Emerging Horizons, Part Two. Harmony’s Story: Answering the Big Question

Abstract

This second installment of the Emerging Horizons series explores Harmony’s digital storytelling (DST) experience (please see the introductory editorial to the series, Crafting Meaning, Cultivating Understanding, to access the film). In this article I lean on the philosophy of Paul Ricœur to suggest that 1) the metaphorical possibilities of DST could enable Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer survivors to come to a deeper understanding of their own cancer experiences and 2) the process of “emplotment” in the creation of a digital story has the power to transform the random and coincidental, pre-narrative experience of cancer into a meaningful whole. I conclude by discussing how attaching meaning to, and learning from, an otherwise meaningless cancer experience through the DST process, can help AYA cancer survivors construct their own answer to the “big question” of cancer in young adulthood.