I'm Speaking Up About Uterine Fibroids

In 2014, I won an Academy Award, one of the highest honors of my career. That same year, I discovered I had uterine fibroids. While the world celebrated my achievement with me, I was privately grappling with a threat to my reproductive health that I never saw coming.

The diagnosis left me with countless questions: What were fibroids? How did I get them? What signs should I have recognized? What were my treatment options? How could I prevent them from returning? But what shocked me most was that very few of these questions had clear answers. Despite affecting millions of women, uterine fibroids remain severely under-researched.

Uterine fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the uterus. They can range from the size of a pea to as large as a melon. While they are benign, they can cause heavy menstrual bleeding and anemia, pelvic pain, frequent urination, and complications with pregnancy. Some women have no symptoms at all, while others experience debilitating effects that drastically impact quality of life.

The statistics are staggering: 80% of Black women and 70% percent of white women will experience fibroids by age 50. Yet when I received my diagnosis at age 31, I was offered only two options: invasive surgery to remove them or live with the pain. I chose surgery and had a myomectomy in November 2014. When I asked my doctor how to prevent them from returning, her response was devastating: "You can't. It's only a matter of time until they grow again."

This moment crystallized something profound for me. I realized that as women, we are conditioned from an early age to expect suffering, and to endure it in silence.

When we hit puberty, we are taught that periods mean pain; cramping, clotting, discomfort are all "normal." So when my periods became more painful, I didn't question it. When they doubled in length in my twenties, I accepted it. When severe clotting began, I still didn't sound the alarm. I had been taught that pain was simply part of being a woman.

The medical system reinforced this assumption. During annual gynecological exams, fibroids were barely mentioned. It wasn't until I was experiencing debilitating pain that I finally insisted my doctor listen. A simple ultrasound followed by an MRI revealed nearly 30 fibroids.

Ten years later, I am facing the same battle, this time with twice as many fibroids. But something has changed: I'm no longer willing to suffer in silence.

When I began sharing my story privately, something extraordinary happened: I discovered that women everywhere – friends, colleagues, acquaintances, were fighting the same battle. We had all been struggling alone with something that affects most of us. We felt isolated and unique, yet we were part of a massive collective experience.

This realization was both heartbreaking and empowering. What if we stopped suffering in silence? What if we spoke up and shared our stories? What could we accomplish together?

When something affects 8 out of 10 women and we're still caught off guard by it, that's not individual bad luck – that is systemic failure. There's something deeply wrong when a serious, mysterious health problem is so common that it’s treated as casual, as inevitable.

We must reject the normalization of female pain. We need to stop treating this massive issue like a series of unfortunate coincidences. We have to study women’s health and prioritize this high-burden condition that has never been comprehensively examined.

I envision a different future: one with early education for teenagers, better screening protocols, robust prevention research, and less invasive treatments for uterine fibroids. But transformation begins with understanding, and understanding requires research.

That's why I've partnered with the Foundation for Women's Health, to turn this vision into action, to transform our reality through research and advocacy.

I'm speaking up because silence serves no one. The presence of pain is a signal that something must change. Let's hear that signal. Let's amplify it. And let's work together to eradicate the pain.

We deserve better. It's time to demand it.

– Lupita Nyong’o