The Start of my Journey

What I’ve learned so far about women’s health, sexuality, and gender equality hasn’t just come from textbooks, studies, or headlines but it has come from listening.

Listening to my own body when it was dismissed or overlooked.

Listening to people I’ve led, who entrusted me with stories about their transitions, their coming out journeys, their struggles and triumphs. Listening to my friends and their moments of dismissal and shame that they have been shown.

Listening in a state where silence sometimes feels safer than speaking out.

For over 17 years as a leader, I’ve been more than a manager, I’ve been a safe space. I’ve had conversations that were never “in the job description,” but that mattered far more than any task list. People have told me things they could not tell their families. And as a woman in her 40s, I’ve had my own share of moments where my voice was minimized, my pain questioned, or my experience brushed aside.

This space is where I want to begin capturing those lessons. Not as a collection of answers, but as a record of the journey: my growth, my learning, and the shifting understanding of what it means to live at the intersections of gender, health, and equality.

This is Volume 1 — the start of my journey. I don’t expect to leave this space the same way I entered it, and I hope that in time, the words I write here will reflect not only who I am now, but who I am becoming.