I’ve had juvenile fibromyalgia and chronic migraine headaches since the age of 15. I also have intrauterine hyperplasia, something that was only helped by getting an IUD at my local planned parenthood, because no other gynecologist nearby would take my insurance, Medicaid and Medicare.

I have also dealt with major depression disorder, generalized anxiety and losing my father at the age of 13 to cancer. My mother has battled, and won, against three different types of cancer. If disability and affordable healthcare were not available for us, people well beneath the poverty line, my mother and I wouldn’t be alive today.

Those of us that need to decide between feeding ourselves, paying the bills, and medicine often go without doing at least one of the three.

This is only a small portion of the many reasons that I choose to march. I don’t only march for myself, I march for my family, my friends and the people I don’t even know. I march because all it takes for evil and hatred to flourish is one good person to do nothing.