A Frank discussion about endometriosis
What Endometriosis Couldn’t Take from Brianna Booker
By CarrieVee
What do you do when your body doesn’t listen? When pain becomes so familiar, you start thinking it’s just the way life is supposed to be?
That’s the world Brianna Booker lived in for years.
In our latest episode of Coffee and Tea with CarrieVee, I had the honor of speaking with Brianna about her powerful journey through chronic illness and how it led her to write her beautiful and raw new book, What Endometriosis Couldn’t Take from Me.
Brianna didn’t just write a book. She wrote a legacy. A poetic, heartfelt, and brutally honest look into what it means to be a woman living with endometriosis—a condition still misunderstood, often dismissed, and rarely discussed out loud.
Why This Book Matters
When Brianna first spoke to me, she did something bold. She stood up at a conference of 250 women and asked me to share her book. No hesitation, no self-doubt—just bold, beautiful bravery. That moment told me everything I needed to know: she wasn’t holding a book in her hand. She was carrying a mission.
Endometriosis affects at least 1 in 10 women. Some say it’s closer to 1 in 7. And yet, so many of us have never heard the word spoken in a doctor’s office—or worse, we’re told the pain is all in our heads.
Brianna breaks that silence. She tells the truth we need to hear: periods aren’t supposed to be painful. And if they are, we deserve to be taken seriously.
📖 Want to go deeper?
There’s an entire chapter on boundary setting in my book, The Radical Empowerment Method. It includes step-by-step guidance and journal prompts to help you define and protect your non-negotiables. You can jump right to that chapter—no need to read in order!
More Than a Diagnosis
Brianna opens up about the toll chronic illness took on her identity—on her sense of womanhood, her future dreams, and her self-worth. When she was first told she might have endometriosis, she was just 18. The idea of needing surgery to address it left her terrified.
But instead of letting fear define her, she started writing.
Poetry became her safe space, her therapy, her truth-telling tool. That writing eventually became her book—a blend of memoir and verse that allows other women to see themselves in her story.
Because when one woman stands up and says, “This is what I’ve lived through,” it gives others the courage to do the same.
Healing Isn’t Linear
Brianna is refreshingly honest about what healing really looks like. It’s messy. It’s frustrating. It’s full of trial and error. Some medications helped, some didn’t. One even started affecting her eyesight. Through it all, she learned to advocate for herself—to listen to her body, and to fight for doctors who would listen too.
She also reminds us of the power in community. In finding people—online or in real life—who understand. Who get it. Who will say, “Me too,” when you finally speak up.
Let’s Normalize the Conversation
When I think back to my own experience with hysterectomy and reproductive health, I realize how much I kept silent. How much we’re taught not to talk about these things. But if we don’t, nothing changes. We stay in pain. We stay confused. We stay ashamed.
So let’s normalize these conversations.
Let’s talk about our pain, our fears, our healing. Let’s talk about the times we’ve peed our pants on a walk or felt like we lost a piece of ourselves in surgery. Let’s talk about thongs, for crying out loud. Let’s talk about all of it.
A Writing Prompt to Begin Your Own Story
Brianna left us with a beautiful journal prompt that I want to pass along to you:
What makes you strong?
Write it down. Sit with it. Let it remind you who you are. Not who the world tells you to be—but who you truly are, in your power.
And if you’ve ever dreamed of writing your own story, take Brianna’s advice: do the hard thing. Even if it’s scary. Even if it’s embarrassing. Especially then.
Because someone out there needs your story too.
