Dear Reader,

Some reflections arrive as revelation.

Others have to be wrestled out of the body.

This one came through weariness, financial uncertainty, unanswered applications, and the quiet humiliation that can settle over you when you know you are qualified, capable, and called, yet the doors remain closed.

It also came through physical pain.

I recently aggravated my quadratus lumborum muscle, commonly called the QL muscle, a deep muscle in the lower back that helps stabilize the spine and support movement, likely through the physical strain of ongoing stress and anxiety. When it flares, even the smallest motion can feel impossible. Turning over in bed. Sitting upright. Standing long enough to walk to the bathroom.

I was bedridden and in excruciating pain.

Pain like that changes the atmosphere of a room. The bed stops feeling like a place of rest and starts feeling like a place you cannot escape. Your body becomes something you have to negotiate with before every movement.

Between the pain, the financial pressure, and the uncertainty of unemployment, I have felt stuck lately.

Not without faith.

Just tired.

There is a difference.

I have prayed. I have applied. I have revised résumés, written cover letters, followed up, waited, and tried to remain hopeful. Still, unemployment has a way of entering places beyond the bank account. It can disturb your sleep, tighten your shoulders, shorten your patience, and make you question whether your years of preparation meant anything at all.

Physical pain can deepen that feeling. When your body will not cooperate, even ordinary responsibilities begin to feel far away. You are not merely waiting for circumstances to change. You are waiting for your own body to release you.

Then today, Minister Carrie called.

She did not call because I posted a crisis online. She did not know every thought I had been carrying. She simply called to check on me.

Sometimes God sends a miracle.

Sometimes God sends a phone call.

And sometimes the phone call is the miracle because it interrupts the lie that nobody sees you.

That call brought me back to a passage God has continued placing before me: the bronze serpent in Numbers 21.

Honestly, it is one of the stranger stories in Scripture.

Yet perhaps that is why I could not shake it.

Look and Live

The people are exhausted.

They have been traveling through the wilderness, taking the long way around Edom. Their patience is thin. Their food is repetitive. Their destination feels distant. They begin speaking against Moses and against God.

Then venomous snakes enter the camp.

People are bitten.

People begin to die.

When the people cry out, God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, place it high on a pole, and instruct anyone who has been bitten to look at it.

Those who look, live.

Not because bronze contains healing power.

Not because the serpent is sacred.

They live because God attaches a promise to the act of looking.

That detail has been sitting heavily with me.

God did not immediately remove every snake from the camp.

He gave the people a way to live while the danger was still present.

The Venom Was Real

We often tell stories of faith as though belief makes pain less real.

It does not.

The Israelites were not imagining the venom. Their bodies had been pierced. The swelling was real. The fear was real. Death was moving through the camp. Likewise, financial distress is not simply a negative attitude requiring a positive confession.

Bills are real.

Housing costs are real.

Food prices are real.

Health insurance is real.

The silence after an interview is real.

So is the strain of watching your savings shrink while people casually tell you that “something will come along.”

Well-meaning encouragement can sometimes feel like handing someone a motivational quote while their lights are about to be disconnected.

Faith should not require us to lie about the wound.

The wilderness story did not begin with irresponsible people randomly complaining.

These were displaced people carrying generations of trauma. They had survived enslavement, political violence, hunger, uncertainty, and the loss of nearly everything familiar. Their complaints may have crossed into rebellion, but their exhaustion did not appear from nowhere.

That does not excuse their response.

It does help us understand the conditions surrounding it.

Public health has often failed people by focusing on individual behavior while ignoring the environment in which that behavior developed. We tell people to manage stress without asking who keeps producing the stress. We advise them to eat better without examining whether healthy food is affordable nearby. We encourage resilience while leaving the harmful system untouched.

Sometimes we become so focused on how people reacted that we fail to examine what they have been surviving.

The Israelites needed correction, but they also needed care.

So do we.

God Told Them to Look at the Wound

Here is what feels almost unsettling.

God instructed Moses to make an image of the very thing that was killing them.

The people had to look toward a serpent while serpent venom was moving through their bodies.

They were asked to face what had wounded them, but from a different position.

The serpent on the ground represented terror.

The serpent lifted above them became a place of divine intervention.

The object had not changed much.

Its meaning had.

This may be one of the deeper lessons hidden in the passage. Healing does not always begin by looking away from what hurt us. Sometimes healing begins when God helps us look at it differently.

Not denying it.

Not worshiping it.

Not allowing it to define the entire story.

Just seeing it from a place where God’s promise ^{stands higher} than the wound.

That is witnessing.

Witnessing does not rush people past their pain. It does not correct their emotions before listening. It allows the truth to be spoken without pretending the truth is the end of the story.

I can say that unemployment has frightened me.

I can say that financial instability has made me feel vulnerable.

I can admit that, after years of education and service, I sometimes wonder why I am still standing in this particular wilderness.

Those confessions do not cancel my faith.

They make room for God to meet the real me, not the polished version of me who knows how to sound strong.

God cannot comfort the person I am pretending to be.

He comforts his baby girl, which I am.

The tired one.

The frustrated one.

The one staring at another application portal thinking, “Daddy, I need You to do something.”

And that is how I have come to understand God’s role in my life.

He is the ultimate “Big Daddy.”

Warm. Protective. Affectionate.

Not distant or irritated by my needs. Not sitting in heaven with folded arms, waiting for me to become impressive enough to deserve help.

He is attentive.

Sometimes He allows me to cry against His chest before He explains anything.

Sometimes He does not explain it at all.

He simply reminds me that I still belong to Him.

Lifted up, an invitation.

Centuries later, Jesus returns to this wilderness story while speaking to Nicodemus.

He says that just as Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness, the Son of Man must also be lifted up so that those who believe may have eternal life.

Jesus places Himself inside the image.

This changes everything.

The bronze serpent was shaped like the source of death but did not contain the venom.

Jesus entered human flesh and stood inside the consequences of sin, suffering, violence, injustice, and death without becoming corrupted by them.

On the cross, He was lifted publicly.

Exposed.

Humiliated.

Wounded.

The Romans likely saw an execution.

The religious authorities may have seen a threat removed.

His followers saw their hopes collapsing.

God saw salvation being revealed.

What appeared to be defeat became deliverance.

What looked like abandonment became invitation.

Look and live.

Not look and pretend.

Not look and immediately understand.

Not look and receive a detailed timeline.

Look and trust.

This is where the passage confronts me.

I want God to remove the snakes.

I want the job offer.

I want financial stability.

I want the relief of knowing how next month will be covered.

There is nothing wrong with asking for those things. God is not glorified by our unnecessary suffering, and poverty should never be romanticized as spiritual purity.

Still, this text suggests that sometimes God first gives us a place to direct our eyes.

The provision may not arrive in the form we expected.

The path may remain unclear.

The venom may still feel active.

But panic does not have to become our only field of vision.

We can look toward Christ while the situation is unresolved.

The God Who Enters Furnaces

Perhaps that is also why God keeps leading me to Daniel 3.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (or colloquially, we like to say Shadrach, Meshach, and A Billy Goat. Just a little Black church humor.) were not facing an inconvenient season. They were facing state-sanctioned execution because they refused to bow.

Their declaration is often remembered for its confidence: God is able to deliver us.

But the sentence that follows matters just as much.

Even if He does not, we still will not bow.

That is not weak faith.

That is mature faith.

They believed in God’s power without trying to control God’s method.

Still, God did not keep them from being thrown into the furnace.

He met them inside it.

When the king looked into the fire, he no longer saw three men.

He saw four.

God did not explain the furnace from a distance.

He entered it.

The fire burned their restraints, but it did not consume them.

That distinction speaks to me.

There are seasons that may burn away our certainty without destroying our calling.

They may burn away our dependence on titles, institutions, salaries, approval, or familiar routines.

That does not mean the loss was good.

It means God is capable of creating freedom inside what was intended to destroy us.

I cannot yet say what this season is producing.

I would be suspicious of anyone who tried to wrap it in a neat spiritual bow.

Some hardship is not a hidden blessing. Some hardship is caused by inequitable systems, poor leadership, political decisions, discrimination, greed, or institutional indifference.

Naming those conditions matters.

Faith should never become an excuse for leaving unjust structures unchanged.

The three Hebrew men did not need a better attitude toward the furnace.

The king needed to stop building furnaces for people who would not bow.

That is where public health, justice, and Scripture meet.

It is not enough to teach individuals how to survive toxic conditions. We must also challenge the systems creating those conditions.

Yet while we work to dismantle the furnace, people still need help surviving the heat.

A Call Can Become an Intervention

In public health, an intervention is something introduced to interrupt harm, reduce risk, or improve an outcome.

Minister Carrie’s call was a small intervention.

It interrupted isolation.

It reminded me that someone had noticed my silence.

It gave me a safe place to say, “I am not doing as well as I appear.”

She did not fix my financial situation.

She did something just as sacred.

She witnessed me and witnessed to me. That’s important!

Trust is not a soft extra. It is part of the healing environment. People are more likely to survive difficult seasons when they are connected to relationships where they can tell the truth without being judged, corrected, or treated as a burden.

The call also became an invitation.

An invitation to come out of emotional hiding.

An invitation to remember that God can place someone’s name on another person’s heart.

An invitation to look up.

This is how care often moves through a community.

One person listens.

One person calls.

One person brings a meal.

One person forwards an opportunity.

One person says, “You crossed my mind today.”

We may never know how close someone was to giving up before we reached toward them.

That is why checking on people is holy work.

It is not nosiness.

It is not small talk.

Done with love and consent, it can become part of the infrastructure of survival.

What Looking Looks Like Now

Looking toward Christ does not mean sitting still while opportunities pass.

The Israelites still had to keep traveling.

The three Hebrew men still had to stand before the king.

Faith is not passivity dressed in church language.

For me, looking may mean praying and submitting another application.

Resting and following up.

Believing God while also reviewing my finances honestly.

Receiving encouragement without pretending encouragement pays the bills.

Allowing others to help.

Refusing to measure my worth by whether an institution recognizes it.

It means remembering that employment is a resource, but it is not my identity.

A salary can support my life.

It cannot name my life.

God has already done that.

Daughter.

Beloved.

Called.

Seen.

Still here.

The bronze serpent was raised high enough for wounded people to see it.

Jesus was lifted high enough for the world to see Him.

Perhaps hope must also become visible.

Not loud.

Not performative.

Visible.

A phone call.

A testimony.

A shared job lead.

A prayer spoken while someone is too tired to pray for herself.

A reminder that the furnace has not become an empty room.

Someone is standing in it with us.

Returning This to You

Dear Reader, maybe your venom has another name.

Grief.

Debt.

Illness.

Rejection.

Caregiver fatigue.

A marriage that feels lonely.

A workplace that keeps taking from you.

A child you cannot rescue from every consequence.

You may be asking God to remove something He has not removed yet.

I will not tell you that everything is fine.

Some things are not fine.

But unresolved is not the same as abandoned.

The snake may still be in the camp.

The fire may still be hot.

The bank account may still be low.

The email may still be unanswered.

Look up anyway.

Not because pain is imaginary.

Look because pain does not get the final word.

Look because Christ entered human suffering rather than watching it from a safe distance.

Look because the fourth figure still walks through furnaces.

Look because sometimes God places your name on somebody’s heart and sends them to remind you that heaven has not misplaced your address.

And, since I am writing this to encourage others and myself, let me say this plainly:

Friend, breathe.

Your present condition is not proof that your Father has stopped providing.

You are not behind.

You are not forgotten.

You are not less gifted because the door has not opened yet.

You are not less called because this season has made you cry.

The venom is not your identity.

The furnace is not your home.

Keep looking.

Keep standing.

Keep listening for the phone to ring.

God has many ways of saying, “Daddy’s got you.”

A Prayer for the Wilderness

Father,

I am looking toward You while some parts of my life remain unresolved.

You see the bills, the disappointments, the unanswered prayers, the physical pain, and the fear I sometimes hide behind competence.

You know how hard it is to keep moving when my body hurts and my future feels uncertain.

Help me tell the truth without surrendering to despair.

Keep my eyes lifted when the venom of worry moves through my thoughts.

Meet me in every furnace I could not avoid.

Send people who know how to witness without judgment, and make me that kind of person for someone else.

Give me wisdom to act, courage to continue, and enough rest to hear Your voice clearly.

Remind me that I am not an employee first, a scholar first, a mother first, or a leader first.

I am Your daughter/son.

Hold me close until my breathing slows and my spirit remembers what fear made me forget.

You are still here.

Amen.

Soundtrack for the Soul

“Safe in His Arms”

For the days when faith does not feel triumphant, only held.

Reflective Corner

1. What “venom” are you carrying that you have been afraid to name?

2. Who has God used to check on you at exactly the right time?

3. What would it mean to look toward Christ without pretending your situation is already resolved?

A truth to carry: God may not always remove us from the furnace, but He has never asked His children to stand in it alone.

And perhaps looking up is not only about where we turn our eyes. It is also about where we choose to remain.

Not visiting God only when the venom moves.

Not reaching for Him only when the furnace grows hot.

Abiding.

Staying close enough to be held, nourished, corrected, restored, and reminded that we do not have to produce strength on our own.

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”
John 15:4, KJV

Sources

Life Bible. (n.d.). Daniel 3, New Living Translation.

Life Bible. (n.d.). John 3:14–15, New Living Translation.

Life Bible. (n.d.). John 15:4, New Living Translation.

Life Bible. (n.d.). Numbers 21:4–9, New Living Translation.

Rhodes, F. N. (2026). The Public Health Griot Approach™ [Unpublished conceptual framework].

Some reflections begin with breaking news.

Others rise from a memory that refuses to remain buried.

This one begins in Wilmington, North Carolina, because Wilmington is home. It is the place I know through family, faith, work, grief, and lived experience.

But this story does not end at the Cape Fear River.

Similar decisions are unfolding in counties, universities, school systems, health departments, and government agencies across the country. The names differ. The details change. The direction often feels familiar.

This reflection asks what happens when institutions stop naming the people their remedies were created to serve.

It asks whether the language of equality can sometimes hide a retreat from equity.

Most of all, it asks what our bodies and communities continue to carry when historical harm is acknowledged, commemorated, and discussed, but never fully repaired.

What follows is not an accusation that every difficult decision has the same cause.

It is an invitation to notice what disappears, who leaves the room, and what remains after the public language changes.

Listen to This Page

Would you rather listen than read?

Press play below to hear an adapted audio story version of this reflection.

Listen Here

Listen while driving, walking, resting, preparing dinner, or simply giving your eyes a break. The story will remain here when you return.

The Trees Are Still Whispering

Over the past ten to fifteen years, the truth about the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup has moved further from guarded family memory into public conversation.

For generations, many people were taught to call it a “race riot.” That language made organized white supremacist violence sound like a spontaneous conflict between two equally responsible groups.

It was not.

On November 10, 1898, an armed white mob burned the office of The Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper. Black residents were killed. Families fled Wilmington. Elected officials were forced from office, and coup leader Alfred Moore Waddell became mayor.

The mob did not simply attack individual Black residents. It seized control of the city government, terrorized Wilmington’s African American community, and helped usher in legal restrictions on Black voting and the Jim Crow era in North Carolina.

The state’s historical marker describes the attack as part of a statewide political campaign built on white supremacy and the exploitation of racial prejudice. The event is now widely recognized as the only successful coup d’état in United States history.

For decades, that truth was softened, distorted, or pushed to the side.

Schoolbooks called it a riot.

Public narratives blamed Black residents.

Families carried stories that official institutions refused to hold.

Renewed public attention grew around the 1998 centennial. The state established the Wilmington Race Riot Commission in 2000, and its final report was released in 2006. That work helped move the massacre and coup from deliberate distortion toward wider public recognition.

More people now speak its proper name.

That matters.

Yet when I look around in 2026, I still hear the trees whispering.

Some trees that witnessed 1898 may no longer stand. Storms may have uprooted them. Axes may have cut them down. Time may have hollowed their trunks and scattered their limbs.

Still, a fallen tree does not disappear without leaving evidence.

Its leaves settle into the earth.

Its seeds travel.

Its roots change the soil long after the trunk is gone.

That is how the systems surrounding 1898 feel to me.

The original actors are no longer alive.

Many laws have changed.

The speeches sound different.

Buildings carry new names.

But traces of the old thinking remain woven through political systems, public agencies, universities, schools, healthcare structures, contracting practices, and cultural narratives.

Racism does not always announce itself through an armed mob or an openly hateful speech.

It may arrive dressed as neutrality.

Efficiency.

Compliance.

Restructuring.

Fiscal responsibility.

The terminology changes.

The outcomes still require examination.

This raises a painful question:

Will we ever become free from racism’s epidemic violence and endemic presence?

An epidemic spreads rapidly and becomes difficult to ignore.

An endemic condition settles into an environment. People grow so accustomed to it that they begin treating it as ordinary.

Racism in the United States has operated as both.

At times, it erupts through massacres, voter intimidation, forced displacement, police violence, and public acts of hatred.

In other moments, it settles into school boundaries, hiring practices, healthcare access, funding decisions, political representation, contracting systems, and policies that appear neutral while producing familiar racial outcomes.

The form changes.

The exposure continues.

Remembering 1898 cannot end with a plaque, an anniversary event, or a documentary screening.

Memory must help us recognize what remains alive beneath the surface.

Otherwise, we may become highly skilled at condemning yesterday’s racism while failing to recognize what today’s version has learned to call itself.

The United States Capitol Heard the Whisper Too

More than a century after Wilmington, another predominantly white mob gathered to challenge the outcome of an election.

On January 6, 2021, Congress met inside the United States Capitol to count the electoral votes and certify the presidential election.

Outside, anger had already been cultivated.

People had been repeatedly told that the election was stolen and that the lawful transfer of power represented a betrayal.

The crowd advanced toward the Capitol.

Barricades were breached.

Police officers were attacked.

Windows shattered.

People forced their way into the building while elected officials, staff members, and others were moved to safety.

The certification proceeding was disrupted for hours. Congress later returned and completed its constitutional responsibility.

The United States Department of Justice described January 6 as a violent attack on the officers defending the Capitol and an unprecedented attack on the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

I do not place Wilmington in 1898 and Washington in 2021 beside each other to argue that they were identical.

They were not.

The Wilmington coup succeeded.

White supremacists overthrew a local government, installed their chosen leader, destroyed Black political power, and changed the course of North Carolina for generations.

The January 6 attack failed to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Wilmington’s Black community was the deliberate target of a racial-terror campaign.

January 6 was a broader attempt to overturn a national election result, carried out by a largely white mob mobilized through false claims of election fraud.

The histories differ.

The echoes still deserve attention.

Both involved white crowds encouraged to believe that lawful political outcomes were illegitimate.

Both were preceded by narratives describing democratically established governments as something that had been stolen.

Both transformed grievance into permission.

Both relied upon a belief that certain people possessed a greater right to political power than the voters and institutions standing in their way.

In Wilmington, white supremacist leaders warned against “Negro Rule.” They portrayed Black voting, Black officeholding, and multiracial government as threats.

Before January 6, people were repeatedly told that the presidential election had been stolen and that extraordinary action was required to “take back” the country.

Different slogans.

Different centuries.

A familiar political temptation:

When a lawful outcome threatens the power you believe belongs to you, declare the outcome illegitimate.

The violence did not begin when the first window shattered in Washington.

Just as it did not begin when The Daily Record burned in Wilmington.

It began with narrative.

Repetition.

Rumor.

Fear.

The construction of an enemy.

The steady permission to believe that force might become righteous when democracy produces an unacceptable result.

Whispers become stories.

Stories shape beliefs.

Beliefs influence behavior.

Behavior can become violence.

Political violence is not safely buried in Wilmington’s past.

The tree may grow in different soil.

Its leaves may carry new slogans.

But the desire to overturn democracy when power feels threatened remains alive.

The Retreat Did Not Begin in Raleigh

North Carolina’s movement away from race-conscious structures did not begin with the 2026 state budget.

The shift was already visible in New Hanover County.

In 2025, the county’s Office of Diversity and Equity became the Office of Civic Engagement.

The work did not necessarily disappear.

The name did.

That distinction deserves attention.

Diversity and Equity identified specific institutional responsibilities.

Civic Engagement is broader and less politically charged. It can welcome everyone without directly naming communities that have historically been denied equal access, representation, or protection.

Perhaps broader language creates new possibilities.

It may also make racial inequity easier to discuss without naming who experiences it.

During the same period, New Hanover County reduced its workforce as officials cut approximately $36 million from the county budget. Positions were eliminated or frozen. Employees were laid off, reassigned, offered retirement incentives, or affected by vacancies that would not be filled.

Within New Hanover County Health and Human Services, the Health Equity Coordinator position was eliminated.

I can confirm that personally.

I was she.

I was not reading about the loss from a distance.

I was the person whose position disappeared.

There is a particular weight in hearing an institution continue to speak about community well-being after eliminating the role specifically assigned to ask who was being left behind.

A title on an organizational chart can sound small.

The work was not.

Health equity meant looking beyond countywide averages and asking:

• Which neighborhoods were experiencing worse outcomes?

• Which racial or ethnic communities were missing from services?

• Who lacked transportation, insurance, information, or trust?

• Who had been invited into planning?

• Who had been overlooked?

• Could a program be called successful if residents facing the greatest barriers could not reach it?

When a health-equity position disappears, inequity does not gather its belongings and leave with the employee.

Maternal health disparities remain.

Chronic disease remains.

Medical mistrust remains.

Transportation barriers remain.

Neighborhoods with fewer resources remain.

What disappears is the person formally charged with keeping those conditions visible.

That does not automatically prove an institution no longer cares.

It does mean the public should ask who now carries the work, what authority that person has, and how outcomes will be measured.

When Black Institutional Presence Narrows

One change may be explained as restructuring.

Another may be described as a personnel matter.

A third may be the result of an election.

But when equity roles, Black leadership, educational authority, election administration, and community investment all shift within a compressed period, the accumulation deserves careful attention.

New Hanover County entered 2025 without Jonathan Barfield Jr. on its Board of Commissioners.

Barfield served for sixteen years before narrowly losing reelection in November 2024. He and his father, Joe Barfield Sr., are the only Black commissioners New Hanover County has elected since 1898.

Sit with that for a moment.

More than a century of county governance.

Two Black commissioners.

Father and son.

After Jonathan Barfield’s departure, no Black person remained on the five-member board.

Representation alone does not guarantee equity.

A Black official can serve within a system without having enough votes to transform it.

Still, absence changes a room.

Who recognizes a coded message before it becomes policy?

Who carries community memory into the discussion?

Who asks whether a geographically neutral decision may land differently in Northside, Creekwood, or another historically Black community?

Lived experience is not the only source of knowledge.

But governing bodies become less informed when that knowledge is consistently missing.

The First Black Superintendent Was Also Gone

New Hanover County Schools had already undergone another significant leadership change.

In July 2024, the Board of Education terminated Dr. Charles Foust, the district’s first Black superintendent.

The termination of a Black superintendent does not by itself prove racial discrimination.

Public reporting described broader concerns involving leadership and the district’s organizational climate. That context belongs in a fair account.

Still, racial disparities within the school system did not disappear with the change in leadership.

Neither did concerns about the removal of diversity, equity, and inclusion language from district planning.

The language became politically vulnerable.

The unequal outcomes remained.

That tension should concern anyone who believes children deserve more than symbolic commitments.

A Lawsuit Against the City

The City of Wilmington is defending a federal lawsuit filed by its former Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director, Kimberly Carson.

Carson, who is Black, was terminated in May 2025 after approximately one year in the role.

In February 2026, she sued the city, alleging racial discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination. Her complaint also alleges that she raised concerns about the treatment of Black employees.

The city denies the allegations and maintains that its employment decisions were lawful and based on legitimate reasons.

A lawsuit contains claims that must be tested in court.

It is not a verdict.

That precision matters.

Even so, the case raises questions that many Black women working inside institutions may recognize.

What happens when the person hired to identify inequity begins naming problems inside the institution that employs her?

How is “professionalism” defined when the work becomes uncomfortable?

Who is characterized as collaborative?

Who becomes difficult?

Whose concerns are investigated?

Who must produce extraordinary evidence before her experience is considered credible?

The court will determine the legal merits of Carson’s claims.

The cultural questions extend beyond the courtroom.

An Elections Director Removed Within Months

In January 2026, the New Hanover County Board of Elections recommended DeNay Harris to become director of elections.

By June, she had been formally terminated.

The State Board of Elections finalized her removal after the county board petitioned for that action. Reporting described disputes involving management, operational authority, and election administration.

Those facts should not be reduced to race without evidence.

The board’s movement toward removal was described as bipartisan, and the public record identifies specific leadership concerns.

Still, Harris’s brief tenure adds another Black woman’s departure from a highly visible public role during a period of considerable institutional change.

No single event tells the entire story.

Accumulation communicates something.

At minimum, it should move us beyond isolated headlines and toward a broader examination of who enters public leadership, who remains, who leaves, and what conditions surround those departures.

The Grocery Store That Has Not Yet Come

Then there is Northside.

For years, residents and community leaders worked toward a community-owned, full-service grocery store in a neighborhood with limited access to fresh, affordable food.

The Northside Food Co-op represented more than retail.

It promised food access, local ownership, employment, community investment, and a gathering place shaped with residents rather than imposed upon them.

New Hanover County and the New Hanover Community Endowment ended financial support for the proposed project.

The Endowment later explained that it had concerns about whether the commercial grocery model satisfied federal charitable-purpose requirements. Co-op leaders continued exploring other business models and possible locations.

The community vision did not disappear.

Institutional backing weakened.

That distinction matters.

So do the consequences of delay.

Imagine an older woman waiting for a ride across town because she cannot walk home carrying milk, produce, and canned goods.

Picture a parent watching frozen vegetables begin to soften while standing at a bus stop in July.

Think about what it means when a neighborhood can find snacks, alcohol, and lottery tickets more easily than fresh greens, affordable meat, or fruit for a child’s lunch.

A grocery store is not merely a building.

It is time.

Nutrition.

Transportation.

Dignity.

Ownership.

A promise postponed long enough can begin to feel like another form of abandonment.

Raleigh Made the Pattern Harder to Ignore

By July 2026, similar questions had reached the state level.

North Carolina abolished the Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses after more than twenty-five years of helping minority-owned, women-owned, disabled-owned, and other historically underutilized firms navigate government contracting.

The Department of Administration reported that the HUB Office assisted thousands of owners through certification, education, business development, and access to contracting opportunities.

Some small-business functions will continue elsewhere.

The HUB Office itself will not.

The state budget also eliminated the standalone Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities, identified in the legislation as the Office of Health Equity.

Its authority, responsibilities, and duties were transferred to and consolidated within the Division of Public Health.

The work may continue.

The independent office will not.

That is not a meaningless distinction.

A standalone office has a name, leadership, visibility, relationships, and a defined line of accountability.

Moving the work into a larger division may improve coordination.

It may also make the mission easier to dilute, underfund, or lose among competing priorities.

A chair pushed into the corner is technically still in the room.

That does not mean it still has a place at the table.

When Donor Intent Meets Institutional Neutrality

At the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the Upperman family decided not to award new scholarships after university officials determined that language connected to African American students needed to be revised under the UNC System’s Equality Policy.

The scholarship was not limited exclusively to Black applicants.

Students were expected to demonstrate an interest in or commitment to issues affecting African American students.

The family concluded that removing that purpose would violate Dr. Leroy Upperman’s intent.

