Brown has always seen adversity as a challenge. Growing up, she didn’t attend an elite track school, and she wasn’t signed to a big shoe brand straight out of college. “It taught me not to look at everything with face value,” she says. “When you don’t have the things that people say you need, you look at things differently, including yourself.” In sport, all athletes are vying for the same contracts—”it’s a crab at the bottom of the barrel mentality”, she says. But instead of making her uber competitive, Brown loved to see her teammates thrive. “I was always so happy seeing other female athletes getting certain stuff, because I’d think ‘she's still opening doors for me—for all of us.’” 

She sees her self-advocacy for endometriosis in a similar vein. “I’m showing that I can open doors in a different way.” She is campaigning for the greater good, using her suffering and experience to better the lives of her contemporaries and the women who will come after her. Winning is no longer only about medals. It’s about winning on behalf of other women. It shows unbelievable strength—not just in body, but in character. 

Brown says she did not expect so many other athletes to be suffering, too. Her confidence in broaching very personal subjects in the public domain goes beyond being a spokesperson. She is also acting as a conduit between athletes and their coaches to foster important conversations. “Our coaches are usually male, and our agents are usually male, our personal trainers are usually male,” she says. “How do you tell such a male-dominated space that you have pelvic pain, when most of them can’t even say the word period without freaking out?” 

Her openness in dialogue has meant that many men within the space have started reaching out to her for guidance. “Coaches want to know how to have these conversations with their athletes,” she says. “I’ve been offering advice and thinking about what helpful resources I can send them. Because people need to understand that it’s not only pain we are managing. It’s the other symptoms that come with it—nausea, infertility, headaches… I want to be a bridge to help people understand. Not just at the elite level, but in college.”

She places huge emphasis on women’s health being a male issue. In doing so, she is flipping the script by encouraging men to be part of the conversation. This is the kind of support that’s critical for women everywhere. In reversing the narrative that women’s health issues are dealt with by women in silence, athletics can become a role model for other sports, and, more broadly, for everyday women within heterosexual relationships at home. 

“Education for men is really important, even in terms of having conversations around periods,” she says. “That should not be a taboo subject. Women shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed; they should be able to freely say, ‘I’m feeling like this at the moment.’ The pain and side effects are real.”

Beyond that, coaches and personal trainers who train women—whether elite or not—need to be versed in women’s pelvic health, she says. “You can be quite susceptible to pain within your abductors and your hips, and a lot of the time, PTs try to treat it as an injury, when the issue is pelvic pain. Sometimes, it hurts to run or to squat. PTs need to be trained in how to create an environment where women feel that it’s safe enough to share their experiences.” 

She’s also campaigning for colleges and sports teams to bring in experts to help them properly manage the care required. “If this is not your specialty, make sure you have someone on staff; have a person whose job it is to talk to the athletes about this and to be their point of contact and resource,” she says. “I’ve been experiencing pain since college, and there wasn’t anyone I could turn to.” 

Within the infrastructure of organized sport, efforts are hyper-focused on training and performance. Brown wants to broaden the definition of healthy. Healthy doesn’t just mean “not injured.” It means actually being well. “What’s happening with my body impacts me both on the track and off it,” she says. “I want to be a fully well-rounded athlete, to not only perform and do my job on the track—for myself, for my track school, for my footwear sponsor—but I also want to feel well outside of the sport. We all deserve that.” 

Brown’s story is a testament to the importance of self-advocacy—within medicine, and in life. Having that connection with yourself means trusting your instincts, honoring your body and its resilience on any given day, and having enough strength of character to step back and rest when needed. “I do a lot to take care of myself.” 

Elite sport is forever wrapped up in the narrative of harder, faster, longer, better; wins are defined by medals and world records. But Brown is proving that the real win is when you can be so at one with your body that you speak the same language. “Our bodies give us warning signs,” she says. “It’s up to us to listen.”