Life-story work is a therapeutic process that involves the active reconstruction of an individual’s life story. Researchers and theorists believe that this storying process may be very important in the development of a healthy sense of self. For most children, the ongoing storying of their lives occurs throughout development as parents recall early memories, tell stories of proud moments, and keep memory books. Unfortunately, for some children their life story is lost. There are many reasons this happens including: tragedy, placement into foster care, poor record keeping, overwhelming parental stress, mental illness, and poor familial communication patterns. Life-story work can be best explained using the Life-Story Work Model. The life-story work model is an interactive model of two systems: the self system (physiological, emotional, and cognitive) and the external system (microsystems [family], exosystem [community], and macrosystem [culture]) (cook-cottone 2006). According.
