A personal geography of care and disability

This research focuses on the bodies, feelings, spaces and places of care and disability. It is informed by feminist geography, and geographies of embodiment and emotion. Using autobiography as a method of inquiry I share my experience of caring for my young disabled son in relation to the disability needs assessment in Aotearoa New Zealand. I argue that embodiment and emotions are often not considered by geographers researching care, and in particular, geographers have been slow to account for their own personal care geographies. I articulate my experience of care and disability and show that the embodied emotions of care emerge in relation to people, things, place and space. This article concludes that any attempt to understand care needs to consider the everyday realities of carers and the paradoxical embodied and emotional spaces they occupy. Personal accounts and a focus on individually felt emotions should always be considered alongside relationality, collective experience, power and politics.