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 laughed at inside jokes, had favorite songs, made grocery lists, worried about her kids, and expected to come home. She deserves to be remembered as more than a data point.

Statistics, reports, and datasets help us understand maternal mortality, but they can’t remember her.

So, we will remember her.