Body, Blood, and Brilliance: A Black Woman’s Battle for Loud Healing and Strength

ABSTRACT

In this defining moments essay, the author describes a day in her life as a woman living with uterine fibroids. As a Black woman scholar, the author found unwell and bloody bodies are counterproductive to some academic institutions, which make little to no room for the deep, intersectional stories of wounded, healing and recovering academics. Not only is the journey toward healing one that has often been muted, but it has been silent in many journal spaces, though the fibroid condition is a very common epidemic often leading to other health conditions and procedures. This essay discusses how the shared stories found in collective racial, gender, and faith identification work together to address health disparities among specific intersectional identities with the Strong Black Woman image and true strength in mind. In the end, the author urges Black women scholars to participate in loud healing to counter the spiral of silence present in many research spaces and Black bodies.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Julia Medhurst, the University Writing Center, and Dr. Srivi Ramasubramanian for the invaluable guidance and support for this essay; Dr. Cara Wallis for introducing Defining Moments to her class years ago; Dr. Anna Wolfe for showing her how to make space for our health stories; and the editor, Dr. Jill Yamasaki, and the anonymous editors who helped to bring this story to life and to our classrooms for healing and learning. It was worth it.

Notes

1. Wilson, K. H. (2005). Interpreting the discursive field of the Montgomery bus boycott: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Holt Street address. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 8(2), 299–326.

2. The woman with the issue of blood refers to a popular Bible story about a woman who had a health condition that left her bleeding nonstop and weak for about 12 years. She had tried several doctors of the day with no help or healing in sight until Jesus was passing through. She heard he was in town, pressed her way through the crowds of people who gathered to see him. It states she was able to touch the hem of his garment and received her healing. The scripture says her faith made her whole. Matthew 9:20–22; Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48