I am not someone with a personal lupus story. But I am a Black woman who has sat in a doctor's office and had to fight to be taken seriously. I am a woman who only recently learned what was happening in my own body because no one brought it up until I did. And I know enough to understand that six years of suffering while three different doctors tell you nothing is wrong is not a medical mystery. It is a failure.
"Lupus is the fifth leading cause of death for Black women between the ages of 15 and 24. Not somewhere on a list. Fifth. And most people have never heard of it."
The butterfly rash. The joint pain that moves. The fatigue that does not respond to sleep. The kidney damage that builds quietly for years. These are not vague complaints. They are a disease that disproportionately hits Black women harder, earlier, and with less support than almost any other group, and the awareness gap is part of what makes it so dangerous.
Lupus awareness should not start and stop in May. But May is where we begin. If someone reads this and recognizes their own symptoms, or shares it with a daughter, a cousin, a friend who has been told she is fine when she knows she is not, then this page did exactly what it was supposed to do.
You know your body. If something has been wrong and no one has listened, keep going. A diagnosis is not a gift doctors give you. It is something you fight for.