Why I started Self Care Flexx:
I started Self-Care Flexx to offer a holistic approach to preventative healthcare. If we can take better care of ourselves than the current healthcare system, we can thrive. By prioritizing our mental, physical, and spiritual health, we can protect ourselves from the oppression still present in our society. Listening to our bodies, processing our emotions, and living our purpose can be liberating and offer us the freedom we need and deserve.
Let me start with my experience with my pediatrician. I remember thinking he was so smart, old, and white. Every time he saw me, he would say, “she’s healthy, she’s fine.” We only had one conversation about my weight, and he told me, “you can’t lose weight; that’s just how you are built.”
When I turned 20 and started having sexual experiences, I worried about getting pregnant. So over the years, I tried different birth control methods as I entered different relationships: IUDs, the pill, Plan B, and the patch for a brief period. My OBGYN was a rough white lady. I remember thinking, “don’t cry, don’t show weakness, don’t shed a tear” as she shoved the IUD in. The hormones made me feel crazy, and I instantly regretted the IUD.
For months, I was uncomfortable, and I could feel it in there. She even put it in wrong and said, “I can pull it out and fix it, but it’s going to hurt” — as if the first time didn’t almost kill me! I hated being a girl for these reasons. Periods, birth control, hormones — all of it is so dreadful.
Did you know that certain countries have menstrual leave (where you can take 3–7 days off work to bleed), and here we are, fighting for our rights to control our own bodies? It’s absurd.
The reason I started Self-Care Flexx is because of my mom’s experience with the healthcare system in the United States. I am a first-generation American, and when my mother went to a hospital to give birth to my older brother, a New York City doctor told her that my brother had died in her belly.
This is Western medicine: a trained professional was dismissing and delivering horrific news to a young, black, pregnant 20-something-year-old first-time mom in a disrespectful manner. She left, went to another doctor, got induced, and delivered the baby, who spent a few weeks in the hospital because he drank all the fluids in her belly.
Today, my brother is a 36-year-old athlete and coach with his own son. But what if my mother had listened to the first doctor and let him cut the baby out? This is why I am scared to have kids. I don’t trust medical institutions to take care of me.
I believe that we can heal ourselves through food, prayer, and love. If Eat Pray Love had a Black spin-off, it would be my life. I deeply believe that if we actively work to heal ourselves from within, we can avoid becoming another statistic.
The doctors in this country who believe that Black people have a higher pain tolerance than any other race are wrong. Do they receive bias training in medical school?
Make it make sense.
