Girl, Disrupted: Trauma, Narrative Disruptions, and Autoethnography

This chapter explores the intersections between and among meaning-making, autoethnography, narrative identity, coherence, and trauma (not necessarily in that order). My perspective centers on the view that both method (autoethnography) and meaning-making post-trauma involve practices that are both process and product, means and end. Toward some sense of an ending, the chapter is framed by a view of our world as one where crisis is all too ordinary. In this crisis ordinary world, trauma is inevitable—a heart-broken life—unavoidable. So, trauma matters—stories matter—and finding a way forward that embraces the full spectrum of our disrupted narratives and lives becomes necessary or at least desirable.