One of the most critical issues in the Black community is health disparities, particularly as we face a pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black people. This chapter provides the opportunity to practice empathy and to open yourself to the experiences of others. I use my own stories to demonstrate the ways that health disparities impact our lives and the factors that have caused them to be part of the landscape of structural racism.

It had been a rough night with my nine-month-old son Andrew. He had woken up in the middle of the night, and cried inconsolably for nearly two hours. My husband and I tried all of our tricks to get him back to sleep, and we all eventually succumbed to exhaustion in the wee hours of the morning. When my sister Marsha arrived to babysit in the morning, I decided to try and take a nap before heading to work.

I heard the phone ring a bit later and then Marsha running down the stairs. It was my mother on the phone. Marsha cried, “Terri, Dad is dead…” My heart stopped—I sat up in the bed and the sobs began soon after. My father had had a massive heart attack, and despite doing CPR, my mother wasn't able to revive him. He was gone by the time the ambulance came.

I could feel my world collapsing around me. I pounded the bed in frustration. Then I held my son Andrew and called my husband. I thought back to the episode my dad had a few weeks earlier, where he had weakness in his legs. He hadn't gone to the doctor, a mistake that may have cost him his life. It was a week before Father's Day and we had just celebrated his 73rd birthday.

My father was my first loss of an immediate family member. It would only be a few years later when my mother would suffer the stroke that would leave her incapacitated. Before the death of my father in 2001, I hadn't paid much attention to racial disparities in health. I didn't realize the broader impacts that these disparities were having on the Black community.