Melody T. McCloud - Black Womens Wellness: Your Ive Got This! Guide to Health, Sex, and Phenomenal Living

Praise for Black Womens Wellness

Whether its fibroids, heart disease, diabetes, cancers, maternal mortality, mental health, or life lessons, Black Womens Wellness gives a blueprint to help us ensure total health. I dedicate my voice to support Dr. McCloud in reaching our Black women.

Pauletta Washington

musician, actress, wife of Denzel Washington

This book could not be more relevant. Not just for womens health, but for general Western medicine. We are at a time when we have learned the importance of individualized, personalized medical care. Black women are known to have specific risk factors that require this kind of individualized care. Gone are the days of one size fits all, and this book sheds light on this concept for both health professionals and laypeople alike. Black Womens Wellness will improve womens lives.

Jennifer Ashton, MD

obstetrician-gynecologist, nutritionist, and chief medical correspondent, ABC News and Good Morning America

Dr. McCloud is faithful to her calling to heal and serve. Black Womens Wellness is rich with medical advice and inspiring personal anecdotes. And her tips for a successful community and relationship pearls of wisdom are a prescription everyone can use.

Cedric L. Alexander, PsyD

psychologist, author, consultant to MSNBC and network affiliates, and past president, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE)

Black Womens Wellness is a must-have reference for physical, psychological, and sexual wellness with helpful tips for success in life and love. Finally, we have a book that specifically addresses the path towards health and happiness for our beautiful Black women.

Jeffrey Gardere, PhD, ABPP

Americas Psychologist, author, and media consultant to cable and network affiliates

Melody T. McCloud, MD

Obstetrician-Gynecologist

Sounds True

Boulder, CO 80306

2023 Melody T. McCloud

Sounds True is a trademark of Sounds True, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author(s) and publisher.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical recommendations of physicians or other health-care providers. Rather, it is intended to offer information to help the reader cooperate with physicians and health-care providers in a mutual quest for optimum well-being. We advise readers to carefully review and understand the ideas presented and to seek the advice of your personal physician or health-care provider before attempting to use them.

Published 2023

Cover design by Huma Ahktar

Book design by Linsey Dodaro

Interior book production by Meredith Jarrett

Illustrations by Montana Forbes

Cover photo by Drexina Nelson

Power and Control Wheel. Adapted image used with permission from the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs.

BK06349

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McCloud, Melody Theresa, author.

Title: Black womens wellness : your Ive got this! guide to health, sex, and phenomenal living / Melody T. McCloud, M.D., Obstetrician-Gynecologist.

Description: Boulder, CO : Sounds True, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021057561 (print) | LCCN 2021057562 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683648765 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781683648772 (ebook)

Classification: LCC RA564.86 .M33 2022 (print) | LCC RA564.86 (ebook) | DDC 362.1089/96073dc23/eng/20211124

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057561

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057562

This book is dedicated to every one of my patients, whose trust in me as your physician and surgeon has me humbled and honored.

To the memory of both my beloved godmother, Genevieve Kemp, and to Mr. Leo Richards, who stood in as a fathertwo gems who were always there for me.

To my Atlanta Mom Mrs. Earnestine Shaw and her daughter, Patrice, for letting me know and share a mothers love.

And to my indispensable family of inner circle friends.

S ex, health, happiness, and wealth... you know you want it all. And theres no better time than now for having it all and gettin it good!

Without social networking, motorized vehicles, or modern-day technology, many of our ancestors went for what they wanted and got it. One trailblazing Ive got this woman I revere is Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler. As the Civil War raged in 1864, 33-year-old Rebecca Lee became the first Black female physician in the US. She graduated from what is now Boston University School of Medicine. In 1865, with her husband, Arthur Crumpler, she courageously journeyed to Richmond, Virginia, to provide medical care to recently freed slaves that the White doctors would not touch.

Her life in Virginia wasnt easy. While there, many pharmacists refused to honor her prescriptions, some hospitals denied her admitting privileges, and somereportedly, even physician colleagueswisecracked that the MD after her name stood not for medical doctor, but for mule driver. But Dr. Crumpler persevered! She remained in Virginia for almost four years then returned to Boston in 1869, established her medical practice, and wrote a book about womens and childrens health. She blazed a trail upon which many have and do tread.

Hers is just one story of a brave, determined, capable Black woman. Over the centuries, there have been more in numbers untold! In the 1900s, especially during the Civil Rights Movement, Black women were instrumental in the reckoning of a nation. While their husbands got the most notoriety, matriarchs such as Coretta Scott King, Juanita Abernathy, and Lillian Lewis stood alongside their men and played pivotal roles in moving the nation forward to live up to its creed.

And as the first decade of 2000 ended and a new one began, Black women became increasingly on the move, onward and upward, and are now doctors, accountants, judges, pilots, investment managers, nurses, and elected officials as well as wives, mothers, and caregiving daughters. Undoubtedly many of todays Black women are carving out lives about which our great-great-grandmothers may have only dared to dream.

Black womens voices are no longer muted or silenced; instead, they are heard around the world, with sophisticated, strong, and successful style. In 2020, America elected its first Black female vice president, Kamala Harris, at whose 2021 inauguration the words of the first Youth Poet Laureate of the US, Amanda Gorman, rang forth for the world to hear. But theres more!

In February 2021, Georgia Tech engineering major Breanna Ivey interned at NASA and helped put their rover, Perseverance, on Mars! And as the COVID-19 pandemic stole lives around the globe, vaccine researcher Kizzmekia Corbett, who has a PhD in microbiology and immunology that she earned at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked with the National Institutes of Health and was instrumental in bringing safe, effective vaccines to the world.

Indeed, Black Girl Magic is in full force! When we look around, seemingly theres hardly anything Black women cant doand do wellin any field, including medicine, the military, politics, education, technology, business, sports, aeronautics, and the arts. What we put our minds to, we can achieve! With an Ive