I am compelled to write. Not often for myself, but for others. The mistakes I have made with life in academia, life as a mother, can be avoided. The lessons I have learned as a black woman in academia, a black mother, including mothering a child society labels as not being neurotypical, can be shared. For what is typical anymore? That a child would rather paint in pictures than regurgitate the same mundane lesson plans over and over. That a woman, myself, can have children and still be in academia. That I can love my job, love that it helps me interact with students, love that it forces me to keep learning, love that it enables me to continue to question the questions. The roads we all must take through life are ours to take. My journey has not been smooth. But it’s mine. And so I am compelled to write about it so you know that I am human. With flaws and imperfections, hopes and impediments. I am also a storyteller. My vehicle through life was never really about the spaces I occupy, but the stories I tell. I am learning that now. It has taken a pandemic for me to wake up to my potentials. It has taken a pandemic for me to wake up and start telling the stories that matter. Our best weapon for future pandemics is not to marshall facts but stories. Stories can be our hope and strength. A very present help for future pandemics, without which we are blind.

So I am compelled now, in this phase of my life, to write stories so we never forget people like Jazz Dixon, the first person to die from COVID in Saint Louis City where I live. She was only 31 years old and loved to bake. I am compelled to write about Jacob Plange-Rhule, my mentor and principal investigator on our ongoing research in Ghana. Covid may have robbed us of his gentle warm smile, but I am compelled to write so we never forget him. I am compelled to write about the times we forgot, 1918 to be precise. I am compelled to write about this picture below of a man and his two children. By the time Red Cross stopped by his home with food, their mother had just died. They lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am compelled to write about them because our history books did not even think to include their names.

I am compelled to write because we have been here before with pandemics and the shockingly sparse data on what black populations did to mobile resources, to engage in activism, to survive the pandemic. I am compelled write because unlike today, we knew back then that masks worked, social distancing too. I am compelled to write about what went wrong then with the pandemic we find ourselves in. I am compelled to write because over 500,000 deaths in the US alone, over 2 million globally, demand that we never forget that they lived. For them, I am compelled to write so we never fall into amnesia, another forgotten pandemic, another forgotten experience of racism, or inequities and their contributions to pandemics or silence, or survival with being black and female in academia. I am compelled to write so we never forget. Keep writing.