‘Betwixt and between’; liminality in recovery stories from people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) Brian Brown, Kate Huszar and Rosemary Chapman School of Applied Social Sciences, De Montfort University, UK Abstract This paper explores experiences of 16 people claiming to have recovered from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) using the concept of liminality. Liminality describes the status of those falling between socially recognised and medically sanctioned categories, and illuminates both the experience of illness and the process of recovery from ME/CFS. The liminality experienced during illness was akin to that described by Turner with a degree of communitas among sufferers. As recovery progressed, participants stressed the percentage to which they had improved, and compared themselves with peers and themselves prior to the illness. Recovery did not mean transition into a post- liminal phase, but involved a new liminality, characterised by straddling boundaries between illness and wellness. Participants continued strategies such as rest, pacing and meditation. This second liminal state included difficulty in communicating the experience convincingly, and estrangement from the ME/CFS community. Thus, recoverees moved from the liminality of illness to a second, and less legible state of sustained liminality in recovery, described as having one foot in the ill world, one foot in the well world. This suggests that more needs to be understood about the recovery experience to assist those making the transition toward wellness. Keywords: ME, CFS, liminality, recovery, illness experience, illness behaviour, normality Introduction In this paper we will consider what it means to ‘recover’ from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). ME/CFS is a controversial illness which debilitates suf- ferers (Clayton 2015, Goudsmit et al. 2009, Hammond 2002). The pain suffered is claimed to be comparable with end stage renal disease and more disabling than multiple sclerosis, mononucleosis, acute myocardial infarction and type II diabetes (Komaroff 1995). While there is some literature examining treatments (e.g. White et al. 2011), the experience of recovery from the condition has so far not been thoroughly explored in the literature. The dominant dis- courses through which ME/CFS is understood tend to emphasise the persistence and intractability of the symptoms (Grue 2014, Krzeczkowska et al. 2015, Pemberton and Cox 2014). Consequently, there is little material available concerned with recovery, barring a small number of long term outcome studies emphasising persistent impairment (Brown et al. 2012) © 2017 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 39 No. 5 2017 ISSN 0141-9889, pp. 696–710 doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12546