The article summarizes the keynote address delivered at the 23rd Annual Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Conference. It is routine for qualitative researchers to "locate" themselves, sharing their history in relation to the settings/contexts, issues, vocabularies, identities, and other factors associated with their topic of inquiry. In this article, I explore how my ideas about qualitative methods shifted and expanded as I pursued a line of inquiry connected to transforming understandings of human abuse, exclusion and, conversely, inclusion and competence of people classified as disabled. My introduction to qualitative research came through the lens of examining the meaning of disability in society, although at the outset I could not fully anticipate the directions the method would lead, that it would afford both wide angle and macro views.