Over the course of my lifetime, I have carried 77 uterine fibroids: 25 surgically removed, and more than 50 still growing inside me today, the largest the size of an orange. This is not a rare story. It is just a rarely told one.

I have endured seasons of constant pain, losing dangerous amounts of blood each month, and suffering in silence. In this image, I'm holding 77 fruits, one for each fibroid, to make visible the weight that I, and millions of women like me, carry every day.

Last year, I broke my silence. The response was overwhelming: women everywhere reached out with stories just like mine.

That's why I launched Make Fibroids Count, to raise funds and awareness for uterine fibroid research, and to directly support scientists developing less-invasive and non-invasive treatments.

Women's health has been historically underfunded and under-researched, and fibroids are a striking example: they affect up to 80% of women by age 50, yet treatment options remain limited and often devastatingly invasive. Black women are disproportionately affected, experiencing fibroids earlier and with more severe symptoms. Fibroids are also the leading cause of hysterectomies in the United States, a drastic intervention with profound consequences for a woman's body, identity, and reproductive future.

There is something deeply wrong when a condition this widespread is this poorly understood. That has to change.

Your donation helps fund the research that could change the course of this disease: for me, for the women who reached out, and for the generations of women who come after us.

Help make fibroids visible. Donate today.