We report on the use of a data-gathering task requiring preservice primary teachers to 'graph' their emerging relationships with mathematics. A cultural-historical activity approach was used to analyse data from nine final year preservice primary teachers to reveal what and how key events in their lives helped shape their current mathematical identities. Oscillations between "high" and "low" points in their relationships with mathematics was a feature of participants' graphs regardless of their current mathematical identities. Combined with semistructured interviews, the graphing task is posited as a valuable method for researchers and practitioners to explore mathematics-related identity.