National Wear Red Day: What Women’s Heart Health Taught Me About Capacity

Today is National Wear Red Day.

I am wearing red and reflecting.

I began working with the American Heart Association in 2001. At the time, heart disease was widely viewed as a man’s disease and something that showed up much later in life. When I had a heart attack at age 35, while seven months pregnant with twins, the reaction was disbelief. People were shocked. I was told repeatedly that I was too young to have heart disease, even by medical professionals reviewing my chart.

In interviews, I was often asked whether I had simply failed to take care of myself.

Stigma and blame were common. Systems were not built to recognize what women were actually experiencing.

That experience shaped my work.

My early work in heart health education made one thing unmistakably clear. Sustained pressure carries a physical cost. Heart health showed the outcome in ways that could not be ignored. Over time, the conversation expanded to stress, because that was the language women recognized in their own lives.

But stress alone never fully explained what I was seeing.

Capable, conscientious people were doing everything they were told to do and still paying a high price. The explanation could not stop at stress.

Capacity does.

Capacity explains how invisible load accumulates across roles, expectations, and decisions. It explains how physical burden builds quietly over time. It explains how decision quality erodes long before anything looks wrong on the surface. It explains why strong people compensate for strained systems until they can no longer do so.

Most importantly, capacity explains why blaming individuals is not only inaccurate but dangerous.

I am proud to have worked to pass the HEART for Women Act by lobbying Congress and leading a rally at the Capitol to expand education, access, research, and treatment for women’s heart health. That work helped move the field forward.

Today, most women know that heart disease is the number one killer of women. Yet many still do not recognize it as their most serious personal risk.

That gap matters.

We are laying the foundation for our future health and quality of life at every age. Capacity is not something we address after a crisis. It is shaped by how we operate, decide, recover, and carry a load over time. The signals often appear earlier than we expect, long before a chart, diagnosis, or dramatic event forces attention.

This is why heart health still matters so deeply to me.

It is not just about outcomes. It is about early identification. It is about recognizing strain before decision quality, health, and longevity are compromised. It is about building systems in our lives and workplaces that protect capacity rather than quietly drain it.

So my call to action today is simple and serious.

Take heart health seriously at every age. Schedule regular checkups. Have clear conversations about risk with your healthcare provider. Pay attention to the physical signals that are easy to dismiss when life is full and demands are high.

Do this without blame. Do it without denial. Do it with attention, early identification, and systems that protect capacity before the cost shows up on a chart.

We have been here before. We know what to do. Let’s go RED together.