Journey to the ‘new normal’ and beyond: reflections on learning in a community of practice

Through poetry and strips of narrative, this paper discusses the embodied experience of chemical sensitivity and the anthropologist authorʹs and other patientsʹ journey through altered perception towards knowledge, community and transformation in the context of a medical clinic. The narratives are situated in several strands of relevant theory, including Merleau‐Pontyʹs work on the primacy of perception, feminist perspectives on embodied experience and standpoint epistemology, disability studies, identity creation through narrating the self, and Lave and Wengerʹs situated learning in a community of practice.