Joanne
Los Angeles
In 2023, my son was born still at 39 weeks, after a healthy, beautiful pregnancy that ended in silence. I was devastated and lost, and what followed was over a year of postpartum depression and anxiety that I fought largely in the dark, because so many of us are expected to grieve quietly and get back to “normal.” I experienced another pregnancy loss the following year, and in 2025 I welcomed a healthy baby boy. Both the grief and the gratitude are real, and I’ve learned they can live in the same body at once.
What I couldn’t ignore, even in my own grief, is the bigger picture: Black women face stillbirth at roughly double the rate of white women, and our infants die at more than twice the rate, not because of biology, but because of structural racism, unequal access to care, and a mental health system that too often doesn’t believe our pain or reach us when we need it most. I share my story so no mother has to carry hers in silence, and because I want to see real change: culturally responsive mental health support built into perinatal care, providers who take Black women’s pain seriously, and open conversations about pregnancy and infant loss in our communities. I carry my grief and my purpose together ,and I’ll keep telling this story until every mother gets the care and belief she deserves.
