On the surface, it seems easy to define my beliefs about the nature of reality and how we come to know. I am, at heart, a constructivist with a very liberal, relative view of the world. I fit the stereotype pretty closely For instance, I remember breathing a sigh of relief during the first class in qualitative research because after a semester of quantitative, which I found jargon-filled and dissatisfying, here was a place I felt at home, a place filled with stories, with individual voices bringing their perspective of the world, looking through the lens of their biological and cultural heritages.

I enter the world through narrative. I have been telling my own story for as long as I can remember, scribbled in binders and blank books.

I can trace the development of my oema through the progress of the 21st century. 2000 was a year of great change for me both personally and professionally: I left my job to start a consulting business with the college as my primary client and pretty quickly began to plan for graduate school. Personally, I began a practice that has become a fundamental part of my methodology: morning pages. I also began reading tarot cards.

The past five years have been an intriguing part of my life journey and they have brought me to a place where I can take shelter for a time. Ontology: what is the nature of reality? Subjective, viewed through the lens of our biological and cultural heritages; we can understand the biases and ideas that come from those heritages but it is difficult to escape them. I think we need to in order to truly be able to meet another person. As long as I see you as a category–African American, female, gay–I don’t see you as a person. It sounds trite but I have heard it voiced by others, most often on news programs when they are asked to comment on how a particular group is going to respond to an event (ie., what do women think about the trade deficit?). These commentators have balked–there is great diversity among women in terms of what they think about any issue or event, as diverse as the opinions in the larger population. While women may share certain concerns about children and the family, their ideas for how to solve those problems may be quite different: a stay-at-home mom may wish for better family leave while a working mom may wish for daycare in the workplace. And even amongst those smaller groups, there will be differences. Reality is in the eye of the beholder.