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Black Pain by Terrie Williams6/28/2023 ![]() ![]() If I'm honest with myself, and with you, the fact is that I'm more like these folks than I care to admit. He can't talk about it, nor can his family, even though he's a respected physician and his brother is a well-regarded man of the cloth! Sometimes I would come home from these trips totally drained in my heart and soul, having heard stories like the one I heard from a man whose two sisters are home suffering from major depression. ![]() After my talks, person after person would come to me to confide that they, too, were "going through it." ![]() ![]() Their fear was echoed in conversation upon conversation I had while traveling across the country giving talks about how we are doing - about waking up in pain each day - to audiences that ranged from CEOs to regular churchgoers. The folks who wrote to me were scared - some of them terrified - to breathe a word to anyone they were paralyzed by the fear that no one would understand or accept them. Not friends, not family members, but me - someone they didn't know! I also wasn't prepared for the intensity of my frustration as I came to understand how many Black women and men are suffering silently. Complete strangers wrote to me because I was the safest person they could share with. I received over 10,000 letters, over half of them from people "coming out" for the first time about their pain and depression. I was not prepared for the reaction it generated. In June 2005 I wrote an article about my depression for Essence magazine. I'm Coming Out, I Want the World to Know It's not just what we say, but what we don't say. ![]()
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