Results and discussion are combined

Results and discussion are combined. In doing so, our aim is to provide a more transparent connection between participants’ stories and existing knowledge. The analysis conducted revealed three types of post-retirement narratives: Entangled, Going Forward and Making Sense. The storyline of the Entangled Narrative is ‘I was a successful gymnast. I am not a gymnast anymore. I want to be a gymnast again’. The storyline of the Going Forward Narrative is ‘I was more than just a gymnast. I am more than a former gymnast. I look forward to what the future holds’. The final storyline refers to the Making Sense Narrative. This narrative differs from the previous two due to its emergent quality. Smith (2013) described emergent narratives as being open to anything life brings. Differently from the other narratives, the emergent one is lacking a real plot and can be considered a protonarrative (i.e. the beginning of a narrative; Smith 2013). It is productive, optimistic and open, with its main focus on the present.In the stories of the participants from this study there is a narrative tension spanning from memories and values from the past and the comfort of the ‘known’ (e.g. life in the gym), and a general openness to new, undefined – and possibly not yet imagined – possibilities. Figure 1 illustrates the three narrative typologies, with a particular focus on the making sense narrative and its potential development towards the unknown of the going forward narrative, or withdrawal into the past of the entangled narrative. In the following pages, and in line with previous narrative studies (e.g. Phoenix and Smith 2011, Carless and Douglas 2013b), three exemplar cases, one for each type of narrative, are presented: namely those of Diana, Giorgia