← Something Positive for Positive People
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brain. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 non profit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. But it didn't always start out that way.
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At first it was a podcast in.
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2017 where I was interviewing people who were struggling with their herpes diagnosis. And the reason that I started this was because I saw that there were many people who were sharing that they had suicide ideation because of their herpes diagnosis. And this was really just a way of giving people the stories of others so that they were able to see how other people are living with the herpes virus. And in that it grew into a nonprofit. And the nonprofit was intended to raise money to pay for people to get therapy, get data that matters to the people who are living with herpes, as well as bring a sense of community together outside the context of oh my God, I have herpes. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me. And then it becoming like this, this, this trauma loop of people just sharing their like the trauma of their diagnosis versus any type of healing taking place. So let me see, I gotta put my phone on, do not disturb because something will happen while I'm talking here and I'll get interrupted and lose my train of thought. But yeah, the. It's evolved, right? And one of the evolutions I'm really excited about it happened Monday. So today's Wednesday, February 26th, and on Monday. This was the year and a few months in the making. A few weeks in the making. Affirm Az they sponsored the podcast the conference last year. This is a sexual health related organization. A sexual health related organization. I am not doing them services reproductive wellness and sexual wellness organization and a lot of their services are in. Under the umbrella of. I don't know if I'm. I'm very much censoring myself because of today's political climate, being mindful of saying, because I want to post clips of this too. So if I'm seeming like I don't know who I'm working with, that's not the case, y'all. It's not the case. Right. So I don't, I hope that this doesn't come out in that way at all. But to try and keep it as in algorithmically aligned as I can. What we did was we created a scene, some scenes where clinicians, sex educators and med students were able to.
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Work.
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With a patient and receive feedback from them. All of these were in relation to herpes. So the first case was someone who was 40 years old, married, presenting physical symptoms of herpes. And their biggest concern was, is my husband cheating on me? So the clinician not only had to deal with delivering the diagnosis, but also talking to the patient through that. At the end of their time together, they were able to get feedback from the patient. And that patient feedback is critical because we did this also in a room full of other clinicians, other staff members as well. And we were able to bounce feedback off of all of these people and engage in very useful discussion. The next case was a genderqueer person who is looking to date again. They have herpes, they've had it for a while, and they want to know how to communicate with partners and keep them safe from getting herpes. So the sex educator who was doing the consult with this patient was responsible for addressing the patient's concerns while also maintaining the integrity of their identity and navigating the discussions about the kinds of sex that they have or are looking to have and talk about herpes. And what was so beautiful about this one was there were things that the educator just didn't know, and they were able to own that a name that they just didn't know. They were like, I would have to do some more research in that, and we can do that together, which was so beautiful to see. The other case we presented was neonatal herpes, and this one was like, kind of freestyle because we had a. I think she's in. What is it? In clinical. Something like that. And she was very curious about what an interaction could look like from that perspective. So we improvise. We improvise and we roleplayed that. And then we had one bonus at the end that I didn't get to observe, so I can't speak to. But we had a man who sat down with Dr. Evelyn Dacker shout out to her for being my family physician on this and being somebody or being the medical person to be able to speak to what the clinicians and staff and public health might be dealing with outside of my realm of perspective. So it was very, very wonderful having her there. And in fact, I want to shout out Jordan. I want to shout out Dakota. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Paula, for putting this together. Thank you, everybody who had some involvement with this. Like, it goes way further. Shout out to True, who is retired. She really prepared me for being able to put this training together. And this is what we're going to do. This is what we're doing from here on out. All in all, with travel expenses and everything, I think that this came out to being about 12 to $15,000, I would need to look at the expenses from the trip, but all of $15,000 for us to put the simulation on. And it was a very small turnout. I think we had a total of 20 people there. That's everybody. But I envision being able to do thing on a larger scale. And for the first time there's, you know, bumps in the road. Like there are things that I could have done better. I definitely could have set the expectations and gotten the clinicians to understand, like, hey, you're going to be on camera. Because a lot of people didn't want to be on camera. So we have the back of the clinicians heads, which works fine. Like we were able to improvise there. I was able to get a videographer to come so that we can get footage. And now I can show you all what it is that we're doing rather than me explaining it or trying to talk through it. Because for the last seven, eight.
