological research tend to focus more on what people’s stories are about than on how and under which circumstances people are telling their stories (de Medeiros & Rubinstein, 2015; Phoenix et al., 2010). This tendency keeps narrative gerontology trapped in its fundamental dependency on the narrative willingness of those about whom we want to learn more. Furthermore, it marginalizes those who for some reason have difficulty telling meaningful or coherent stories. The example of Martha and Catherine demonstrates the insufficiency of merely searching for meaning in people’s stories. Rather, meaning is created between interlocutors, in specific contexts, through the act of storytelling.

De Medeiros (2014) has noted that traditional autobiographical interviews may privilege certain groups and stories and disadvantage other groups. Furthermore, Baldwin (2006) has noted that an insistence on consistency, coherency, and emplotment in people’s narratives may serve to dispossess people, for example people living with dementia, from their potential narratives.

Several scholars, such as Bamberg (2006), Baldwin (2006), and Georgakopoulou (2006), have argued in favour of devoting greater attention to “small” stories in narrative research. According to Bamberg, the point of departure for many “traditional narrative researchers” is what the narratives are about. In contrast, narrative analyses of “small” stories focus on “narrating as an activity that takes place between people… [and] the present of ‘the telling moment’” (p. 140). Freeman (2007), however, justified the interest in “big” stories in narrative inquiry. According to him, “big” stories “entail a significant measure of reflection on either an event or experience, a significant portion of a life, or the whole of it” (p. 156). Specifically, he noted that the reflection inherent in “big” stories “entails a going-beyond the specific discursive contexts in which ‘real life’ talk occurs” because it is “a meaning-making, an act of poiesis, in which one attempts to make sense of some significant dimension of one’s life” (p. 157). Freeman dismissed the claim that “big” stories represent “life on holiday,” a distance from everyday reality, by contending that reflection is indeed an aspect of life itself. He argued for the importance of focusing on both “small” and “big” stories in narrative inquiry. Neither type of story has privileged access to “the truth”; rather, they represent different aspects of life.

Other scholars, such as Coupland (2009) and Norrick (2009), have argued that studies of the discursive constitution of aging necessitate an interest “both in the detail of local acts of meaning making and in how symbolic exchange through words and actions cumulatively contributes to social positions, norms and understandings about age” (Coupland, 2009, p. 850). Nikander (2009) demonstrated how perspectives from discursive psychology can contribute to gerontology by giving central stage to the rigorous analysis of people’s situated discursive actions. “Instead of assuming a priori that age categories are salient, the researcher’s task is to look for the ways in which the participants use identity as a discursive resource, and for how various contradictory versions and meanings of age are constructed in talk and text” (p. 867).

As de Medeiros and Rubinstein (2015) suggest, stories contain silences, gaps, and omissions—the untold stories, which they call “shadow stories.” They claim that shadow stories can be brought “to the surface” (p. 162) through careful listening and subsequent probing during research interviews. Their point of departure is the acknowledgement that interviewers always shape what tellers tell. Details that are introduced by the teller but not recognized or affirmed by the interviewer may be dropped from the teller’s unfolding story. In the article, they present an illustrative case study based on three interviews with Constance, a woman in her 70s enrolled in a qualitative study about generativity in the lives of women over age 65 years who did not have children. The authors demonstrate how they could have missed out on important insights if they had stopped after Constance’s initial story; however, by following up on the gaps, omissions, and contradictions in the first interview, the interviewer managed throughout the two subsequent interviews to obtain more complex and multi-layered stories about Constance’s choice not to have children. The authors conclude that by being satisfied with a surface plot, interviewers miss the opportunity to uncover shadow stories and other omissions (p. 168).

