Episode 137: Who Am I Now? Narrative Identity with Rianne Brinkman

In this episode you will discover: Identity Is Shaped in Interaction — Narrative identity forms and reforms through relationships and stories shared with others — making connection a core ingredient of recovery, not a bonus Visual Methods Unlock What Words Cannot — Collage-making, photos, and art give people with aphasia a pathway into identity work that talk alone can't always reach. Identity Reconstruction Is a Long Game — People continue navigating complex, shifting identities for years after stroke. Our systems need to follow them farther into that journey, not stop too soon. Sit on Your Hands and Truly Listen — The most powerful thing you can offer is unhurried, attentive presence. Learning to wait and watch — rather than fill the silence — is a skill worth deliberately practicing. If you've ever felt like there's more to aphasia care than the therapy protocol in front of you, or wondered what identity-centered practice actually looks like in the real world, this conversation will give you both the framework and the practical insights you need. Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Katie Strong from Central Michigan University and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group — a community dedicated to supporting better aphasia care. Rianne Brinkman is a speech-language pathologist and linguist from the Netherlands whose PhD project "Who Am I Now?" explores identity changes in people with aphasia through storytelling and creative arts-based approaches. Before her doctoral work — supported by the Dutch NWO Teacher Research Grant — she spent years as a clinician in rehabilitation and aphasia centers, and that deep clinical foundation shapes everything she brings to her research. She teaches in the Speech and Language Therapy program at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen and conducts her research at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. Today's conversation feels especially personal to me. Like Rianne, I came to doctoral work after years of established clinical practice, and my own research centers on narrative identity and aphasia through the My Story Project and the PULSE framework. So, when she sought me out at a conference in 2019, I recognized immediately that we were kindred spirits working toward the same questions from different corners of the world.

So, let's get into the conversation. Katie Strong: Well, before we dive into your work, I wanted to share something with our listeners. One of the things that drew me to this conversation is that we have a parallel story. We both came to do our PhDs after established clinical careers, and you're in the thick of that journey. I'd love to start with what made you decide to go back, and how did your clinical work shape what you wanted to pursue? Rianne Brinkman: I used to work in rehabilitation for a long time, and then I moved from one part of the Netherlands to another part, and there was not much work for me. So, I got the opportunity to help establish an aphasia center. And of course, if you look at the rehabilitation phase, that's far more deficit oriented, so that's very different than in the chronic phase, where an aphasia center comes into place. So, I really had to change my view of therapy. I had to establish a few groups on identity. I started reading on identity, on communicative participation, on how to do that in groups. So that's really where the interest came from. Katie Strong: I love hearing that. Sometimes as we go into a different phase or area of work, and it really re-shapes our thinking and how we engage with our clients or patients. Rianne Brinkman: Yeah, it does. And in those groups, I worked together a lot with creative therapists, and I learned so much from them, because then I realized that if you use narrative approaches, and you combine them with visual arts or arts therapy, that it can mean so much for somebody. They can get so many more means of expression. So, yeah, I l