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Yeah, it's been eight. Almost nine years.
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Yeah, eight years. For the last eight years that I've been doing this, it's been a lot of talking and there hasn't really been a lot of showing. And partially because of stigma.
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Right.
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People don't want to be seen, people don't want to be associated with or connected to an organization that's providing services for people who have herpes.
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Right.
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Because then people are going to think you have it or whatever. But we were able to get some volunteers that offered to contribute to this, the money that, that we were able to raise. I want to shout out the Love and Action Fund for being willing and able to provide us with the money that we needed. That was the bulk of it. The rest of it just came from Yalls donations. I want to thank my yoga therapy clients because Yalls contributions have helped make this possible. And this is the launchpad for the rest of what my career is going to look like. I am going to work with people on a one on one basis through yoga therapy. And I feel so certain and clear now that I can say that like. And I also want to name. I've not been present consistent at all with recording podcast episodes since the episode.
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That I did with Holly.
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I've been dealing with a lot of things personally, but also having to prepare for this. This thing that is in fact going to be what the rest of my career looks like. So as I pursue grant opportunities and funding, this looks like being able to create jobs across the country for patient actors. So I don't know what the price point is going to be but people who sex educators or if you are looking to volunteer, if you are somebody who is in the medical field, if you work at an organization that can use some training, especially in regards to delivering a herpes diagnosis or counseling patients with herpes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Like that is a very specific niche. We can wiggle in other things. But in order to be aligned with the mission and the funding that I'm hoping to be able to get over the years, it needs to be in alignment with herpes. There's plenty of medical health organization. Medical health. Why did I say that? There's plenty of health related organizations, public health, mental health places and people where this is going to be valuable to them. So as long as I can find the funding opportunities, I'll be able to continue to run this program, train everybody, organize the events and put these on like this. This was really useful and we got some really good feedb. Some people ask for more lecture and that's coming from, from me, who I talk a lot.
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Right.
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So they wanted more of me talking, which was great and speaking about what it means to be stigma free. But all this information will be updated on the training tab on something Positive for Positive People's website. So as I get video footage, as I get the marketing materials, we're creating a commercial for it so that it's more easy to find if you're somebody who works at a clinic, if you're in public health and you know you want to support something positive, but maybe you don't want to out yourself. I think that being able to say that stumbled across this program that can be helpful for the staff to be stigma free with their language or to navigate communicating with patients about their sexual health, especially with herpes. Right.
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Like I got to keep throwing that.
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In there because this is so unique. There's a lot of HIV organizations, there's a lot of STI work for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, but there's so few in regards to herpes. There's herpes cure advocacy and myself as far as organizations that I know of, I don't know of any other ones, at least in the United States that are doing what it is that we're doing. So it's very useful, it's very, it's powerful, it's impactful. The feedback has been tremendous in the sense that know what to do more of and what to do less of. And a lot of it really just has to do with expectation setting in the marketing material.
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I, I thought I did a good.
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Job of that, but you know, it could, it, it always can be better. And then in regards to feedback, like, I, I don't want to recap it. You know, I'm, I'm gonna, hopefully when I post this episode, I'll just link to the training page and then whenever the commercial's there, the commercial will be there. But yeah, I would really like for, if you work at a health related organization, please have them, somebody get in contact with me so that we can talk about what it looks like to host and facilitate a training. To be virtual. It can be virtual, but I prefer in person because there's just so much more value there. There's more presence, there's more feedback and that's. This is what I want to be doing. I want to be doing this and I want to be seeing my yoga therapy clients and of course the podcast, like, I host that. Speaking of also, Trisha, aka Safe Slut, she and I have next Thursday or March 6th, we're going to be hosting a social event. It's free, it's in Brooklyn, it'll be at the house.
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And the.
