Journey Of Reflection

Navigating Identity, Culture and Healing Through Soul Work

Abstract

This article uses autoethnography to explore how identity was shaped and gradually re-authored of through experiences of girlhood, migration, grief, and reflective writing. Drawing on journals, poetry, and reflective rereading, I examine how Yoruba and Christian-inflected patriarchal expectations, migration from Nigeria to England, institutional misrecognition, and bereavement shaped my sense of self. I use the term soul work to describe the reflective and emotional labour through which writing became a means of examining inherited narratives of respect, silence, duty, and worth. The article argues that self-compassion and self-recognition did not emerge separately from writing, but developed through repeated acts of  journalling, poetic reworking, and reflective engagement with personal experience. In doing so, the article demonstrates how creative and reflective writing can function as a method of inquiry, healing, and self-authorship within creative writing for therapeutic purposes (CWTP).