Where Nobody Can Follow (Memoir as Catharsis)

I'll create a memoir which, I hope, will address universal questions about trauma, sickness, suffering and catharsis in spheres from the medical to the political.
In Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins, Nurse and writer Josephine Ensign, contends that narrative medicine often ignores the limits of narrative; the patient's story is rarely 'just a story,' but the representation of complicated motive and meta-narrative influence.
Does this complexifying of narrative adversely affect assumptions about authenticity? Does the meta narrative delegitimise the patient's voice? How does one create truth from uncertainty? And what of the ethics involved? Who owns illness? These are questions I will address in my commentary.
The innovative research of literary scholar and physician, Professor Rita Charon will be invaluable, in particular her study Narrative Medicine: Honouring the Stories of Illness. Likewise, Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, although controversial, is often cited as an important development in literature and medicine.
The structure of the creative component will consist of a transmutation of events from the raw material of my life experience into a work of creative non-fiction - Where Nobody Can Follow. The act of writing - drafting, considered revision and redrafting - will be exploratory research that emerges from, and complements, the creative process.
Narrative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to bring the powerful skills of listening and creativity from the humanities and the arts, to address the needs of all who seek and deliver health care. I am interested in the interface between medicine and the act of telling the story of illness.
I have a life-limiting cancer. I attend a day-hospice. As patient and writer, I believe I am qualified to deliver an original contribution to the ongoing arts and illness debate. In response to my experience, I want to explore the physical and psychological damage that illness can inflict, to ask questions pertaining to the ability to survive trauma; to find meaning in writing about these experiences. I'm interested in how personal memory can fuse with historical record.
Increasingly, doctors and allied healthcare professionals are writing about their experiences in caring for patients. It would contribute to the field of existing research to discover what patients make of the fact that healthcare professionals are recounting their stories. By liaising with patients and those who care for them, I'll address this question.
I volunteer with Macmillan Cancer Support as a patient advocate and speaker. I've contributed to a documentary on living with cancer for Marie Curie. My experience and contacts within these organisations provide me with unique access to resources - staff and research materials - to facilitate this aspect of the project.
There is potential in what is obtainable by working with narrative, results that can be difficult to achieve with questionnaires and quantitative scales.
In my commentary, I'll demonstrate how my work engages with, and contributes to, broader conceptual or theoretical issues. I'll undertake an examination of my own critical decisions in writing the memoir, the defining characteristics of self-narrative and the nature of therapeutic writing.
Cancer, family dysfunction, experience of violence during the 'troubles,' drugs, crime and rootlessness, feed into a broader narrative of illness, loss and fractured family dynamic. I'll explore my lived experiences in order to address the universal.
Taking control, confronting an illness in the form of creating a narrative of the self, allows for ownership of illness and provides understanding which is empowering. Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse "terror and pity" and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions. In conclusion, I'm interested in memoir as catharsis.