Annie Pringle Memorial Scholarship

Our breasts are more than anatomy. They are vessels of nourishment, symbols of womanhood, sources of confidence, and, for many of us, among the first places where we ever experienced love. For 19 years of my life, I have understood the meaning of nurture—and for much longer than I have been conscious enough to know the word, I experienced it through the breasts of my mother. Before I could define love, my body knew it. Before I understood nourishment, I received it. Before I understood protection, I experienced it. My mother’s breasts were my first source of warmth, comfort, and sustenance; an unspoken promise that she would make a way to give my fresh, earthly body what it needed to grow. As I grew older, they began to represent something different. They became part of my womanhood—a part of my body that could make me feel beautiful, confident, and powerful when I put on a dress that made me feel like a woman. Yet I have come to understand that the same part of a woman’s body that can represent love, nourishment, confidence, and femininity can also become vulnerable to threats that can alter the course of an entire family. That is why Annie Pringle’s life resonates with me so deeply. Among all the hats Annie wore throughout her life, she too was a nurturer. She spent her life caring for women at two profoundly different points in their breast-health journeys: helping mothers nourish their children and supporting women navigating breast cancer. In a beautiful way, her life reminds me that nurturing does not end when a child is no longer at the breast. Sometimes nurturing means educating. Sometimes it means advocating. Sometimes it means sitting beside a woman in the middle of her fear and making sure she does not have to face it alone. My mother nurtured me through her breasts; Annie nurtured women through her knowledge, her care, and her presence. Both remind me that there is something sacred about a woman using what she has to help another woman survive and thrive. That is the kind of nurturer I want to become. My Grammie was robbed of time after a malignant tumor was found in her breast and eventually metastasized. Her story taught me that breast health should never become a conversation only after something goes wrong. Women deserve to understand their bodies before there is something to fear. They deserve to know what is normal for them, what changes to pay attention to, why screenings matter, and how to advocate for themselves. That is why breast health education matters to me. As a Radiation Therapy major, I am preparing to enter a field at the forefront of cancer imaging and treatment. I am fascinated by the ability of medical imaging and technology to reveal what cannot be seen from the outside. My growing interest in mammography has made me especially passionate about what happens before treatment is ever necessary: awareness, education, screening, recognizing changes, understanding risk, and knowing when to seek care. But breast health education matters to me for another reason: knowledge is only powerful if people have access to it and feel empowered to use it. I think about the women who can easily become overlooked in conversations about breast health—the transgender woman who has made the decision to begin estrogen and needs to understand how her breasts are changing; the immigrant who may not speak the language well enough to explain that a small lump in her breast is growing larger; the woman who cannot always afford healthcare or take time away from work to seek answers; and the woman of color who may hesitate to speak about an abnormality or pain because of the history of women like her not being believed, heard, or treated with the care they deserved. Breast health education is important to me because I do not just want to spread awareness. I want to be an advocate for the women in this world the world has discriminated against. I want to be the person who can take the knowledge I gain through my education and make it understandable, accessible, and useful. I want women to know what questions to ask, what changes to pay attention to, and when it is important to seek professional care. I want to help create an environment where a woman does not feel that she has to suffer silently because she does not have the language, resources, confidence, or trust to speak up. Because when you KNOW, you are NOW accountable. And because I know, I am now accountable for every woman in this world who holds questions about her breasts. I am damned if I sit on information when I have the power to make a difference with it. I want death to no longer mar the lives of women like Annie Pringle—women whose lives are spent nurturing everyone around them. I want to learn everything I can about breast health so that I can turn that knowledge outward, educating and advocating for women who may not otherwise have the information, resources, or voice to protect themselves. My Grammie’s story is something I cannot rewrite. But I can allow it to shape what I learn, what I teach, and the healthcare professional I become. I can carry her memory into my education and use the science I am learning to help other women have conversations that may give them something my family ultimately lost: more time. For me, breast health education is personal before it is professional. It is connected to the woman who nourished me, the woman I lost, the woman I am becoming, the women I hope to advocate for, and the healthcare professional I am working to become. For me, learning how to protect the breast is not simply learning how to protect an organ. It is learning how to protect something that has already given me so much.