Current recipients will remain supported through graduation, while the endowment is being redirected away from UNCW.

The scholarship supported students for nearly thirty years.

The need did not disappear.

The language became unacceptable before the disparity did.

Picture a student leaving class after dark and driving directly to an overnight shift.

She sits in her car and does the math again:

1. Tuition

2. Books

3. Rent

4. Gas

5. Groceries

A scholarship may appear as a line in an institutional ledger.

To that student, it may mean six hours of sleep instead of three.

Time to study.

One fewer loan.

A semester she does not have to postpone.

The body understands what policy language can obscure.

What the Accumulation Tells Us

These events are not identical.

They did not all occur in the same year.

They were not ordered by one office, caused by one political party, or justified through one policy.

The available evidence does not prove that every departure, restructuring, budget reduction, or funding decision was racially motivated.

We should not make that claim.

But refusing to notice accumulation would be its own failure of analysis.

Within a relatively short period, New Hanover County, Wilmington, and North Carolina experienced:

1. The renaming of the county Office of Diversity and Equity

2. The elimination of the county Health Equity Coordinator position

3. The departure of the county’s only Black commissioner

4. The termination of the school district’s first Black superintendent

5. A racial-discrimination lawsuit filed by the city’s former DEI director

6. The termination of a Black county elections director within several months

7. The loss of major institutional support for a Northside grocery initiative

8. The redirection of a scholarship tied to African American students

9. The state’s elimination of the HUB Office

10. The state’s elimination of a standalone minority-health office

Each item deserves its own context.

Together, they reveal a climate in which Black institutional presence and race-conscious repair appear increasingly vulnerable.

That is the story.

Not a conspiracy.

Not a claim that every decision shares the same intent.

A climate.

A direction.

A pattern worth naming before it becomes so familiar that we stop seeing it.

The Body Knows What Policy Means

Policy is often presented through abstract language:

• Procurement

• Compliance

• Consolidation

• Workforce reduction

• Administrative efficiency

• Personnel action

• Fiscal restraint

The body experiences those words differently.

It experiences policy as food.

Medicine.

Housing.

Sleep.

Transportation.

Safety.

Stress.

Belonging.

A lost state contract may determine whether a Black-owned business can provide health insurance.

An eliminated health-equity position may mean no one asks why a county program is not reaching a particular neighborhood.

A missing grocery store may add another hour to a parent’s weekly search for fresh food.

A scholarship may decide whether a student studies at midnight or clocks in for another shift.

A governing board without Black representation may overlook a history no one else in the room has been required to remember.

The body knows when access narrows.

It knows when support becomes harder to find.

It knows when an institution says the mission remains important while removing the people, names, structures, and money that once made the commitment visible.

Wilmington Has Heard These Whispers Before

The decisions of 2024, 2025, and 2026 are not equivalent to the violence of 1898.

Renaming an office is not murder.

Eliminating a position is not an armed coup.

Losing an election is not forced removal from government.

Historical comparison requires restraint.

Still, history can illuminate political habits without making two eras identical.

In 1898, white supremacist leaders framed Black political participation and economic progress as threats to social order.

They portrayed multiracial government as illegitimate.

They persuaded white residents that Black advancement meant something had been unfairly taken from them.

The violence did not begin with the first gunshot.

It began with narrative.

Newspapers.

Speeches.

Rumors.

Repeated claims that Black political power represented disorder.

Whispers become stories.

Stories shape beliefs.

Beliefs influence policy.

Policy creates systems.

Systems shape the conditions in which people live, work, become ill, and try to heal.

That is why language matters.

When targeted support is recast as unfair advantage, we should pay attention.

When naming Black communities becomes more controversial than the disparities those communities experience, we should pay attention.

When institutions commemorate 1898 while present-day equity structures grow thinner, we should pay attention.

History does not repeat itself in identical form.

Sometimes it whispers through familiar leaves.

Justice Must Reach the Wound

Deuteronomy 16:20 tells us:

“That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live.”

Justice is connected to life.

Breath.

Safety.

Food.

Housing.

Education.

Work.

Health.

The ability to leave something for the children coming behind us.

Justice must be specific enough to reach the actual injury.

If Black mothers face higher risks during pregnancy and childbirth, justice must be able to say and protect Black mothers.

If Black-owned businesses have faced barriers in public contracting, justice must be able to identify those businesses.

If Black children experience unequal educational outcomes, justice must name the disparity rather than hiding behind a countywide average.

If Northside residents lack nearby access to affordable food, justice must reach Northside.

A remedy that refuses to name the wound may never reach it.

You cannot treat pain by pointing to the wrong part of the body.

You cannot correct an unequal outcome by pretending everyone began in the same place.

You cannot remove a root system by cutting only what can be seen above the ground.

Faith Cannot Hide Behind Neutrality

James 2:17 reminds us:

“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”

Faith must become visible.

So must our public values.

A university may say it values belonging, but belonging requires more than language on a website.

A county may call itself inclusive, but inclusion requires people, authority, funding, and accountability.

A state may praise minority entrepreneurship, but praise does not help a business owner navigate certification or compete for a contract.

A community may commemorate 1898, but remembrance without present-day accountability risks becoming ceremony without consequence.

Statements do not change outcomes by themselves.

Commitments need structure.

Justice needs resources.

Faith needs hands.

It should:

• Attend the meeting

• Read the budget

• Support the business

• Fund the scholarship

• Protect the archive

• Ask who made the decision

• Ask who was consulted

• Ask who is no longer in the room

• Demand public measures of what happens next

Neutrality cannot become a hiding place.

Inaction in the presence of persistent disparity is still a choice.

What We Must Preserve

When public institutions retreat from race-conscious repair, communities must decide what we will protect and what we may need to strengthen for ourselves.

That does not excuse government, universities, schools, or healthcare systems from responsibility.

Community resilience must never become permission for institutional neglect.

Still, history has taught us not to place the survival of our people entirely in structures that can change direction with the next budget, board majority, policy, election, or court ruling.

We must preserve:

1. Black philanthropy and scholarship funds that honor donor intent

2. Minority-owned business networks that share referrals, mentorship, and contracting knowledge

3. Health-equity research focused on maternal health, environmental conditions, workplace harm, food access, and medical mistrust

4. Public records and archives documenting why offices and programs were created

5. Faith institutions capable of holding civic education, health screenings, scholarships, grief, organizing, and hope

6. Community leadership pipelines that prepare residents to serve on boards, commissions, and public bodies

Our churches have held far more than Sunday services.

They have held voter-registration drives.

Food distributions.

Scholarship committees.

Funerals.

Health screenings.

Strategy meetings.

They have held people together when larger institutions would not.

When government retreats, faith and community organizations may again be called to stand in the gap.

But standing in the gap must never give government permission to abandon the bridge.

What Are We Still Willing to Name?

We are living through a period when the language of fairness is reshaping the structures of repair.

Offices are renamed.

Positions are eliminated.

Responsibilities are consolidated.

Scholarships are redirected.

Funding is withdrawn.

Leaders leave or are removed.

Viewed separately, each decision may appear administrative, electoral, legal, or financial.

Together, they raise deeper questions.

Are we still willing to say that Black-owned businesses face barriers?

Can we acknowledge that racial health disparities persist even when an office disappears?

Will we admit that Black children may require targeted support because educational opportunity has never been distributed evenly?

Can we say Northside deserves reliable access to fresh food?

Are we willing to recognize that Black leadership and institutional presence carry knowledge that cannot be replaced by a general statement about inclusion?

Equality and equity are related.

They are not interchangeable.

I am a native of Wilmington, North Carolina.

I come from a city where the trees have heard more than they could ever repeat.

They stood beside churches, homes, schools, businesses, docks, roads, and fields where Black families lived, worked, worshiped, and dreamed.

Some of those trees are gone.

Their leaves became part of the ground.

Their roots disturbed the soil.

Their seeds traveled beyond the places where they first stood.

I also come from people who remained.

They kept living.

Working.

Praying.

Opening businesses.

Raising families.

Telling stories.

Caring for one another.

That inheritance teaches me that naming harm is not divisive.

Naming is the beginning of repair.

We cannot heal a wound by refusing to say where it hurts.

We cannot honor history while weakening the structures created in response to it.

You cannot repair what you refuse to name.

You cannot uproot what you refuse to recognize.

The trees are still whispering.

The question is whether we are willing to listen before another generation is left to describe what we chose not to hear.

With care and conviction,

The Public Health Griot

Soundtrack for the Soul

“Babylon System” by Bob Marley and the Wailers

Some systems do not disappear when their names change.

They adapt.

They move through laws, budgets, institutions, political language, and the stories societies tell about who deserves power, protection, and opportunity.

They teach people to accept inequality as order.

They describe targeted repair as unfairness.

They make long-standing harm look natural, inevitable, or too complicated to confront.

“Babylon System” belongs with this reflection because Bob Marley does not ask us to examine only individual prejudice.

He asks us to recognize the structure.

The machine.

The system that feeds upon unequal power while insisting that its rules are neutral.

The trees are still whispering.

This song asks whether we are willing to hear what the roots have been telling us all along.

Reflective Corner

1. Which office, scholarship, leadership position, or community program once made equity visible where you live?

2. What becomes harder to see when targeted work is renamed, consolidated, defunded, or removed?

3. What similarities and differences do you recognize between Wilmington in 1898 and the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021?

4. Who is no longer present in the rooms where decisions affecting your community are made?

5. What is your body telling you about the changes you are witnessing?

Action for This Week

This week, I am asking you to do more than read one article and move on.

Read

Read Lauren Collins’s new book, They Stole a City: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live With Its Legacy.

Collins, also a Wilmington native, follows four families across 125 years to examine the long-term effects of the massacre and coup and their role in undermining American democracy.

You may also purchase the book through Amazon.

Do not read it only as a history of something that happened to other people long ago.

Ask what the book reveals about inheritance, silence, land, power, memory, and the city that exists now.

Watch

Watch Christopher Everett’s documentary Wilmington on Fire.

Everett, a Wilmington resident, whose film retells the massacre and its lasting effects on Wilmington’s African American community. North Carolina historical officials have described the documentary as an examination of the only successful coup d’état in United States history.

Then watch the PBS American Experience documentary American Coup: Wilmington 1898.

The documentary examines how self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s elected multiracial government.

The full PBS film is currently listed as available to stream through November 13, 2027.

Remember

Do not treat these resources as entertainment consumed and forgotten.

Pause afterward.

Write down what you did not know.

Ask what you were taught instead.

Share one fact with someone younger than you.

Discuss the history with your:

• Family

• Church

• Classroom

• Book club

• Sorority or fraternity chapter

• Neighborhood group

• Professional association

Then choose one additional action:

• Read the public record behind one institutional change discussed in this reflection.

• Contact a commissioner, school board member, legislator, trustee, or agency leader.

• Ask who now holds responsibility for eliminated or consolidated equity work.

• Attend a public meeting.

• Support a Black-owned or historically underutilized business.

• Contribute to a community scholarship.

• Preserve a report, webpage, oral history, photograph, or public document before it disappears.

• Share accurate information with someone directly affected.

Do not try to carry every issue this week.

Choose one place where you can stop scrolling and begin acting.

Listen for the whisper.

Then decide what it requires of you.

References

Collins, L. (2026). They stole a city: Wilmington’s white supremacist coup and the families who live with its legacy. Penguin Press. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/610949/they-stole-a-city-by-lauren-collins/

Everett, C. (Director). (2015). Wilmington on fire [Film]. Speller Street Films. https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0KVR9UKN84LGA6YMPPJ3PRXST4

Keith, R. (2026, July 6). UNCW Upperman family pulling future scholarship funds over UNC System’s equality policy. WHQR. https://www.whqr.org/local/2026-07-06/uncw-upperman-family-pulling-future-scholarship-funds-over-unc-systems-equality-policy

Lichtenstein, B., & Richen, Y. (Directors). (2024). American coup: Wilmington 1898 [Film]. American Experience; PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/american-coup-wilmington-1898/

New Hanover County. (2026, January 13). New Hanover County Board of Elections recommends DeNay Harris as elections director.

North Carolina Department of Administration. (2026, July 9). State budget eliminates program for North Carolina historically underutilized businesses.

North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. (n.d.). 1898 Wilmington coup. https://www.dncr.nc.gov/1898-wilmington-coup

North Carolina General Assembly. (2026). Current Operations Appropriations Act of 2026, Session Law 2026-41, Senate Bill 257.

Port City Daily. (2024, July 3). “We accomplished so many great things”: Foust responds post-termination.

Port City Daily. (2025, July 1). New Hanover County workforce reduction coming into focus.

U.S. Department of Justice. (2025, January 6). Attorney General Merrick B. Garland statement on the fourth anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-statement-fourth-anniversary-january-6-attack-capitol

U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. (2022). Final report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. U.S. Government Publishing Office.

WECT Staff. (2026, February 26). Former Wilmington DEI director sues city, alleges racial discrimination and wrongful termination. WECT.

WHQR. (2026, June 10). DeNay Harris officially removed as New Hanover County elections director. WHQR.

WilmingtonBiz. (2025, July 30). Amid funding setback, Northside Food Co-op officials say they remain committed to store.

WilmingtonBiz. (2025, October 9). DEI in flux.

The Holy Bible, King James Version. (n.d.). Deuteronomy 16:20; James 2:17.

The audio version of this article is available here:

Listen on Speechify: https://speechify.app.link/MQEeBqwtR3b

Whether you’re commuting, walking, exercising, or simply resting your eyes, I invite you to join me as we journey down the Yellow Brick Road and explore what The Wiz teaches us about power, place, health equity, and the systems shaping our lives.

Dear Reader,

If I am being honest, The Wiz has probably been my favorite movie for most of my life.

I cannot tell you how many times I have watched it. I know the songs. I know the lines. I know when Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow is about to sing “You Can’t Win.” I know when Nipsey Russell’s Tin Man starts asking for oil. I know when Richard Pryor’s booming voice fills Emerald City. And I know that by the time Lena Horne appears near the end of the movie, I stop whatever I am doing and listen.

Yet somehow, every time I watch it, I discover something new.

As a little Black girl growing up in North Carolina, I saw magic. I saw adventure. I saw Dorothy trying to get home. I saw witches, flying monkeys, silver slippers, and a cast that looked like me doing something joyful and unforgettable.

Today, I see something different.

• I see neighborhoods.

• I see policy.

• I see labor.

• I see power.

• I see public health.

Most of all, I see systems.

Released in 1978, The Wiz arrived during a difficult chapter in New York City’s history. The city was still recovering from the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing. Public services were strained. Entire neighborhoods were experiencing the effects of decades of disinvestment. Communities of color were living with the long-term consequences of redlining, discriminatory housing practices, environmental neglect, and economic exclusion.

The film never uses phrases like Social Determinants of Health, Political Determinants of Health, Commercial Determinants of Health, or Structural Determinants of Health.

It did not need to. The movie shows them. And once you see them, you cannot unsee them. What I realized during my most recent viewing is that The Wiz is not really about Oz. It is about the conditions that shape whether people thrive or merely survive.

It is about:

• Who gets opportunities.

• Who gets resources.

• Who gets represented.

• Who gets exploited.

• Who gets left behind.

And perhaps most importantly, who gets to decide!

Dorothy’s Harlem: The Geography of Possibility and the Social Determinants of Health

One of the most important lines in the entire movie lasts only a few seconds.

Dorothy tells her family she has never been south of 125th Street. Most viewers barely notice it. Public health cannot. Because Dorothy is not simply describing where she lives. She is describing the geography of possibility.

To fully understand that statement, we have to understand Harlem.

Harlem occupies a unique place in American history. It is impossible to talk about Black culture, Black politics, Black faith, Black art, Black literature, or Black resilience without talking about Harlem. During the Great Migration, thousands of Black families moved north seeking opportunities that were often denied in the Jim Crow South. Harlem became a destination. It became a symbol. It became a place where Black excellence flourished despite tremendous barriers.

• Langston Hughes wrote there.

• Duke Ellington performed there.

• Zora Neale Hurston gathered there.

• Adam Clayton Powell Jr. organized there.

• Malcolm X preached there.

For many Black Americans, Harlem became more than a neighborhood.

It became a declaration.

Yet Harlem also experienced the same structural forces that shaped countless Black communities across America.

Beginning in the 1930s, federal housing policies systematically denied investment to many Black neighborhoods through redlining. Banks restricted lending. Property values declined. Businesses relocated. Public and private investments followed wealth elsewhere. Urban renewal projects displaced families. Highway construction disrupted communities. By the 1970s, many neighborhoods were still experiencing the consequences of decisions made decades earlier. The residents living through those conditions did not need a public health framework to explain what was happening. They lived it every day.

Today, we call these realities the Social Determinants of Health. The World Health Organization defines them as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age (World Health Organization [WHO], 2024).

• Those conditions shape educational opportunities.

• They shape housing quality.

• They shape transportation access.

• They shape employment opportunities.

• They shape exposure to violence and environmental hazards.

Ultimately, they shape health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that social and environmental factors account for a substantial portion of health outcomes, often exceeding the impact of healthcare itself (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024). Researchers have documented life expectancy gaps exceeding twenty years between neighborhoods located within the same metropolitan area (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2023).

Twenty years.

An entire generation.

A child born in one ZIP code may reasonably expect to live into their eighties.

A child born only a few miles away may not.

Those differences are not explained by biology. They are explained by opportunity. By investment. By policy. By power. Dorothy’s statement about never leaving Harlem is not simply character development.

It is a Social Determinants of Health manifesto.

• Where you are born matters.

• Where you can travel matters.

• What opportunities exist around you matters.

The Yellow Brick Road becomes more than a road. It becomes a pathway toward possibility.

From a Public Health Griot Approach perspective, Harlem reminds us that communities are not data points.

They are living archives. Every block carries memory. Every neighborhood carries stories. Every story helps explain how people arrived where they are today. The story of Harlem is not simply about place.

It is about power.

And Dorothy’s journey begins the moment she steps beyond the boundaries others have normalized.

Dorothy

There is another detail about Dorothy that often gets overlooked.

She is a teacher. Not a politician. Not a lawyer. Not a business executive.

A teacher. That matters.

When The Wiz was released in 1978, teaching represented one of the most accessible professional pathways available to educated Black women. Black women have long served as educators, caregivers, organizers, faith leaders, advocates, and community anchors. They have often carried responsibility for community well-being while receiving far less recognition than they deserved.

Dorothy embodies that reality. She spends her life caring for others.

Teaching children. Supporting family.

Doing what is expected.

Yet there is a quiet tension underneath her character.

She is capable of more. She knows it. The audience knows it.

But her world has become confined by fear, routine, and limited opportunity.

That reality remains familiar for many women today.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, women continue to represent approximately three-quarters of the public school teaching workforce. At the same time, teacher burnout, staffing shortages, and workforce turnover remain significant challenges across the country. Public health often focuses on healthcare professionals when discussing workforce well-being.

We should also talk about teachers.

• Teachers witness trauma.

• Teachers provide emotional support.

• Teachers identify hunger.

• Teachers notice abuse.

• Teachers serve as unofficial counselors, mentors, and advocates.

Many are carrying tremendous emotional burdens. The irony is that Dorothy begins the film helping others discover their potential while struggling to recognize her own.

The Public Health Griot Approach encourages us to ask a different question.

• What happens when the healer needs healing?

• What happens when the caregiver needs care?

• What happens when the person helping others find their way loses sight of her own?

Dorothy’s journey is not simply about getting home. It is about rediscovering possibility.

Infinite Possibilities!

And perhaps that is why so many people identify with her story.

“You Can’t Win”: The Scarecrow and Educational Equity

When Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, she encounters someone who believes he lacks intelligence despite repeatedly demonstrating creativity, humor, insight, and wisdom.

His challenge is not intellectual ability.

His challenge is belief.

The crows surrounding him sing “You Can’t Win.” As a child, I heard a catchy song.

As an adult, I hear structural oppression set to music. The crows are not simply teasing him. They are teaching him.

• They are teaching him to doubt himself.

• To lower his expectations.

• To stop trying before he ever begins.

The visual symbolism is remarkable.

The Scarecrow is literally made from discarded materials sitting in a vacant lot. He becomes a living metaphor for educational neglect and the way communities often discard intellectual potential before it has an opportunity to flourish. Educational attainment remains one of the strongest predictors of health outcomes in America. Individuals with higher educational attainment generally experience longer life expectancy, improved health literacy, greater economic mobility, and lower rates of chronic disease (CDC, 2024).

Yet educational opportunities remain deeply unequal.

• School funding disparities persist.

• Technology gaps persist.

• Teacher shortages persist.

• Access to advanced coursework remains uneven.

• Children do not begin life with equal opportunities.

The Public Health Griot Approach asks us to examine who gets labeled as gifted and who gets labeled as deficient.

• Who receives investment?

• Who receives opportunity?

• Who gets overlooked?

The tragedy of the Scarecrow is not that he lacks intelligence.

The tragedy is that he has been convinced he does.

And if we are honest, entire communities have heard their own version of “You Can’t Win” for generations.

Photo A. Dorothy and the Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road. "A Place to Hang Your Cape" by David Molofsky. Reproduced from Retrozpective: The Wiz (1978), by A Place to Hang Your Cape, 2023 (https://ap2hyc.com/2023/05/retrozpective-the-wiz-1978/).

Rust Never Sleeps: The Tin Man, Weathering, and the Biology of Survival

The older I get, the more the Tin Man becomes my favorite character.

As a child, I thought he simply needed oil.

As an adult, I see someone carrying years of accumulated burden.

When Dorothy first finds him, he is frozen in place. He cannot move without help. He still has a heart. He still cares. He is simply exhausted. Watching those scenes today, I cannot help but think about Dr. Arline Geronimus and her groundbreaking work on weathering. Geronimus (1992) proposed that chronic exposure to social disadvantage and racial stress accelerates biological aging and contributes to poorer health outcomes among Black Americans.

If you’ve read my blogs for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I return to this concept often. That’s intentional. I believe we cannot fully understand health inequities without understanding what chronic stress does to the body, mind, and spirit over time. Public health researchers call it allostatic load.

The term may sound technical, but the concept is straightforward. Allostatic load refers to the cumulative wear and tear on the body that occurs when people are exposed to ongoing stress and adversity. It happens when stress is no longer an occasional challenge but becomes a constant part of daily life.

For many people, this isn’t an abstract idea.

• It’s lived experience.

• It’s the mother, father, or guardian working multiple jobs while caring for children and aging parents.

• It’s the teacher stretching limited resources to make sure her students have what they need.

• It’s the healthcare worker who spends every day caring for others while neglecting her own well-being.

• It’s the community leader who carries the concerns of everyone around her while quietly managing her own worries, grief, and exhaustion.

For Black communities, these experiences are often compounded by generations of economic hardship, systemic discrimination, underinvestment, and the daily realities of navigating systems that have not always been equitable or inclusive.

Over time, the body responds.

• Blood pressure increases.

• Sleep becomes more elusive.

• Inflammation rises.

• The risk of chronic disease grows.

What many people dismiss as “just stress” can have very real biological consequences.

This is why I continue to write about it. Not because it’s a popular topic. Not because it’s an academic concept. But because it helps explain so many of the health disparities we see across communities. If we are truly committed to improving health outcomes, we must also address the conditions that create chronic stress in the first place. The Tin Man reminds us that exhaustion is not always a sign of weakness.

Sometimes it reflects everything a person has endured.

Sometimes it is the visible evidence of carrying invisible burdens for far too long.

His rust is not failure.

His rust is a receipt.

Public health data continue to support what many communities have known for generations. Black Americans experience higher rates of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, maternal mortality, and stress-related illness than many other populations. Black women remain significantly more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women, regardless of income or educational attainment (CDC, 2024).

The explanation is not biology. The explanation is exposure.

• Exposure to stress.

• Exposure to inequity.

• Exposure to systems that create barriers while demanding resilience.

The Public Health Griot Approach reminds us that bodies often carry stories statistics alone cannot tell.

• Sometimes a blood pressure reading tells a story.

• Sometimes chronic pain tells a story.

• Sometimes fatigue tells a story.

• Sometimes grief tells a story.

And sometimes the body becomes the archive.

The Tin Man’s rust is not simply a character trait.

It is a public health warning.

Be a Lion: Fear, Power, and Collective Action

The Lion believes he lacks courage. Yet throughout the movie, he repeatedly demonstrates courage. What he actually struggles with is fear. And fear influences health more than we often acknowledge.

• Fear keeps people from seeking medical care.

• Fear keeps workers from reporting unsafe conditions.

• Fear keeps people trapped in abusive relationships.

• Fear keeps communities from challenging harmful systems.

• Fear keeps voters home.

• Fear keeps people silent when they know something is wrong.

• Fear can become its own social determinant of health.

Communities that have experienced historical trauma often carry understandable mistrust. Black Americans, Indigenous communities, immigrants, and other marginalized populations have experienced generations of discrimination, exclusion, and broken promises. Those experiences shape how people engage with institutions, including healthcare systems.

That mistrust did not appear out of nowhere.

History earned it.

The Lion’s story reminds us that courage is not the absence of fear. It is movement despite fear. One of the most remarkable things about the Lion is that he continues walking.

• Even when he is afraid.

• Even when he doubts himself.

• Even when he believes everyone else is stronger than he is.

He keeps going.

There is a lesson there for public health. Communities often possess more courage than institutions give them credit for.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, communities organized food drives, wellness checks, mutual aid networks, transportation support, and caregiving efforts long before formal systems caught up. During natural disasters, neighborhoods often become first responders for one another. People show up. People adapt. People help.

The Lion reminds us that courage frequently looks ordinary.

• It looks like attending a doctor’s appointment despite anxiety.

• It looks like advocating for a child at school.

• It looks like speaking during a community meeting.

• It looks like voting.

• It looks like asking for help.

• It looks like telling the truth.

The Public Health Griot Approach asks us to pay attention to those everyday acts of courage because they are often the foundation of community resilience.

The Lion spends the entire movie believing he lacks something he already possesses.

How many communities have been told the same thing?

How many people have been convinced they are powerless when the evidence suggests otherwise?

Perhaps the Lion’s journey is not about finding courage.

Perhaps it is about recognizing it.

And perhaps that is true for communities as well.

Riding Through Fear: The Flying Monkeys, Social Control, and the Politics of Fear

As a child, the Flying Monkeys terrified me.

Not because they were monsters.

Because they felt organized.

Intentional.

Relentless.

Unlike many movie villains, they were not acting alone. They moved in groups. They enforced rules. They carried out the will of someone more powerful than themselves.

Watching the motorcycle-riding Flying Monkeys as an adult, I cannot help but think about how fear shaped public perceptions of New York City during the 1970s. Headlines emphasized crime, disorder, urban decline, and fiscal crisis. Communities were often portrayed as dangerous rather than disinvested. Public narratives frequently focused on individual behavior while ignoring the structural conditions that produced hardship in the first place.

• Lost jobs.

• Housing discrimination.

• Redlining.

• Disinvestment.

• Underfunded schools.

• A shrinking tax base.

• A deteriorating physical environment.

Those realities rarely received the same attention as the images of crime and chaos dominating television screens and newspaper headlines. Fear became the story. The conditions producing the fear often did not. More than forty years later, the pattern remains remarkably familiar.

In 2026, many municipalities across the United States and communities around the world continue to grapple with similar challenges. Public conversations frequently focus on crime rates, homelessness, migration, substance use, or community disorder while spending far less time examining the underlying conditions driving those outcomes. Communities are still too often portrayed as dangerous rather than under-resourced. Struggling neighborhoods are still described as failures rather than places carrying the cumulative effects of decades of policy decisions, economic neglect, environmental injustice, and political disinvestment.

