Suffering Speaks: Embodied Articulation (in Spiritual Autobiographies)

The living-body bears the indelible marks of life’s deepest wounds and profound joys. With its scars and beauty, each body speaks of the earthly pilgrimage that one has undergone so far. In spiritual autobiography, the body emerges not just as a vessel of experience—but as the very text inscribed with the ineffable Mystery—experiences of grief, love, loss, and transcendence. This presentation examines how suffering speaks through the body in spiritual autobiographies, drawing from feminist mysticism, carnal hermeneutics, trauma studies, and narrative therapy. It explores the body as both interpreter and articulator of suffering, engaging thinkers such as Lanzetta, Anzaldúa, Kearney, and White. By reframing trauma as an embodied and communal phenomenon, the presentation situates spiritual autobiography as an act of resistance and theological articulation. In dialogue with liberation theologies, we argue that suffering is transfigured through storytelling, revealing the body as a crucible of transformation and a sacred text where the ineffable meets the human experience.