Disability and Illness in Arts-Informed Research: Moving Toward ...

Those looking at Willa's wounded body had forgotten that objectivity is not necessarily a useful thing in healing, in meeting the vulnerable. Neutral and unimpassioned vision is one way of seeing. Used for so long that they forget that they and Willa inhabit the same world, they forget that each of them has dreams and visions. They forget their objectivity¹⁹ was at one point a tool, not the standard of vision.

Willa is scared to speak. Her language is not understood, she fears to say how she feels because they believe her to be crazy.²⁰ If she tells them her hips are inhabited by demons who wield the most subtle punishments upon her flesh and that her arms are bruised by falls onto rocks, by fish swimming through bone, what will they do to her?