ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author draws from her experiences working on two of her studies where she examined how people with illnesses and disabilities negotiate, construe, and communicate their experiences through narrative. The power of narrative strengthened her studies, but at the same time, the narratives that the participants told also brought forth a dilemma in the area of research ethics, as the participants had their own agendas in the telling of their stories. The value of illness and disability narratives has been foregrounded in the field of the sociology of health and illness. The first study, “Negotiating the Invisible”, focused on the narratives of embodied experience of two women with ‘invisible’ chronic illnesses: Shiori with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and Mia with rheumatoid arthritis. The second study, “And Then There was a Battle”, focused on the narratives of Hashemi, a young woman with sensory disabilities.
