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

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.