I do this for every woman and person who's been told their pain is "normal,"

My story starts when I was just 14 years old with my first period, but it took me over a decade to understand what was really happening to my body. Picture this: I'm sitting in math class experiencing symptoms so severe I'd literally army crawl on the floor to the bathroom and throw up from pain. But everyone kept telling me this was "normal."

Here I was, bleeding through overnight pads within hours, fainting from pain, feeling like my body was completely betraying me. And the response? "Oh, that's just what periods are like." From ages 14 to 18, I was just suffering through as best as I could. When I finally got on birth control at 18, it thankfully did help with the intensity of my symptoms and brought them down. But here's the thing - even when I was given birth control, there was no further investigation into why my periods were like that in the first place, and there was no direction going forward. It was just "some people experience this, take birth control and you'll be fine."

For over a decade, I kept reporting the same symptoms, and what did I get? A "learn to manage" attitude. Not heal—just manage. And here's the thing: this is especially true for Black women and people. We're statistically less likely to be believed when we report pain, and that's facts.

For the longest time, I really thought that everything people were saying was true—that my periods were normal or that my body just hated me. I had accepted that this was the life I was supposed to live. But things got progressively worse, even with an IUD, which is what led me to seeking out a gynecologist in August 2024.

In August 2024, I finally got in to see a gynecologist that I had waited almost a year to see. I told her all my symptoms, and the first thing she asked me was if I wanted to have kids. Then she jokingly (but not really, in my opinion) told me to consider having children to help with my symptoms... what. I was shook.

But then she said something that changed my life: "Have you ever heard of endometriosis?" She gave me a pamphlet which was practically useless, but I spent the rest of that night and the days following exhaustively researching about endometriosis. That research literally saved my life.

The next month I was in the ER with the most excruciating pain of my life. I was terrified. I thought I was going to die. I ended up going to the ER again the next day, and a nurse straight up didn't believe I was in pain. She took me in for vitals and saw that I was in the ER the night before—she then proceeded to ask, "What do you want us to do for you then? Are you just looking for drugs?"

I could not believe what I was hearing while I was nearly blacking out from pain. Thankfully I knew about endometriosis before this, or I would have had no idea what was happening in my body at all, especially since so many scans came back clear.

The next four months were brutal. Daily pain, barely able to move around—my entire life just stopped. Thankfully, I was able to get in with a specialist pretty quickly. When met Dr. Mini Somasundaram, and she was one of the first doctors who actually knew what she was talking about when it came to these conditions. In January 2025, I had my excision surgery and finally got my official diagnosis: stage 2 endometriosis, endosalpingiosis (both with severe adhesions and Allen Masters syndrome), and severe adenomyosis. Having those words, that validation—it was everything.

I'd never heard about endosalpingiosis until it was on my pathology from surgery. It's the same as endometriosis but with fallopian tube tissue instead of uterine tissue. We don't even have an estimate of how many people have it because it's so under-diagnosed and under-researched.

You know what really got me started on social media? I knew how hard it was to find information and other people who actually look like you going through the same things. So I started @endowhileblack on TikTok, sharing my real, unfiltered journey and talking about the unique challenges we face as Black women and people trying to get proper care.

It makes me vulnerable sometimes, but representation matters so much. I want people to understand that endometriosis doesn't discriminate, but our healthcare system definitely does.

I put myself out there because I believe the best way to bring awareness is by showing it firsthand, especially as a Black woman whose pain has been minimized in healthcare spaces. I do this for every woman and person who's been told their pain is "normal," and I won't stop until our voices are heard and our pain is believed.

-Dara B