Transcriber: Rachel Batchelor Reviewer: David DeRuwe
I was recently on a flight with my daughter,
and as we were preparing for take off, it hit me that the safety briefing
felt like a public service announcement for women’s health.
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but hear me out.
The part that resonated with me the most is when they say,
“Should an emergency occur, you should put your own mask on first
before helping those around you.”
And so I immediately looked at my daughter,
and my motherly instincts kicked in,
and I couldn’t imagine putting on my mask before assisting her.
And the reality is, I put on everybody else’s mask first, everyday.
I wake up in the morning at 5 a.m.,
scurry out of bed to get myself ready for the day,
only to be ready at 6 a.m. to knock on my daughter’s door
and get her out of bed and hurry her around the house
so that she can get ready for school so that we can leave the house by 7 a.m.,
and then I commute an hour to drop her at school and then continue on to work.
And then while I'm at work,
I’m working so intently only to jump right back in the car
and drive another hour to pick up my daughter and then head home.
And by the time we get home,
I have to transition into my nightly routine of cooking and cleaning,
and by the time all of that’s done, it’s 8 p.m. and I am completely exhausted.
So I want us to take this notion about putting your mask on first
and apply it well beyond a flight emergency.
I want us to apply it to our everyday lives and to our health,
and as women, we are the experts at putting everybody else’s mask on,
leaving little time and oxygen for self-care.
So did you know that over 14% of American women are in poor health?
And that’s from a 2020 study,
and I’m certain these numbers have increased during the current pandemic.
So I ask you:
Who’s taking care of you, while you’re taking care of everybody else?
So I’m Vivien Singletary, the director of the Public Health Informatics Institute,
a program of the Task Force for Global Health,
and I promise you, I will not bore you with informatics talk today,
but what I will do is give you three rules of thumb
to help you make your health a priority.
But let me start by telling a story, when I didn’t put my mask on first.
My mother was the core of our family.
She raised four children, and she cared and nurtured for her husband.
But she also had diabetes and heart disease,
and she was always known for helping everybody else
and putting everybody else's mask on first.
And at the young age of 50, she had a massive heart attack and died.
This was just three weeks before my 16th birthday,
so needless to say,
I was devastated because I had just lost the most important person in my life.
So fast-forward to the current pandemic,
and I found myself doing much of the same thing,
and yes, just two months ago, I turned 50.
So at the beginning of the pandemic, I was trying to navigate
virtual school for my daughter, who was in fifth grade at the time;
I was still managing a staff of over 35, running a large program;
I was serving as the full time housekeeper, the full time chef,
and, yes, the full time virtual school enforcer.
And you may ask me, where was my significant other at this particular time?
Well in his industry, the food industry, he was still working outside of the home
because he was considered an essential worker.
So I was left to navigate all of this by myself.
Well, they say all good things must come to an end.
They say that about bad things too, they come to an end,
and it came to a head, when my body essentially put me down.
My blood pressure rose to what they consider a crisis level,
I couldn’t concentrate,
and I had gained a significant amount of weight,
in a very short period of time -
that I had worked so hard to gain all of this lean-mass muscle
prior to the beginning of the pandemic.
And then this isolation from family and friends
did not have me in a good mental state.
And to top it off, I was eating and drinking all of the wrong things
to comfort myself.
So you can see that I didn’t put my mask on first, and I had to take a step back
and make changes in my life, so that I can survive.
And I, of anybody, should have known better,
I didn’t want to leave my 11-year-old child without a mother.
I know the pain of losing a parent, at a very young age,
and the irony of it all is that I work in public health,
and I lead this world-class team that is focused on developing
health data systems and ensuring that you have all of the health data
that you need to live your best and healthiest life.
Yet I wasn't caring for myself.
So this leads me to my first point about advocating for your own health,
and advocating by yourself can sometimes be difficult,
so I want to encourage you to find a health and wellness partner.
And this partner is somebody that is going to be committed to your progress.
They’re going to hold you accountable, and they’re not going to let you get away
with all of these excuses that you come up with, and we know we can,
about why you can’t do something.
And this person can be anybody.
It can be your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your neighbor,
and I will tell you, the most convincing health and wellness partner for me,
is my daughter.
She definitely doesn’t bite her tongue,
and she often tells me: “Mom, your stomach is getting too big,”
and I’m like: “Oh, I better get back on that treadmill right away.”
In this vast world of connectedness that we have,
you’ll be surprised that you can find a health partner,
maybe on a platform, maybe as part of a group.
In fact, one of my health partners is a friend that I have on Facebook.
She recently beat breast cancer, and she constantly posts
about the importance of getting your annual mammogram.
And these posts serve to me as a reminder, of the importance of self-care.
So point number two is all about reclaiming your time,
and we as women, we want to meet the expectations of everybody,
and we’re often socialized
to put our caregiving skill set ahead of everything else.
So picture this:
the head of the PTA reaches out to you
and asks you to participate in the annual bake sale;
your significant other texts you in the middle of the day
to ask you to cook their favorite meal;
you’re tucking your child into bed at night and they’re asking:
“Hey, Mom, can I have a sleepover?”;
you open your email inbox and every single email that you open is a request,
and yes, I’m talking about the promotional emails too,
because they're not only vying for your time, they're vying for your money.
Have you ever just stopped to think how many requests you get every single day?
It can be overwhelming, and you can see how quickly your time
becomes everybody else’s time to make their wants, needs, and desires come true.
So what I’m offering you is in no way a silver bullet about reclaiming your time,
but what it does require is intention,
an intention for you to craft your day around you
and carve out a little bit of time for yourself.
And whether that is 30 minutes to walk outside and get some rays
and enjoy that time to yourself or to work out or to meditate.
But taking that time is incredibly important.
And so by this time in my speech, you may be thinking about
all of the things that you do every day and how overwhelming that can be,
or maybe you’re even still thinking about the schedule that I described,
at the beginning of this talk.
So I want you to take a beat with me and do something:
I want you to breathe in (Inhales)
and breathe out. (Exhales)
Let’s do this again,
breathe in (Inhales)
and breathe out. (Exhales)
And this leads me to my third and final point: giving yourself grace,
because everybody just needs to take a moment and breathe.
We all need to understand the limitations that we have.
We can’t do it all, we don’t live on an island by ourselves,
so it’s OK to ask for help,
it’s OK to say no sometimes without feeling guilty,
and it’s OK to push back on maybe you can do something, but just not right now.
And giving yourself grace in today’s Zoomed-out world
could be as simple as writing to your colleague
and letting them know
that you’re not able to join by camera today, but you’ll be there,
and I can guarantee you that they’ll probably thank you for that,
because they’re Zoomed-out too.
So there you have it,
the three rules of thumb to help you make your health a priority:
advocate for your own health, reclaim your time and give yourself grace.
So I ask you once again: Who’s caring for you while you’re caring for everyone else?
And the answer is you.
So ladies, it’s OK to advocate for your health -
go through your health journey and put your health first.
It’s OK to carve out time for your day to just have a moment for yourself,
and it’s OK to say no and push back without feeling guilty.
In all other genders, this also applies to you,
and if you don’t remember anything else about my speech today,
always remember, to put your own mask on first.
Thank you.