I haven't stopped thinking about the stories I heard at "The Yarn: Maternal Health Storytelling" event a few weeks ago at Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Six Arkansas mothers--each with different backgrounds, health challenges, births and losses--stood on a stage and shared stories that were brave, vulnerable and deeply moving. Their words have stayed with me not just as an OB-GYN but as a mother and someone who believes Arkansas can and must be the safest place in the nation to give birth and raise a family.

One mother described the unbearable grief of leaving the hospital without her baby. Another explained the terror of postpartum anxiety so consuming she feared sleep itself. We heard from women who felt that legitimate concerns were dismissed--sometimes repeatedly--until their lives were in danger. And we heard from women who survived because someone finally listened: a nurse who refused to leave a patient's side, a family member who insisted she go to the hospital, a doula whose presence broke through fear.

The most impactful part of the evening was seeing common threads weaving through the stories. Each woman's experience revealed both the fragility of the systems families rely on and the extraordinary strength mothers show despite those gaps. But long after the lights dimmed at The Rep, the question that followed me home was simple: How can........

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