Skilled facilitator and UBC alumnus takes emeriti, retired faculty, senior administrators and librarians on a journey to document their life stories. 
 

Guided Autobiography (GAB) is a form of writing practice with therapeutic effects originally developed by gerontologist Dr. James E. Birren at the University of Southern California, and which is now practiced worldwide. The late Dr. James Thornton, Associate Professor Emeritus of Administrative, Adult and Higher Education at UBC, was instrumental in introducing GAB to Canada. 

While GAB participants can be of any age, the practice often particularly appeals to older adults in a retirement transition, who may want to look back on the trajectory of a life, and “restory,” remembering forgotten moments of strength and resilience.

Dr. Philip Holden facilitated a GAB Program at the UBC Emeritus College this spring. He is a UBC alumnus who, after graduation, taught literary and narrative studies at the National University of Singapore until his retirement in 2018. In addition to an ongoing commitment to historical research and creative writing, Dr. Holden is now a Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia, Canada, and splits his time between Vancouver and Singapore.

The College's Guided Autobiography Program ran for six weeks in February and March. Each week, participants wrote a short piece reflecting a theme or aspect of their lives. 

A safe space for sharing

In the first half of the group meeting, individuals would discuss the writing experience and explore aspects of life writing. In the second, they would read their pieces to each other, commenting empathically on them.

All participants brought something different to the group: some focused more on a process of recollection and reflection, others more on a writing product, whether in honing the short piece itself or preparing for a longer memoir. 

"In facilitating the group, two things struck me," said Dr. Holden. "The first was the diversity of our experience and complexities of our life stories, which spanned five continents, and reached back into different historical pasts. The second was the ability of group members to reach out in friendship and empathy, and to find such richness in experiencing the lives of others."  

Dr. Sandra Penn Whitehouse, Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, recently retired and faced some health challenges. She participated in the inaugural College GAB group and found it to be a meaningful opportunity to reflect on the relationships, achievements, and challenges that have shaped her life.  

"It was especially rewarding to share the experience with a small group of six peers and to listen to their diverse and fascinating stories," said Dr. Whitehouse. "The formal 'guided' course structure and topics were helpful in creating a focussed, supportive environment in which to discuss difficult topics." 

She added that participants bonded so well that they plan to continue together as a writing group. 

"I’m grateful to the UBC Emeritus College for offering this opportunity," said Dr. Whitehouse. 

 The Emeritus College plans to host another guided autobiography group in spring 2027. 

Branching points in the tree of my life

Written by Dr. Whitehouse during the College's Guided Autobiography Program.

People always seem to ask the wrong question. “Why did you leave Australia?” Australia, the lucky country, the refuge for our immigrant parents, a faraway sunny land at peace, with plenty of fresh air, sea and bounty. 

My husband and I had several responses, brief and long, personal and professional, serious and funny depending on the circumstances. They all included adventure, careers, opportunity. But it was the wrong question.

The real question is “Why did you decide to stay?” 

To respond to this question is to trace the branching paths of a tree my husband and I tended together, the limbs shaped largely by circumstance and serendipity. 

Like many Australians who feel isolated from the world at large, we uprooted for a two-year adventure to garner more skills “overseas”. Our young family already contained two small branches, a boy and girl, whose world was going to transform from sunshine to snow.

We packed in the Australian summer of 1986 and travelled in January, to arrive in Quebec City just in time for Carnivale. In short, we went from plus 30 to minus 30 over 30 hours of flying.

At this instant, the decision to leave Australia was an unequivocal mistake! We hadn’t anticipated the complexities of Quebecois winter life, from finding lodging to understanding the dialect. Our relationship was stressed. When my husband left for a conference in March, I pleaded: “Come home with another job!” There was no place for us to grow roots in this icy landscape.

In June we left for Calgary, where we were fortunate to live in the married students’ quarters at the University, right next door to the Olympic site. We joined a community who didn’t have their extended families close by and rapidly adapted to a new life in a new city. While we missed our families, they felt Calgary was exotic enough to visit, and we were busy.

While many would consider Canada and Australia very similar, there were differences we liked as we stepped into this new environment—it seemed softer, less racist, better professionally for women and easier to get childcare. The Jewish community to which we belonged was more assimilated, having migrated a generation earlier than that of Australia’s. 

There we were, the two-year adventure coming to an end, and some branching decisions to be made. Sitting in our little townhouse, we just didn’t feel ready to go “home”. The work back in Australia was stifled by a country club mentality that was hard to crack. I asked my husband. “Are you ready for the black leather chair and mahogany desk?” a reference for a lifelong career position, weighty enough to grow strong roots. 

And then came an opportunity for him. To work with the inventors of the first coronary artery stent … in Phoenix Arizona. It would be just for a year, it would be warm, another adventure … and I was pregnant!

“The simple act of adjusting a branch’s angle is one of the most powerful (and inexpensive) tools an orchardist has” Botanist and barrel.com.

We leaned toward the desert heat. This was a temporary adjustment. We weren’t staying. We’d kept a house in Sydney; our belongings were there. It was just an extension of the adventure. We hadn’t pruned a branch yet. We had learned Quebec was not for us, and now the USA was also not on the table. The real cut, the first pruning, came when we realized that my husband’s pioneering skills would have trouble finding a home. The soil wasn’t ready. There was no work for using stents in Australia. We had big decisions to make, and with three children we needed to make a living. 

We wrote lists of pros and cons, felt the tensions of our extended families who were still well enough to travel to visit us, thought about future opportunities, particularly for me in returning to my pediatrics training, and made another adjustment­—to apply for landed immigrant status in Canada. We moved to London, Ontario. 

Had we decided to stay? Not really.

We didn’t apply for citizenship for more than a decade. As Australo-Canadians we pined for the sun and surf, the dry sense of humour and the brusque banter full of cockney slang. We needed a plan to reconcile our restlessness. My mother-in-law’s well used phrase, “You can’t sit at two weddings with one Tuches (bottom)” reverberated. There we were, trying to do just that.

We realized that while most of the branches were blossoming, we really hadn’t made deep roots. We were too restless, that a final decision of where to land was too hard to make, so we formalized a strategy to review our life every four years and keep our minds and hearts open. It made it easier to sell our original home, and ensure our lives felt fresh and purposeful. 

That is how we ended up staying! 

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