Paper short abstract:

The author interrogates her secret blog written during a year of cancer treatment. Friends and family were the readers. In the "making of" the blog, the author shifted from narrator to object of her auto-ethnography. The curation of her self-representation became factors of healing and resilience.

Paper long abstract:

In November 2017, after receiving a cancer diagnosis, the author began a secret Facebook group in which she documented her journey through cancer treatment, through text and photographs, and occasional video. The members of the group were individually, and in two cases collectively, invited to participate in and witness this blog. Over the course of a year, the author reported on, performed, and narrated representations of herself that were active agents of her healing journey.

Drawing on notions of curating the self through dress and adornment (Pravina Shukla), personal reflexivity and hermeneutics of self (Foucault), and the dynamics between author and readership in enacting, reinforcing, and creating a sense of community, the author interrogates her "making of" the blog, reflecting on the shifts between narrator and object of her own narration. Questions of authenticity versus, or in conjunction with, performance came into play. Beyond a distraction, the blog created an opportunity to witness the ways in which information and communication technologies create new spheres of reality, creativity, and interaction. Self-curation choices also revealed what might or might not be the author's choice to share with her audience, and how she narrated her own self-presented narrator.