Expressing care in narratives about occupations

Introduction: Engagement in occupations impacts on wellbeing, but this relationship needs to be better understood by occupational therapists. A focus on the meanings of occupations, rather then their purpose, might help further this understanding. Being meaningful, an occupation enables the individual to participate in society in a way that reflects personal and societal values. This paper explores how people can express personal values and caring in the narratives that they tell about leisure occupations. Method: Seventeen serious leisure enthusiasts were interviewed and encouraged to talk about their chosen occupation. Narratives were extracted from the transcripts and analysed, giving attention to content, structure and interaction. Those narratives that appeared to have a meaning associated with caring were examined further in order to establish the types of caring that they revealed. Findings: Thirty-one narratives were found to have a meaning associated with values or caring, relating either to a moral struggle, caring close to home or caring further afield. Conclusion: For some individuals, the meaningfulness of their leisure occupations lies, in part, in using them as a vehicle to express care towards themself, towards others or towards the environment. This has implications for the uses of occupations in therapy