Chapter 17 Polyphony and Dialogism

​“If truth is the object of its quest, the word is the portal through which it passes. For the word is our only access to truth, both the truth of what we know and the truth of what we are” (Patterson, 1988, 2).
 
Our letters and phone calls gave life to our transformational process. But our convergence also trigged physical reactions that were connected to deep sub-conscious memories of trauma embedded in the mind-body. As we stood naked and exposed before each other, we risked reexperiencing the pain from the past so that future joy could be found ‘somewhere over the rainbow’.
As a connected with my birth family, I needed to assure my birth mother that our bond of unconditional love would never be questioned. In this chapter, you can read my letter to my adopted mother Jan. My adopted father Dave had often discussed Greek philosophy and Gnothi Seuton, the Greek wisdom tradition of Self-knowledge. He would say to me “Healer heal thyself; healer know thyself.”
 
Bringing the voices together in a ‘communiverse’ (Gergen, 2020) set in motion a healing process not just for me, but for the entire relational matrix. Here are links to articles, books, and websites that can offer more insight into Bakhtin’s philosophies. We were all asking, “Who are you?” Then we had to pause to listen to the responses that came back to us like echoes bouncing off mountain faces.

Literature and Spirit:
 
https://books.google.ch/books?id=d7EfBgAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective
https://books.google.ch/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=2dMgAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=bakhtin+and+dialogism&ots=I8Aa__8X-2&sig=EZZkIdJDTFGfNRKYcphA41VprlY#v=onepage&q=bakhtin%20and%20dialogism&f=false
 
In Theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and Heteroglossia
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-1/
 
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-2/
 
Traumatic Triggers
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-triggered-4175432