(Re)creating a healthy self in and through disability sport: autoethnographic chaos and quest stories from a sportswoman with cerebral palsy

Abstract

Those with physical disabilities are at increased risk of poor physical, mental and social health. Despite widely reported physiological and psychosocial benefits of sport for disabled people’s health and wellbeing, participation remains low and is in decline. Subsequently, we answer calls for greater focus on individuals’ voices to understand the complexities of disabled people’s participation in sport. Through a narrative autoethnographic approach we critically show and examine the lived experiences of a young female sportswoman with a disability (Gemma), as she reflects on the role of sport in, through and beyond her childhood. Framed within Arthur Frank’s narratives of injury and illness, we highlight the sport-based posthumanist narrative(s) that enabled Gemma’s (re)construction of a healthy self. Ultimately, we offer narrative inquiry, including autoethnographic methods, as a framework for understanding the lived experiences of children and young people with physical disabilities and practical recommendations for expanding narrative resources.

Points of interest

• Despite the barriers to and benefits of sport and exercise for children and young with a disability, the number who participate remains low and is in decline.

• This research examines stories from a young woman with cerebral palsy as she reflects on the role of sport in and beyond her childhood.

• She views her participation in sport as a turning point in her life when she was struggling to work out who she was and what she could be in the world.

• Sport has enabled her to make sense of who she was, who she is and who she can be and has therefore supported her health and wellbeing.

• These types of stories can be used to support other young people with similar health and wellbeing issues.

Keywords:

• Narrative inquiry
• autoethnography
• congenital physical disability
• disability sport
• self-identity
• children and young people

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Collaborative autoethnography comes in various forms and has various names (e.g., duoethnography, co-constructed autoethnography, co-ethnography), but we interpret this to be where researchers ‘analyse and interpret a group’s collection of autobiographical writing as well as their own’ (Lapadat 2009, 967). See Chang, Ngunijiri, and Hernandez (2012) for an overview of this work.