About Tara Takes A Stand
In 2020 the sudden passing of my mom changed my siblings and I lives forever. Nothing in this life could have prepared me for that amount of pain. The pain I felt I couldn’t even describe, really I still can’t describe it. At the same time I had so much anger at how mom was treated while trying to get a diagnosis I needed to do something so other families didn’t go through the same thing. I began questioning everything in my life even my career. Did I need to go back to school and become a doctor so I can try to make changes in that field, or become a researcher to help find cures? Did I need to go to law school so I can help families sue doctors when things like this happen? My faith was being challenged at the deepest level. I still had to try and navigate this life with this big gapping whole in it. Although in your mind you know grief and joy have to co-exist it’s much harder to really put that into practice. I seemed to be frozen in time as the last five and months of my moms life kept replaying in my mind everyday like a movie, for everyone else time was still moving on. In my mind also started replaying different things that happened to family members while they were sick.
While I have a great deal of respect for the medical community, as my mom was a retired Registered Nurse, and served in the Army Reserves Nurse Corp but it’s known there are disparities in healthcare and the inconsistencies in treatment of African Americans still exist. Even though there have been some improvements, in 2023 this is still a challenge. We haven’t come far enough. These last 3 years I’ve been on a mission to figure out how I could best serve and reach the most people, putting my moms story out there. Also share my grandmas story as well as some other family members. As I was sharing with different people about what my mom went through or things that happened with my grandma it was a similar theme. There were so many to that don’t know how to be an advocate for themselves, or have someone that can advocate for them if they can’t. Many have even experienced having their symptoms dismissed and felt frustrated after doctor’s appointments.
After batting around many ideas I felt I was being led to start this Podcast. There are so many hard conversations that people don’t like to have concerning illness, death, grief, wills, end of life decisions, caregiving, life insurance and so many more. Especially in the African American community where our history has caused us to have so much distrust. So many superstitions have also developed it prevents people from having these hard conversations. Close to the end of 2022 I knew I had to move forward with the podcast. Someone suggested I call it ‘Tara Stands’. But the more I developed the podcast idea it morphed into Tara Takes A Stand. I’m taking a stand against these disparities in healthcare, distrust for doctors, superstitions, and whatever else prevents us from having the information we need to have these hard, important, and necessary conversations.