Apr 11Liked by Molly Dickens, PhD, Karen Sheffield-Abdullah
I always think of Tressie Cottom's essay on how doctors treated her as incompetent and never took her bleeding and pain seriously when she was pregnant until she lost the baby.
The just plain negligence is so heartbreaking, and she details how she was treated as incompetent as soon as she was in a medical setting due to her race--and it also raises questions about whether she was looked at as "worthy" of medical care and attention. I think about what could happen to my own Black biracial daughter if she ever decides to have a baby. There's so much more work we need to do in this space. Thanks for your attention and research.
Thank you for elevating Tressie Cottom's essay. Yes, it is heartbreaking to see how little has changed over the years regarding Black women's pain being under assessed and under addressed and how we aren't listened to. BUT these conversations are essential to making sure we keep it at the forefront of people's minds and letting them know we must do better!
When you talk about weathering, it reminded me of some of the comments Tarana Burke recently made at the Moms First Summit in NYC this past May (replay available here - https://www.momsfirstsummit.us/)
On Tarana's panel she recounts, "I think we all heard the term comorbidities, and I think it applies when we're talking about Black women and mental health. There are so many intersecting things that Black women are holding. And so when we're talking about mental health, we cannot separate that from the intersecting oppressions that Black women are also dealing with. So it's not just coming from nowhere, the high rates of mental health issues that Black women are dealing with, you have...the maternal mortality rate is incredible high because of issues with intimate partner violence, sexual violence and reproductive health. You have issues with inadequate access to healthcare, issues with low weath, and there's all of these intersecting things that lead to depression and the big "R" word that people always want to run from, but racism is still a problem. And we want to circumvent the fact that that leads to depression. When you are in a job that has inequality, when you are in a country that has systemic inequality, those things lead to depression, these statistics don't just come out of thin air...These disparities mean something, you know everybody knows the book, "The Body Keeps the Score," that is why those things show up in our bodies after a while. When you have to deal with these different forms of inequality in the world, those things show up in your body, trauma shows up in your body and it's going to cause depression. It's not just going to be the things that you're dealing with out in the world, that's going to show up in your body and it's going to affect your mental health after a while."
Whoa. I’ve seen Arlene Geronimus speak so I was familiar with weathering. Seeing weathering framed in this way, especially in reference to the intersections of race and gender, something I have understood for years, helped me become clearer about my experience with 6-years of infertility before I had my son (with my husband) and my failure to progress in labor with my daughter sixteen years earlier when I had her alone at only twenty. This is why we say rising tides lift all boats. Because working on improving birth equity for Black perinatal people will help all perinatal people and outcomes for all infants.
I always think of Tressie Cottom's essay on how doctors treated her as incompetent and never took her bleeding and pain seriously when she was pregnant until she lost the baby.
The just plain negligence is so heartbreaking, and she details how she was treated as incompetent as soon as she was in a medical setting due to her race--and it also raises questions about whether she was looked at as "worthy" of medical care and attention. I think about what could happen to my own Black biracial daughter if she ever decides to have a baby. There's so much more work we need to do in this space. Thanks for your attention and research.
Tressie's essay: https://time.com/5494404/tressie-mcmillan-cottom-thick-pregnancy-competent/
Thank you for elevating Tressie Cottom's essay. Yes, it is heartbreaking to see how little has changed over the years regarding Black women's pain being under assessed and under addressed and how we aren't listened to. BUT these conversations are essential to making sure we keep it at the forefront of people's minds and letting them know we must do better!
When you talk about weathering, it reminded me of some of the comments Tarana Burke recently made at the Moms First Summit in NYC this past May (replay available here - https://www.momsfirstsummit.us/)
On Tarana's panel she recounts, "I think we all heard the term comorbidities, and I think it applies when we're talking about Black women and mental health. There are so many intersecting things that Black women are holding. And so when we're talking about mental health, we cannot separate that from the intersecting oppressions that Black women are also dealing with. So it's not just coming from nowhere, the high rates of mental health issues that Black women are dealing with, you have...the maternal mortality rate is incredible high because of issues with intimate partner violence, sexual violence and reproductive health. You have issues with inadequate access to healthcare, issues with low weath, and there's all of these intersecting things that lead to depression and the big "R" word that people always want to run from, but racism is still a problem. And we want to circumvent the fact that that leads to depression. When you are in a job that has inequality, when you are in a country that has systemic inequality, those things lead to depression, these statistics don't just come out of thin air...These disparities mean something, you know everybody knows the book, "The Body Keeps the Score," that is why those things show up in our bodies after a while. When you have to deal with these different forms of inequality in the world, those things show up in your body, trauma shows up in your body and it's going to cause depression. It's not just going to be the things that you're dealing with out in the world, that's going to show up in your body and it's going to affect your mental health after a while."
It's all interconnected.
Whoa. I’ve seen Arlene Geronimus speak so I was familiar with weathering. Seeing weathering framed in this way, especially in reference to the intersections of race and gender, something I have understood for years, helped me become clearer about my experience with 6-years of infertility before I had my son (with my husband) and my failure to progress in labor with my daughter sixteen years earlier when I had her alone at only twenty. This is why we say rising tides lift all boats. Because working on improving birth equity for Black perinatal people will help all perinatal people and outcomes for all infants.
This is such an important conversation! Thank you for working on this.
Thank you! I am committed to elevating this conversation!