ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with an extended quote from a participant interviewed in 2011 about her involvement with roller derby in Australia. June (not her real name), in her early thirties, worked as a naturopath. She had recently gone through a breakup with her boyfriend and shared some of the ways roller derby affected her:
It’s just that it gave me that strength, I was feeling quite broken at the time that I started … I’ve always had the ability to pick myself up and dust myself off, but it’s like a different kind of a strength cause you are part of a team, you feel connected to something, its outside of my friendship world and outside of everything else I do … it constantly challenges you, which I guess any sport must do but I’ve just never been part of a team sport … I feel like I am a strong person, but it just helped resurrect me at a time when I needed it most, you know, so I feel it has been healing in that respect … and even having that double identity, it’s quite fun, you get to sort of disappear into something else, whatever you call yourself, you can sort of play this role of this kick-arse, strong person, whatever you create for yourself, and you can just disappear into that.
