Shadow trajectories: The poetic motion of motherhood meanings through the lens of lived temporality

Abstract

This article seeks to develop the concept of shadow trajectories through analyzing narratives of six sisters on the process of becoming mothers. Development implies a dynamic tension between literal and imagined domains, which has been called poetic motion. Psychological novelty emerges from the polarized connections between literal × imagined, possible × performed domains, and between past–present–future. The six sisters (interviewed when they were 65–82 years old, and referred along the text by numbers—Sister 1 to Sister 6, to emphasize that chronological order in time), and I discuss, through their diverse experiences, personal movements that can represent cultural novelty inside their social contexts. Novelty seems to emerge from the interplay of what is seen, dreamed of, or planned as possibilities and what is effectively performed along their trajectories. I call these directions “shadow trajectories,” in opposition to other lines supposed to be “dominant,” both lines present and dynamically tensioned within the dialogical self-territory. The article intends to explore how these two kinds of trajectories are actualized in the women’s current experience, focusing on how “shadow trajectories” can support, amplify, direct, undermine, and create developmental continuity concerning “dominant or main trajectories.”