Winnie

Winnie danced. She laughed at things most people took seriously and took seriously the things most people dismissed. She had a warmth that was immediate. You felt it the moment you walked into a room with her.

She was my cousin. She went to India for IVF. The reason behind it was never something our family fully discussed, not even between the people who loved her most. That silence itself is part of the story.

She also lived with significant mental health difficulties, long-standing, and those were not discussed openly either. Her marriage broke down. These things compounded each other, as they so often do for South Asian women, each one making the others harder to carry, and harder to name.

The silence around mental health in South Asian communities is not separate from the silence around fertility. They come from the same place. They keep each other company.

Women carry both alone because neither is considered something you talk about. Not within families. Not even between the people sitting closest to each other.

Winnie died on December 31, 2020.

She deserved more space to be heard. More people around her who had the language. More places where this could have been spoken about without shame. That is what we are trying to build here.