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Standards of Care

Rolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

The Empty Room Inside Each of Us

Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

Formed Otherwise

There’s a presumption that to raise a child with disabilities makes you brave. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t always a stellar mother, either. But I studied my daughter as if she were an ancient text to see what was beneath the chatter and the rage

The Feeding

Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

Our Fraying Hearts

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

Sunbeams

God and the Doctor we alike adore / But only when in danger, not before; / The danger o’er, both are alike requited, / God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.

John Owen

Milk

Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

Practicing

Taking piano lessons, learning to speak Russian, seeking enlightenment

My Bowstring Heart

On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.