Abandonment or Release: Finding Words That Cut Through Pain

Abstract

Illness creates a disruption in the normal progression of life by placing restrictions on everyday existence. Such disruptions may trigger pauses and open spaces to explore new bodily parameters of being and possibility, as well as to reflect on our physical intransience. This autoethnography presents a snapshot of illness that increasingly shapes my research and writing practices. Through depicting the lived experiences of physical injury, I relate the tensions between the abandonment and release underpinning desires to express immortal words through a finite body.