Fear has always been a powerful political tool.

• It shapes policy.

• It shapes policing.

• It shapes investment.

It shapes who is viewed as deserving of protection and who is viewed as a threat.

The Flying Monkeys represent more than danger. They represent systems of surveillance and social control. In many ways, they resemble historical forces that were designed to monitor movement, enforce compliance, and preserve existing power structures.

Some viewers may see echoes of overseers. Others may see slave patrols, which historians widely recognize as one of the predecessors to organized policing in parts of the American South. And others may see modern institutions that continue to disproportionately monitor, police, and regulate certain communities while protecting others.

The details change.

The objective remains remarkably familiar.

• Control movement.

• Control behavior.

• Control opportunity.

• Control access.

The Public Health Griot Approach reminds us that health is not simply the absence of disease.

Health also requires safety, dignity, and freedom from constant fear. Communities cannot thrive when they are perpetually under surveillance, perpetually viewed as threats, or perpetually expected to prove their worthiness.

Yet there is another layer to the story. Unlike Evillene, the Flying Monkeys eventually change. When the Witch’s power is broken, they no longer serve oppression. They help Dorothy and her companions continue their journey. That transformation matters.

Because PHGA teaches us that systems are made up of people.

• People can learn.

• People can change.

• People can choose differently.

History offers examples of individuals who enforced harmful systems and later challenged them. Former segregationists became civil rights allies. Former opponents of justice became advocates for change. Transformation remains possible, even within institutions that have caused harm.

The lesson is not that the Flying Monkeys were innocent.

The lesson is that they were not the source.

They were symptoms of a larger system.

And public health has long taught us that if we want lasting change, we must move beyond symptoms and examine the structures producing them. The Flying Monkeys may have been frightening. But the real danger was the system directing them.

And that distinction may be one of the most important public health lessons hidden inside The Wiz.

The Man Behind the Curtain: Richard Pryor and the Political Determinants of Health

This is where The Wiz shifts from a great movie to a profound public health lesson. Most viewers remember the reveal. Few remember the backstory.

• The Wizard is not a king.

• He is not a prophet.

• He is not a genius.

He is Herman Smith, a failed politician from Atlantic City who arrived in Oz by accident and spent years maintaining the illusion of power.

That detail changes everything.

Because Herman Smith is not simply a character.

He is a metaphor.

Throughout the film, everyone believes the Wizard possesses extraordinary power. His image dominates public life. His voice shapes behavior. His approval determines access. Entire systems organize themselves around his authority. Yet when Dorothy finally reaches him, the truth emerges.

He is a frightened man operating a machine.

The irony is impossible to miss.

Richard Pryor, one of America’s greatest truth tellers, spends the entire film portraying a man desperately protecting a lie. Pryor built much of his career exposing uncomfortable truths about race, poverty, power, and the contradictions of American life. Yet in The Wiz, he portrays a man whose authority depends entirely upon illusion.

Looking back, there is another layer that audiences in 1978 could not have anticipated. The film could never have predicted Pryor’s later struggles with addiction, struggles that many biographers and observers have described as intertwined with deep personal pain, insecurity, and trauma. Like many people who appear larger than life, Pryor wrestled with vulnerabilities that were largely hidden from public view. That reality makes his performance even more poignant.

The Wizard projects certainty while privately fearing exposure.

Pryor would later speak openly about his own flaws, fears, and self-destructive behaviors. In both cases, we are reminded that public images often conceal private struggles.

It is amazing how often fiction imitates life.

History is filled with individuals, institutions, and systems that appeared powerful while quietly failing the people who trusted them. Communities are often told help is coming. They are told someone is working on their behalf. They are told solutions are right around the corner.

• Meanwhile, schools remain underfunded.

• Hospitals close.

• Housing becomes less affordable.

• Environmental hazards persist.

• Health inequities grow.

The Wizard’s greatest trick was not convincing people he possessed power.

It was convincing them that they did not.

Viewed through the lens of the Political Determinants of Health, the Wizard becomes a symbol of governance disconnected from accountability. Daniel Dawes (2020) defines Political Determinants of Health as the systematic process through which power, policies, resources, and opportunities are distributed throughout society.

• Politics determines who gets sidewalks.

• Politics determines who gets hospitals.

• Politics determines who gets clean drinking water.

• Politics determines who gets public transportation.

• Politics determines who gets protected and who gets ignored.

In other words, politics shapes health whether people realize it or not.

The Public Health Griot Approach teaches us to look behind the curtain.

Not simply at individuals. At systems. At structures. At policies. At the decisions that quietly shape daily life.

The Wizard was a fraud. The systems were real.

And that distinction may be one of the most important public health lessons in the entire film.

Redrawing the Road

Once we understand the Wizard as a symbol of political power, another question naturally emerges. Who gets to decide where the road goes? That question may sound simple. It is not.

• Every road reflects a decision.

• Every district reflects a decision.

• Every budget reflects a decision.

• Every investment reflects a decision.

And every decision has consequences for health. When most people think about redistricting, they think about politics. Public health practitioners should think about health.

• Political representation influences which neighborhoods receive investment.

• Political representation influences where hospitals are built.

• Political representation influences school funding.

• Political representation influences transportation systems.

• Political representation influences environmental protections.

• Political representation influences whether communities are heard or ignored.

In short, representation is a determinant of health. Daniel Dawes (2020) argues that political systems shape the distribution of resources and opportunities that ultimately determine health outcomes. When communities have limited political power, they often struggle to advocate for the investments necessary to support healthy lives.

The connection is not theoretical. It is measurable.

• Communities with inadequate transportation systems often experience reduced access to healthcare.

• Communities lacking political influence may struggle to attract grocery stores, pharmacies, healthcare facilities, and economic investment.

• Communities experiencing environmental injustice often spend years fighting for protections that wealthier neighborhoods receive without question.

The road matters because the road determines access. This is one reason recent debates surrounding voting rights and redistricting deserve attention beyond political circles.

When district lines change, representation changes.

When representation changes, priorities change.

When priorities change, resources move.

And when resources move, health outcomes often follow. The Political Determinants of Health remind us that maps are never just maps. They are reflections of power.

• Who belongs.

• Who matters.

• Who gets counted.

• And who gets overlooked.

Looking back at The Wiz, the Yellow Brick Road suddenly feels different. Dorothy and her companions spend the entire film following a path someone else designed. They assume the road leads to answers. They assume the destination holds solutions. They assume the person at the end of the journey possesses the power to transform their lives. Yet the road ultimately teaches them something unexpected.

The destination is not the point.

The journey is.

And perhaps the same is true in public health. Communities often spend years waiting for institutions to solve problems that require collective action, accountability, and sustained investment.

The road matters. But who built it matters too.

The Public Health Griot Approach encourages us to ask questions that statistics alone cannot answer.

• Who drew the boundaries?

• Who benefited?

• Who was excluded?

• Who was displaced?

• Who was forgotten?

Every map tells a story. The challenge is learning how to read it.

Who Speaks for the Common Good: Barbara Jordan, Civic Responsibility, and the Public Health Griot Approach

As I reflected on The Wiz, I found myself returning again and again to the words of Barbara Jordan. Perhaps that is because Jordan understood something that public health practitioners continue to wrestle with today. Healthy communities require more than individual success. They require collective responsibility.

Years ago, Jordan offered a warning that feels remarkably relevant in 2026:

“We are a people in search of a national community... But this is the great danger America faces, that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups... each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good?”

Every time I read those words, I find myself pausing. Because public health asks a remarkably similar question.

• Who speaks for children breathing polluted air?

• Who speaks for neighborhoods without grocery stores?

• Who speaks for communities whose hospitals have closed?

• Who speaks for workers exposed to unsafe conditions?

• Who speaks for future generations?

One of the most overlooked tensions in The Wiz is the difference between individual wishes and collective well-being.

• Dorothy wants to go home.

• The Scarecrow wants a brain.

• The Tin Man wants a heart.

• The Lion wants courage.

Each character begins the story focused on a personal need. Nothing is wrong with that. Human beings naturally seek solutions to their own challenges. Yet the story cannot truly end until the broader community experiences liberation.

The Winkies must be freed. The witches must be defeated. The masks must come off. The illusion must be exposed. Only then can everyone move forward. That distinction matters.

The public good refers to the systems, institutions, services, and investments designed to benefit society as a whole.

The common good refers to the shared conditions that allow communities to flourish together.

Public health exists at the intersection of both. We depend upon public goods such as schools, clean water systems, transportation networks, public health departments, libraries, parks, and healthcare infrastructure. Yet those systems are only effective when they serve the common good. When they promote fairness. When they expand opportunity. When they strengthen communities rather than divide them.

Barbara Jordan understood this. So did many of the civil rights leaders who came before her. And in many ways, PHGA asks similar questions.

• Who benefits?

• Who bears the burden?

• Whose voice is absent?

• Whose truth remains unheard?

Stories help answer those questions. Stories reveal what data alone cannot.

A spreadsheet can tell us that a neighborhood experiences high rates of asthma.

A story can tell us what it feels like to raise a child beside a highway.

A report can show us hospitalization rates.

A story can show us what happens when a grandmother chooses between medication and groceries.

A chart can document disparities.

A story can explain how people survive them.

That is why storytelling matters. Not because stories replace evidence. Because stories are evidence.

The Public Health Griot Approach recognizes that communities carry knowledge long before institutions recognize it.

Stories preserve memory. Stories preserve culture. Stories preserve truth. And sometimes stories preserve warnings. The people of Emerald City accepted the Wizard’s authority because they stopped asking questions.

• They accepted appearances.

• They accepted spectacle.

• They accepted the illusion.

Barbara Jordan spent much of her life urging Americans to do the opposite.

• To participate.

• To engage.

• To remain accountable to one another.

• To think beyond personal interests.

• To consider the common good.

Looking around today, I sometimes wonder whether we are still wrestling with the same challenge. Social media encourages individual branding. Politics rewards division. Consumer culture encourages self-interest. Yet public health keeps reminding us of a simple truth. None of us lives alone.

Our health is connected. Our communities are connected. Our futures are connected.

Dorothy discovers this by the end of her journey. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Dorothy each arrive seeking something for themselves. They leave understanding something larger.

Community matters. Belonging matters. Shared responsibility matters. The common good matters. And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons hidden inside The Wiz. The road was never really about getting to Emerald City.

The road was teaching them how to walk together.

Photo Credit: The Wiz (1978), courtesy of The Criterion Collection. Featured in "The Wiz: A Soulful Oz." Retrieved from https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8830-the-wiz-a-soulful-oz

Emerald City: The Illusion of Prosperity, Consumer Culture, and the Commercial Determinants of Health

One of the most fascinating decisions made by the filmmakers was using the World Trade Center as Emerald City. At the time, the towers represented modern America. They represented wealth. They represented power. They represented success.

For many Americans in the late 1970s, the World Trade Center symbolized the future.

Today, those images carry additional meaning because of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which forever changed how many people view the towers. While The Wiz was created decades before that tragedy, seeing the World Trade Center on screen now can evoke both the optimism it once represented and the profound loss associated with its destruction.

That symbolism makes Emerald City even more interesting. Because beneath all of its beauty, something feels off. The city sparkles. The city dazzles. The city entertains. Yet it never feels particularly grounded. Everyone is smiling. Everyone appears happy. Everyone appears successful. But nobody seems free.

The more I watch Emerald City, the more it feels like a place built on appearances rather than well-being. And perhaps that is exactly the point. One of the most memorable scenes in the film occurs when the citizens of Emerald City change colors based on the Wizard’s latest decree. Green is fashionable. Then red. Then gold. Nobody asks why. Nobody challenges the decision. Everybody simply follows along.

As a child, I thought the scene was colorful and fun.

As an adult, I see something entirely different.

I see consumer culture. I see marketing. I see social pressure. I see the Commercial Determinants of Health at work. The World Health Organization defines Commercial Determinants of Health as the systems, practices, and pathways through which commercial actors influence health outcomes (WHO, 2024). In plain language, businesses influence health. Sometimes positively. Sometimes negatively.

• The products we consume.

• The food we eat.

• The advertisements we see.

• The information we trust.

• The environments where we live and work.

All of these can be influenced by commercial interests. That influence is often invisible. Much like the Wizard himself. The average American encounters thousands of advertisements each day. Companies spend billions of dollars annually encouraging people to purchase products, adopt lifestyles, and define success in particular ways.

The message is often subtle.

Buy this. Wear that.

Drive this. Look like that.

Consume more. Be more. Need more.

Emerald City captures that dynamic perfectly. Its citizens are constantly changing to match the latest trend.

• Identity becomes performance.

• Participation becomes consumption.

• Belonging becomes conditional.

Looking back from 2026, Emerald City feels surprisingly familiar. Social media platforms reward visibility. Algorithms reward engagement. Influencers shape consumer behavior. Trends appear and disappear overnight. People are encouraged to curate lifestyles rather than build lives. The pressure to perform can be exhausting. And public health increasingly recognizes that those pressures carry consequences.

Research continues to connect social comparison, financial strain, chronic stress, and mental health challenges to environments that prioritize appearance over authenticity (American Psychological Association, 2024).

The irony is that Emerald City appears healthy.

It appears prosperous.

It appears vibrant.

Yet appearances can be deceiving.

That lesson extends far beyond the movie. Communities can appear healthy while struggling beneath the surface. Individuals can appear successful while battling anxiety, depression, burnout, or loneliness. Institutions can appear effective while quietly failing the people they serve.

The Public Health Griot Approach teaches us to pay attention to what lies beneath the surface.

Stories help us see what statistics sometimes miss.

• A neighborhood may look revitalized on paper. A story may reveal long-time residents being priced out of their homes.

• Economic growth may appear impressive in a report. A story may reveal workers struggling to afford rent.

• A healthcare system may report positive outcomes. A story may reveal patients who still feel unheard.

The question is not whether Emerald City is beautiful. It is.

The question is whether beauty alone creates well-being. Public health tells us the answer is no. Health requires more than appearance.

• Health requires belonging.

• Health requires opportunity.

• Health requires safety.

• Health requires dignity.

• Health requires community.

And perhaps that is why Emerald City ultimately disappoints Dorothy and her friends.

They arrive expecting transformation. Instead, they find performance.

They arrive seeking answers. Instead, they find spectacle.

They arrive searching for truth. Instead, they discover marketing.

The city shines. The city dazzles. The city impresses. But it cannot deliver what people truly need. In many ways, Emerald City reflects one of the central tensions of modern society. We have become remarkably skilled at creating the appearance of well-being. Yet many communities continue struggling with housing insecurity, food insecurity, economic instability, social isolation, and preventable illness.

The challenge is not making things look healthy.

The challenge is creating conditions that actually support health.

That distinction becomes even clearer when Dorothy and her friends leave Emerald City and encounter another side of Oz. A side that many people would rather not see.

• The workers.

• The labor.

• The exploitation.

• The people whose suffering makes the illusion possible.

Because every Emerald City has its Winkies.

And every system built on appearance eventually reveals who pays the cost.

The Poppy Girls: Numbing the Pain and the Commercial Determinants of Health

One of the strangest scenes in The Wiz occurs when Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, and the Tin Man enter the poppy field. The field appears beautiful. The women are beautiful. The atmosphere feels inviting.

At first glance, nothing seems dangerous. That is what makes the scene so powerful. The danger arrives disguised as comfort.

The Poppy Girls seduce Dorothy and her companions into sleep. In the original Wizard of Oz, the poppies function primarily as a magical obstacle. In The Wiz, however, the scene takes on a far more adult meaning. The Poppy Girls are not simply flowers. They resemble temptations that offer escape from reality while quietly pulling people further away from freedom.

Viewed through a public health lens, the scene becomes an unsettling metaphor for addiction, substance misuse, and the industries that profit from numbing pain. Communities experiencing chronic stress, poverty, discrimination, trauma, and disinvestment often become prime targets for products that promise relief.

Tobacco, alcohol, opioids, predatory gambling, Unhealthy food marketing and even social media can function this way.

The promise is often the same.

Forget your problems, escape for a while, and stop feeling.

Yet public health teaches us that what temporarily numbs pain rarely addresses its root causes. The Commercial Determinants of Health remind us that corporations often profit from conditions they did not create but have little incentive to change. The communities carrying the greatest burdens frequently become the communities targeted most aggressively.

The poppy field is beautiful and that is precisely the point. Some dangers do not announce themselves. Some arrive wrapped in comfort.

The Public Health Griot Approach asks us to look beyond the surface and ask a different question.

Who benefits when communities remain asleep?

Because every movement toward justice requires people to stay awake.

Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News: Evillene, the Winkies, and the Human Cost of Exploitation

If Emerald City represents the illusion of prosperity, Evillene’s kingdom reveals the price. And it is not subtle. The Wicked Witch of the West rules through fear.

She controls through intimidation. She maintains power through exploitation.

Her workers labor in the shadows while she benefits from their efforts. Watching these scenes today feels remarkably contemporary. Because while the costumes may be theatrical, the underlying story is not. Throughout history, economic systems have often depended upon workers whose contributions remained invisible.

• The people who harvest food.

• The people who clean buildings.

• The people who care for children.

• The people who transport goods.

• The people who maintain infrastructure.

• The people who keep society functioning.

Many perform essential work while receiving limited recognition, limited protection, and limited power. The Winkies embody that reality.

They work. They obey. They endure.

And they do so while hiding behind masks. That image may be one of the most powerful metaphors in the entire film. Because the masks are not just costumes. They represent what happens when systems strip people of individuality.

When workers become numbers. When productivity matters more than humanity. When profit matters more than dignity.

The Public Health Griot Approach reminds us that every statistic represents a person.

Every workforce shortage represents people. Every health disparity represents people. Every unemployment figure represents people. Stories help us remember that.

One of my favorite moments in the entire movie occurs after Evillene is defeated.

The Winkies remove their masks. For the first time, we see who they really are.

• They were beautiful all along.

• They were valuable all along.

• They were worthy all along.

The masks simply prevented others from seeing it. Health equity work often feels similar. Communities frequently carry labels imposed by outsiders.

High-risk. Underserved. Vulnerable. Disadvantaged. Those labels may describe conditions.

They should never define people.

The Winkies remind us that communities are far more than the challenges they face.

They possess strengths.

They possess culture.

They possess resilience.

They possess wisdom.

And sometimes liberation begins when the mask comes off and the world finally sees what was there all along.

Photo Credit: Screenshot from The Wiz (1978), featured in The Songs from The Wiz, from Worst to Best (Music Is My Religion, November 25, 2015). https://musicallegiance.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-songs-from-wiz-from-worst-to-best.html

A Brand New Day: Liberation, Collective Healing, and What Health Equity Actually Looks Like

One of the most powerful scenes in The Wiz happens immediately after Evillene melts.

The music changes. The atmosphere changes. The people change.

The masks come off. The fear disappears. The community begins to celebrate.

As a child, I loved the scene because it was joyful.

As an adult, I see something much deeper.

I see a public health intervention.

Not the kind that comes from a hospital. Not the kind that comes from a prescription bottle. Not the kind that comes from a clinic.

The kind that comes from freedom. The kind that comes from dignity. The kind that comes from justice.

Public health often focuses on what happens after people become sick.

Health equity asks a different question.

What conditions need to exist so people can thrive in the first place?

That question matters because health is about much more than healthcare.

• A person can have access to a doctor and still struggle if they lack safe housing.

• A person can have health insurance and still struggle if they cannot afford groceries.

• A person can have access to medication and still struggle if they live in a community burdened by violence, environmental hazards, or chronic economic instability.

Health is shaped by conditions. Health equity is about improving those conditions.

That is exactly what happens in “A Brand New Day.”

Nobody receives a diagnosis. Nobody receives treatment. Nobody receives medication.

Yet everything changes.

Why?

Because oppression has been removed.

Because fear has been removed.

Because exploitation has been removed.

Because people are finally allowed to be fully human.

The scene reminds me of something we often overlook in public health.

Justice is not separate from health. Justice is health.

Read that again.

Dr. Camara Jones often challenges public health professionals to examine the systems that create inequities rather than focusing solely on the outcomes. In other words, we cannot keep treating symptoms while ignoring the conditions producing them.

• The Winkies did not need a wellness program. They needed liberation.

• They did not need a motivational speaker. They needed dignity.

• They did not need another lecture about resilience. They needed the barriers removed.

That distinction matters.

Too often, public health interventions focus on changing individual behavior while leaving harmful systems untouched. We tell people to eat healthier without addressing food deserts. We encourage exercise without addressing neighborhood safety. We promote mental health awareness without addressing the conditions causing chronic stress. We celebrate resilience while ignoring the reasons resilience became necessary in the first place.

The Public Health Griot Approach challenges us to think differently. PHGA recognizes that stories help reveal the systems beneath the symptoms.

Stories help us understand not only what happened but why it happened. They help us identify patterns, expose inequities, preserve memory, and elevate truths that statistics alone cannot fully capture.

A spreadsheet may tell us a community has high rates of diabetes. A story may reveal the grocery store closed ten years ago.

A report may show elevated asthma rates. A story may reveal children living next to highways, industrial facilities, or aging housing stock.

Data tells us what. Stories often tell us why. That is why storytelling matters. Not because it replaces evidence. Because it expands it.

The celebration in “A Brand New Day” is not simply a musical number. It is collective healing. For the first time, the community experiences something many marginalized communities understand deeply.

Relief.

• The relief of no longer carrying a burden.

• The relief of no longer living under constant fear.

• The relief of finally being seen.

• The relief of finally being heard.

• The relief of finally being free.

Healing often begins there. Not with perfection. Not with the complete absence of struggle. But with the restoration of hope. The restoration of agency. The restoration of possibility. Perhaps that is why the scene feels so powerful nearly fifty years later. We are witnessing more than celebration. We are witnessing transformation.

And transformation is at the heart of public health.

Not simply helping people survive. Helping communities flourish.

Home Was Never the Destination: Dorothy, Belonging, and the Search for Community

By the end of the film, Dorothy finally receives the answer she has been seeking. Or at least she thinks she does. Throughout her journey, Dorothy believes her greatest challenge is getting home. That seems reasonable. After all, that is the goal that launched the entire story.

Yet by the time she reaches the end of the Yellow Brick Road, something has changed. Dorothy is no longer the same person who left Harlem.

• The road changed her.

• The people changed her.

• The experiences changed her.

And perhaps that was always the point.

When Glinda appears near the end of the film, she does not give Dorothy anything new. Instead, she helps Dorothy recognize what was there all along. That lesson feels remarkably relevant to public health. Communities are often treated as though they lack what they need.

Lack knowledge. Lack capacity. Lack solutions. Lack resilience.

Yet communities frequently possess tremendous strengths that go unrecognized.

• They possess cultural wisdom. They possess social networks.

• They possess faith traditions. They possess lived experience.

• They possess solutions.

The challenge is not always creating something new. Sometimes the challenge is recognizing what already exists. This is one reason I continue emphasizing asset-based approaches to health equity. Communities are not empty vessels waiting to be filled.

They are reservoirs of knowledge waiting to be acknowledged.

Dorothy’s journey reminds us that empowerment does not always come from receiving something external. Sometimes it comes from recognizing something internal.

The brain. The heart. The courage. The wisdom. The power. The capacity.

The answer was there all along. What changed was belief.

And that may be one of the deepest lessons hidden inside The Wiz.

Health equity is not simply about providing resources. It is about creating conditions where people can recognize and exercise their own power.

Pulling Back the Curtain: The Lesson I Keep Carrying

Every time I watch The Wiz, I find myself returning to the same realization. Nobody is actually saved by the Wizard.

Not Dorothy.

Not the Scarecrow.

Not the Tin Man.

Not the Lion.

Not the Winkies.

The Wizard never gives them what they need. He simply confirms what they already possess. That distinction matters.

Because too often we place our faith in individuals when we should be examining systems. We wait for charismatic leaders. We wait for institutions. We wait for someone behind the curtain to fix what is broken. Meanwhile, communities continue doing what they have always done.

They organize. They adapt. They care for one another. They survive. They build. They heal.

Richard Pryor’s Wizard reminds us that appearances can be deceiving. The towers of Emerald City looked impressive. The giant floating head looked powerful. The booming voice sounded authoritative. But the real power was never in the machine.

The real power was and always is in the people.

That may be the central public health lesson of the entire film.

The Wizard was a fraud. The systems were real. But communities were real too. Their struggles were real. Their wisdom was real. Their resilience was real.

Their power was real.

And once they recognized that truth, everything changed. The Public Health Griot Approach begins from a similar premise. Communities are not problems to be solved.

They are storytellers. They are historians. They are knowledge holders. They are innovators. They are experts in their own lived experiences.

When we listen carefully, their stories reveal the conditions shaping health, the barriers limiting opportunity, and the pathways toward healing.

The Yellow Brick Road was never really about getting to Emerald City. It was about discovering what becomes possible when people recognize their own power, reclaim their own stories, and begin walking together toward something better.

Soundtrack for the Soul 🎶

“If You Believe” | Lena Horne

Of all the songs in The Wiz, this is the one that stays with me. Not because it is the loudest. Not because it is the most famous. Because it contains the heart of the story.

“If you believe...”

Lena Horne’s performance feels less like a song and more like wisdom being passed from one generation to the next.

By the time she appears as Glinda, Dorothy has traveled through fear, uncertainty, disappointment, danger, and discovery. She has met companions who reflected pieces of herself she did not yet fully understand. She has challenged witches, exposed frauds, and survived a journey she never expected to take.

Then comes the lesson. Not a lecture. Not a command.

A reminder.

Dorothy spent the entire movie searching for something outside herself.

The Scarecrow did too.

The Tin Man did too.

The Lion did too.

Each believed that somewhere beyond the next obstacle, beyond the next mile of Yellow Brick Road, beyond Emerald City itself, someone else possessed the answer. By the end, they discover something remarkable. What they needed was already there.

• The Scarecrow always had wisdom.

• The Tin Man always had heart.

• The Lion always had courage.

• Dorothy always had the power to get home.

The Wizard never gave them those gifts. He simply helped reveal what was already present. Public health often teaches a similar lesson.

Communities are not waiting to be rescued.

Communities are waiting to be invested in.

Communities are waiting to be heard.

Communities are waiting to be trusted.

Communities are waiting to be given a fair opportunity to thrive.

The Public Health Griot Approach reminds us that communities carry knowledge long before institutions recognize it.

Storytelling is not simply a way to illustrate evidence. It is evidence. Communities hold wisdom, memory, faith, resilience, and solutions that often remain invisible until someone takes the time to listen. Trust is not an afterthought. It is a design condition. Accountability is not optional. It is required.

Belief alone cannot eliminate inequities. Belief alone cannot dismantle racism.

Belief alone cannot improve housing, strengthen schools, expand healthcare access, or undo generations of disinvestment.

But meaningful change becomes difficult without belief. Before communities organize, they must believe change is possible. Before people advocate, they must believe their voices matter. Before systems improve, someone must believe improvement is worth pursuing. That is the gift Lena Horne offers Dorothy.

Not magic. Perspective.

Not certainty. Possibility.

And perhaps that is what public health offers at its best. Not simply programs. Not simply policies. Not simply interventions. A vision of what becomes possible when people, communities, and institutions choose to believe that a healthier, more equitable future is worth building together.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is remind people of what they already carry.

Reflective Corner

One of the reasons I continue returning to movies, music, scripture, family stories, and cultural moments in my writing is because they often reveal truths we might otherwise overlook. A good story does more than entertain us.

