(Depression) I Became My Own Enemy: Pain, Endometriosis Memoirs, and the Rhetoric of a Battle to Stay Alive

This chapter interrogates the lived experience of endometriosis pain through memoir, feminist theory, and disability studies, centering those with chronic pain and illness who defy traditional, social models of disability, whose impairments are progressive, volatile, and often incompatible with dominant narratives of disability pride. Through close readings of Abby Norman’s Ask Me About My Uterus, Lara Parker’s Vagina Problems, and Hilary Mantel’s memoirs, I examine how relentless pelvic and abdominal pain fractures self-perception, undermines bodily trust, and resists incorporation into frameworks that privilege social barriers over the material realities of suffering. The chapter critiques disability studies’ historic reluctance to theorize impairment, challenging its tendency to valorize health-neutral or non-painful embodiments while marginalizing conditions that defy control or adaptation. Engaging with feminist disability critiques of the medical gaze, I trace how medical misogyny compounds this psychic violence, reinforcing cultural narratives of female brokenness. Situated within the “Depression” stage of a grief-based narrative arc, the chapter lingers in the heaviness of brokenness as a stage where theory falters, justice feels abstract, and survival is a daily negotiation. It asks what care, solidarity, and scholarship might look like if we take seriously the experiences of those for whom cure is unattainable and pride is not always accessible, yet whose voices demand theoretical and political recognition. Access this chapter Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout Purchases are for personal use only Similar content being viewed by others

Bell, Christopher. 2011. Blackness and disability: Critical examinations and cultural interventions. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Bérubé, Michael. 2016. Life as Jamie knows it: An exceptional child grows up. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Clare, Eli. 2017. Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Couser, G. Thomas. 2009. Signifying bodies: Disability in contemporary life writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Cox, Emma. 2020. Endometriosis Awareness Month 2020 launches to tackle the fact 54% don’t know about endometriosis. Endometriosis UK. https://www.endometriosis-uk.org/endometriosis-awareness-month-2020-launches-tackle-fact-54-dont-know-about-endometriosis#:~:text=33%25%20of%20women%20do%20not,young%20women%20is%20alarmingly%20low. Crosby, Christina. 2016. A body undone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crow, Liz. 1996. Including all of our lives: Renewing the social model of disability. In Encounters with strangers: Feminism and disability, ed. J. Morris, 201–221. London: Women’s Press. Daudet, Alphonse. 2002. In the land of pain. Translated by Julian Barnes. New York: Vintage. Originally published 1930. De Beauvoir, Simone. 2012. The second sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage. Originally published 1949. De Bres, Helena. 2021. Artful truths: The philosophy of memoir. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Endometriosis. 2022. National Health Service (NHS), September 5. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/endometriosis/. Erevelles, Nirmala, and Andrea Minear. 2016. Unspeakable offenses: Untangling race and disability in discourses of intersectionality. In The disability studies reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 5th ed., 381–395. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1994. The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage. Originally published 1973. Frank, Arthur. 1995. The wounded storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2002. Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. NWSA Journal 14 (3): 1–32. Kafer, Alison. 2013. Feminist, queer, crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kamm, F. M. 1992. Creation and abortion: A study in moral and legal philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mantel, Hilary. 2003. Giving up the ghost: A memoir. London: Picador. Mattlin, Ben. 2022. Disability pride: Dispatches from a post-ADA world. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Mullaney, Clare. 2021. Feminist disability studies and the problem of recovery. In Gender in American literature and culture, ed. Jean Lutes and Jennifer Travis, 316–331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norman, Abby. 2018. Ask me about my uterus: A quest to make doctors believe in women’s pain. New York: Bold Type Books. Parker, Lara. 2020. Vagina problems: Endometriosis, painful sex, and other taboo topics. New York: Griffin. Price, Margaret. 2015. The bodymind problem and the possibilities of pain. Hypatia 30 (1): 268–284. Schalk, Sami. 2022. Black disability politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Seear, Kate. 2014. The makings of a modern epidemic: Endometriosis, gender and politics. New York: Routledge. Shakespeare, Tom. 2016. The social model of disability. In The disability studies reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 5th ed., 212–220. New York: Routledge. Siebers, Tobin. 2010. In the name of pain. In Against health: How health became the new morality, ed. Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland, 183–194. New York: New York University Press. Smilges, J. Logan. 2023. Crip negativity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sterne, Jonathan. 2022. Diminished faculties: A political phenomenology of impairment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wendell, Susan. 1996. The rejected body. New York: Routledge. Wendell, Susan. 2017. Unhealthy disabled: Treating chronic illnesses as disabilities. In The disability studies reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 160–172. New York: Routledge. Winter, Jeremy Alan. 2003. The development of the disability rights movement as a social problem solver. Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (1): 33–61. Author information Authors and Affiliations Corresponding author Rights and permissions Copyright information © 2026 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG About this chapter Cite this chapter Rovito, M. (2026). (Depression) I Became My Own Enemy: Pain, Endometriosis Memoirs, and the Rhetoric of a Battle to Stay Alive. In: Cripping Endometriosis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-15681-5_6 Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-15681-5_6 Published: Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham Print ISBN: 978-3-032-15680-8 Online ISBN: 978-3-032-15681-5 eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)