A couple of weeks ago I did an interview with Yolanda King on heart disease and stroke. She was a spokesperson for the American Heart Association,
because her mother had suffered a stroke. I woke up Wednesday to several emails telling me that she died of a heart attack. My editor tells me that I probably did the last interview with her. What she had to say was important on its own, but when you think that less than a month after the interview she would die from the very thing she was trying to help prevent, it is stunning.

There are a lot of things to be learned from Yolanda King. She and her siblings were left with a powerful legacy, but also an awesome burden that I think they all struggled to lift. They paid a high cost for the freedoms that people of color now enjoy. I got the feeling from talking to her that it was a cost that she paid a little bit every day, even though she was a little girl when she lost her dad. It begs the question – can you die of a broken heart? Can the ways that you mask your pain increase your risks of dying of a heart attack?

I admire the fact that this was a woman who did the best she could to carve out her own identity as much as she could. She was a realist. She knew that she was never going to be quoted without the tag, “daughter of the late Martin Luther King,” and later, references to her mother. But she tried hard to shape a life and identity as a speaker on things that mattered to her and as an actress.

I feel honored to be let into conversation with her on her relationship with her mother, and her mother’s illness. We talked about the stress that her mother faced and how she struggled to manage it. She told me about the changes Mrs. King made in her diet. Yolanda and I had a lot in common. We were both momma’s girls. We both lost our mothers to ovarian cancer. And Yolanda was 51 when she died. I will be 51 this year.

I just had my annual physical last week. I need to lose some weight. I need to exercise. I need to put down the ice cream. I have high blood pressure, for which I take medication. And my cholesterol was high this time, putting me at risk for cardiovascular disease. These are all the things she and I talked about during my time with her. And now she’s gone of the disease we talked about. Needless to say, she got my attention. And I hope it gets yours too.

As you know, I write a lot about health and wellness issues. But today it seems that I don’t write enough about it. I am not telling women enough about their risks for heart disease. I am not sharing with women the risks and the warning signals. I told someone the other day that I was probably over writing about health. This morning, as I write this, I am sure that I have much more work left to do – in informing myself and you too. So in another way, Yolanda King has given much, in ways she would have never expected.

Let this be a wake up call, if you need one. Call your doctor and get an appointment to check your blood pressure and cholesterol. If you smoke, stop. If you are not exercising and moving, start today – even if it is just a little walk at first. Put the fried foods down. Make yourself a student of your body and how it works. And learn how to manage your stress. I can still hear Yolanda tell me that she believed stress can kill you. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, take control.

Andrea King Collier

Author: The Black Woman’s Guide to Black Men’s Health
www.andreacollier.com

This article also ran in Heart Insight, a free publication of the American Heart Association.