The Storm of Disparities and Silence
By Chong Her Xiong Let me talk to you for a moment. Not as a researcher. Not as an advocate. But as a daughter, a sister, a mother, and a survivor of the very storm I’m about to share with you. You see, this storm didn’t crash into my life all at once. It didn’t announce itself with thunder or lightning. It came quietly, woven into our everyday lives — in the pills tucked away in drawers, the dialysis appointments whispered about, the funerals we attended far too soon. And the silence. God, the silence. It wasn’t just the kind where no one talks about being sick. It was the kind passed down through generations. The kind that teaches you to endure, not question. To survive, not seek help. To keep the pain in your chest rather than on your tongue. It’s the kind of silence that makes illness feel like shame. And that silence... it’s killing us. In my family, we’ve lost too much. Two of my siblings have end-stage kidney failure. One is barely holding on with stage four CKD. My mother...