There might be good reasons to encourage interviewees to dig deeper into their stories or to help them tell more complex and multilayered stories about their lives, as de Medeiros and Rubinstein suggest. However, I do have some concerns. While I agree that narrative gerontology would benefit from a stronger focus on the “hows” of storytelling, I do not agree if the main reason for paying attention to the “hows” is to get people to tell stories that we, as researchers, find somehow “thicker” or “stronger.” It might not have been de Medeiros’ and Rubinstein’s intention to suggest that there is a story “under the surface” that could be brought “to the surface” with the right tools. However, statements in the article could give the reader this impression— for example, “The risk in an interview is that what is left may be the story that the interviewer wants to hear, which in turn may be only a small part of the larger story that the teller could potentially have revealed” (p. 163, emphasis added). The use of the singular (“the larger story”) and the verb revealed, which could indicate that the story exists prior to and independent of the narrative context, may contribute to this conception. In my opinion, narrative research never could or should be about finding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Rather, I believe that the story a person tells about her or his life is a matter of choice, which implies that life stories are not fixed. Life stories are situational constructions that are told for an audience and for a purpose. The teller makes past events, “real” or “imagined,” relevant in the here-and-now act of telling and thereby in her or his situated constructions of meaning and identity (see Bamberg, 2011).

During the course of my PhD study, I became aware that several of the older Sami adults’ stories were about missed opportunities or roads not taken. I did not do anything in particular with these stories back then, but awhile ago I started to examine these stories with renewed curiosity. I was intrigued by the fact that several interviewees chose to tell stories about missed opportunities, things that did not happen, when invited to tell “the stories of their lives.” As Randall (2014) notes, “Of the countless stories we could tell of ourselves, there are comparatively few we do” (p. 281). This implies that “the stuff selected as worthy to insert into a life story” (Bamberg, 2011, p. 3) is chosen for a purpose, for an audience, in specific contexts. Consequently, narrative gerontology needs methods and analytical perspectives that offer the possibility of studying meaning, not as something that is inherent in stories, and identities, not as something people have, but things that are continuously constructed through the act of narration. We need to move beyond the idea that stories “offer insight” (see Synnes, 2015) and instead consider insight as something created through the act of telling and listening. We need perspectives that allow a focus on both the referential world (what the stories are about) and how this referential world is constructed in the interactive setting.

While working with the stories about roads not taken— specifically, two women’s stories about missed opportunities for education—a three-level narrative positioning analysis, as suggested by Bamberg (2004), turned out to be a fruitful approach (Blix, Hamran, & Normann, 2015). On the first level, the analysis focused on what the stories were about: how the story’s characters were positioned in story time and story place. On the next level, the analysis focused on the interactive work accomplished between the participants in the interactive setting (that is, between the interviewees and me). On the third level, the analysis focused on the narrators’ positioning of themselves with regard to broader discourses: social and cultural processes beyond the immediate telling situation. Questions about agency, who were the protagonists and who were the antagonists, who were the heroes and who were the villains in the two women’s stories were modified and nuanced as the analysis proceeded at the three different levels. For example, one of the women, Inga, told the story of how she, as a young child, was almost adopted by a teacher from the South who wanted to bring her to the South and give her the opportunity to go to school there. Inga’s mother, however, refused to let her go. At level one (positioning of the story’s characters), the teacher appeared as a hero and the mother as a villain, while Inga herself appeared as both adventurous and as a passive object to others’ decisions. At level two (positioning in the interactive setting), Inga positions herself as a person who could have had an opportunity for education. At level three (positioning with reference to broader discursive contexts), the positioning of Inga’s mother and the teacher appear to be different than on level one. Within a post-colonial frame of reference, the story about the teacher from the South offering to provide Inga with an education was also a story about the attempt of an authority figure from the majority society to “save” a Sami child from her own culture. Within this context, Inga’s story is positioned among numerous stories of authorities removing indigenous children from their families and communities to make them into “proper” citizens. Given the historical and social circumstances and the power relationships between a Sami woman and a teacher from the South, the mother’s refusal to let Inga go to the South could be perceived as an act of resistance. From this perspective, Inga’s mother appears as a hero. The three-level analysis demonstrates that stories about missed opportunities are not necessarily about regret or about lost possible selves. Rather, I consider narrations about missed opportunities significant because of the functions they serve in people’s situated identity claims.

