The first European Conference of Narrative Therapy ever ends today, and if there is something in my suitcase that really proved to be useless, it was my bathing suit.

But can one say that a conference has really ended just because we arbitrarily choose to reduce it to a few days of get-togethers? For me, the Narrative Conference in Adelaide never ended. We had the opportunity to regularly correspond with colleagues throughout the world who are intelligent, humble and enthusiastic. We were also able to learn new concepts that have influenced, and continue to influence, my daily work. We were offered the opportunity to be supervised by a very prominent Australian therapist. Conferences are occasions to stretch our identity by starting a whole series of new stories with new people and by strengthening the ties we have with people we have already met. Conferences continue to live on after all the bright lights have dimmed.

I still have discoveries to share: the construction of a sort of epistemology of narratives by Ricardo Ramos, an extremely innovative supervision method developed by Eva Sophia Myers based on a narrative paradigm that reinvests creativity and intuition, and the wonderful work of Geir Lundby on obsessions entitled: “Obsessions can not be suppressed or forced, but they might be tricked”. This Conference also saw the birth of a multinational European team whose mission is to coordinate European initiatives on the development of the narrative approach. Almost every country (all but one actually, guess who ?) was able to gather and appoint a delegate. This was a seminal moment, very joyful, one of these fraternal instants when we feel we belong to a warm and welcoming community. Too cool!

Conferences continue to live on after all the bright lights have dimmed. But one should not be overwhelmed and succumb to the headiness of lectures, like Mr. Jourdain with his learned palinodes, and seek to be part of the “circuit” at any price. The objective of a successful narrative journey is to move towards new territories in one’s life, with its unusual opportunities, to promote what is truly important and precious. Spending one or two weeks a year traveling and participating in this kind of “conference therapy” seems all the more worthwhile when the journey takes me more solidly back to my Southwestern France, better armed to live there, respect and honor those I love, richer with a knowledge that I can grow by sharing it with my clients, students and colleagues. Most of all, however, aware that the true miracle of narratives is that they put us in contact with the experience of living a full life, that they invite us to inhabit this richly described conscience, that they allow us to remain connected with the miracle of sharing and co-writing this life with a partner, children and friends – everything else is just literature.