During my pregnancy with my son Milan, I remember sitting with a pain that didn’t feel normal. It was sharp, persistent, and unsettling in a way I couldn’t ignore. As a former labor and delivery nurse, I understood the risks in a way many patients do not. I knew what to watch for. I knew my history. I knew when something felt wrong. Yet when I raised concerns, they were not met with the urgency they deserved.
At the time of my pregnancy with Milan, I had already experienced a high-risk pregnancy and an emergency C-section during a previous pregnancy. I knew that the vertical incision on my uterus could put a future pregnancy at risk. I spoke up. I asked questions. I paid attention to my body. Still, when I experienced a uterine rupture, I was navigating a system that did not respond with the level of care and urgency that the moment required.
If someone with years of labor and delivery experience can recognize the signs, advocate for herself, and still be failed, what happens to the women with less information, fewer resources, or less confidence that they will be heard?
Conversations during Black Maternal Health Week often center around one urgent truth: Black women are still far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes in this country than white women. This is not an assumption. It is a proven fact, and it should stop all of us in our tracks. It also does not only impact one socioeconomic group. It affects everyone, including some of the most visible and resourced women in the world.
As the founder of Mielle, my mission is to empower women, especially Black women, to express their authentic selves. At its core, that mission is about care, agency, and visibility, which is why conversations like this matter. It’s about showing up for every part of Black women’s experience. We need to talk more candidly about what happens to Black women who survive the trauma of miscarriage or stillbirth, and the prolonged mental health challenges that can follow, including postpartum depression.
Black women are expected to remain “strong” while navigating medical emergencies. We’re dismissed, told to wait, to calm down, and to trust a system that has not always earned that trust. We survive experiences that change our families and us forever. And then, too often, we are expected to do something just as impossible: keep going as if survival is the end of the story. It is not.
That is why Black Maternal Health Week cannot be about mortality alone. It must also be about what it means to live after trauma, preventable harm, and loss that reshapes your life.
The data make clear that this crisis is ongoing. Black women are about three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, and more than 80% of those deaths are considered preventable. Black infants also die at more than twice the rate of white infants. These are not random gaps. They reflect a healthcare system and a culture that too often normalizes Black women’s pain instead of responding to it.
Research shows that one in five women, or about 20%, report mistreatment during maternity care, but for Black women, that figure climbs to nearly 30%, reflecting more frequent experiences of bias, disrespect, and lack of autonomy in clinical settings. Nearly half of women say they have held back from asking questions or sharing concerns. In one of the most vulnerable moments of a person’s life, too many are already calculating whether speaking up will make things worse.
Black mothers deserve more than “survival”
In my own life, grief did not arrive quietly. It entered my marriage, my motherhood, my body, my faith, and eventually my work. In my book, The Glory In Your Story, I write about how grief does not follow a timeline. It becomes part of who you are, and healing begins not by outrunning it, but by acknowledging it.
That matters because so many Black women are praised for being strong when what we actually need is space to be human. After losing Milan, I returned to work. I kept moving. I built Mielle. From the outside, it can look like a story of resilience. And in many ways, it is. But we have to be honest about the lessons we take from stories like mine.
The lesson should not be that Black women are uniquely equipped to carry devastating grief and still perform at a high level. It should not be that our resilience makes systemic failures acceptable. And it should not be that we have to turn survival into something productive just to make our pain legible.
Too often, we celebrate the comeback without sitting long enough with the conditions that made it necessary.
Faith carried me. Purpose helped me rebuild. But none of that changes the reality that more listening, better care, stronger hospital systems, and greater urgency might have changed my story. If we are serious about maternal health, we have to be just as serious about saying that clearly.
Black Maternal Health Week gives us an opportunity to think more broadly about what justice looks like. It looks like hospitals are equipped for emergencies. It looks like providers who listen to Black women the first time, without requiring patients to fight to be believed. It looks like support for families after loss–not just during a crisis. And it looks like making space for grief without expecting Black women to turn it into inspiration before we are ready.
It’s time that we honor not only the women we have lost, but also the women still here carrying what the system could not or would not hold for them. Survival is not the finish line. Being heard, protected, and cared for should be.
Related:
- I Could Not Goop My Way Out of Infertility
- I Have One Child, and Now I Can’t Seem to Have Another
- 11 Health Conditions You Should Know About If You’re Black and Pregnant
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