• It invites us to see ourselves.

• It asks us to examine our assumptions.

• It encourages us to reconsider what we thought we knew.

And sometimes it holds up a mirror.

As I reflected on The Wiz, I found myself wondering which character I identify with most in this season of life. Some days I feel like Dorothy, standing at the edge of something unfamiliar, trying to gather the courage to take the next step. Some days I feel like the Scarecrow, questioning whether I know enough despite evidence suggesting otherwise. Some days I feel like the Tin Man, carrying more than I should and needing a reminder that caring deeply is not a weakness. And if I am honest, there are moments when I feel like the Lion, moving forward despite fear because standing still is no longer an option. The beauty of this story is that it reminds us we are rarely just one character.

We are all of them at different moments.

As you reflect on your own journey, consider the following questions:

Questions for Reflection

1. What invisible boundaries have shaped your understanding of what is possible?

2. Are there roads you have avoided because someone convinced you they were not meant for you?

3. Which character’s journey feels most familiar to your current season of life?

   Dorothy. The Scarecrow. The Tin Man. The Lion. The Winkies.

   a. What does that reveal about where you are right now?

4. What “Wizard” have you been waiting on to solve a problem that may require community action instead?

5. Where have you placed faith in a person, institution, or system rather than recognizing your own power?

6. Where do you see the common good being protected in your community?

7. Who is doing the work of building healthier, safer, more equitable communities?

   a. How can you support them?

8. What stories in your family or community deserve to be preserved before they are lost?

9. What wisdom are elders carrying that future generations need to hear?

Actions for the Week

Public health is not just something we study. It is something we practice.

This week, consider taking one or more of the following actions:

✓ Learn who represents your community at the local, state, and federal levels.

✓ Attend a community meeting, town hall, school board meeting, or neighborhood gathering.

✓ Support a local organization working to improve health, education, housing, or food access.

✓ Have a conversation with an elder about a challenge they overcame and what helped them persevere.

✓ Take inventory of your own allostatic load. Ask yourself what stressors you have been carrying and what support you may need.

✓ Identify one way you can contribute to the common good this month.

Small actions rarely stay small. They ripple.

And communities are often transformed through a series of small actions repeated consistently over time.

Until Next Time...

The Yellow Brick Road was never really yellow.

• It was made of policy.

• It was made of history.

• It was made of opportunity.

• It was made of barriers.

• It was made of decisions.

And like every road, someone built it. The question is whether we are willing to examine who built it, who benefits from it, who is excluded from it, and what it might take to build a better one.

Until next time,

Fawn N. Rhodes, MPH
Founder, The Public Health Griot™ and Rhodes To Wellness, LLC
Doctoral Student, Global Health Equity
Meharry Medical College School of Global Health

“When story becomes evidence, memory becomes witness, and community becomes the path forward.”

Foundation Corner

At The Public Health Griot™, stories are honored as evidence, but evidence still matters.

The following sources informed this reflection and offer additional opportunities for exploration.

Books

Dawes, D. E. (2020). The political determinants of health. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Geronimus, A. T. (2023). Weathering: The extraordinary stress of ordinary life in an unjust society. Little, Brown Spark.

Jones, C. P. (2019). Toward the science and practice of anti-racism. American Public Health Association.

Journal Articles

Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis and the health of African American women and infants. Ethnicity & Disease, 2(3), 207-221.

Krieger, N. (2014). Discrimination, segregation, and health inequities. International Journal of Health Services, 44(4), 643-710.

Williams, D. R., Lawrence, J. A., & Davis, B. A. (2019). Racism and health: Evidence and needed research. Annual Review of Public Health, 40, 105-125.

Reports and Data Sources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Social determinants of health. https://www.cdc.gov/social-determinants-of-health

American Psychological Association. (2024). Stress in America Report.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2023). Life expectancy and community conditions.

World Health Organization. (2024). Social determinants of health. https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health

World Health Organization. (2024). Commercial determinants of health. https://www.who.int/teams/health-promotion/enhanced-wellbeing/commercial-determinants-of-health

Cultural Reference

Filler, R. (Producer), & Lumet, S. (Director). (1978). The Wiz [Film]. Universal Pictures; Motown Productions.

Public Health Griot Framework

Rhodes, F. N. (2026). The Public Health Griot Approach™: Storytelling as a Health Equity and Justice Framework. Meharry Medical College School of Global Health. Unpublished doctoral research.

Some roads in life cost more than we expected.

Spiritually. Financially. Emotionally. Mentally. Biologically.

There are seasons where obedience affects the whole person. Your peace. Your nervous system. Your sleep. Your relationships. Your confidence. Your body.

And if we are honest, 2026 has left many people tired, and we are only halfway in.

People are exhausted from carrying families, bills, caregiving, grief, racial stress, church hurt, workplace pressure, political tension, loneliness, and the quiet performance of pretending everything is okay. Gas prices keep climbing. Grocery bills feel disrespectful. Rent and mortgages continue stretching families thin. For many households, simply existing feels expensive right now.

And the stress of survival does not stay in the wallet.

That is why this conversation about obedience matters.

Because obedience is not just religious behavior. It is alignment. It is the decision to trust God beyond fear, convenience, ego, or social pressure. Scripture shows us repeatedly that obedience almost always carries a toll.

But here is the good news:

Fear does not disqualify faith.

Most biblical figures were afraid at some point. The difference was that their faith eventually superseded their fear.

And when faith supersedes fear, that is when the power of God shows up.

Scripture reminds us that people have always wrestled with the cost of obedience. Different generations. Different pressures. Same human tension between fear and faith.

Noah

The Toll of Obedience Before Evidence

Noah built an ark before people saw rain.

Imagine how foolish he must have looked to others. Hammering away while everybody else kept living normally.

That still happens today.

People preparing for burnout recovery before their body collapses. Women setting boundaries before everybody understands why. Public health workers sounding alarms before systems respond. Community leaders warning about violence, mental health, maternal mortality, or inequity while people dismiss them as “doing too much.”

Noah teaches us that obedience sometimes means preparing before proof arrives.

Within the Public Health Griot Approach™ (PHGA), stories and lived experiences matter because communities often recognize danger before institutions do. Wisdom is not always loud. Sometimes it sounds strange before the flood comes.

And while Noah teaches us about trusting God before evidence appears, Abraham shows us what happens when obedience requires leaving what feels safe.

Abraham

The Toll of Leaving Familiarity

God told Abraham to leave home without giving him the full blueprint first.

That toll was uncertainty.

Many people are standing in that same place right now. Leaving draining jobs. Releasing unhealthy relationships. Walking away from environments that looked successful but slowly destroyed their peace.

Researchers continue to find that chronic stress and instability may increase anxiety, inflammation, emotional exhaustion, and high blood pressure over time. The body carries what the mind keeps trying to push through.

Abraham’s story reminds us that obedience often begins before clarity.

Sometimes God gives direction before details.

But obedience is not only tested in transitions. Sometimes it is tested inside systems that wound people while expecting them to keep functioning normally.

Joseph

The Toll of Integrity

Joseph obeyed God and still experienced betrayal, exploitation, false accusation, and imprisonment.

That story feels painfully current.

Many people today are navigating toxic workplaces, emotional exhaustion, unfair treatment, and systems they once trusted but no longer feel safe inside. Black women especially continue carrying disproportionate burdens across caregiving, leadership, emotional labor, and workplace stress.

And yet Joseph’s story reminds us that hardship is not always proof that God abandoned you.

Sometimes systems fail people.

PHGA reminds us that stories should not end as stories alone. They should help create change. Lived experiences should help expose harmful systems, strengthen accountability, and push communities toward healing.

Healing without accountability is often just performance.

And sometimes obedience becomes even more complicated when power demands silence or participation in harm.

Shiphrah and Puah

The Toll of Protecting Human Dignity

Before Moses ever led Israel out of Egypt, two midwives quietly resisted injustice.

Pharaoh ordered them to kill Hebrew baby boys. They refused.

That toll was risk.

Their story feels deeply relevant in 2026 as healthcare workers, educators, advocates, and communities continue wrestling with questions around healthcare access, maternal health, disability rights, racial equity, censorship, and political pressure.

Shiphrah and Puah remind us that obedience to God sometimes means refusing to participate in harm, even when powerful systems expect compliance.

Quiet courage can protect generations.

Their courage reminds us that obedience is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like refusing to violate human dignity even when powerful people expect compliance.

But there is another cost many people know well: telling the truth when nobody wants to hear it.

Micaiah

The Toll of Telling the Truth

Hundreds of prophets told King Ahab exactly what he wanted to hear. They spoke comfort. They spoke optimism. They spoke the kind of words that protected their access to power and preserved their position in the room.

Micaiah stood alone.

And even before he spoke, people already expected him to fall in line and repeat what was politically convenient. But Micaiah refused to weaponize dishonesty just to make powerful people comfortable.

That decision cost him.

Mockery. Isolation. Imprisonment. Public humiliation.

That still happens now.

Truth telling can become expensive in workplaces, churches, politics, academia, healthcare systems, and even families. We are living in a time where performance is often rewarded more than integrity, where branding can matter more than honesty, and where people are pressured to protect institutions even when those institutions are harming people.

Many people know what it feels like to stay quiet because speaking honestly could threaten their paycheck, their reputation, their relationships, or their sense of belonging.

Researchers continue to document rising levels of institutional distrust across healthcare, government, media, education, and religious spaces. Distrust often grows where people repeatedly experience silence, manipulation, exploitation, gaslighting, or pressure to pretend harmful things are normal.

That is why PHGA matters.

The Public Health Griot Approach™ reminds us that witnessing is sacred work because silencing people creates harm. Communities cannot heal from what they are forbidden to name. Stories carry evidence about systems, suffering, resilience, and truth. But when people are punished for telling the truth, entire communities can begin normalizing dysfunction just to survive.

Micaiah’s story forces us to confront a difficult reality:

Telling the truth may isolate you temporarily, but living inside a lie can slowly destroy you spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and even biologically over time.

And honestly, some people are exhausted not because they are weak, but because they have spent years swallowing truths they were never allowed to speak aloud.

Not every lonely season means you are wrong.

Sometimes it means you refused to lie.

And yet no biblical example reveals the cost of obedience more clearly than Jesus.

Jesus Christ

The Ultimate Toll

Jesus carried the greatest cost of obedience.

Not because He lacked power.
Not because He lacked options.
But because love chose surrender.

That part matters deeply.

Sometimes people describe obedience as passive weakness, but scripture paints a very different picture. Jesus understood betrayal was coming and still loved people. He understood suffering was coming and still obeyed God. He understood the crowd would turn on Him and still chose compassion instead of cruelty.

That kind of obedience is not weakness. That is spiritual strength under pressure.

Jesus carried betrayal from people close to Him. Public humiliation. Physical suffering. Emotional grief. Spiritual agony. He carried the weight of being misunderstood, falsely accused, abandoned, and mocked while still remaining aligned with God’s purpose.

And in many ways, that mirrors what so many people are experiencing now.

People are tired of carrying invisible burdens while still being expected to function normally. Many are navigating grief while answering emails. Managing anxiety while raising children. Fighting burnout while trying to remain faithful. Surviving economic pressure while still attempting to maintain dignity and hope.

Public health continues to show how chronic stress, trauma exposure, discrimination, financial strain, social isolation, and emotional suppression affect the body over time. Rates of anxiety, depression, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, sleep disorders, and emotional exhaustion continue rising across the country. The body does not separate spiritual suffering from physical strain as neatly as people sometimes imagine.

The body keeps responding to what the soul keeps carrying.

And yet Jesus shows us something powerful.

Obedience does not mean pretending pain does not exist.

In Gethsemane, Jesus was honest about His anguish. He prayed. He grieved. He wrestled. Scripture says His distress was so intense that His sweat became like drops of blood. That image matters because it reminds us that even Christ experienced deep emotional and physical strain under pressure.

But fear did not have the final word.

Faith did.

That is the center of the gospel.

Not comfort.
Transformation.

Not performance.
Surrender.

Not shallow positivity pretending life never hurts.
Resurrection after unimaginable suffering.

And maybe that is the reminder many people need in this season:

Obedience does not always remove the toll immediately, but God can still produce purpose, healing, wisdom, and life on the other side of what tried to break you.

Because when faith supersedes fear, that is when the power of God shows up.

Soundtrack for the Soul 🎶

“Untold Stories” — Buju Banton

Because obedience often happens while people are carrying silent battles nobody else can see.

“While I’m living, thanks I’ll be giving the most high…”

That song fits this devotional deeply because it speaks to survival, struggle, injustice, resilience, spiritual endurance, and the hidden emotional toll many people carry every day while still trying to remain faithful.

It sounds like people trying to survive high gas prices, rising rent, workplace stress, grief, political chaos, community violence, and exhaustion while still thanking God for another day.

It sounds like people who kept going even when life was heavy.

It sounds like Noah building.
Abraham leaving.
Joseph surviving systems.
Micaiah telling the truth alone.
Jesus carrying the cross.

And honestly, it reflects one of the deepest truths behind the Public Health Griot Approach™:

Many of the most important stories shaping people’s health, stress, trauma, and healing are still untold stories. Stories hidden behind professionalism. Church clothes. Degrees. Smiles. Leadership titles. Social media posts. Survival mode.

But God sees the full story.

Even the parts people never clap for.

Reflective Question Corner

• What toll has obedience been requiring from me lately?

• Am I asking God for guarantees before I move in faith?

• What fear has been louder than my faith recently?

• Have I mistaken exhaustion for purpose?

• Where might God be calling me to protect my peace, integrity, or dignity even if it costs me comfort?

• What part of my story may actually hold healing or wisdom for someone else?

Prayer

Lord, help me trust You beyond my fear. Give me wisdom to discern when You are calling me to move, speak, rest, release, or rebuild. Strengthen me when obedience feels costly, and remind me that You never waste surrendered faith. Teach me how to walk with courage, compassion, truth, and accountability in a world that often rewards the opposite. Amen.

References & Grounding

Scripture References

• Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV)

  • Genesis 6-9

  • Genesis 12

  • Exodus 1:15-21

  • 1 Kings 22

  • Luke 9:23

  • Philippians 2:8

Public Health & Stress Research

• Arline T. Geronimus. Research on weathering and the long-term biological impact of chronic stress exposure.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). National mental health and stress-related public health data and resources.

• American Psychological Association. Stress in America reports examining financial stress, political stress, burnout, and emotional well-being in the United States.

• Bessel van der Kolk. The Body Keeps the Score. Research and clinical insight on trauma, stress physiology, and the relationship between emotional experiences and the body.

Framework Grounding

• Rhodes, F.N. Public Health Griot Approach™ (PHGA).
  A healing-centered, community-rooted framework recognizing storytelling, witnessing, accountability, and lived experience as critical forms of public health knowledge and evidence.

There are people who have forgotten what rest even feels like.

Not vacation. Not entertainment. Not scrolling on a phone while anxiety still hums in the background.

I mean real rest.

The kind that lets your body unclench. The kind that quiets survival mode long enough for peace to enter the room.

For many Black families, exhaustion did not begin with us. It was inherited quietly through generations taught to keep pushing no matter how tired they became.

That is part of why conversations about rest feel so personal in our communities.

For many of us, exhaustion was normalized long before we understood what it was doing to us physically, emotionally, or spiritually. We learned how to function tired. How to smile tired. How to keep producing while quietly running on empty while still longing for still waters we rarely felt safe enough to reach.

Some people cannot even recognize true rest anymore because survival trained their nervous systems to stay in motion. And honestly, for some people, slowing down does not immediately feel peaceful. It feels unsafe. Silence can make unprocessed grief, anxiety, fear, and exhaustion louder.

Many of us inherited that mindset from people who were doing the best they could with what they had.

People who survived segregation.

Poverty. Overwork.

Racism. Instability.

People who carried entire families, churches, and communities on exhausted shoulders because stopping was never presented as an option.

So when scripture talks about rest, it hits differently.

Because rest is not just about sleep.

For many people, rest feels tied to safety, trust, worthiness, and permission.

For many of us, exhaustion became normal long before we had language for it.

We watched parents work multiple jobs. Grandparents push through illness. Church leaders pour into everyone else while quietly neglecting themselves. Somewhere along the way, overworking became connected to responsibility, ambition, morality, and even faithfulness.

Rest started looking:

• Lazy

• Selfish

• Unproductive

You hear it in the phrases people repeat almost proudly:

• “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

• “No days off.”

• “Team No Sleep.”

• “Keep grinding.”

• “The early bird gets the worm.”

Hustle became identity, and exhaustion became proof of worth. Some people no longer know who they are outside of productivity.

The World Health Organization officially recognizes burnout as an occupational phenomenon tied to chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. In the United States, rising burnout rates continue affecting mental health, sleep quality, workplace retention, and overall well-being across professions.

That is why the scriptures about rest hit differently when you really sit with them.

Genesis says God created humanity in His image. Then scripture says that after creation, God rested.

Not because He was weak.

Not because He lacked power.

He rested because rest was part of the design.

That changes the conversation entirely.

Because if the Creator of heaven and earth intentionally rested, why do so many of us treat exhaustion like righteousness?

Why do we glorify burnout but shame boundaries?

Why are people applauded for running themselves into the ground while those who slow down are labeled lazy, difficult, selfish, or uncommitted?

And honestly, some of this reaches far beyond personal habits.

For Black Americans especially, our relationship with rest carries historical weight.

Enslavement depended on stolen labor and the denial of rest. Black bodies were valued for production while humanity was ignored. Even after it ended, many Black families continued living under enormous pressure to outperform, overachieve, and overwork simply to gain access to opportunities routinely given to others.

That pressure did not disappear.

It adapted.

You can still see it everywhere now:

• Parents overworking to create stability

• Students carrying impossible expectations

• Black professionals feeling pressure to outperform everyone around them simply to be viewed as competent

• Children pushed into nonstop achievement before they even learn emotional balance

The body keeps score.

And eventually, exhaustion starts collecting interest.

The CDC estimates that between 50 and 70 million American adults struggle with sleep or wakefulness disorders. Studies have also found Black Americans are more likely to experience shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality than White Americans, even after accounting for income and education. Researchers point toward chronic stress exposure, discrimination, environmental inequities, shift work, neighborhood conditions, and economic strain as contributing factors.

Public health calls this a health disparity.

Some elders simply called it:

“Running yourself down.”

Research continues to show that chronic sleep deprivation is connected to:

• Hypertension

• Diabetes

• Depression

• Cardiovascular disease

• Weakened immune functioning

• Cognitive strain

The body can survive stress for a season. But chronic survival eventually becomes wear and tear on the nervous system, the heart, the immune system, and the mind.

And honestly, many Black families do not need a research article to recognize that pattern.

We have lived it.

We have watched grandparents work themselves into exhaustion trying to provide for family and community. We have seen loved ones retire only to become seriously ill shortly afterward because their bodies spent decades surviving stress instead of recovering from it.

That part sat heavy with me.

Because if we are honest, many of us inherited survival patterns that no longer know how to slow down.

Even when doctors tell us to rest, some people still feel guilty doing it.

We want to prove we are:

• Dependable

• Valuable

• Strong

• Needed

Research consistently shows Black women often carry disproportionate caregiving responsibilities while also navigating workplace inequities, financial strain, racism, and gendered expectations around strength. Many are expected to nurture everyone else while receiving very little space to rest themselves.

At the same time our bodies are begging for mercy.

And scripture never says exhaustion is the measure of holiness.

Jesus says something very different in Matthew 11:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Rest.

Not endless striving or constant performance.

Not proving your worth through burnout.

And honestly, I think many people miss how radical that invitation really is.

Because many of us have built entire identities around proving ourselves:

• Proving we belong

• Proving we are capable

• Proving we deserve love, safety, opportunity, or success

Meanwhile, Jesus is saying:

“You can put some of that down now.”

That does not mean abandoning responsibility or avoiding meaningful work. Scripture is not promoting laziness or apathy.

But there is a difference between purposeful work and worshipping exhaustion.

One produces growth.

The other slowly consumes people from the inside out.

And scripture goes even deeper than personal restoration.

Sabbath was never simply about taking a break.

It was about trust.

Trusting God enough to stop producing constantly. Trusting that worth did not disappear when labor paused. In many ways, Sabbath challenged the idea that human beings existed only to work.

Even the land was commanded to rest. Workers rested. Animals rested. Debt was forgiven in cycles. Rest interrupted systems built around endless production and reminded people that human value was never supposed to be tied only to labor.

Jesus reinforces this in Mark 2:27:

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

Hebrews 4 also speaks about “entering God’s rest.”

And honestly, I no longer think that scripture only points toward heaven someday far away.

I think part of God’s rest is learning how to live differently now.

Rest can look like:

• Saying no without guilt

• Taking care of your body before it forces you to stop

• Letting children experience joy instead of nonstop pressure

• Sleeping without apologizing for it

• Disconnecting from constant productivity

• Making room for peace and stillness

• Trusting that your worth is not tied only to what you produce

That last one right there may preach all by itself.

Because capitalism teaches people that value comes from output.

God teaches people that value comes from identity.

Those are not the same thing.

And honestly, some of us have become productive for everybody except ourselves.

Pouring into:

• Jobs

• Organizations

• Churches

• Communities

• Family

While quietly running on empty emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

That is why Tricia Hersey’s words hit so deeply:

“Rest is resistance.”

Rest resists the lie that human worth is measured only through productivity.

Rest pushes back against systems that normalize burnout and call it ambition.

Rest reminds people they are human beings, not machines.

And honestly, rest is spiritual too.

Psalm 23 does not begin with hustle.

It begins with green pastures and still waters.

God leads people beside peace on purpose.

Some of us have survived chaos for so long that":

• Peace feels unfamiliar

• Silence feels uncomfortable

• Slowing down feels unsafe

But survival is not the same thing as wholeness.

Rest restores what constant striving slowly drains away. It replenishes the body, renews the mind, and reminds people who they are outside of performance.

And maybe that is the deeper invitation sitting inside this devotional today.

Not simply to sleep more.

But to stop glorifying exhaustion as proof of value.

Because heaven should not only be a destination someday later.

Part of heaven is learning how to live aligned with the heart of God now. Learning how to stop running on empty long enough to finally reach the still waters our souls have been longing for all along.

And the God who created the world without growing tired still chose to rest.

That was not weakness.

That was wisdom.

Soundtrack Corner

The soundtrack sitting beside this piece is I Need You to Survive by Hezekiah Walker.

Because that song carries a truth many people forget:

“I need you. You need me.”

Rest is not only personal.

It is communal.

Communities suffer when people are emotionally depleted, physically exhausted, spiritually disconnected, and applauded for overworking while quietly falling apart.

That is not sustainable.

And it is not the fullness of life God intended.

Reflective Corner

• When was the last time you truly rested without guilt?

• What messages about work, productivity, and worth were passed down to you?

• Have you confused exhaustion with faithfulness?

• What would change if you believed rest was not laziness, but stewardship?

God never asked people to destroy themselves to prove devotion.

Sometimes faith looks like finally sitting beside still waters after spending far too long running on empty.

Some families pass down land. Others pass down survival.

Not only money or property, but the quieter things people inherit every day. Faith. Fear. Resilience. Silence. The stories communities carry about what is possible for “people like us.”

That is part of why the story of the daughters of Zelophehad keeps pulling at me.

Because this is not simply a Bible story about five women asking for property. It is a story about access, memory, dignity, and refusing to quietly disappear inside systems that were never fully designed to account for you.

Mahlah. Noah. Hoglah. Milcah. Tirzah.

Five sisters standing before Moses, Eleazar the priest, and the leaders of Israel after their father died in the wilderness. Since Zelophehad had no sons, the inheritance customs of that time suggested his family line would lose its claim to the land.

But land in scripture was never just land.

It represented identity, stability, protection, future opportunity, and the ability for generations to remain rooted instead of vulnerable to displacement.

That changes how you read this story.

Because these women were not simply asking for “stuff.” They were fighting for continuity. For belonging. For the right not to disappear.

And honestly, Black communities understand this struggle deeply.

We know what happens when people lose access to land, housing, ownership, and opportunity. We have watched neighborhoods transformed by disinvestment, families pushed out through rising costs, and generational wealth interrupted before it ever had the chance to fully grow.

The body remembers instability.

Communities do too.

Land represented stability.

Stability meant knowing your family had somewhere to remain rooted. It meant children growing up without constant displacement. It meant elders aging in communities where people still knew their names. Stability creates room for the nervous system to rest.

Some people have never known what it feels like to exhale without wondering what crisis comes next.

Land also represented protection.

Protection was not only physical safety. It meant legal recognition, community covering, and the ability to exist without constantly feeling exposed to removal or erasure. In many Black communities, protection has historically been inconsistent. Families learned quickly that laws did not always protect them equally.

That kind of uncertainty changes how people move through the world emotionally, financially, and spiritually.

Land also meant economic survival.

Without inheritance, families often lost access to wealth-building opportunities entirely. That reality still echoes today. Scholars continue documenting how racial wealth disparities remain tied to generations of unequal access to land ownership, homeownership, lending systems, inheritance accumulation, and investment opportunities.

People love talking about “personal responsibility” while skipping over the systems that restricted access in the first place.

That conversation requires honesty.

Land also represented future opportunity.

Inheritance gave future generations options. Education. Trade. Mobility. Stability. Room to dream beyond immediate survival. Without resources, many people spend most of their energy managing crisis instead of building possibility.

A lot of brilliant people never lacked intelligence.

They lacked access.

That is different.

Land also carried community belonging.

To belong somewhere matters deeply. Communities shape identity, memory, safety, culture, and emotional connection. We see this clearly in Black neighborhoods, churches, family reunions, civic organizations, fraternities, sororities, and community traditions where people continue creating belonging even while navigating struggle.

The body responds differently when people feel connected instead of isolated.

And finally, land represented generational security.

Not only surviving today, but creating something your children and grandchildren could build upon tomorrow.

Because many families are not simply fighting present struggles. They are fighting accumulated disadvantage carried across generations.

The daughters of Zelophehad understood all of this even if the language looked different in their time. So they stood before leadership and asked a question that still carries weight today:

“Why should our father’s name disappear because he had no son?”

Whew.

That question still echoes far beyond scripture.

Why should communities disappear because investment left them behind? Why should neighborhoods collapse after decades of disinvestment and then be blamed for struggling?

Why should workers sacrifice their physical and emotional health inside institutions that praise productivity while ignoring burnout?

Why should women spend generations shrinking themselves to survive systems built on their labor?

Underneath their request sat a deeper issue entirely.

• Who gets remembered?

• Who gets protected?

• Who gets written into the future?

And what moves me every single time is this:

God publicly affirmed them.

“The daughters of Zelophehad speak right.”

• Not “be quiet.”

• Not “know your place.”

• Not “this is simply tradition.”

God said they were right.

Then the law changed.

Their courage did not only bless their own household. It created access for women who would come after them.

Sometimes personal testimony becomes structural intervention.

And honestly, many Black women understand that burden intimately.

Far too often, Black women become the emotional infrastructure holding institutions together while simultaneously being overlooked inside them. Public health research continues to show that Black women experience disproportionately high levels of chronic stress tied to racism, sexism, caregiving burdens, workplace inequities, and economic strain.

Scholar Arline Geronimus described this cumulative physiological impact as “weathering,” meaning the long-term wear chronic stress places on the body over time.

Public health gave it terminology.

Our elders often described it differently:

Being tired in your spirit. Carrying too much for too long. Functioning while exhausted. Smiling while depleted.

