Blog

We’ve just published the first 2026 issue of International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. 

This is a special issue celebrating 20 years of the Tree of Life narrative approach. 

The Tree of Life narrative approach has travelled way beyond its original contexts in Southern Africa. Practitioners in communities across the globe have adapted and expanded this metaphor, finding ways to gather stories of survival, kinship and hope in the face of storms. In honour of the 20th anniversary of the Tree of Life, this issue includes a special section on metaphoric practice. These contributions demonstrate the many creative ways metaphors can open space for storytelling, identity and collective imagination.

Across many parts of our world, people are living through ravaging storms of appalling war crimes and growing violence. Colonisation, neoliberal economic discourses, political denial, historical silences and poverty have led to immense suffering.

And yet these storms do not tell the whole story. People are not passive recipients of hardships, and they are always responding. It is heartening to witness the innovative ways practitioners are adapting narrative therapy ideas and rooting them in diverse soils across the world. Their practices honour people’s knowledge and skills, acknowledge acts of refusal and resistance, invite agency and enable contribution. Across the work in this issue, therapy and community practice are understood not simply as sites of individual change but also as places where social and political change can be fostered.