Caring for My Sister Broke Me — and Taught Me

 

If this sounds like you, we made something for this exact moment → [link]

 

I want to tell you the real story behind GlowHerLane. Not the polished version. The true one.

Because if you've found this page, I think you deserve to know who built it and why.

I Lost My Sister and My Grandmother in the Same 24 Hours

In 2023, I lost my older sister to stage 4 breast cancer. The very next day, my grandmother passed away too.

People say grief comes in waves. This felt more like I got hit by a storm I never walked away from.

My sister was a Black woman in pain who was dismissed, overlooked, and not taken seriously by the medical system until it was too late. By the time they stopped playing with her life, it was stage 4. I watched her go from looking healthy and strong to losing weight fast, her whole body in pain, on heavy medication just to exist.

I became her home health aide. I was up at 3am with her, then up again at 6 to get my nephew ready for school because she physically couldn't. I was doing this while I didn't even have a stable place to live myself.

She rubbed my back one night while I sat next to her completely depleted, and I thought: I feel sick. I feel like I'm disappearing.

The last time I saw her conscious, she told me: 'I don't want this to be the last time you see me.'

It was.

What I Learned About Bodies From Watching Hers Fail

Watching my sister's body be dismissed, minimized, and ignored by people who should have helped her taught me something that changed how I see everything.

Black women's bodies are not taken seriously. Our pain is questioned. Our symptoms are minimized. We are told to push through, take a painkiller, come back later.

And in the absence of being taken seriously by the medical system, we stop taking ourselves seriously too. We stop listening to our own signals. We stop trusting our own bodies. We push through pain. We ignore the whispers until they become screams.

I didn't want to do that anymore. And I didn't want other women to do that either.

How GlowHerLane Was Born From Grief

I built GlowHerLane because I needed something I couldn't find anywhere.

I needed tools that understood what it meant to be a woman carrying grief, hormonal chaos, hair that nobody taught me about, a nervous system running on empty, and a body I was just beginning to learn how to listen to.

I needed tools that met me in the specific moment I was in — not generic wellness advice, not 'drink water and do yoga.' Real, specific, herbal, honest tools for the moments that actually happen.

The Stop The Spiral Tea Deck was the first thing I made. Because I was spiraling. Because I needed something to reach for at 2am that wasn't a phone or food or a decision I'd regret. I made it for myself and then realized: she needs this too.