Black clinicians sit at a crossroads where our professional education teaches us the ideal of what healthcare could do, but our personal experience teaches us the injustice of what healthcare is doing.

I know that many of us in healthcare are on Substack. For myself and so many other clinicians, writing has become an outlet for processing the pain, exhaustion, and discrimination many of us experience from both patients and colleagues and navigating that along with our personal struggles.

As one of the only 2% of US physicians who are Black women, starting my newsletter has been a way to make sure we could feel less isolated, and validated in our pain but also able to collectively heal from our trauma.

We finished our clinical training, only to realize how insufficient it is for the work we have to do because our work has never been limited to taking care of patients.

Our work has always included fighting for the policies and practices that keep us and those who look like us alive.

And they never taught me that in medical school.

I write to erase the myth of the all-knowing doctor. I write to erase the myth of the strong Black woman. I write to erase the myth that Black stories are just suffering and trauma.

I write because I had to reclaim my humanity