Deploying Sociological Fiction and Memoir to Explore Issues of Loss, Kindness, and Emotional Wellbeing

Sociological fiction and memoir aids the telling of sociological stories. My own such writings began after two significant bereavements and is a significant part of the griefwork (Letherby and Davidson, Illness, Crisis and Loss 23(4), 343–360, 2015) that I (continue to) do alone and with others. Since COVID-19 began, prompted by my own lockdown experiences, I have written some short pieces, for both adult and child audiences, with kindness, community and emotional wellbeing in mind. More recently I have also begun to reflect on the experience of, and relationship between, loneliness, isolation and solitude. I suggest that creative approaches like this enable us to express our sociological, emotional and political imaginations, drawing on our own and/or on respondents’ experiences. Here I reflect on how this way of working, prompted by my own experiences of loss and of personal and community kindnesses, by my own pandemic lockdown experiences and by my concerns for the emotional wellbeing of self and other, in turn helps to bring such issues into focus for a variety of audiences. In arguing for the value of such endeavours I reflect on my intellectual and emotional engagement with such writing, and what engagement I aim, and hope, for from readers and share some stories and memoir extracts.