All descriptions are telling the truth.

And I think this is where the devotional shifts from ancient story to present reality.

Because many believers are walking through life spiritually like they have no inheritance at all.

• Still begging for peace.

• Still apologizing for existing.

• Still questioning whether they belong.

• Still carrying shame Jesus already nailed to the cross.

Romans 8:17 says:

“And if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

Joint heirs.

Not outsiders.
Not temporary guests.
Family.

The attachment compared this spiritual inheritance to birthright citizenship, and honestly, the metaphor works because citizenship tied to birth is not earned through constant performance.

Identity establishes access.

Now let me say this carefully because discernment matters.

This is not prosperity gospel performance theology where inheritance only means money, luxury, or status. God is not a vending machine for ego and excess.

Biblical inheritance is deeper than that.

It includes:

• Peace in seasons that should have broken you

• Wisdom when life feels unclear

• Freedom from shame and condemnation

• Joy returning after grief

• Strength to endure hardship without losing tenderness

• Rest that does not require guilt or apology

And honestly, some of us need to relearn rest.

Especially Black women.

Many of us were raised to survive first and feel later. Productivity becomes identity. Hyper-independence gets praised while softness feels unsafe.

But survival is not the same thing as wholeness.

The names of these sisters almost feel prophetic when you sit with them:

• Mahlah points toward healing and restoration

• Noah reflects rest and movement

• Hoglah reflects joy and celebration

• Milcah reflects wisdom and royalty

• Tirzah reflects delight and favor

Healing.
Rest.
Joy.
Wisdom.
Favor.

That sounds less like coincidence and more like a picture of the life God desires for His people.

Not painless lives.
Not struggle-free lives.
But lives where suffering does not become identity.

Because some people have inherited fear masquerading as wisdom.

• Fear of failure.

• Fear of visibility.

• Fear of joy ending too quickly.

• Fear that good things belong to everyone except them.

And if we are honest, some family systems unknowingly pass down hopelessness as protection.

“Do not expect too much.”
“People like us never get ahead.”
“Stay quiet and survive.”

But scripture keeps interrupting that narrative.

Galatians 3:13 reminds believers that Christ redeemed us from the curse. Ezekiel 18 challenges the idea that generations are permanently doomed to carry the same outcomes forever.

Now wisdom requires balance here.

Faith does not erase structural inequality overnight. Prayer is not a replacement for healthcare, policy reform, fair wages, housing access, or justice work. Anybody suggesting otherwise ignores both scripture and common sense.

But spiritual inheritance absolutely changes how people understand their worth while navigating those realities.

And that matters deeply.

People who believe they are worthy of dignity often move differently. They advocate differently. They dream differently. They stop shrinking to fit spaces that benefit from their silence.

That is what I keep returning to with the daughters of Zelophehad.

They did not ask for permission to matter.

They already believed they did.

Soundtrack Corner

The soundtrack sitting beside this piece is The Blessing of Abraham by Donald Lawrence.

Not simply because it sounds good in the background while you read, but because the theology inside the song connects directly to this story.

“You are the heir of Abraham.”

That line carries weight when you really sit with it.

An heir.

• Not forgotten.

• Not disqualified.

• Not spiritually homeless.

The song reminds believers that through Christ, access to God’s promises is not reserved for a select few. It is covenant language. Identity language. Family language.

And honestly, that song hits differently when you understand how many people have spent their entire lives feeling spiritually, emotionally, or socially locked out of rooms they were always meant to enter.

Donald Lawrence does something powerful in that song that many people miss. He connects inheritance to responsibility, not just blessing.

Because biblical inheritance is not only about receiving.

It is also about becoming.

• Becoming whole enough to stop reproducing cycles of hopelessness

• Becoming healed enough to stop confusing survival with peace

• Becoming grounded enough to stop begging for seats at tables God already prepared for you

Sometimes worship is not only comfort. Sometimes worship is correction.

Sometimes God uses a song to remind people who they are because life, systems, trauma, and exhaustion made them forget. And maybe that is the real devotional sitting in front of us today.

Not simply asking God for more things.

But finally believing we were fully seen by Him in the first place.

Reflective Corner

What family narratives about worth, struggle, or limitation are you still carrying?

Where have you mistaken survival for the fullness of life God intended for you?

What would change if you stopped approaching God like a stranger asking permission and started approaching Him like family?

The daughters of Zelophehad stood before power and spoke anyway.

And God said they were right.

Sometimes faith looks exactly like that.

I keep thinking about corners.

Not only street corners—though those matter, too. I mean the corners where elders talked quietly and children listened; where people learned which blocks felt safe, which houses once held family cookouts, which schools used to feel alive, and which buildings have sat empty for so long they blend into the background.

Every community holds memories in its places—and Black communities know this well. We know a block can hold grief. A school can hold loss. A rowhouse can hold pride and pain at the same time. Sometimes a neighborhood tells the truth before any report does.

Nobody sat us down and taught us the phrase “structural determinants of health.” But we still knew what was going on.

Structural determinants of health are the big systems and rules that shape daily life long before anyone walks into a clinic. For example:

• Housing policy and zoning

• Transportation and transit reliability

• School funding and educational opportunity

• Food access and neighborhood investment

• Insurance practices

• Environmental protections

These systems decide which communities get support—and which communities are left with more risk, more stress, and more harm.

Black communities have lived with these realities for generations—long before public health gave them formal names.

When a community loses investment, the body eventually feels it:

• Grocery stores leave.

• Hospitals close.

• Bus routes become unreliable.

• Schools lose funding.

• Insurance costs rise.

• Parks disappear.

After a while, people start treating those conditions as normal. That is the part that stays on my mind.

If you would like to listen to a podcast version, click HERE

In many ways, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about these issues long before public health used today’s language.

When Du Bois published The Philadelphia Negro in 1899, he did not blame Black people for the conditions around them. He pointed to segregation, overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, unfair labor conditions, and being shut out of opportunity.

He understood a simple truth many systems still avoid: people cannot do well in places built to wear them down.

That truth still explains a lot of what we see today.

Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a similar point. In The Case for Reparations, he describes redlining and housing theft as something families still live with today, not just history.

The harm did not stop when the policies stopped making headlines. It showed up in schools, housing, stress, wealth gaps, and, eventually, shorter lives.

Today, Black Americans live about four to five fewer years than White Americans on average. The biggest gaps often show up in places shaped by segregation.

Four to five years.

Pause there.

Those years are not just numbers. They are birthdays missed. Grandparents gone too soon. More time spent getting by—and less time simply living.

Even when people stop talking about the past, the effects can stay in the body.

Maps can seem neutral if you do not know the story behind them. But Black communities have learned to read maps for generations. For example:

• Redlining maps

• School district maps

• Bus route maps

• Development maps

• Maps showing where hospitals close and where grocery stores disappear

Those lines were never just ink on paper. They helped decide who would have resources and who would be left more exposed to harm.

Food access tells the same story. Neighborhoods that were pushed to the margins are still more likely to have fewer healthy options and more cheap, low-quality food.

In Seattle, areas with larger Black populations had noticeably lower healthy-food availability than wealthier White communities nearby.

Most of us do not need a journal article to recognize that pattern. We have seen it. You can drive through some neighborhoods and find three liquor stores before you find one grocery store selling fresh produce.

Detroit shows this clearly. Over time, many grocery stores closed. Investment left. Whole parts of the city had to make do with less.

Food is not just about preference. It is about proximity.

A lot of the time, it comes down to what is close by. Do kids grow up around real options for healthy food or mostly around what is cheap and easy?

In many places, you can guess what resources are nearby once you know the ZIP code.

Sidewalks and parks tell part of the story, too. Places that were redlined often have fewer trees, fewer safe places to walk, and fewer health-supporting spaces. Those conditions are linked to asthma, diabetes, poor sleep, and mental health stress.

In predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in New York City, poorer walkability was tied to lower physical and mental health-related quality of life.

That might sound small until you think about what “walkability” really means. It is about whether elders can safely walk outside. It is about whether children have green space to play. It is about whether daily stress has anywhere to go besides deeper into the body.

The neighborhood itself becomes part of the exposure.

Some places are still being asked to survive with leftovers.

Many Black neighborhoods pay higher insurance costs but get fewer protections. This can happen even when the risks are similar to wealthier areas. Paying more and still being less protected should worry all of us.

Here is the harder truth: when families are denied investment, over-policed, and under-resourced—and then blamed for the results—the harm is real.

It shows up in daily life, and over time, stress changes the body.

Many Black adults carry heavy stress that is linked to worse health and earlier death. Public health calls this allostatic load, meaning the “wear and tear” the body builds up after years of constant stress.

Some elders just called it being tired in a way sleep cannot fix.

Both are telling the truth.

Vacant homes can feel heavy. Not just in a physical way, but in an emotional one.

You can feel it in the details:

• Boarded windows

• Empty rowhouses

• Blocks where families once sat outside together now carrying silence instead

• Homes that should provide shelter becoming reminders of neglect

In Baltimore, nearly 12,000 properties are vacant, while many residents still cannot access stable homeownership.

That is the contradiction. Whole blocks can sit full of empty homes, while families struggle to find safe, affordable housing.

Housing is never just housing. It affects stress, sleep, safety, and stability. It shapes whether children feel secure enough to focus in school and whether elders can stay in their homes without fear of being pushed out.

Vacancy rarely travels alone. It often pulls other losses behind it:

• Grocery stores disappear

• Walkability declines

• Green spaces shrink

• Insurance becomes more expensive

• Public transportation weakens

Over time, whole parts of a city are expected to live with conditions wealthier communities would never accept.

When neglect becomes routine, problems stack up.

Philadelphia carries another kind of lesson.

This is the city Du Bois studied. Black life, migration, faith, struggle, and brilliance have always lived side by side here. But the city is still debating which histories deserve protection and which neighborhoods are expected to get by with less.

Recent debates over school closures made that tension clear. Many proposed closures would hit Black students and neighborhoods that have already faced years of underfunding and disinvestment.

Families did not see those decisions as simple “efficiency.” Many saw them as another sign that some neighborhoods are treated as easier to sacrifice.

There is also a fight over public memory. That includes efforts to restore exhibits that acknowledge the lives of enslaved Africans held by George Washington at the President’s House site.

Even telling the truth is still debated, and that matters. A community cannot fully heal while it is also being asked to forget pieces of its history.

Memory is not extra. Memory is part of survival.

Black communities know forgetting can be dangerous. We have seen what happens when disinvestment gets dressed up in nicer words and structural harm gets treated as “just how things are.”

Communities begin disappearing in plain sight.

And the truth is, this is not just a Baltimore story or a Philadelphia story.

You can see the same pattern repeating itself across the country if you know what to look for.

In San Francisco, as some neighborhoods gentrified, racial gaps widened in life expectancy, environmental exposure, and access to resources that support health. Black residents were more likely to face concentrated hardship even as neighborhoods around them grew wealthier.

Development does not always mean healing.

Some communities survived years of disinvestment, only to find they could not stay once money returned. Hunters Point is one example.

Longtime residents reported food insecurity, exposure to violence, money instability, discrimination, and ongoing mental and physical health challenges—even as the city around them grew and gained wealth.

The city prospered. Many residents carried the cost.

That same tension appears in other places too.

In Chicago, environmental cleanup and new green spaces sometimes came with pressure that pushed longtime residents out of historically Black neighborhoods. As investment arrived, staying became harder.

School closures showed a similar pattern. Black neighborhoods already dealing with public housing loss and disinvestment were asked to carry one more disruption. What looked like paperwork to some people felt personal to the families living through it.

Repair does not always reach everyone.

Altadena raises another hard question after wildfire: who actually gets to come back? Families who spent generations building stability faced the risk that rebuilding, rising insurance costs, and redevelopment could slowly erase one of the country’s historic Black communities.

Now look at New Orleans, what many affectionately call “The Big Easy.” The city has been asking the same question for years. After Hurricane Katrina, many Black residents returned to neighborhoods changed by displacement, higher housing costs, school restructuring, and uneven recovery. Some families never returned. Others came back and found the city they knew was becoming too expensive.

Recovery does not always arrive equally.

Some neighborhoods rebuild fast. Others spend years fighting just to be seen in the recovery. People miss this part: a community can survive the disaster and still be pushed out during rebuilding.

Different cities, different histories, but the pattern starts looking familiar after a while.

In places shaped by segregation, disinvestment, environmental burden, and economic extraction, Black communities are still expected to absorb instability. At the same time, the changes get labeled “revitalization,” “redevelopment,” or “growth.”

Over time, that anxiety and uncertainty can settle into the body, too.

What the Corner Still Knows

That is why Common’s “The Corner” feels like the right soundtrack for this piece.

The corner is not just background. It is a witness. It is where people gather, grieve, laugh, warn each other, and trade stories. It holds everyday survival in a way policy reports often miss.

Black communities have always found meaning in places others call problems. That does not make struggle look beautiful—abandonment is not beautiful. But there is wisdom in how communities protect each other and remember what institutions try to erase.

The corner remembers who left, what closed, and which promises never came back.

And if we are willing to listen, the corner can still teach us the truth.

“Memories on corners with the fo’s and the mo’s.”
— Common, The Corner

So where do we go from here?

Maybe we start by saying it plainly: health does not begin only in hospitals and clinics. It is shaped earlier by systems like

• Housing policy and neighborhood investment

• School funding

• Transportation systems

• Food access

• Insurance practices

• Environmental protections

• Public memory and whose history gets preserved

Maybe we stop pretending maps are neutral, because they never were.

And maybe we listen to what Black communities have said for generations: when exclusion is built into the system, the damage ends up somewhere in the body.

That is not just a public health insight.

That is lived knowledge passed down. Research is finally catching up.

Reflective Corner

1. What has your neighborhood taught you that no report could fully explain?

2. Where do you still see old policies shaping health today?

3. What systems in your community quietly shape who has access to safety, stability, and care?

4. What would change if public health treated community memory as evidence, not just background?

The lines were never just on the map. They were always about whose lives were considered worth protecting.

References

Coates, T.-N. (2014). The case for reparations. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro: A social study. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Lee, H., & Harris, K. M. (2022). Mapping the color line: Racial/ethnic and gender disparities in life expectancy across the United States. Annals of Internal Medicine, 175(8), 1185–1186. https://doi.org/10.7326/M22-1777

Shaker, Y., Grineski, S., Collins, T., & Flores, A. (2022). Redlining, racism and food access in US urban cores. Agriculture and Human Values, 40(1), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10340-3

Taylor, D., Bell, A., Treloar, D., Ajani, A., Alvarez, M., Hamilton, T., Velazquez, J., Nandar, P., Fillwalk, L., & Ard, K. (2024). Defying the food desert, food swamp, and supermarket redlining stereotypes in Detroit: Comparing the distribution of food outlets in 2013 and 2023. Sustainability, 16(16), 7109. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16167109

The impact of redlining on mental health. (2025). Psychiatric Services. https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.20250473

Acolin, A., Crowder, K., Decter-Frain, A., Hajat, A., Hall, M., Homandberg, L., Hurvitz, P., & Woyczynski, L. (2024). Gentrification yields racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to contextual determinants of health. Health Affairs, 43(2), 172–180. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2023.01034

Calderon, L., Booker, T., Watts, S., Sobel, D., Mankin, M., Rich, A., & Cohen, A. (2025). A community-based health assessment among residents of affordable housing in San Francisco’s Hunters Point. Discover Public Health, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12982-025-00466-0

Schusler, T., Krings, A., & Melstrom, R. (2023). Experiences with environmental gentrification: Evidence from Chicago. Landscape and Urban Planning, 236, 104765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104765

Binoy, P. (2026). “Altadena is not for sale”: Black geographies, wildfire afterlives, and speculative justice in the wake. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2026.2644382

Yang, Y., Cho, A., Nguyen, Q., & Nsoesie, E. (2023). Association of neighborhood racial and ethnic composition and historical redlining with built environment indicators derived from street view images in the US. JAMA Network Open, 6(1), e2251201. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.51201

Zhang, N., & Xu, H. (2024). Fairness of ratemaking for catastrophe insurance: Lessons from machine learning. Information Systems Research, 35(2), 469–488. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1195

Zhu, J., Kodali, H., Wyka, K., & Huang, T. (2023). Perceived neighborhood environment walkability and health-related quality of life among predominantly Black and Latino adults in New York City. BMC Public Health, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14973-1

Let’s tell the truth for a moment. Many of us know how to connect with people. We know how to be present, how to hold a conversation, and how to show up in ways that feel supportive and engaging. But knowing how to connect is not the same as knowing how to steward what we are given access to, and that distinction will humble you if you sit with it long enough.

I began to notice it in ways that were easy to overlook at first. There were conversations that felt full in the moment but left me unsettled later. There were moments where I gave more than I had and called it kindness. There were relationships that made sense on paper but felt misaligned in my spirit. Individually, none of it seemed like a major issue, but taken together, it told the truth.

At a certain point, I could no longer ignore the pattern. I had to stop asking what was wrong with the interaction or the other person and instead ask a more honest question about my own role in what I was experiencing. I had to consider that I might not just be mishandling moments, but mishandling people.

Because there is a difference between being connected to someone and being responsible for how you handle them.

So I sat with the question, not the easy version, but the honest one. What does it actually mean to handle people with care?

Connection Is Not Neutral

From a public health perspective, relationships are not just social experiences. They are determinants of health.

The quality of our relationships shapes how we experience stress, how we regulate our emotions, and how we cope over time. In other words, how we experience people shows up in the body. Research across the life course shows that chronic relational strain and role overload contribute to psychological distress and physiological wear, particularly among Black women navigating layered demands (Geronimus, 1992; Burton et al., 2023). What we often dismiss as “just stress” is, in many cases, the accumulation of poorly structured relational environments.

At the same time, strong, supportive friendships can function as protective factors. They support emotional stability, strengthen coping, and contribute to overall well-being (Pezirkianidis et al., 2023; Abrams, 2023). Studies that look at daily life even suggest that it is the quality of relationships, not simply the number, that shapes well-being in real time (Šutić et al., 2025). Within the Public Health Griot Approach™, relationships can be understood as environments. They either reproduce harm or interrupt it. They influence what people carry and what they are able to release.

So this is not just about connection. This is about health.

We Were Taught to Avoid, Not Navigate

If we step back, most of us were never taught how to steward people. We were taught how to be likable, how to maintain relationships, and how to avoid conflict. What we were not taught was how to move through conflict in a way that strengthens connection rather than erodes it. So we learn to smooth things over instead of addressing them. We stay quiet when clarity is needed. We protect comfort at the expense of truth. It feels easier in the moment, but it costs more over time. Avoiding conflict does not remove tension. It simply relocates it.

At a broader level, this reflects what has been described as a “friendship recession,” where people report fewer deep, meaningful relationships despite increased opportunities for interaction (Bruckmann, 2025). We are not lacking access. We are lacking alignment. Stewardship requires something more. It requires clarity, emotional regulation, and the discipline to stay present when things get uncomfortable.

Kindness Requires Structure

A lot of the confusion begins with how we define kindness.

We have made kindness interchangeable with being nice, but those are not the same thing. Being nice tends to prioritize comfort and perception. It avoids tension and maintains appearances. Kindness, on the other hand, requires action. It requires truth. And sometimes, it requires discomfort.

This is where overextension often begins. We say yes when we mean no. We remain accessible when we are depleted. We maintain connections that are not aligned because we do not want to disrupt what feels familiar. Over time, that creates strain.

From a public health standpoint, that strain accumulates. The weathering framework reminds us that repeated exposure to stress, including relational stress, contributes to long-term health decline (Geronimus, 1992). So what we call “being there for people” can either support well-being or quietly erode it, depending on how it is structured.

That is where stewardship becomes real.

Paying Attention to Capacity

I had to confront that in real time.

There were seasons where I believed I was showing up well because I was consistent and available. But consistency without capacity leads to depletion, and availability without boundaries creates imbalance. That tension forced me to slow down and pay attention, not just to what I was doing, but to how it was affecting me and the people around me. You cannot steward people well if you are not grounded in who you are, what you value, and what you have the capacity to carry. Because what flows from you does not stop with you. It reaches other people.

Love Is a Practice

At the center of this conversation is love, but love has been diluted. In All About Love, bell hooks challenges the idea that love is simply a feeling. She reframes it as a practice that requires responsibility.

If love is a practice, then it requires structure. It requires boundaries, presence, accountability, discipline, and commitment. Without those, love becomes inconsistent and unclear.

Transparency Before Vulnerability

We often hear that strong relationships require vulnerability, and there is truth in that. But vulnerability without discernment can open the door to harm, whether intentional or not. It may be more accurate to say that healthy relationships require transparency before vulnerability.

Transparency creates clarity. It allows people to understand who you are, what you value, and what you can offer. Vulnerability requires something more. It requires trust. And trust takes time.

In Friends of the Good, Demond Martin writes, “Support during major transitions is invaluable. When you are facing uncertainty, guiding lights provide both reassurance and realistic assessment.” That kind of support does not come from just anyone. It comes from people who have demonstrated alignment and consistency over time. People who are grounded enough to hold both truth and care.

So vulnerability is not rejected. It is sequenced.

Alignment Is the Difference

Alignment is not a luxury or a privilege. It is what determines whether a relationship will feel supportive or burdensome over time.

I have seen that in my own life. I met my best friend, Lenita in 1990 at North Carolina Central University. What started on the campus of North Carolina Central University in 1990 became a lifelong bond, strengthened over decades by shared experiences, accountability, and the kind of presence that turns friendship into family. She is now my son’s godmother, and we consider ourselves sisters.

I saw it again in my MPH program, where I met my godsister Kela. The alignment was clear from the beginning. We did not force closeness. It grew because the foundation supported it. And even now, in my dissertation program, I have formed one of my closest friendships with Shannon. Different season, same principle. Alignment first, trust over time, and depth that grows rather than rushes.

These are what Demond Martin describes as friendships of the good. They are rooted in shared values and sustained through accountability.

From a Public Health Griot Approach lens, these relationships function as protective environments. They buffer stress, support growth, and create space for truth. They also require generosity and foresight. Generosity that is intentional rather than draining, and foresight that considers what a relationship will require over time.

Research supports this. Friendships grounded in trust, reciprocity, and communication are associated with stronger well-being and more stable relational outcomes (Glick & Rose, 2011; Pezirkianidis et al., 2023). Not every relationship is meant to carry that kind of weight. But the ones that do will show you what stewardship looks like.

What You Carry Forward

Handling people with care requires discipline.

It asks you to be honest about your capacity, clear about your boundaries, and intentional about your connections. From a public health perspective, this is relational health. It is about reducing harm and strengthening support.

Stewardship is not about holding on to everyone. It is about holding people well.

Soundtrack for the soul: “Man in the Mirror” — Michael Jackson

Reflective Corner

1. Where am I maintaining connection without alignment?

2. What boundaries do I need to strengthen?

3. Where do I need more generosity and foresight in how I show up?

Handling people with care begins with how you manage yourself.

Dedicated to Akil.

References

Abrams, Z. (2023, June 1). The science of why friendships keep us healthy. Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/06/cover-story-science-friendship

Bruckmann, C. (2025, February). The friendship recession: The lost art of connecting. Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.happiness.hks.harvard.edu/february-2025-issue/the-friendship-recession-the-lost-art-of-connecting

Burton, D. C., Kelly, A., Cardo, D., Daskalakis, D., Huang, D. T., Penman-Aguilar, A., Raghunathan, P. L., Zhu, B.-P., & Bunnell, R. (2023). Principles of health equity science for public health action. Public Health Reports, 139(3), 277–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549231213162

Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis and the health of African American women and infants: Evidence and speculations. Ethnicity & Disease, 2, 207–221.

G.C. Glick, G. C., & A.J. Rose, A. J. (2011). Prospective associations between friendship adjustment and social strategies: Friendship as a context for building social skills. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 1117–1132. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023277

hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.

Demond Martin, D., & Hajim, C. (2024). Friends of the good: How remarkable friendships transform our lives (Foreword by M. Norris). Penguin Random House.

Pezirkianidis, C., Galanaki, E., Raftopoulou, G., Moraitou, D., & Stalikas, A. (2023). Adult friendship and wellbeing: A systematic review with practical implications. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1059057. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1059057

Šutić, L., van Roekel, E., & Novak, M. (2025). Quality of friendships and well-being in adolescence: A daily life study. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 30(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2025.2467112

Some reflections arrive quietly. Others arrive with numbers. This one arrived with both.

Because the word “control” sounds responsible until you sit with it long enough.

Control the meeting. Control the outcome. Control how people see you. Control the narrative before someone else writes it.

At first glance it looks like leadership. But if we are honest, control is often a conversation about fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being exposed. Fear of losing credibility. Fear of not being enough.

So we tighten our grip. We manage details. We rehearse conversations. We plan every possible outcome.

Many of us were raised to believe that discipline meant carrying everything well and quietly. In my family that idea was often summarized in a single sentence: if something has been entrusted to you, take care of it.

That kind of teaching builds character. It also builds habits. Over time those habits can shape personality in ways we rarely examine.

Because the truth most of us eventually discover is this. Control is not always about power. Sometimes it is insecurity wearing professionalism. And insecurity has a way of shaping personalities before we realize what is happening.

Public health studies exposure in environments. Sometimes the exposure lives inside the habits we build to survive those environments.

Control is not always about power. Sometimes it is about trying to outrun vulnerability.

Click this link if you would like to listen to this essay.

Where Control First Learned Our Name

Most of us learned about control long before we had language for it. A child learns quickly what earns approval. Be dependable. Be strong. Work harder than everyone else. Do not embarrass the family.

At first those lessons create discipline. Discipline can be a gift. It helps us manage money, honor commitments, and move through life with steadiness.

But discipline driven by fear begins to look different.

I have sat in rooms where the most exhausted person was also the most competent one. The person everyone relied on. The one who stayed late without complaint. The one who quietly carried the work of three people.

From the outside it looked like excellence. Inside, it often felt like pressure.

Public health researchers have begun to document something many people already sense. Perfectionistic coping styles are associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress (Limburg et al., 2017). Chronic pressure to perform can also increase emotional exhaustion among professionals working in high-demand environments.

Standards themselves are not the problem. Standards fueled by fear eventually become strain.

Control begins to show up in subtle ways. Overworking because failure feels dangerous. Overpreparing because uncertainty feels unsafe. Trying to anticipate every possible outcome because vulnerability feels threatening. What we call professionalism sometimes begins as protection. Over time that protection can quietly reshape personality.

When fear drives discipline, the body eventually carries the bill.

When Control Hides Inside Respectability

Control rarely introduces itself honestly. Sometimes it hides inside behaviors society rewards. Perfectionism. People pleasing. Micromanagement. Hypervigilance.

Some people learn to control through achievement. Others learn to control through authority. Still others try to control by managing how everyone else feels.

Sometimes it even shows up through microaggressions.

Correcting someone unnecessarily. Interrupting their expertise. Questioning their competence in subtle ways. Overtalking, devaluing, or demeaning another’s point of view.

Psychologist Derald Sue describes microaggressions as everyday verbal or behavioral slights that communicate dismissive or hostile messages toward marginalized groups (Sue et al., 2007). They may appear small in isolation, but repetition changes the equation. Research increasingly links workplace microaggressions with psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, and decreased organizational belonging (Torres et al., 2019). Small acts accumulate. Over time they shape the emotional climate of workplaces and institutions.

Control can also appear through the pursuit of power. Power to secure outcomes. Power to reduce uncertainty. Power to avoid vulnerability.

