r/publichealth • u/FancyLadyLite • 3d ago
Just Venting Black sheep at the dinner table
I just need to vent about something that hit me hard after another dinner with extended family. I’ve always felt like the black sheep in my family, not because of who I am, but because of what I value. I started working for a medical school 3 years ago and I teach family centered care, health policy, how to advocate, and sexuality topics all within in the lens of disability. This drove me to pursue my MPH. I love my work. I love my degree. I just had my first guest lecture at an Ivy League for a workshop I’m developing all before I even graduate with my masters. I have had some of the greatest highs of my career and I can’t even celebrate them because my family can’t look past their discomfort. No one ever asks me about how work is or what I’m learning, or what’s going on in my life outside my relationship or how I look. My degree is “controversial” and my work is “political”. Yet still I sit there quietly, waiting for my turn, waiting for someone to show curiosity about me… but it never comes. As the youngest, I’ve spent years thinking eventually they’d see me, that my moment would come. But I’m realizing maybe it never will. We live in a different world now. I don’t want applause or praise. I just want to be considered, to be asked, to feel like I belong in my own family. And it stings to realize that in their eyes, my existence feels less comfortable to engage with than others’ all because after covid I chose to run towards the chaos not from it…
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u/evidentlynaught 3d ago edited 15h ago
There is a documentary called “our silent guardians “ or something like that. It is from the Minnesota school of public health. I urge you to find it online. It’s only 20 minutes long or so.
In it Dr. Michael Olsterholm says that the lifespan in 1900 was 47 years, in 2025 its 78 years. In the last 125 years, for every two days we have lived we have essentially added one more day of life- and that is not due to curative medicine, that is due to public health. Hygiene,nutrition,vaccines, food safety, etc.
That is more time on earth. More time with the ones we love. More time to pursue our dreams. More time to make the world a better place.
I tell new public health staff this because I want them to know it. I tell them, it doesn’t matter if your friends don’t think your work is important. It doesn’t matter if your family thinks your work is important. What matters is, you know your work is important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LivCy_CPung