Through the looking glass: Biographical writing as self-reflection

Abstract

Combining creative writing excerpts from my Ph.D. work-in-progress, ‘The Other Mothers: Exploring adoption, surrogacy and egg donation through life writing’, with reflective commentary, this article will discuss the ways in which writing the lives of others can serve as a process of self-reflection. Inspired by my personal experience as a biological and adoptive mother, my Ph.D. project involves creative practice as research, alongside critical approaches, to culminate in the production of a multi-subject biographical narrative of women who have become mothers through adoption, surrogacy and egg donation, and their silent partners – birth mothers, surrogates and egg donors – whose stories remain largely untold.