Clinical research on narcissistic personality structures suggests that outward dominance and control behaviors are often rooted in unstable self-esteem and hypersensitivity to perceived threat (Ronningstam, 2011).

That insight does not excuse harm. But it reveals something important.

Control is often a coping strategy rooted in insecurity and pride at the same time.

When Control Moves Into the Body

There is also another side to this story.

The absence of self-control carries consequences of its own. Impulsive decisions. Unstable habits. Financial choices that create long-term strain. Reactivity that fractures relationships. Neglecting sleep. Ignoring preventive healthcare until the body demands attention.

Different pattern. Similar consequences.

Public health research consistently shows that chronic stress exposure affects multiple physiological systems simultaneously. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health defines job stress as harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when job demands exceed a worker’s resources or needs (NIOSH, 2024).

When stress becomes constant, the body adapts. Heart rate rises. Cortisol remains elevated. Sleep becomes disrupted. Blood pressure increases.

For Black women these stress exposures often intersect with cultural expectations of strength.

There is an old American folk story that helps explain this dynamic. The legend tells of John Henry, a steel driver who worked on the railroads during the era of industrial expansion. According to the story, when a steam-powered drill was introduced to replace manual labor, John Henry challenged the machine to a race. He swung his hammer with extraordinary strength and determination, driving steel faster than the machine beside him. By the end of the race, the legend says John Henry had won. But moments later he collapsed, his heart giving out from exhaustion.

The story has endured in American folklore not simply because of the victory, but because of the cost.

Public health researcher Sherman James later used this legend to describe a coping style now known as John Henryism. The concept refers to high-effort coping in response to prolonged psychosocial stress (James, 1994). Research shows that individuals with high John Henryism scores may experience higher blood pressure when structural stressors persist.

At the same time, researchers examining the Superwoman Schema describe a cultural expectation that Black women maintain strength, emotional restraint, and caregiving responsibility despite significant stress (Woods-Giscombé, 2010). Studies have linked strong endorsement of the Superwoman role with increased perceived stress, sleep disruption, and elevated blood pressure among African American women (Watson-Singleton, 2017).

This is not simply personality. It is physiology.

Hypertension affects nearly three in five non-Hispanic Black adults, the highest prevalence among major racial and ethnic groups in the United States (CDC, 2024).

Numbers tell part of the story. Lived experience explains why those numbers exist.

In many ways, this tension between discipline, control, and chronic stress is exactly the kind of lived experience my research seeks to examine more closely among Black women working within public health systems themselves.

What Control Actually Means in Public Health

Trying to control everything eventually exhausts a life. But the absence of self-control creates instability.

One produces strain. The other produces chaos.

Health lives somewhere between those extremes. Enough discipline to govern yourself. Enough humility to stop trying to govern everyone else. When people adapt to difficult environments, those adaptations often make sense. Working harder. Staying vigilant. Managing how others perceive you.

But adaptation is not the same as healing.

At some point survival strategies must evolve into sustainable ways of living.

That requires a different understanding of control. Control over what you carry. Control over the boundaries that protect your health. Control over when rest becomes necessary instead of optional.

The Kind of Control That Protects Health

Real control is quieter than most people imagine.

It is not dominating the room. It is not proving competence every minute. It is not performing strength until your body begins to protest.

Real control looks like stewardship.

Managing your finances because chaos is expensive. Resting before your body demands it. Telling the truth when insecurity shows up sideways. Allowing other people space to breathe without policing their every move.

Scripture says it plainly.

“Let your moderation be known unto all men.”
Philippians 4:5

Moderation is not weakness. It is self-governance.

In a culture that often confuses force with strength, the most stable people in the room are often the ones who no longer feel responsible for controlling it.

That kind of steadiness protects the body. It protects relationships. It protects peace.

Reflective Corner

1. Where has discipline served you well, and where has it quietly turned into fear?

2. What outcomes are you trying to control that were never fully yours to command?

3. Where does lack of self-control create avoidable chaos in your life?

4. What would stewardship without domination look like?

Soundtrack for the Soul

Lauryn Hill—Doo Wop (That Thing)

Lauryn Hill was not just talking about relationships. She was talking about self-governance.

“How you gon’ win when you ain’t right within?”

That line still lands. Because no title, no performance, and no reputation can stabilize a life that is misaligned inside.

Control begins there. Not in managing everybody else. In telling yourself the truth.

You do not have to control the whole room to be whole.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Hypertension prevalence in the United States.

James, S. A. (1994). John Henryism and the health of African Americans. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 18(2), 163–182.

Limburg, K., Watson, H., Hagger, M., & Egan, S. (2017). The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73(10), 1301–1326.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (2024). Stress at work.

Ronningstam, E. (2011). Narcissistic personality disorder: Clinical perspectives. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 17(2), 89–99.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C., Torino, G., et al. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271–286.

Torres, L., Driscoll, M., & Voell, M. (2019). Discrimination, acculturative stress, and mental health outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology.

Watson-Singleton, N. (2017). Strong Black woman schema and psychological distress. Journal of Black Psychology.

Woods-Giscombé, C. (2010). Superwoman Schema: African American women’s views on stress and health. Qualitative Health Research, 20(5), 668–683.

Some reflections come quietly.
Others come with numbers you can no longer explain away.

This one came after both. And before you settle in, let me say this clearly. This essay is longer than my typical pieces. I needed the room. The data required it. My body deserved it.

I now have the capacity to put words to what I have gone through. And what others have gone through. And what some are still going through. There was a time when I felt it but could not name it. Now I can.

I was raised on excellence. Stewardship. Perseverance. If God entrusted you with something, you honored it with discipline. Resilience felt holy. Strength felt sacred.

And for a long time, I leaned into that identity. Until my body began documenting the cost.

Public health trained me to look upstream. To trace exposure to outcome. When I applied that lens inward, I had to admit something sobering.

My body was not weak. It was responding to prolonged strain.

And if I could map my symptoms to exposure, so can you.

Click this link if you would like to listen to this essay.

When Resilience Becomes Policy Instead of Prevention

Resilience has become a workplace strategy. It appears in employee wellness programs. In “infinity groups.” In trauma-informed leadership trainings. In resilience cohorts meant to improve morale and productivity. The language sounds compassionate.

• Build capacity.

• Belonging

• Be adaptable.

• Stay grounded.

• Push through.

But resilience, as operationalized in many institutions, centers the employee’s coping ability rather than the organization’s responsibility to reduce harm. John Patrick Leary argues that resilience rhetoric allows systems to normalize crisis instead of reforming the conditions that produce it. Public health does not call that prevention.

Public health calls that exposure management.

Nearly half of adults in the United States have hypertension. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death, responsible for roughly one in four deaths annually (Benjamin et al., 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). High job strain increases the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke by approximately 20 to 30 percent (Kivimäki et al., 2012). The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed (WHO, 2019).

Stress does not stay in the office.

• It elevates cortisol.

• It disrupts sleep.

• It alters immune function.

• It raises blood pressure.

Over time, it reshapes the body.

The Superwoman Myth and Measured Strain

For Black women, there is another layer.

A 2024 scoping review identified 13 peer-reviewed studies measuring the Strong Black Woman or Superwoman construct using validated psychometric scales. Those studies consistently link gendered racial stress to adverse health outcomes among African American women (Muhirwa et al., 2024).

bell hooks wrote in Ain’t I a Woman that Black women have been socialized to be strong in ways that deny vulnerability. Strength becomes expectation. Expectation becomes silence. Invisible pain still registers in the body.

Arline Geronimus introduced the Weathering Hypothesis, describing cumulative biological wear from sustained adversity (Geronimus, 1992). Later research demonstrated stress-related accelerated biological aging among Black women exposed to chronic stress (Geronimus et al., 2010).

Sherman James demonstrated that high-effort coping under structural constraint, known as John Henryism, is associated with elevated blood pressure (James, 1994).

Working harder under inequity carries a cost.

Betrayal as a Health Exposure

It is one thing to experience stress in a job.

To be faced with constant microaggressions.

It is another thing to be discarded by an institution you loved.
To be pushed aside by an organization you served passionately.
To be treated as expendable in the very community where you were born and raised.
To have no thought given to your livelihood.

That kind of betrayal is not only emotional. It is biological.

Research on workplace injustice shows associations with hypertension, depression, sleep disruption, and inflammatory markers. Social rejection activates neural circuitry similar to physical pain. Chronic relational rupture sustains sympathetic activation.

But betrayal is also structural exposure. When institutions remove protection without providing transition support, when they privilege budget lines over bodies, and when they rely on resilience programming instead of reforming harmful conditions, they are shaping exposure.

And exposure accumulates.

Economic Shock Is a Health Event

In the first half of 2025, approximately 300,000 Black women left the workforce. By December 2025, Black women’s unemployment rate rose to 7.3 percent, up from 5.4 percent earlier in the year (Bethune, 2025; Carrazana, 2026).

Add me to that list.

Black women were unemployed for an average of nearly 30 weeks. Federal workforce cuts disproportionately affected Black women, who comprise approximately 12 percent of the federal workforce, nearly double their representation in the overall labor force (Carrazana, 2026). Employment instability is a social determinant of health.

Black women are 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension than white women (CDC, 2023). They are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes (Petersen et al., 2019). In 2023, 23.3 percent of Black households experienced food insecurity (USDA, 2023). Layer unemployment on top of that, then betrayal. then chronic stress. That is not growth.

That is cumulative exposure.

• Weathering.

• John Henryism.

• Work strain.

• Job loss.

• Resilience rhetoric.

That layering does not build strength.

It builds burden.

What It Looked Like in My Body

Frequent migraines. A very bad knee injury that slowed my mobility. Severe swelling in my legs and feet.

Sleeplessness at night. Tired all day.

Nocturnal hypertension. It is real. It is documented. It increases cardiovascular risk (Kario et al., 2018).

Hot flashes and irregular menstrual cycles that I initially dismissed as perimenopausal or weight-related. I told myself it was just aging. Just hormones.

Morbid obesity, with stress listed as a contributing factor. Continuous sinus infections.

Then came fibromyalgia. “Random,” they said.
No clear origin story, they said.
”No cure,” they said.

Yet research increasingly links fibromyalgia to chronic stress dysregulation and trauma exposure. When the nervous system remains in prolonged fight or flight, pain pathways amplify.

Then shingles. The final knockout blow. Down goes Frazier! I was done.

Immune suppression does not happen in isolation. None of it was random.

It was layered.

The Political Layer We Must Name

Achille Mbembe describes necropolitics as the power to determine who may live and who must endure life-eroding conditions (Mbembe, 2003).

Daniel Dawes, through the Political Determinants of Health framework, explains how policy and institutional decisions shape exposure to risk and access to protection (Dawes, 2020).

These are not abstract theories. When resilience programming replaces structural reform, institutions are making a decision. They are deciding who absorbs strain.

• Across races.

• Across genders.

• Across ages.

Some communities absorb more. Structural racism, gendered labor expectations, and economic precarity concentrate exposure. But no nervous system escapes chronic strain untouched. When systems fail to reduce workload inequity, psychological harm, employment instability, or discriminatory practices, they are participating in patterned exposure. Not through dramatic declaration, but through omission.

Necropolitics is not only about death. It is about slow deterioration.

It is about whose exhaustion is normalized.
Whose pain is dismissed. Whose health is collateral.

When resilience becomes a buffer that protects systems from accountability, bodies carry the cost.

Healing, Forgiveness, and Reclaimed Autonomy

I had to let go. I had to forgive myself for believing endurance was holiness. For equating resilience with silence. I had to forgive leaders who leaned into resilience language because it felt easier than reform. I had to forgive systemic dynamics that shaped me to believe Superwoman was virtuous.

Forgiveness does not excuse harm.

It releases it.

I am in a healing space now. Reclaiming autonomy. Making choices aligned with my values and purpose. Taking my health as seriously as the communities I serve.

• The data I cite.

• The inequities I analyze.

• The policies I challenge.

I must serve myself with that same excellence. Excellence includes boundaries. Excellence includes rest. Excellence includes refusing to normalize preventable harm. Excellence must include longevity. Excellence must include structural truth.

And if I could trace my symptoms back to exposure, so can you.

Reflective Corner: Take Inventory Before Your Body Does It For You

Let me ask you gently.

Are you sleeping? Are you swollen?
Are your numbers creeping upward?
Are you dismissing symptoms as just stress or just hormones?

Do you see yourself here?

You cannot meditate or pray your way out of structural strain.
You cannot outwork weathering.
You cannot resilience-train your way out of cardiovascular risk.

Strength is sacred. But safety is structural.

Resilience is a coping skill. Justice is a public health intervention.

And your body deserves both.

Now here is the assignment. Not for your supervisor.

For you.

1. Schedule the appointment. Get your labs. Blood pressure. A1C. Lipids. If you wake up tired, ask about sleep evaluation. If your pressure rises at night, ask about ambulatory monitoring.

2. Audit your stress exposures. Write down your top five chronic stressors. The daily ones. The ones that live in your shoulders.

3. Identify what is structural. Name what cannot be solved with breathing exercises alone.

4. Reclaim one boundary this month. One evening. One meeting. One no.

5. Tell the truth to someone safe. Healing requires witness.

6. Redefine excellence. If excellence has required self-neglect, rewrite it. Include longevity.

Take inventory now.

Before your body takes it for you.

Soundtrack for the Soul

“Noise” – Brian Courtney Wilson

“When the noise of this world tries to drown out my praise…”

In this season, I am choosing clarity over noise. Health over applause. Longevity over performance.

References

Benjamin, E. J., Muntner, P., Alonso, A., et al. (2018). Heart disease and stroke statistics—2018 update: A report from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 137(12), e67–e492.

Bethune, N. (2025). To Be Black, Female, and Unemployed. The American Prospect, December 2025.

Carrazana, C. (2026). Black women’s unemployment has skyrocketed. The 19th News, January 26, 2026.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Hypertension prevalence data.

Dawes, D. E. (2020). The Political Determinants of Health. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis and the health of African American women and infants. Ethnicity & Disease, 2, 207–221.

Geronimus, A. T., Hicken, M., Keene, D., & Bound, J. (2010). Weathering and age patterns of allostatic load scores. American Journal of Public Health, 96(5), 826–833.

James, S. A. (1994). John Henryism and the health of African Americans. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 18(2), 163–182.

Kario, K., et al. (2018). Nocturnal hypertension: New technology and evidence. Hypertension, 71(6), 997–1009.

Kivimäki, M., Nyberg, S. T., Batty, G. D., et al. (2012). Job strain as a risk factor for coronary heart disease. The Lancet, 380(9852), 1491–1497.

Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40.

Muhirwa, A., Giscombe, C., Noonan, D., Silva, S., & Granger, B. (2024). Psychometric scales of the Strong Black Woman construct evaluating stress-related health disparities among African American women: A scoping review. Nursing Clinics of North America.

Petersen, E. E., et al. (2019). Racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related deaths. MMWR, 68(35), 762–765.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2023). Household food security in the United States in 2023.

World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an occupational phenomenon: International Classification of Diseases.

Dear Reader,

February has always been full in my life.

Not full of roses. Full of names.

February 5 belongs to my sister-in-law Angela. It is also her wedding anniversary with my brother. It is my mother’s birthday. It is my best friend Lenita’s son Jabari’s birthday. February 7 is mine. February 9 is Angela’s sister Joanna’s. February 14 holds my grandfather Royce and Angela’s father.

Before Valentine’s Day ever arrived, love was already layered.

This year, I turned fifty-three.

Happy Birthday to me.

And I say that without hesitation.

Fifty-three feels less like aging and more like alignment. I am realigning myself with the purpose God created me to embody. Not the version shaped by expectation. Not the one molded by performance. The one anchored in calling.

I am leaning into what true serenity looks like.

Serenity is steadiness under pressure. It is laughing louder and freer because I no longer negotiate my worth in every room. It is resting without guilt. It is releasing the need to apologize for imperfection and choosing instead to pursue persistent excellence.

Perfection seeks applause.
Persistence builds impact.

Click this link if you would like to listen to this essay.

Where Love Was First Practiced

In my family, love was repetition.

It remembered birthdays without reminders. It showed up. It corrected you and fed you in the same breath. It ironed your clothes and prayed over you.

No one called it philosophy. It was simply how we lived.

bell hooks defined love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” That definition removes fantasy and inserts discipline. It suggests love requires intention.

That sounds familiar.

I did not grow up seeing love as chaos. I saw it as structure.

How Belief Anchored It

The women in my life modeled belief without spectacle.

Faith was not aesthetic. It was posture. It did not need witnesses. It needed endurance.

Scripture says, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).

That verse reads differently at fifty-three.

It is less about sentiment and more about consistency. I trust God not because outcomes are guaranteed, but because alignment matters more than applause.

Love, spiritually understood, is regulated.

When Love Meets Systems

If love nurtures growth and protects life, then measurable outcomes reveal whether love is operational or rhetorical.

In 2022, the CDC reported that the maternal mortality rate for Black women in the United States was 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births. For white women, it was 19.0.

These disparities are patterned. They reflect structural decisions about access, bias, investment, and whose pain is taken seriously.

The U.S. Surgeon General reports that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by roughly 26 to 29 percent. Loneliness carries health risks comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

Being held matters biologically.

Public health is organized care. It is what love looks like when it takes responsibility for outcomes.

It shows up in transportation systems that get mothers to appointments. In hospitals that listen. In policies that fund prevention instead of only crisis response.

When neighborhoods lack safe housing, quality schools, clean air, and accessible healthcare, the problem is not absence of affectionate language. It is the result of sustained policy choices about who is worth protecting.

Love that remains personal but never structural comforts. It does not reduce mortality.

What Fifty-Three Clarified

This birthday arrived with clarity.

I am laughing louder now, but not recklessly. The laughter feels measured. Earned.

I am choosing serenity over spectacle, not because I lack fire, but because I no longer need to prove that it burns.

I am not apologizing for being human.

I am committing to persistent excellence because discipline sustains what emotion cannot.

February, with its crowded calendar, reminds me that love multiplies across generations. It carries memory. It demands responsibility.

Love is continuity.

Soundtrack for the Soul

“The Look of ”Love”—Chris Botti (feat. Sy Smith), Live in Boston

The trumpet does not rush. The vocal does not plead. The performance understands restraint as confidence. It lingers in the gaze.

At fifty-three, that feels right.

Love that breathes.
Love that does not chase.
Love that stays.

Reflective Corner

If you lead anything, pause here.

If you steward a classroom, a congregation, a clinic, a budget, a household, or a policy agenda, ask yourself this:

Where does love move from sentiment to structure in your leadership?

What outcomes would look different if your definition of love required measurable protection?

Who is safer because of your decisions?

Who is still waiting?

If love is a discipline and not just a feeling, what are you willing to rearrange, reallocate, or relinquish in its name?

At fifty-three, I am learning that love is not only what we say or feel.

It is the quiet steadiness of remaining present long after the music fades.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2022. National Center for Health Statistics.

hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.

Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. (2001). Crossway. (1 Corinthians 16:14)

Bacharach, B., & David, H. (1967). The look of love [Song]. Performed by Chris Botti featuring Sy Smith (Live in Boston).

Some reflections arrive fully formed.
Others need silence before they can speak.

This one needed a day.

It needed space to breathe, to listen, and to remember without rushing to explain. It needed room for tenderness without performance and truth without polish. What follows was written slowly, with care, because some stories are not meant to be hurried. They ask us to sit down, lower our voices, and receive what has been passed to us with reverence.

What follows is not an announcement. It is a witnessing. A naming. A return. It is written for anyone who has loved deeply, lost early, and lived long enough to finally understand what they were given.

Where Love Took Root

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Grandma Maebelle.
You would have been ninety-four yesterday, and I felt you close.

It took me a day to gather my thoughts because some love takes time to settle. Some grief only speaks after silence. I miss you more than words can carry, and somehow, I love you more now than I knew how to when you were here.

Adulthood taught me what childhood could not name.

Your faith, Grandma, was the catalyst. You planted God in me long before I had language for Him. I watched you trust Him quietly. I watched you endure with dignity. I watched you live like belief was not a performance but a posture.

At the time, I did not know that was theology.
I just knew it was real.

How the Story Was Given

I am only now able to say this with understanding and reverence.

I am a woman of God too.

Not because I am perfect.
But because I have learned how to trust Him the way you did.

Life has brought me into places that feel familiar in my spirit. I am walking in your shoes now. Studying. Teaching. Pressing forward. Carrying wisdom, endurance, and faith with intention as I pursue my PhD, just as you did.

Grandma, I graduated from your alma mater, North Carolina Central University. And now, I teach. Again, just as you did.

Separate lives.
Same calling.

I know you would smile so big knowing this.

What It Means to Witness a Life

When I look in the mirror of my life, I see your fingerprints everywhere.

In my resilience.
In my discipline.
In my insistence on dignity.
In the way I keep going even when it is hard.

I wish I had known to take more pictures of you. I wish I had captured more moments, more smiles, more ordinary days. But now I carry you in memory, and maybe that is how it was always meant to be.

You live in my posture.
You live in my choices.
You live in the woman I am becoming.

When Legacy Names Itself

It would please you to know we are no longer only grandmother and granddaughter.

We are sorority sisters.
Alpha Kappa Alpha, Incorporated. Let me get a heavenly Skee-Wee!

I finally took that step, Grandma. I can almost hear you laughing, pleased as punch, saying, “Well alright now.”

And there is this small, sweet detail I keep smiling about. We are both Aquarians. You, January 27. Me, February 7. There is something special about those sevens, I guess. Maybe we could never escape each other, because destiny had me in your hands from the very beginning. That feels right. That feels like us. (laughter)

Legacy is not a title I claim lightly. I use the word deliberately. Not as a procedural designation, but as inheritance. Legacy, in this sense, is what is carried forward through example, memory, and obligation. It is the quiet transmission of values that teaches you how to move long before you know how to name what you are doing.

That was you.

What Gets Returned

I have a son now, Grandma. He is my only, and he carries your legacy too.

His name is Dynzcil Benjamin.
Benjamin, just like your baby boy, Carl Benjamin.

The names continue.
The love continues.
The story continues.

Your absence still aches, but it no longer feels empty. It feels full of inheritance.

Thank you for loving me before I knew who I would be. Thank you for leaving me a path to walk when you could no longer walk beside me. I hope you can see me. I hope you know I am trying to live well.

I carry you with me, Grandma.
In faith.
In purpose.
In womanhood.

Always.

With all my love,
Your granddaughter,
Fawn

Soundtrack for the Soul

“Better Days” – Dianne Reeves

This song holds the tenderness of memory without collapsing into sadness. It honors what was while making room for what continues. It understands that grief and gratitude often sit side by side and that faith does not erase longing. It simply gives it somewhere to rest.

Reflective Corner

Who planted something in you before you had language for it?
What faith, values, or posture did you inherit quietly?
How are you carrying that inheritance forward now?

Some stories are not meant to be archived.
They are meant to be lived.

This reflection is offered in the spirit of remembrance and responsibility. It is written at the intersection of lineage and labor, faith and evidence, memory and method. It is not nostalgia dressed up as history, nor celebration detached from consequence. It is an accounting.

I write as someone shaped by Black women who understood service as obligation long before I had language for public health. I write as someone formed in rooms where care was practiced quietly, consistently, and without applause. And I write as someone who has learned that stories, when held responsibly, are not soft. They are instructional.

What follows is an invitation to look again at what has been built, who built it, and what that legacy now requires of us. Read this not as a tribute alone, but as a map. Because remembrance without responsibility is incomplete.

The Ground We Stand On

Founders’ Day, observed each year on January 15, invites celebration, memory, and gratitude. Pink and green fill the room. Pearls are dusted off. Names are spoken with reverence.

But Founders’ Day is not only about remembering who was formed.
It is about remembering what was built.

My earliest understanding of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, did not come from a textbook or a lecture. It came from my grandmother Maebelle’s jewelry box. As a child, I once asked why she had a pin with someone else’s initials. She smiled and explained it was her sorority brooch. She did not give me a history lesson that day. She gave me an image. Black women gathering. Serving. Belonging to something larger than themselves.

I watched her attend meetings and service projects long before I had language for leadership or public health. What I was witnessing was discipline, continuity, and care rooted in community.

Founded in 1908, Alpha Kappa Alpha emerged from Black women’s recognition that health, education, and collective wellbeing are inseparable. Health is not neutral. It is shaped by access, power, education, environment, and by who is deemed worthy of care.

That understanding became unmistakable in 1935, when Alpha Kappa Alpha launched the Mississippi Health Project. This was not charity. It was intervention. Rural Black communities were suffering and dying from preventable illness, and the state was not coming.

So the sorority did.

This is the legacy Founders’ Day asks us to remember honestly.

How We Enter the Story

This reflection is not written only for those celebrating Founders’ Day. It is written for those who want to understand how Black women have long practiced public health before the field gave itself that name.

At fifteen, while living with my father’s parents, I was invited into a debutante program by a neighbor who approached my grandmother Virgie. She said yes without hesitation. What followed were months of etiquette lessons, public speaking, discipline, and collective responsibility. At the time, it felt like polish. In hindsight, it was preparation. I was being shaped to move through the world with confidence, restraint, and accountability to others.

Over the years, I encountered women of Alpha Kappa Alpha in classrooms, churches, boardrooms, and communities. Without fail, they carried quiet authority. Strength without spectacle. Beauty rooted in purpose. Their presence reinforced what I had learned early. This was not an organization built on visibility alone. It was built on service as obligation.

In May 2025, I became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. I name this not as a personal milestone but as a matter of ethical positioning. To write about this now is to write from within it, with responsibility to uphold its standards, steward its history accurately, and ensure its public health work is represented with care.

I also name this as my grandmother Maebelle Tate Newton’s “Legacy.” I use the word “legacy ” here deliberately. Not as a procedural designation, but as a title of inheritance. Legacy, in this sense, is what is carried forward through example, memory, and obligation. It is the quiet transmission of values that teaches you how to move long before you know how to name them.

As I grew older, I struggled with mainstream feminism. I saw how often Black women’s labor was used to advance movements that did not center us in return. When I encountered womanism, I found language that finally fit. A framework that honors Black women’s fullness, our families, our communities, and our responsibility to collective survival.

Alpha Kappa Alpha has always felt like womanism in motion.

We enter this story with that understanding. Service here is not optional. It is strategic.

The Work That Was Done

At the center of the Mississippi Health Project stood Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Medical Director from 1935 to 1942.

Dr. Ferebee was not symbolic leadership. She was operational leadership.

Under her direction, Alpha Kappa Alpha delivered immunizations, maternal and infant care, parasite treatment, and health education to thousands of Black Mississippians who had been structurally abandoned. This was Jim Crow Mississippi. Roads were poor. Resources were scarce. Racism was overt.

And still, the work persisted.

Alongside her were women such as Ida L. Jackson, the Supreme Basileus whose vision initiated the project, and physicians including Sadie Berry Montier, Zenobia Gilpin, and Myra Smith.

They were not performing service.
They were building infrastructure where none existed.

Founders’ Day honors these women not because they were anomalies, but because they modeled what disciplined service looks like when systems fail.

What the Evidence Reveals

What Alpha Kappa Alpha demonstrated through the Mississippi Health Project is now codified in public health and global health frameworks.

Community-based care works when it is trusted. Prevention succeeds when it is culturally grounded. Health communication works when messengers are accountable to the people they serve.

That same logic is visible today at the organizational level.

