Narrative Beginnings: Traveling To and Within Unfamiliar Landscapes

Abstract

Drawing on the life stories of Debra, an Aboriginal woman living with HIV, I reflect on the feeling of (dis)placement from a geographic landscape and cultural heritage that both Debra and I experienced, although in different ways. I explore how place is inscribed onto and into our bodies and how home can be understood as embodied. In this way I explore place as geographic position of home and as ontological. In the living out of her stories, Debra made me not only understand the deeper conditions of human life, but that stories told are not fixed texts, that they are composed in and out of the living and in relation to others. The textual representation and physical inscriptions of Debra’s stories are another way to not only understand, but to inquire into her life and my own. The inquiry deepened my understanding of nursing practice as a particular, contextual, and meaningful relational engagement.