October Editor’s Letter: The Month That Holds Everything

Every so often a month comes along that holds everything at once. October is that month.

It carries three things in one breath. Black History Month. World Menopause Month, with World Menopause Day on the 18th. And Breast Cancer Awareness Month, with its ribbons and its reminders to check, to ask, and to keep asking.

Three conversations that all belong to us, and that we are usually asked to have separately. Our history. Our changing bodies. Our lives. I have never managed to pull them apart, and I do not intend to start now.

But before any of it, I want to honour someone.

Professor Jason Arday died in August. He was 41. He was a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge and one of the youngest Black professors in its history. An inquest into his death has opened and been adjourned, so I will not comment on the circumstances. That is not mine to do, and his family should not have to read speculation anywhere.

What I will do is tell you what he stood for. Jason Arday was a boy the experts wrote off. He could not speak until he was eleven, and the limits were set for him early and confidently. He spent his life proving that the people who set those limits are rarely the people who get to know our ceiling. He spoke openly about the odds stacked against him, and he turned that honesty into work that held doors open behind him. He believed talent is everywhere but opportunity is not, and he spent his career trying to prove himself right.

If you have ever sat in a room where nobody looked like you and stayed anyway, you know what a man like that means to a generation of us. So when we talk about Black history this month, let us remember that it is still being made. Often by us. Often at a cost that rarely reaches the history books.

Now, our health.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is not a ribbon to me, and it will not be to you either. Black women in the UK are more likely to be diagnosed with the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, and research has shown we face triple negative breast cancer at higher rates than white women. Uptake of breast screening is lower among Black women, and Black women have described not seeing themselves in the awareness campaigns at all. Behind those facts sit the ones I know personally. A concern raised once and not pursued. A woman who did not want to make a fuss. A family that learns afterwards what listening would have cost.

So here is my October ask, and it is a small one. Check your breasts. Know what is normal for you. Go to your screening when the letter comes, and if the appointment does not fit your life, move it rather than lose it. If something does not feel right, say it, and keep saying it, until somebody listens. Then ask a sister when she last checked hers. Not because we are frightened. Because we are worth knowing.

And then, the work of my heart. World Menopause Month. Black women tend to enter perimenopause earlier and are frequently reported as experiencing more severe symptoms, yet we are among the least likely to be offered hormone therapy and among the most likely to be sent away with a leaflet and a shrug. The research tells us what our group chats already know. The silence around menopause was never built for us, so we are building the conversation ourselves.

This month, Black Wall St will be carrying stories on all three threads. Our history, because it is still being written. Our health, because nobody is coming to hand it to us, and our bodies keep telling us the truth even when we are busy. And each other, because that is the whole reason this platform exists.

So here is October, and here we are. Check yourself. Book the appointment. Read the story that feels uncomfortable. Honour the man who held the door. And be kind to yourself while you do all of it.

However this month finds you, I am glad you are here.

Diahanne
Editor in Chief