Are we going to talk about how doctors refused to diagnose her, even went as far as saying she was making it up? She literally collapsed in front of one for her symptoms to be taken seriously and that was years after she was already seeking help. Years! And the one person that believed her was another actor that she didn’t even know!

I sat in front of an NIH researcher and explained how I was a #1 NYT Bestselling author but I’d had to pull out of domestic tour stops and cancel all my international tours for the first time in my career and how I couldn’t focus to race cars anymore and how I couldn’t put together words enough to write a novel for the first time in a decade and some days I couldn’t remember my address or digest food. I was willing to put in the work to get my brain back, I said, but I just didn’t know what I had to do, if there was anything I could do.

He thought about it.

And then he told me that sometimes women of my age get sad.

It doesn’t matter if you have status if you look like a woman.

Never let yourself be talked out of your symptoms just because someone has more letters after their name. And PoC, that goes double. Triple. Quadruple. There are doctors who will listen.