Fractured Memories, Enduring Self: A Feminist Autoethnography of Cognitive Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis

Cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis quietly fractures memory, identity, and agency long before it is clinically acknowledged. This autoethnography examines the lived experience of cognitive disruption through a feminist lens, where memory loss is not only a neurological event but a challenge to narrative authority, self-definition, and social credibility. Weaving personal narrative with critical inquiry, this work explores the tensions between clinical invisibility and existential disruption, highlighting how gendered expectations and epistemic injustice shape the experiences of women with cognitive disabilities. By situating fragmented memory within broader social, medical, and feminist discourses, this inquiry challenges traditional biomedical models and advocates for a narrative-centered approach to care. In doing so, it calls for structural changes in healthcare, research, and policy that recognize and validate cognitive decline's complex, lived realities.