Breast health education is not just important to me—it is essential to my life’s mission. I believe that the body holds stories, pain, memory, and potential for transformation. As a wellness practitioner, kinesiology graduate student, yoga teacher-in-training, and a Black woman shaped by both ancestral wisdom and lived experience, I view breast health as more than a medical concern. I see it as a deeply spiritual, emotional, and community-rooted issue that demands urgent attention, compassion, and culturally informed education. I was raised in Detroit, Michigan, in a family where health issues were often whispered about, hidden, or managed in silence. I’ve seen women I love delay mammograms, ignore pain, or minimize symptoms because they didn’t trust the system—or worse, didn’t feel seen within it. I’ve watched how systemic racism, generational trauma, and misinformation create dangerous gaps in care for Black women. And I’ve witnessed firsthand the toll it takes when access to breast health education is absent or inaccessible. This silence is not benign—it is fatal. That is why I am committed to being part of the solution. Annie Pringle’s legacy touches me deeply because she was not only a healthcare professional—she was a nurturer, a guide, a presence in the breast health community. She showed up for others with knowledge, tenderness, and strength. I want to follow in those same footsteps, not only as a student but as a future educator, practitioner, and leader in wellness spaces that center the people most often left out of the conversation. Currently, I’m working toward multiple wellness certifications including Kemetic Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga (200HR and 300HR), Somatic Healing, and Bodybuilding through NASM. I hold a BFA in Acting, a Master’s in Kinesiology, and I’m preparing to begin my MBA at the University of Michigan–Flint. On the surface, these paths may seem varied—but they are all guided by one central purpose: to help heal and empower the Black community through embodied knowledge, wellness education, and safe spaces for transformation. Breast health is a core part of that mission. Breast health is not just about detection or treatment—it’s about agency. It’s about teaching people, especially women and those with marginalized genders, how to listen to their bodies, advocate for themselves, and feel safe doing so. It’s about understanding the language of the body—how discomfort, swelling, fatigue, or asymmetry are not nuisances to ignore, but signals to respect. That type of awareness begins with education. The kind of education that is accessible, inclusive, and free from judgment or fear. For me, breast health also connects to movement, to somatics, and to healing modalities that reconnect us to our physical selves. When I teach yoga or guide a client through breathwork, I don’t just see bodies—I see sacred vessels that deserve reverence and care. The chest and heart space are often where we hold grief, trauma, and unspoken truths. I’ve seen students cry in heart-opening postures or tremble during breathwork. That is the body’s intelligence at work. And when we talk about breast health, we must include emotional and energetic health too. The body remembers. Inflammatory breast cancer, the disease that took Annie’s life, is one of the most aggressive and underdiagnosed forms of breast cancer—especially among Black women and people assigned female at birth. It doesn’t always present as a lump, which means it’s often missed or misdiagnosed. This is where education becomes life-saving. We need more professionals who know the signs, who can teach the signs, and who can do so in culturally relevant, trauma-informed ways. My goal is to build community-based wellness and education platforms that integrate breast health education into broader conversations about fitness, healing, and embodiment. I want to host workshops on breast self-exams, teach yoga flows that support lymphatic drainage and breast tissue awareness, and invite breast cancer survivors to share their stories. I want to make breast health feel approachable, empowering, and even sacred. I’m especially passionate about serving people who are often erased in traditional breast health spaces—trans and nonbinary individuals, LGBTQ+ folks, and especially Black queer women. Our needs are different. Our risks are higher. And our inclusion is non-negotiable. I want to become the kind of educator and practitioner who doesn’t just teach but listens, holds space, and builds trust. Just like Annie did. My educational path, while nontraditional, is intentionally interdisciplinary. I don’t want to only be in clinical rooms—I want to be in community centers, schools, yoga studios, wellness events, and anywhere people gather to learn about their bodies. I want to demystify breast health and weave it into everyday life. Because prevention shouldn’t be a privilege—it should be part of our cultural fabric. Receiving this scholarship would not just support my academic journey—it would affirm my calling. It would allow me to deepen my studies, invest in more certifications, and create more programming for my community. It would help me bring Annie’s legacy to life by continuing the work she championed: making breast health education accessible, powerful, and personal. I believe that breast health is an act of liberation. When we know our bodies, when we understand the systems we live in, when we’re equipped with knowledge—we are harder to silence, easier to heal, and more capable of change. That’s the future I want to build. One breast, one body, one sacred life at a time.