Making the Invisible Visible: How Chronic Illness Changes Narrative and the Autoethnographic Perspective

Autoethnography and narrative have long been used in health research, particularly as tools for understanding and exploring personal experiences with illness. As an autoethnographer, I employed this methodology in almost all of my previous academic work, and I thought I knew it well. However, when I approached narrating and investigating my rare, invisible, chronic illness, my understanding of the methodology was challenged; the emic and etic perspectives are complicated when sharing what is inside my own body.