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated operates a Mobile Mammography initiative, addressing delayed breast cancer diagnosis and access barriers that disproportionately affect Black women. This work has been reinforced through previous sorority-wide campaigns such as Release the Pressure, which centered cardiovascular health, stress reduction, and self-care as public health imperatives rather than luxuries.

The sorority’s Child Hunger Initiative Power Pack (CHIPP) addresses food insecurity by ensuring children receive nutrition during weekends and school breaks, recognizing hunger as a foundational determinant of health with lifelong consequences.

These programs, along with many other past and present service initiatives, reflect a consistent institutional approach. Health improves when intervention is mobile, relational, culturally grounded, and accountable.

This legacy did not end in the United States.

Alpha Kappa Alpha continues to expand its global public health footprint, with its two most recently chartered chapters established in London, England, on May 30, 2025, and Accra, Ghana, on January 16, 2026. These moments signal not only organizational growth but also an ongoing commitment to Black diaspora health, education, and community well-being across borders.

That continuum includes modern system-level leadership such as J. Nwando Olayiwola, President of the Advocate National Center for Clinical and Community Impact and Senior Vice President at Advocate Health, and Adjunct Professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and College of Public Health. Her work demonstrates how community-centered values scale into national and global health systems.

This is not a coincidence.
It is institutional memory at work.

What This Legacy Requires of Us

Founders’ Day should do more than inspire pride. It should clarify responsibility.

Alpha Kappa Alpha has not simply participated in public health. It has helped define it, especially in spaces where Black life has been excluded from formal systems of care.

For students, this history demands curriculum correction.
For practitioners, it requires humility about where innovation truly comes from.
For institutions, it demands partnership without extraction.
For Black women called to service, it offers permission to name strategy where others see only gentleness.

As a PhD student in Global Health Equity, I carry this honor not as an abstraction, but as an obligation. Community-centered work requires more than credentials. It requires regulated presence, historical awareness, and accountability to those whose lives are shaped by our decisions.

Dr. Ferebee did not ask whether the work was too bold.
She asked whether it was necessary.

That question still governs ethical global public health practice.

A Question We Carry Forward

• Whose labor have we minimized in global health narratives?

• How does remembering Black women as architects of care change how you understand equity?

• What responsibility comes with inheriting a legacy built on disciplined service rather than visibility?

Founders’ Day is not only remembrance.
It is instruction.

Soundtrack for the Soul

The song holding this reflection is Four Women, performed by Lisa Simone, Dianne Reeves, Lizz Wright, and Angélique Kidjo.

This is not nostalgia.
It is lineage voiced across generations and continents.

References

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. (n.d.). Child Hunger Initiative Power Pack (CHIPP). Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. (1941). Mississippi Health Project annual report (No. 6). Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

Ebony. (n.d.). Release the Pressure, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and more team up to encourage Black women to prioritize self-care and heart health. Ebony Magazine.

Watch The Yard. (2025, May 30). Alpha Kappa Alpha charters chapter in London, England. Watch The Yard.

Watch The Yard. (2026, January 16). Alpha Kappa Alpha charters first chapter in Ghana. Watch The Yard.

There is another truth I could not fully name then.

I was born on February 7, 1973. My mother was born on February 5, 1951, and she passed in 1984 at just thirty-three years old. By the time I became a mother at thirty-six, I was already older than my mother ever had the chance to be. I was raising a toddler while standing on the far side of a life my own mother never got to finish.

That kind of loss does not announce itself loudly.
It hums beneath your vigilance.
It sharpens your awareness.
It teaches you to move carefully, quietly, and with intention.

That devotional was sincere.
It was faithful.
It was true for that season.

It was also written sixteen years ago.

Today, I am fifty-two years old, standing on the threshold of turning fifty-three in February. I am the mother of an eighteen-year-old young man in college. My son is no longer learning to walk. He is learning how to stand. How to decide. How to carry consequence. And in walking alongside him, I have had to grow as well.

You cannot raise a man without learning something about timing, restraint, protection, and when to let go.

When I reread that earlier devotional, I did not feel embarrassment.
I felt recognition.

Growth does not always correct us.
Sometimes it clarifies us.

Sixteen Years Later

In 2009, I leaned into the symbolic sweetness of a fawn. Gentle. Peaceful. Non-threatening.

That imagery was not accidental. My given name is Fawn.

I framed my name through humility, tenderness, and approachability. Those qualities mattered then. They steadied me while I learned how to mother, how to love deeply, and how to carry responsibility without losing softness.

That devotional came from a faithful place.
It came from survival.
It came from a season where gentleness felt like obedience, safety, and wisdom braided together.

But theology that only names softness, without context or strategy, does not hold forever.

Eventually, life asks harder questions

What Time, Study, and Discernment Revealed

Recently, I encountered a fuller, biologically accurate description of deer behavior. Not metaphor. Ecology.

Deer are prey animals. Their survival depends on vigilance, attunement, and timing. What appears gentle is often situational awareness. What looks passive is frequently calculated restraint. What reads as fragility is, in truth, wisdom shaped by threat.

That description stopped me.

Because this is also me.

Sixteen years of living, leading, studying, teaching, advocating, and mothering have taught me that gentleness alone does not raise children, protect callings, or sustain integrity. Discernment does.

The Systemic and Spiritual Truth

Prey animals survive not by domination, but by perception.

They read environments.
They anticipate danger.
They move fluidly between spaces.
They avoid unnecessary conflict but respond decisively when what they love is threatened.

This is not weakness.
This is intelligence shaped by reality.

Black women, especially those formed at the intersection of faith, leadership, and responsibility, often develop this same attunement. Not because we are timid, but because we are accountable to more outcomes. Systems reward our calm while testing our limits. Survival requires discernment, not bravado.

Jesus modeled this wisdom consistently. He withdrew. He waited. He spoke when the moment was right. Scripture says, “He knew what was in man” (John 2:25). That is not softness. That is clarity.

Scripture and Scholarship

“Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) is not a contradiction. It is balanced.

Public health reminds us that adaptation is not pathology. Trauma-informed science affirms that vigilance can be a learned strength before it becomes a burden. Ecology teaches us that when natural checks are removed from systems, instability follows.

The problem was never gentleness.
The problem was mistaking gentleness for the whole truth.

Naming What Was Misunderstood

The 2009 devotional honored who I needed to be then.
This reflection names who I actually am now.

I am gentle, yes.
I am also perceptive.
I am peace-loving, not conflict-avoidant.
I am adaptable, not indecisive.
I am quiet when silence is wise, and immovable when integrity is at stake.

A fawn does not survive by being cute.
She survives by knowing when to freeze, when to move, and when to disappear.

That distinction matters when you are raising a child.
It matters even more when you are releasing one into the world.

Mothering Without a Map

At thirty-six, I was mothering a two-year-old without a mother of my own and without a map. I was focused on protection more than processing. Instinct more than reflection. I did not yet have language for daughterhood, much less for the inherited wounds that shape how women mother when they have not been mothered well, or at all.

At fifty-two, standing on the edge of fifty-three, the work is different.

I am no longer just mothering a child.
I am repairing lineage.

Breaking traumatic daughterhood chains is more relevant now than ever, because I can finally see them clearly. What I survived quietly at thirty-six requires naming at fifty-two. What I adapted to then must be dismantled now. Not out of bitterness. Out of responsibility.

This matters deeply as I step more fully into Global Public Health Equity work.

Community-centered work requires more than credentials. It requires regulated presence. You cannot walk into communities carrying unexamined grief, unresolved daughterhood, or inherited silence and expect healing to flow cleanly. People feel what has not been tended. Systems amplify what has not been named.

At this stage of my life, breaking daughterhood trauma is not personal indulgence.
It is professional integrity.

At thirty-six, I needed softness to survive.
At fifty-two, on the edge of fifty-three, I need truth to lead.

What This Means Now

I no longer explain my calm as fragility.
I no longer apologize for discernment.
I protect my energy, my body, my calling, and my people with intention.

I honor gentleness without surrendering authority.
I lead without noise.
I mother without fear.
I move without guilt.

Spiritual maturity allows us to rename ourselves without shame.

Soundtrack for the Soul

The song holding this reflection is I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.

This song is not about confusion. It is about recognition arriving when it is ready. The lyric does not say I was foolish. It says I did not yet know the time.

The restraint matters. The silence matters. That is how this understanding arrived for me. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But accurately.

I was not wrong in 2009.
I was faithful to the season I was in.

This season simply required truer language.

Sometimes growth is not becoming someone new.
It is finally realizing what time it is.

Didn’t Know What Time It Was by Cécile McLorin Salvant.

Reflective Corner

What parts of yourself were shaped by survival in an earlier season?
How does outliving those who shaped you change how you mother, lead, and protect yourself?
What language no longer fits who you are now?

Maturity does not erase our beginnings.
It builds upon them.

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: From Fawn to Doe: The Power of Stillness

References

Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Matthew 10:16; John 2:25
Trauma-informed care and nervous system regulation literature
Ecology and prey behavior research
Personal devotional archive: What’s in a Name? (October 14, 2009)

For all 52 years of my life, I have been part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I am fourth generation. I was educated in Adventist schools. I learned how to study Scripture, not skim it. How to ask hard questions without fear. How to pursue wisdom, not just information. That emphasis on education shaped my entire life. It carried me into public health, leadership, and doctoral study. Faith and intellect were never enemies in this tradition. They were meant to sharpen one another.

That matters. I honor that.

And it is precisely because of that formation that this decision did not arrive loudly.

There are decisions that come slowly, after years of prayer, study, loyalty, and restraint. They surface through sleepless nights, Scripture held open, and the quiet realization that silence has begun to cost more than honesty. This is one of those decisions.

After more than five decades of life, formation, and service, I am publicly stepping away from an institution that shaped me deeply but no longer aligns with my conscience, my scholarship, or my understanding of justice rooted in the Word of God. This is not rebellion. This is discernment.

A commitment marked in water and witness carries weight beyond words.
This decision carries additional gravity because my relationship with the Adventist Church was sealed more than once. I was baptized as a baby and again as an adult. Both moments were conscious, covenantal, and public affirmations of faith. So much so that my local Adventist church is where I chose to have my burial services. That is not symbolic language. That is legacy planning. That is home. I am not walking away casually, angrily, or impulsively. I am walking away after a lifetime of belonging, recommitment, and prayerful struggle. This is serious for me. It always has been.

For many of us, this acknowledgement and separation feels like a spiritual divorce.
It is extremely painful and traumatic because this is what we have always known and still love. Our family and friends remain within the denomination. Our home locations, life milestones, friendships, rituals, language, and total way of life are deeply rooted and interwoven within Adventist culture. So if we seem a little frazzled, a little tender, maybe even a little shook right now, please understand why.

We are, quite honestly, in the spiritual emergency room. Some of us are in ICU. The Holy Spirit is attending us closely, and the Great Physician is actively healing wounds we did not always have language for before. This is a season of naming and recognition, not to assign blame, but so healing can actually begin.

The goal is not only to be whole enough to serve God and God’s people well. It is more personal than that. We need to be delivered, whole, and healed so that we ourselves can live fully into who God has called us to be. This is about learning to see ourselves again through God’s love and God’s character, not through institutional injury or religious trauma.

The health message that shaped my understanding of wholeness taught me that faith lives in the body. Long before wellness became a marketing category, Adventists were practicing preventive health rooted in stewardship of the body. The NEWSTART framework emphasized whole-person care. Nutrition, exercise, water, sunshine, temperance, air, rest, and trust in God were not suggestions. They were spiritual discipline.

Public health research affirms this approach, with decades of peer-reviewed data drawn from the Adventist Health Studies conducted by Loma Linda University. Key findings include:

• Adventist men in California live approximately 7.3 years longer than non-Adventist men

• Adventist women live approximately 4.4 years longer than non-Adventist women

• Vegetarian Adventists experience lower rates of ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers

• Lower rates of smoking and alcohol use across Adventist cohorts

Scripture reinforces this integration. “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 1:2). Lifestyle matters. Systems matter. Belief embodied matters.

The Black “Blue Zone” confirmed that alignment can mitigate harm even in a racialized society. In October 2015, Adventist Review published what is often referred to as “The Black Blue Zone,” drawing on Adventist Health Studies data focused on Black Seventh-day Adventists in North America. The findings were both sobering and hopeful.

Compared to the broader Black American population, Black Adventists demonstrated:

• Lower prevalence of hypertension and cardiovascular disease

• Lower rates of type 2 diabetes

• Longer life expectancy than non-Adventist Black peers

The article emphasized these outcomes were not genetic. They were behavioral and communal, shaped by plant-forward diets, Sabbath rest, strong faith-based social networks, lower substance use, and shared meaning-making. In the same racialized society, alignment mattered.

The covenant I will not break remains intact even as my affiliation changes. Let me be clear. I still believe in the seventh-day Sabbath. Scripture names it a perpetual covenant. “Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath… as a covenant forever” (Exodus 31:16–17). That commitment does not dissolve because my institutional affiliation changes.

At this season of my life, my faith affiliation shifts to nondenominational. The Sabbath remains a sacred rhythm in my life. And yes, I will worship on Sunday. If this sounds familiar, it is because my spirit apparently likes an open floor plan. No assigned seating, just good theology and a decent potluck.

Spiritual maturity allows complexity without apology.

The ignored realities I can no longer bypass required me to examine governance, not doctrine. Over time, a widening gap emerged between the gospel I studied and the decisions made by institutional leadership. These were not abstract disagreements. They were documented actions with real consequences for women, people of color, and moral credibility.

The refusal to ordain women became a defining rupture. In 2015, General Conference delegates voted 1,381 to 977 against allowing world divisions to decide whether to ordain women. This persists despite the denomination’s theological foundation being shaped by Ellen G. White, who wrote, “There is no limit to the usefulness of one who, putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit” (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 9).

What deepens the contradiction is this. Women are actively trained for ministry within Adventist systems, yet structurally constrained.

• Women earn Master of Divinity and advanced theological degrees from Adventist institutions, including the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University

• Regional and Union Conferences have ordained women pastors in alignment with conscience and constituency

• Those ordinations remain unrecognized by the General Conference, and unions that acted have faced formal reprimand

This is not a pipeline problem. It is a recognition problem. This is structural and systemic discrimination.

Sanctions, political alignment, and representation revealed patterns rather than isolated incidents. Between 2018 and 2019, the General Conference Compliance Review Committees formally reprimanded and warned union conferences that ordained women, asserting centralized authority over local discernment. These actions are documented in official General Conference and Adventist Review reporting.

At the same time, claims of political neutrality were increasingly strained. Adventist-affiliated institutions and platforms hosted or amplified figures associated with Christian nationalist movements, including Charlie Kirk. Reporting by Spectrum Magazine documented how these events conflicted with the denomination’s own cautions against partisan entanglement.
https://spectrummagazine.org/news/2021/adventist-institutions-and-political-neutrality

Representation matters too. The 2026 Q1 Sabbath School Lesson continues patterns of Christological framing and visual theology that many scholars and members have raised concerns about, particularly the persistent absence of historically grounded, culturally contextual representations of Jesus. While the lesson centers on discipleship and mission, its imagery remains largely detached from Jesus’ Middle Eastern, colonized reality.
https://www.sabbath.school/LessonBook?lang=1&year=2026&quarter=1

These issues may appear unrelated. Together, they reveal a consistent pattern. Representation shapes belonging. Policy shapes people. Governance is never neutral.

Faithful leaders showed us another way.
I name Walter L. Pearson Jr. and Henry Wright with deep gratitude.

Elder Pearson consistently preached accountability, repentance, and submission to God’s authority over institutional power. His sermons called leaders and members alike to humility, warning against confusing position with righteousness.

Elder Wright’s preaching centers holiness, obedience, and the cost of discipleship, refusing comfort-driven faith and reminding listeners that truth often requires sacrifice.

Their ministry models integrity without idolizing structure. That witness matters.

A brief word on doctrine versus governance helps clarify what I am, and am not, saying. Doctrine refers to the core theological teachings of a faith tradition. Governance refers to how power, authority, and accountability are exercised within the institution. I am not departing because I reject Adventist theology. I am departing because governance decisions, repeatedly and publicly, have contradicted the character of God those doctrines proclaim. When governance eclipses justice, faithfulness requires discernment.

Why I can no longer remain is ultimately about integrity, not abandonment.
Let me be clear. I am not saying the Seventh-day Adventist denomination is biblically unsound or inaccurate in its teachings. What I am saying is that when leaders who are called by God no longer uphold or reflect God’s character, I cannot spiritually, morally, or ethically remain part of that body. To do so would make me complicit and in agreement with actions that contradict justice, humility, and love. As bell hooks reminds us, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” And as Pauli Murray wrote, “Hope is a song in a weary throat.”

Soundtrack for the Soul

The song that holds this moment for me is Your Love Divine by Richard Smallwood and Vision. This song is relevant because it does not rush healing or demand resolution. It names pain honestly and asks God to meet us there.

“Lord, You know the pain, pain we bear,
and Lord, You know the toils, toils and cares.”

This is a prayer for those navigating religious trauma, institutional grief, and spiritual transition. It asks not for revenge or vindication, but for direction, protection, compassion, and divine love. It calls us to love even those who wounded us, while still asking God to cleanse and realign our hearts. In a season where many of us are in the spiritual ICU, this song sounds like the monitors beeping steadily while the Great Physician works. It reminds us that love can flow again, even after rupture. Especially after rupture.

Reflective Corner

Examine the systems you remain loyal to. Ask whether they still reflect the values they taught you to love. Discern whether your silence is faithfulness or fear. Leaving a system does not mean abandoning God. Sometimes it means trusting God enough to move.

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: Leaving the Faith: A Spiritual Migration

References

• Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Exodus 31:16–17; Proverbs 4:7; 3 John 1:2

• Fraser, G. E. (2015). Diet, Life Expectancy, and Chronic Disease. Oxford University Press

• Adventist Health Studies, Loma Linda University Health

• Adventist Review (October 2015). “The Black ‘Blue Zone’”

• Seventh-day Adventist Church. Ordination of Women

• Adventist Review. Compliance Review Committees and Unity Actions

• Spectrum Magazine. Adventist Institutions and Political Neutrality

• 2026 Q1 Sabbath School Lesson, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

As the year closes, I want us to pause before we rush into resolutions and predictions. 2025 gave us more than headlines. It gave us evidence. It gave us warning signs. It gave us moments where systems failed and moments where public health quietly saved lives anyway.

This reflection is rooted in both data and lived experience. Numbers tell us what is happening. People tell us how it feels and who carries the burden. When we listen to both, patterns emerge that policy alone often misses.

Below are twelve reasons public health must be centered in 2026. Each one builds on what 2025 revealed and what the evidence makes unavoidable.

What 2025 Exposed

1. Disinvestment always shows up in bodies

Cuts to global and domestic public health funding in 2025 disrupted HIV, malaria, maternal health, and disease surveillance systems worldwide. Johns Hopkins described the year as one of severe disruption to the infrastructure communities rely on most.

Key data:
• Disruptions to USAID and related funding streams affected millions who depend on prevention and primary care.
• Global child mortality risks increased after decades of progress.

Gift: Prevention is the quiet protection that keeps harm from becoming inevitable.

2. Data systems are not optional

Layoffs and restructuring weakened agencies responsible for tracking maternal mortality, environmental exposure, infectious disease, and health inequities.

Key data:
• Reduced surveillance delays outbreak detection.
• Gaps in data deepen inequities by rendering some communities invisible.

Gift: Truth requires infrastructure strong enough to hold it.

What Still Works When It Is Funded

3. Prevention remains the highest return on investment

Resurgences of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases followed declining immunization rates.

Key data:
• Vaccination programs remain among the most cost-effective health interventions globally.
• Preventable chronic disease continues to drive the majority of U.S. health care spending.

Gift: Investing early saves lives, money, and moral injury later.

4. Trust is a health outcome

Trust emerged as a defining challenge of 2025. Communities that trusted local public health leadership had better engagement with prevention services.

Key data:
• Medical distrust is associated with delayed care and poorer outcomes.
• Community-centered communication improves uptake and adherence.

Gift: Trust is an intervention that strengthens every other one.

5. Global cooperation still saves lives

Despite political headwinds, nearly 200 countries signed a global pandemic agreement focused on preparedness and equity.

Key data:
• Coordinated response reduces mortality during outbreaks.
• Isolationist approaches increase vulnerability.

Gift: Collective protection works better than isolated survival.

What the Body Is Telling Us

6. Innovation only matters if access follows

Long-acting HIV prevention tools showed promise in 2025, especially for communities historically excluded from consistent care.

Key data:
• Long-acting PrEP improves adherence and reduces new infections.
• Without public delivery systems, innovation stalls.

Gift: Access is the difference between discovery and impact.

7. Violence responds to public health strategies

Several U.S. cities saw reductions in homicides after investing in community-based violence prevention.

Key data:
• Treating violence as a public health issue reduces injury and death.
• Prevention-based approaches outperform punitive-only models.

Gift: Safety grows where prevention replaces punishment.

8. Harm reduction saves lives

Expanded naloxone access and overdose prevention strategies contributed to notable declines in overdose deaths.

Key data:
• Overdose deaths declined by roughly 25 percent in some regions.
• Evidence-based harm reduction does not increase substance use.

Gift: Evidence-based compassion keeps people alive long enough to heal.

What 2026 Requires

9. Climate and health are inseparable

Heat illness, respiratory disease, food insecurity, and displacement intensified in 2025.

Key data:
• Climate-related health events are increasing in frequency and severity.
• Preparedness reduces mortality during extreme events.

Gift: Protecting the planet protects the body.

10. Stability is a prevention strategy

Agency mergers and restructuring threatened long-term chronic disease and environmental health leadership.

Key data:
• Stable institutions sustain prevention.
• Constant reorganization drains capacity and institutional memory.

Gift: System stability is preventative strategy incarnate.

11. Community health workers are infrastructure

When funding dried up, community health workers lost jobs and communities lost access.

Key data:
• Community health workers improve maternal, chronic disease, and mental health outcomes.
• They are often the first and only point of contact in under-resourced areas.

Gift: Investing in community-rooted work is investing in resilience.

12. Healing is a public outcome

The rollback of global health gains in 2025 was not only technical. It was moral.

Key data:
• Health equity setbacks follow policy decisions, not inevitability.
• Justice-centered health systems produce sustainable outcomes.

Gift: Centering humanity in health policy is a practice of sacred belonging.

Soundtrack for the Season

There is always music behind the message.

As a child, this song was my absolute favorite Christmas song because it felt like family. It sounded like warmth, belonging, laughter in the kitchen, and the kind of love that does not need explaining. It carried the spirit of togetherness that defines the season at its best.

I offer it here as the soundtrack for this reflection. Not background noise, but grounding. A reminder that public health, at its core, is about people being able to gather, breathe, celebrate, and live well together.

🎶

Let it play while you reread the gifts. Let it remind you why this work matters.

Final Hope and Reflection

As we move toward 2026, my deepest hope is simple and ambitious at the same time.

That we all have the opportunity to experience optimal health.
Not just survival. Not just access. But health that allows for joy, rest, purpose, and connection.

And that we commit, collectively and seriously, to reducing and eliminating as many health disparities and inequities as possible. Not as slogans. Not as performative goals. But as measurable, accountable work rooted in prevention, policy, and people.

May 2026 be a year where fewer lives are shortened by systems failure.
May it be a year where more communities feel seen, protected, and resourced.
May it be a year where health feels less like a privilege and more like a shared inheritance.

Reflective Corner

Two questions to sit with and share in the comments so we can learn together:

1. What would your community lose if public health infrastructure continues to weaken?
   Whose health, safety, and access would suffer first?

2. Where have you seen prevention work quietly this year?
   What stories are not making headlines but deserve policy attention?

Two actions for this week:

1. Contact your congressional representatives.
   Ask how they are protecting public health funding, workforce stability, and prevention systems.

2. Share this article with at least three people.
   A colleague. A student. A community leader. A parent.
   Public health only works when the public understands what is at stake.

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: 2025: The Gifts of Public Health

References

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (2025). Public Health in 2025: Year in Review.
Valadéz, R. (2025). 2025 in Global Health: A Devastating Setback and a Test of Resolve. Contrarian Substack.

Pull up a chair for a moment. Let’s take this slowly and truthfully.

One of my favorite rap groups of all time is The Lox. Years ago they released a track called Money, Power, and Respect. The hook says:

Money, power and respect what you need in life
Money, power and respect—you will be eatin right
Money, power and respect—you can sleep at night
You will see the light. What is the key to life?

That song stays with me because it names something our society often whispers but rarely says out loud. We live in a world where money, power, and respect are treated like the keys to security. Not service. Not calling. Not community. But those three things.

And right now, those same forces are reshaping who gets to serve in public health and medicine. They are making it possible for the people who protect our communities to become unprotected themselves.

The proposed federal rules from the U.S. Department of Education are more than policy changes. They are value statements. They reveal who is considered worth investing in and who is expected to fend for themselves.

And dear reader, that should trouble us.

What Is Happening and Why It Matters

Congress and the Department of Education are advancing rules that would dramatically change how graduate and professional students borrow money. The most significant shifts include:

• eliminating Grad PLUS loans
• capping borrowing for graduate and professional degrees
• excluding medical residents from Public Service Loan Forgiveness
• redefining “professional degree” in a way that excludes the MPH and DrPH

Let me be plain about that last point.

Public health degrees would no longer count as professional degrees. PERIOD. FULL STOP.

This means fewer loan options. Higher interest rates. More private loans. No income-driven repayment safety nets. And fewer people are able to afford the degrees necessary to protect our communities.

We are weakening the very pipeline that keeps our nation healthy.

ASPPH has already warned that excluding the MPH and DrPH risks undermining our ability to prepare the workforce that protects and promotes community health.

If you shrink access to education, you shrink the workforce.
If you shrink the workforce, communities suffer.

Why the MPH Matters

An MPH is not a “nice to have.” It is the backbone of the systems that keep communities healthy.

People with MPHs are the ones who:

• track disease outbreaks
• design prevention strategies
• investigate unsafe water
• build maternal health programs
• lead emergency response during hurricanes, fires, and floods
• address chronic disease in Black, Brown, and rural communities
• partner with schools, churches, clinics, and community groups
• conduct research that informs policy and saves lives

The MPH teaches students how to use data, community wisdom, policy, and communication to solve the root causes of illness. It equips people to protect the public. Period.

To strip that degree of its professional status is to say the work is not essential. To limit access to loans is to say only the wealthy should lead population health systems.

That is not how you build a healthy nation.

Breaking This Down for Everyday Life

Here is the reality:

• Median medical school debt is $205,000 (AAMC, 2024).
• Total cost of attendance can reach $393,484 (EducationData.org, 2025).
• Half of medical students rely on Grad PLUS loans.
• Public health students depend heavily on federal aid because many community-serving roles pay less.
• Income-driven repayment and PSLF help stabilize a workforce already under strain.

If these programs are restricted, wealth becomes the filter for who gets to serve. That is the opposite of equity and the opposite of justice.

A Human Story Behind the Headlines

Think about Shae Marie Stafford Trujillo. He has survived narcolepsy, optic nerve damage, fluid on his brain, and years of being dismissed by clinicians. He now wants to become the kind of physician who listens and believes patients. But with these proposed rules, he worries that medical school may slip out of reach.

Or picture the public health student who wants to work in a local health department because his grandmother died from a preventable condition. He wants to help someone else’s family avoid that pain.

What happens when his degree is no longer recognized as professional?
When his loan options shrink.
When his future becomes financially impossible.

