To My Daughters, Who Will Need to Know

*“To My Daughters, Who Will Need to Know” a poem*

This physician had recently started a new job when the pandemic hit.

The safety measures put in place at work enabled her to have an extended maternity leave to spend time with one young daughter and her baby daughter born that summer.

Still, the year had many challenges with so many changes at once in the midst of the pandemic.

As a Black woman, she faced additional challenges related to ongoing racial violence in the U.S. and how so many of her well-meaning colleagues at work reacted to this racism. She saw herself as having grown tremendously during that year — both in actions she took herself as well as her renewed reliance on her strong network of other Black women.

She wanted her poem to cement how much struggle she had overcome that year and to also serve as a role model for her daughters.

Listener Poet Yvette Perry

Association of American Medical Colleges

March 2021

One day, you’ll want to know how I came to

be so strong and you will need to know:

I grew into this woman

You’ll need to know how hard it was this

past year for me to start a new job,

to be a new mother of two

Running fast, I hit a brick wall

A new virus made the wall harder

The old virus made it harder still

Even though that summer my inbox at work

overflowed with their words of

solidarity, after a while when I’d say

8 minutes 46 seconds they’d be confused

or when I’d say Say her name

they’d wonder Whose?

You’ll need to know that when I

hit that brick wall, I did not fall,

I leaned back into arms of sister-friends

I learned to slow myself down, inhale

good moments, extend grace unto myself

I learned to reject the legacy of

so many women before me who had

learned to build walls that were

hindrances to their own happiness

I see, my Beloveds, me reflected in you:

strong Black woman I grew into,

unbreakable not despite, but

because of my vulnerability

I know one day you’ll need to know so that

when you come to your own brick walls you can

find the doors and walk through

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