I’m a nurse-midwife with a PhD who studies maternal mortality. After over two decades of caring for women, I know death is a professional reality – but knowing that has never made it easier.

After losing a colleague, and later a patient I had cared for, I did what I’d been trained to do … I turned to the literature. Searching for something that I couldn’t quite name.

I found statistics.

I found risk factors.

I found causes of death.

But I couldn’t find her.

The Remember Her Project began because I couldn’t stand the idea that these women could disappear into the statistics. Every maternal death was a woman who expected to come home.

The statistics tell us how many. The stories tell us who.

Statistics, reports, and datasets help us understand maternal mortality.

But they can’t remember her.

We can.