The dilemma of connecting the personal and the universal has been one grappled with by artists, poets, and performers for ages. The author's philosophical underpinning has sought ways to connect the personal and universal, private and public; and her scholarly, performance, and poetic work has been rooted in the tradition of the lived curriculum and the soil of autobiography. This is the paradox, beauty, and mystery of interconnecting autobiographical work, whether that is poetic, narrative, artistic, or embodied ways of inquiry for others and ourselves.