Introducing to narrative gerontology perspectives that focus on identities as “claims”—that is, as “‘acts’ through which people create new definitions of who they are” (De Fina, Schiffrin, & Bamberg, 2006, p. 3)—necessitates reflexive accounts of the narrative gerontologists’ effects on narrative environments, such as interview situations. Phoenix (2013) has noted that “narrators actively set up their entitlement to talk by warranting themselves through particular types of experience and positioning themselves in specific ways, which include anticipation of what they assume the interviewer wants to hear or will approve” (p. 82) In my study (Blix, Hamran, & Normann, 2015), the women’s emphasis on missed opportunities for education and their active referencing of language difficulties and cultural norms could not be observed in isolation from the immediate audience of the stories: me, a unilingual, Norwegian-speaking, female Sami researcher from the university. If I had restricted the analysis of the women’s stories to what the stories were about (positioning level 1), I would have missed the opportunity to give a reflexive account of my own impact on the women’s narrations (positioning level 2) and how both the women and I were positioned with reference to broader discursive contexts (positioning level 3). Ray (1999) has encouraged scholars in feminist gerontology to intervene critically in their own lives as well as the lives of others and to use personal experience as “a standpoint on which to base analysis, formulate theory, and motivate action” (p. 174), thereby challenging “the scientific paradigm by being personally ‘involved’ and critical (as opposed to distanced and objective)” (p. 173). Rather than conceptualizing the fact that we, as narrative gerontologists, shape what people tell as a methodological problem to overcome, we should consider it an opportunity to create new insights. To do so, we must offer reflexive accounts of how we and the participants in our research affect one another and the stories being told.

Randall (2010) notes, quoting Casey, “We are what we remember ourselves to be” (p. 151). I have taken the liberty of rephrasing this as “We are what we narrate ourselves to be” (Blix, Hamran, & Normann, 2015). This perspective is at odds with Synnes (2015), who relates older adults’ nostalgic stories to the term “smaller narrative identity” (p. 171; emphasis added), with reference to de Lange’s (2011) “narrative identity, version light.” By focusing on the act and context of telling rather than merely on what is told, all stories, big or small, nostalgic or not, are considered relevant in people’s ongoing constructions of meaning and identity claims. Consequently, no identity is considered “smaller” or “lighter” than others.

At the outset of this essay, I shared my concerns that narrative gerontology might favour certain types of stories, people, data, and analyses. I agree with Baldwin (2006) who has noted that our conceptualizations of narrative and narrativity could contribute to the narrative dispossession of people whom we want to learn more about. Our fundamental dependence on people’s narrative agency and willingness is inevitable. There are, however, other aspects of our field of inquiry that are open for negotiation, such as: What types of research questions do we typically ask? Who do we include in our research? How do we construct and analyze our data? I believe that narrative gerontology could benefit from moving beyond traditional studies of older adults’ life stories or biographical narratives related within the context of qualitative interviews. There is a tendency in narrative gerontology to ask questions that allow older adults to tell stories only about the past. Although older adults are likely to have fewer years ahead than behind, there is no reason not to include research questions that could elicit stories about imagined futures. Stories about imagined futures could, like stories about possible pasts, serve important functions in older adults’ situated identity claims. Furthermore, data construction could take place in less formalized settings than traditional life story interviews. Narrative gerontology should pay more attention to the diverse sites of engagement, more or less formalized settings, and spontaneous everyday talk in which older adults tell stories. In that respect, the study by Örulv and Hydén (2006) of the conversation between Martha and Catherine in the dementia care unit’s living room provides an inspiring example. That study also illustrates that we can gain important insights from studying seemingly incoherent narratives. By directing our attention towards diverse sites of engagement, we may be able to include those who for some reason are reluctant to participate in traditional life story interviews in our research. Finally, narrative gerontology needs to focus not just on what older adults’ stories are about but also on how, to whom, and under which circumstances they tell their stories. If narrative gerontology moves in such a direction, I believe I will grow quite old in this intriguing field of inquiry.