You end up with a workforce shaped by wealth rather than calling.
And inequity deepens.

Why This Threatens Primary Care, Underserved Communities, and Public Health at Large

We are entering a time when our health infrastructure is stretched thin. The evidence speaks clearly:

• The U.S. could face a shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians by 2034 (AAMC, 2021).
• State and local health departments need 80,000 additional full-time workers to provide basic public health services (De Beaumont Foundation, 2023).
• Black mothers experience significantly higher maternal mortality and morbidity than white mothers due to systemic inequities in care (McKinsey, 2023).
• More than 190 rural hospitals have closed since 2005, leaving entire counties without medical access (USDA ERS, 2024).
• Climate-related disasters continue to increase the demand for trained public health responders.

Public health is already struggling with recruitment and retention. And here is where the equity lens deepens.

Studies show:

• About 42 percent of the public health workforce are people of color (Rao et al., 2020).
• Black and Hispanic professionals are heavily represented in community health, environmental health, and health education roles.
• Asian and Pacific Islander professionals are prominent in epidemiology, laboratory science, and informatics.
• A more diverse workforce is linked to 20 to 50 percent reductions in adverse maternal outcomes for Black and Asian mothers (RVPHTC, 2022).

These individuals often enter the field because they come from communities experiencing the greatest inequities. They carry lived experience, cultural understanding, and commitment. They step into these roles to stand in the gap. This is why these proposed federal changes strike so deeply. They are about access. They are about opportunity. They are about who gets to be trained and who gets left out.

Financial barriers are not neutral.
They shape who enters the workforce.
They shape health outcomes.
They shape life and death.

The Bigger Truth: Money, Power, Respect

This moment feels like The Lox wrote a prophecy. Money determines who can afford the training. Power determines which degrees count. Respect determines which professions society protects.

When the protectors become the unprotected, every community stands on shaky ground.

So What Now

Here is what we can do.
Here is what we must do. Links embedded—click below

• Engage in the 30-day comment period when the Department of Education releases the proposal.
• Contact your federal representatives and urge them to protect access to public health and medical education.
• Share accurate information with your networks so others know what is at stake.
• Support students navigating fear, stress, and uncertainty.

Soundtrack for the Soul

“Money, Power and Respect” by The Lox.
Not because it glorifies anything harmful, but because it names the tension of this moment. Let the song spark courage. Let it remind you that our people have always turned truth into sound.

When systems decide who gets access…
Who gets funded…
Who gets protected…
And who gets left exposed…

Reflective Corner

Two questions to sit with—and share your answers in the comments so we can learn together:

1. What would your community lose if fewer people could afford to become public health professionals or physicians?
Whose health, safety, and access would suffer first?

2. How would these proposed federal changes directly affect the people you care about?
Tell us what you see where you live.

Two actions for this week:

1. Contact your congressional representatives.
Express your opposition to policies that restrict access to public health and medical education.

2. Share this article with at least three people.
A colleague. A student. A community leader. A parent.
The more people who understand what is happening, the stronger our collective response.

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: The Hidden Cost of Public Health

References

Association of American Medical Colleges. (2021). The complexities of physician supply and demand: Projections from 2019 to 2034.
Association of American Medical Colleges. (2024). Debt, costs, and loan repayment fact card for the class of 2024.
ASPPH. (2025). Department of Education proposal excludes public health degrees from professional degree definition.
De Beaumont Foundation. (2023). Staffing up: Workforce needs in state and local public health.
EducationData.org. (2025). Average cost of medical school.
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2024). Key data on health and health care by race and ethnicity.
McKinsey & Company. (2023). Closing the Black maternal health gap: Healthier lives, stronger economies.
Rao, A., et al. (2020). Racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. public health workforce.
Regional Public Health Training Center. (2022). Why we need a more racially diverse public health workforce.
USDA Economic Research Service. (2024). Rural hospital closures.

Some stories return to the public square not because they are new, but because the country has unfinished business with the truth. The Epstein files fall squarely into that category. There is political noise surrounding them, but beneath the shouting sits a deeper question: What does any of this have to do with health equity in public health?

The answer is uncomfortable and unavoidable: everything.

Recently, I listened to Dr. Gail Christopher, Dr. Michelle Williams, and Linda Marsa speak with clarity about truth, trauma, power, and the systems we depend on to keep us safe. Their reflections stayed with me because the Epstein files sit inside the exact intersection they warn us about — the place where institutional silence protects the powerful, trauma multiplies across generations, and communities are left to carry the aftermath with little acknowledgment and even less repair.

This moment is not about gossip or political strategy.
It is about the public health implications of silence.
When truth is buried, vulnerability grows.
And when vulnerability grows, inequity becomes predictable.

Seeing Past the Picture

🎧 Cordae, “Thousand Words”
“A thousand words is worth a picture, but a picture worth a thousand lies.”

Cordae opens the door for us. His line is a reminder that images often hide more than they reveal. For years, the public was fed curated photos of Epstein beside global leaders, celebrities, and cultural figures — images designed to project trustworthiness and authority. But pictures only tell the story power wants us to see. Public health deals in the truths those images work to obscure.

Dr. Michelle Williams states that “public health is the strategic pillar upon which a functioning society rests.” When that pillar weakens — whether through institutional neglect, moral compromise, or deliberate silence — harm spreads far beyond the individuals directly involved.

Child sexual exploitation is not a political embarrassment.
It is a public health emergency.

What the Data Shows

The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys in the U.S. experience sexual abuse before age 18. Globally, more than 1 billion children experience violence each year. Survivors carry higher risks of depression, PTSD, chronic illness, anxiety, substance use, and suicide attempts.

The data has always been clear.
What has not been clear is our willingness to confront it.

When governments or institutions withhold what they know about how harm occurred, they are not withholding gossip. They are withholding prevention. They are withholding accountability. They are withholding safety.

Silence is not protective.
It is permissive.

Casualties of Silence

🎧 Cordae, “Thousand Words”
“Lose track of reality, a nuisance, a casualty.”

Silence turns people into casualties long before society notices. And silence is never neutral. It is a choice — one that creates disproportionate vulnerability.

As Linda Marsa warns, we are living in a time of “preventable suffering,” where the conditions that harm people are well known but rarely addressed with urgency. Children in foster care, unstable housing, underfunded communities, or marginalized identities face the highest risks of exploitation because systems fail to protect them.

For Black families, especially Black women, these dynamics are tragically familiar.

Epstein is not a new pattern — he is a modern manifestation of an old one: powerful men protected, vulnerable children disregarded, and entire systems designed to minimize or dismiss the magnitude of harm.

Picture a Black elder woman watching these hearings today. She may not use academic language for what she sees, but she recognizes the pattern. Her mother survived exploitation during Jim Crow. Her grandmother endured racialized sexual violence bonded into the history of enslavement. Her own childhood might have been shaped by a mother who carried trauma she couldn’t name. Dr. Joy DeGruy’s Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome explains how enslaved mothers sometimes publicly diminished their children — “She’s slow,” “He’s no good” — to make them less appealing targets to predatory men. A heartbreaking survival tactic. A protective act that left emotional wounds lasting generations.

Generational trauma manifests in the body long before it appears in the medical chart.

By the time that granddaughter becomes a grandmother today, she may carry hypertension, chronic stress, anxiety, and “noncompliance.” But her chart does not say:
Her ancestors’ bodies were never safe.
Her family learned silence as survival.
Her distrust of systems is rooted in lived history.

As Dr. Gail Christopher reminds us, “We cannot eliminate inequities without eliminating the false hierarchy of human value.” And the Epstein story is, at its core, a story about who is protected, who is disposable, and whose pain is considered inconvenient to acknowledge.

The Spectacle and the Truth

🎧 Cordae, “Thousand Words”
“People love a spectacle, but never love the truth.”

Cordae names the exact crossroads we stand at.
The spectacle is loud.
The truth is quiet but costly.

The political conversation around the Epstein files has devolved into a spectacle — accusations, denials, conspiracy theories, and curated outrage. But public health is not concerned with political performance. It is concerned with truth, safety, and prevention.

Dr. Michelle Williams said, “Preventable suffering keeps me up at night.”
This is preventable suffering.

What Trauma Does to the Body

Trauma reshapes the nervous system.
It increases inflammation.
It accelerates aging.
It suppresses immunity.
It raises the risk of chronic disease and premature death.
Survivors have two to three times higher rates of chronic illness.

Trauma is not an emotional inconvenience.
It is a biological disruption.
And its effects span lifetimes.

This is why the Epstein files matter.
Because truth is the foundation of prevention.
Prevention is the foundation of health equity.
And accountability is the foundation of trust.

Returning to What Is Real

🎧 Cordae, “Thousand Words”
“Keep it real with yourself and you will never lose.”

Returning to what is real means stepping beyond the noise and asking what these files reveal about us as a society. The truth is that Epstein is not an isolated tragedy — he is a mirror. He reflects what happens when wealth, access, and influence outweigh the safety of children.

This is why the Epstein files should matter to all of us. They are not just a list of names. They are evidence of how institutions — cultural, legal, political, and religious— decide whose lives are protected and whose lives are ignored. They reveal a pattern of complicity and selective accountability that shapes public health conditions across entire communities.

Public health rests on a simple foundation:
People deserve dignity, safety, and truth.

When we make exceptions for power, we make exploitation predictable.
When we normalize secrecy, we normalize harm.
When we protect the powerful instead of the vulnerable, we institutionalize inequity.

And this is where Pauli Murray’s wisdom speaks directly to our moment. In Song in a Weary Throat, she wrote that “hope is a song in a weary throat,” a reminder that justice work is born from truth-telling even when truth feels exhausting. Murray taught us that systems do not heal on their own. They heal when people refuse to remain silent. They heal when we choose truth over comfort. They heal when we challenge the structures built to overlook harm.

Her life reminds us that silence is not neutrality — silence is complicity.
And complicity is the soil where exploitation grows.

If we are serious about building a healthier nation — one where trauma is not inherited — then we must confront every structure that allows exploitation to flourish in silence. These files are a test of whether we value truth enough to act on it for the sake of the children whose names will never reach the headlines.

Returning to what is real means choosing courage over comfort. It means refusing the easy narratives that tell us to look away. It means caring about children we will never meet. It means honoring the vulnerable over the powerful. It means building a nation where dignity is not conditional and protection is not selective.

Pauli Murray’s legacy challenges us to name the truth and demand better. Because public health is about honoring life, and there is no equity without accountability.

🎧 Soundtrack for the Soul

🌿 Reflective Corner

• Where do you see echoes of generational trauma in your own lineage?

• How has silence shaped how your family or community learned to cope?

• What might prevention look like if transparency were a value, not an option?

  Healing begins with honesty.
  Equity begins with acknowledgement.
  Prevention begins with responsibility.

  The Epstein files remind us that silence protects the wrong people.
  Harm thrives in the places we refuse to examine.
  And when adults choose comfort over truth, children pay the price.

  🎧 Podcast Corner

  For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

  Listen here: Behind the Silence: Epstein’s Dark Legacy

  Your Action Steps This Week

  1. Advocate for transparency.
  Contact your congressional representative and urge them to support the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Request a survivor-centered release of records, not a political spectacle.

  2. Support child protection work where you live.
  Choose one:
  • a sexual assault crisis center
  • a Black- or Brown-led survivor organization
  • a youth mentoring or advocacy program
  Donate, volunteer, or amplify their work.

  3. Break silence in your own circles.
  If someone shares harm, believe them the first time.
  If your family carries unspoken trauma, start with one honest conversation this month.

  4. Protect your lineage by healing your part.
  Choose one trauma-informed practice — therapy, journaling, prayer, breathwork, movement, or spiritual grounding — to interrupt what was passed down.

  5. Stay informed, not overwhelmed.
  Follow one credible source on trauma prevention or racial healing. Let knowledge be a tool for empowerment, not fear.

  Because protecting children and healing communities is not abstract work.
  It begins with us — one truth, one action, one step toward justice at a time.

  ---

  📚 References

  ABC News. (2025). Trump’s MAGA followers care about the Epstein files. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-maga-followers-care-epstein-files/story

  American Psychological Association. (2023). Trauma exposure and mental health in African American communities.

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Adverse childhood experiences and lifetime health. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Preventing child sexual abuse. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse

  Christopher, G. C. (2023). Racial healing and the narrative of human value.

  DeGruy, J. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury and healing. Uptone Press.

  Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis. Ethnicity & Disease, 2(2), 207–221.

  Marsa, L. (2013). Fevered: Why a hotter planet will hurt our health—and how we can save ourselves. Rodale Books.

  Murray, P. (1987). Song in a weary throat: An American pilgrimage. Harper & Row.

  PBS NewsHour. (2025). What to know about the MAGA faithful’s anger over Trump and the Epstein case. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-to-know-about-the-maga-faithfuls-anger-over-trump-and-the-epstein-case

  Politico. (2025). House advances vote on Epstein Files Transparency Act. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/12/house-epstein-files-vote

  The Atlantic. (2025). The Epstein email that changed the political equation. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/trump-epstein-email

  World Health Organization. (2024). Violence against children: Key facts. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-children

There have been so many Biblical, clinical, historical, philosophical, and psychological books written to explain the state of humanity. Each tries to name what went wrong. Some say “man is selfish and self-centered.” Others say “man is intrinsically evil.” The Bible says we were born into sin and shaped in iniquity.

But before we go running down rabbit holes of how humanity fell, we must go back to the very beginning to see three foundational truths that restore our understanding of life itself:

• Truth One: “In the beginning God.”
  This establishes life. It teaches that everything that exists—every body, every breath, every living thing—exists because of God. Not the universe. Not a nameless energy. A real, living being. Almighty God. Before there was any person, place, or thing, there was and is God. Period. Full stop.

• Truth Two: Life was created in the image of God.
  Genesis 1:27 reminds us that humanity was made in the Creator’s image. Life was not an accident, and you were not an afterthought. Every human being carries the imprint of divine worth that cannot be ranked, priced, or rationed.

• Truth Three: The Word has power.
  John 1:1 tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Words create. The language we use about health, worth, and one another either breathes life or takes it away.

These truths are the foundation of all understanding. Because if life begins with God, then health equity begins with honoring that divine breath in every person.

God, Life, and the Circle of Equity

If life is sacred, then every system that touches life must also be sacred. Yet in America, our systems often tell another story. We can hear the imbalance in the data and feel it in our daily lives when safety becomes uncertain, when care becomes unaffordable, and when despair becomes familiar.

The circle of health is not only broken by disease. It is broken by neglect, disconnection, and disbelief in one another’s humanity.

📊 Data Snapshot: Life, Loss, and the Intersections of Inequity

Behind every statistic is a system, and behind every system is a choice. These numbers are not random. They are connected, forming a pattern of imbalance that mirrors a spiritual wound in the nation’s conscience.

1. Life Expectancy and Geography
The length of life is often decided by the ZIP code you were born into. Black Americans live nearly five years shorter on average than White Americans (CDC, 2024). Those years are not just lost; they are taken by stress, polluted air, underfunded hospitals, and communities that have been disinvested for generations.

The South, where faith and family roots run deep, carries some of the nation’s highest chronic-disease and premature-death rates. The same regions that birthed freedom songs now face the highest rates of heart disease and diabetes. These are not coincidences. They are the echoes of redlining, segregation, and systemic neglect.

2. Gun Violence and Generational Trauma
Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for Black men under 45 and the second leading cause of death for all American children and teens (CDC, 2024). The rate of firearm homicide for Black Americans is twelve times higher than for White Americans.

Each shooting reverberates through families and neighborhoods, eroding the sense of safety that health depends on. Violence is not isolated; it is connected to poverty, housing instability, and a lack of mental health resources. When the body is unsafe, the mind and spirit suffer too.

The American Public Health Association names gun violence a public health crisis, urging prevention strategies that center community healing, not punishment. Exposure to violence increases the risk of chronic disease, PTSD, and depression across generations.

3. Mental Health and the Cost of Grief
Only one in three Black adults who need mental health care receive it (APA, 2023). That gap is not about willingness but access and trust. Communities still carry memories of harm from medical neglect and racial trauma. When compounded by grief from gun violence, unemployment, or chronic stress, the toll is immense.

Untreated trauma leads to hypertension, anxiety, substance misuse, and despair. The broken circle of care shows how spiritual, emotional, and physical wounds intersect.

4. Environment and Economy
Where we live shapes how we live. Environmental injustice remains a silent killer. Black and Brown neighborhoods face higher exposure to pollutants, fewer grocery stores, and less green space. These conditions increase risk for asthma, cancer, and cardiovascular disease (Williams & Cooper, 2019).

Economic inequity compounds the harm. Disparities in income and wealth drive differences in nutrition, housing, and access to care, reinforcing the cycle of poor health outcomes (Bates & Hodge, 2022).

When you connect these data points, you begin to see the whole picture. They are not separate crises. They are one broken circle of violence, trauma, pollution, poverty, and poor access all orbiting the same core: the devaluation of life.

If Genesis tells us that all life carries the imprint of God, then these inequities are not just public-health failures. They are moral and spiritual fractures. The circle has been broken, not by fate, but by design.

To restore the circle, we must start where life began: with God’s breath and with truth.

From this truth, everything else flows.

Later, in Genesis 1:27, we learn that humankind was created in the image of God. That verse gives us the second truth. Life was not an accident. You were not an afterthought. You are made in the image of the Creator, and that image carries worth that cannot be ranked, priced, or rationed.

That is why the first rule of life is there is life. Because before there was sin, there was creation. Before there was brokenness, there was belonging.

Finally, in John 1:1, Scripture says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is power. The words we speak shape the worlds we live in. When we speak about health, equity, and who “deserves” care, our language either breathes life or takes it away.

The question then becomes: are we still speaking life into one another, or just managing death with better technology?

Speaking Life Back Into Systems

Words create worlds. When we describe communities as “vulnerable,” “noncompliant,” or “high-risk,” we speak limits over lives that God already called good. Healing begins when we change both our language and our lens.

In African and Indigenous traditions, health was never separate from the sacred. The circle of life—spiritual, emotional, physical, and communal—was whole. When one part was harmed, the entire community gathered to restore it. The same must be true for us today.

Health equity is not a favor extended by privilege. It is the restoration of divine order. The breath of God belongs to all.

If the first rule of life is that there is life, the second is that life must be protected.

📊 Data Snapshot: Faith, Health, and Wholeness

• Spirituality strengthens healing. The World Health Organization (2024) recognizes spirituality as a determinant of health, influencing recovery, resilience, and overall well-being (WHO, 2024).

• Faith protects mental health. Religiosity and spirituality predict psychological well-being among Black women, with prayer serving as a key coping resource (Assari & Lankarani, 2013).

• Community connection heals trauma. Faith-based and ancestral healing traditions reduce distress and rebuild belonging, proving that spiritual wellness is public health.

• Spiritual determinants of health bridge the gap between policy and purpose. When systems honor both the science and the spirit of human existence, outcomes improve across all indicators.

✨ A Closing Thought

Health equity is not a technical goal. It is a spiritual covenant, a promise that what God created, we will not destroy. To heal the body of a nation, we must first heal the spirit that guides it. The data shows the damage, but faith demands the repair.

And maybe that is what Soul II Soul was reminding us when they asked, “Back to life, back to reality… however do you want me?”
The lyric is more than rhythm. It is a call. It asks whether we are willing to return, to breathe life back into our systems, our words, and our communities.

If the first rule of life is that there is life, then the second is that we must come back to it. Back to justice. Back to empathy. Back to one another.

🎧 Soundtrack for the Soul

Let this song guide your reflection. Let it remind you that revival of faith, of health, and of community begins when we return to what was divinely established: life itself.

🌿 Reflective Corner

Meditative Reflections

1. Where have you seen the circle of health or humanity broken in your own community?

2. How might returning to the sacredness of life change how you view justice and healing?

Actionable Steps

• Speak Life: Replace deficit words such as “at risk” or “noncompliant” with dignity-affirming language.

• Circle Work: Identify one local effort that uplifts Black or Brown wellness, then volunteer, donate, or amplify.

• Faith Practice: Each morning this week, declare aloud, “There is life, and I choose to protect it.”

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: Breath, Race, and Health Inequality

📖 Scripture References

• Genesis 1:1

• Genesis 1:27

• John 1:1

• Hebrews 13:8

• Psalm 32:8

References

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Life Expectancy in the United States, 2023. Data Brief 521.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Firearm Violence: Facts and Statistics.

• American Public Health Association. (2024). Gun Violence Prevention: A Public Health Priority.

• American Psychological Association. (2023). Stress in America 2023: A Nation Recovering from Collective Trauma.

• Williams, D. R., & Cooper, L. A. (2019). Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(4), 606.

• Bates, L., & Hodge, D. (2022). Faith, Race, and Health Inequities in the United States. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 9580265.

• Assari, S., & Lankarani, M. M. (2013). The Influence of Religiosity and Spirituality on Psychological Well-Being Among Black Women. Journal of Black Psychology.

• World Health Organization. (2024). Achieving Well-Being: A Global Framework for Integrating Well-Being into Public Health.

There are seasons of wandering. When you have lost the recipe even though you still have the ingredients: faith, purpose, the bond with your child, and the call for health equity. You just cannot remember how you once cooked up joy.*

So I asked myself, where are the recipes?
The ones passed quietly through generations. The ones whispered in prayer circles, lived in persistence, and carried by our elders. These recipes are not just for us. They are for our children, our communities, and for the justice-filled work we are called to do.

As the incomparable Mumu Fresh reminds us:

“Baby, if you lose your way
It’s only a prayer away.
Your guiding light, your North Star, is with you everywhere you are.”

“I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.”
— Psalm 32:8 (NLT)

That lyric rings like a bell. When you are off-course, whether you meant to be or not, you are not lost beyond retrieval. Your North Star still shines.
And the recipes? They are still there. Waiting for you to remember.

God, Guidance, and the Recipe for Alignment

Faith is not a ticket to an endpoint. It is an orientation, a turning toward truth when the world tells you otherwise. It is the “how” behind the “why.”

When Mumu Fresh sings:

“When you get a stain on your crown from fumbling down, pick it up and brush it off, it’s part of the process.”

She is telling you that stumbling does not disqualify your calling. It is part of the recipe, the ingredient of humility, the measure of persistence.

And herein lies the wonder. The God of our ancestors, the prayers they heard, and the songs they sang are still alive. He still remembers the prayers whispered under oaks draped in Spanish moss, in outside sanctuaries, and from decorated pulpits. Because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8 NLT).

Those prayers were planted in us. We are the manifestation. The living recipe.

Lessons from the Kitchen: Salt, Sugar, and the Spirit of Discernment

In cooking and in life, appearance can fool you. Salt and sugar look the same. Water and vodka shimmer the same in the light. Not everything that looks pure belongs in the mix.

So much of what looks like a blessing can be an impostor. So much of what feels like purpose can be distraction.
Discernment is the tool, the test, and the trusted recipe for authenticity.

Everything that is good is not of God, and everything of God is always good. Sometimes what glitters as opportunity is temptation dressed in favor. It is like tasting something sweet only to realize later it was the wrong ingredient. The relationship that looks right but pulls you away from peace. The job that pays more but costs your purpose.

Scripture reminds us that we are to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1 NLT). True discernment helps us separate imitation from intention and authenticity from appearance.

In our African ancestral traditions, discernment was sacred work. Elders consulted both prayer and spirit through dreams, divination, song, and community dialogue before making decisions.

From the griots of West Africa to the ring shouts of the Carolinas, spiritual wisdom was never separate from daily life. It was the compass.

The original North Star.

Today, that same ancestral discernment reminds us that not every open door is destiny. Some are detours that test whether we still trust Almighty God and the ancestors who guide our steps.

📊 Data Snapshot: African Spirituality and Healing

• Across sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, ancestral ritual, possession practices, and storytelling serve as collective therapy for trauma and memory restoration (Ferme & Palmie, 2007).

• In Yoruba and Afro-Caribbean cosmologies, spirit communication and ancestral veneration reduce psychological distress and build social belonging (Ofili, 2023).

• Global frameworks recognize that faith and spirituality contribute to psycho-spiritual resilience and recovery (Sumaiya, 2024).

Faith and ancestral connection together form the recipe for discernment: testing, tasting, and trusting before we act.

Staying the Course: Faith, Family, and the Future

For me, the recipe is about legacy. My son. The work I have committed to. The people I serve.

“The righteous road’s a lonely one, the words I told my only son.”

That lyric stirs me. Because yes, the path toward purpose is not always crowded. It is not always applauded. But it is meaningful. It is real.

📊 Data Snapshot: Faith and Black Women’s Leadership

• Spirituality shapes civic engagement. Religiosity and divine purpose increase critical social action among Black emerging-adult women, strengthening both faith and advocacy (Patton et al., 2025).

• Among African-descended women, spiritual health predicts emotional well-being more strongly than income or education, emphasizing the protective power of faith (Hodge et al., 2006).

• Religiosity and spirituality predict psychological well-being and purpose among Black women, with prayer serving as a consistent coping resource (Assari & Lankarani, 2013).

I do not just want to get well. I want us to heal together. I want my son to see me return to my truth, to walk steady, and to cook the right recipe even when the kitchen is chaotic and the instructions are lost. Because the ingredients are already within me.

Healing, Purpose, and Public Health

In the work of health equity, purpose and prayer are not side notes. They are the foundation. You cannot separate the story of healing from the story of the people. You cannot separate health from history.

📊 Data Snapshot: Spiritual Determinants of Health

• The World Health Organization affirms that spirituality is central to well-being and should be included in all public-health frameworks (WHO, 2024).

• The Oxford Handbook of African Religions reports that indigenous healing rituals and ancestral communion reduce anxiety and depression while restoring communal balance (Falola & Afolabi, 2023).

• Health Affairs (2024) identifies spirituality as a determinant of health that influences recovery, chronic-disease management, and mental-health outcomes (VanderWeele et al., 2024).

• African healing philosophies connect spirituality, ecology, and justice, offering ritual as symbolic reparation for historical trauma (Mbala, 2023).

The recipe I hold onto is not only mine. It belongs to a community and a lineage. It stretches across generations. It is about health and justice. It is about the story of a people whose prayers have always been grounded in faith, discernment, and enduring joy.

As the Word reminds us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.”
(Proverbs 3:5–6 NLT)

🎧 Soundtrack for the Soul
Let the sound guide your reflection.

🌿 Reflective Corner

Meditative Reflections

• What recipe did you once follow, spiritually or emotionally, that you have lost track of?

• What “salt disguised as sugar” has crept into your life, imitating purpose but stealing peace?

Actionable Steps

• Prayer Reset: Begin each morning this week by saying, “God, show me the recipe I have forgotten.”

• Recipe Reconstruction: Write down two or three spiritual or ancestral practices you inherited from elders, ancestors, or community. Reclaim one this week.

• Community Note: Share with one person, whether a child, friend, or mentee, the recipe you are returning to, and invite them into it with you.

🎧 Podcast Corner

For readers who prefer to listen, this essay has also been adapted into an audio podcast using Speechify.

Listen here: Finding Your North Star

Intentionality and wellness,
— Fawn

References

• Achebe, C., & Ofili, E. (2023). Faith, Anxiety, and Ancestral Continuity in Yoruba and Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Practices. The Oxford Handbook of African Religions. https://academic.oup.com/book/35499/chapter-abstract/304498301

• Ferme, M., & Palmie, S. (2007). Investigating Possession Pasts: Memory and Afro-Caribbean Religion and Folklore. New West Indian Guide. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25474843

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