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The, the intention is just for us to hang out, for us to just socialize. I think my battery to my headphones is low. I think my headphones just died. That's crazy. If I sound different, it's because my headphones just died.
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So. All right, hopefully y'all can still hear me, but my headphones just died over.
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Wow.
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I might even sound better to be completely honest. But I'll check before posting this. And yeah, it's going to be a social event. And then two days later, I have the Something Positive for Positive People Stigma Minimization Expo that's going to be in Newark, New Jersey. It's at the njcri. The details and address is all on the events tab of Something Positive for Positive People. So you can go there if you want to register. There are free spots available, but if you can pay, y'all, please, please pay. Okay, we got Dakota. She's going to come do her Deep Throat workshop. So there's something pleasure based and fun. And then I myself am going to facilitate a herpes disclosure workshop to teach people how to talk about herpes as well as sexual health with their partners. I'll be using the STARS framework from Dr. Evelyn Dacker. And yeah, we'll have food, we'll have some socializing, and that's going to be a really good time. And then in a month, it'll be April 8th, I believe April 6th or 8th. I forget, like, what the days do in relation to the different days of the month. But that'll be a Saturday at Hit Me Up Space in New York City. This is going to be an event where Trisha and I are going to both facilitate a workshop.
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So these are going to be two.
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Separate workshops for the price of one admission at Hit Me Up Space for us to talk about rejection handling as well as herpes disclosure culture. So we'll have those two workshops and be able to mix and mingle and socialize there as well. So lots of opportunities. I'm trying to make sure to get out here while I can and build community, like, in person. Because there's something about the power of presence where we can commune together and through this thing that we have in common, be able to formulate some type of community, sense of safety, and be able to. To, like, just see that there's people who have herpes who are living a healthy, normal life, who are living the kind of life that they want, having the kind of sex that they want. And I want that for y'all. I want that for everybody. But I'm. I'm riding a high right now. I really am, from having been in Phoenix for the last eight days. I've done a lot of traveling over between December 12th and literally Monday. I've gone to see friends. I've gone to a friend, a friend's wedding. Dakota and I had a conference that we presented at. We had another conference that we presented at. I had my yoga therapy training in person and then the training simulation in Phoenix, Arizona. So I'm gonna sit my ass down for a little bit. Very much, like, looking at and working on boundaries for myself. A lot of the personal stuff that I've been dealing with has come from a lack of or absence of or negligence of boundaries, all in general. So I'm working on that. I'm working on my boundaries around my time, finances, energy, slash, emotions, right? Like, how I want to feel, as well as my, wow, what were the other ones?
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Communication and then sex.
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These are important places to have boundaries. I've always had this belief that, like, oh, you know, why should I have boundaries? You know, for people, like, I don't believe in that. I don't want to give people boundaries. And it never sat right for me. So I've always used that as an excuse for not having.
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Having boundaries.
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But really the boundaries are for myself around things. I think boundaries are for things, not for people. So if I have boundaries in regards to my time, the kind of people who would violate my time won't be able to make their way into my space because that's an instant boundary. Like, I can communicate. Like, hey, I don't like when people are late to things, to calls, to things that we have planned. And so I'm not going to violate myself by, you know, welcoming that and. And trying to work myself around the person who consistently violates my time. And the same thing with finances. Food is another one you bounced around food, y'all. I ate like, I didn't feel good. Like, I. And it was just how I ate, what I ate. Like, when I burped, it tasted like throw up, and I was very. Just gassy. I don't know if it was a specific thing I ate, but I hadn't been able to cook my own food, really. Like, I got these salads from Walmart and like a rotisserie chicken, and I ate that for lunch every day and then dinner. It was whatever. But I've been eating significantly less and just being more mindful of that. But my stomach has been messed up in the sense of, like, just fullness, and that wasn't healthy. You know, we do all this talking about herpes, right?
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But I'm.
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I'm looking at myself beyond that and having a more expansive view of myself. If you've listened to the yoga therapy podcast episode, you know, I talked about the koshers, the five aspects or layers of self, and those selves being the physical body, the energetic or breath body, the mental emotional body, our identity or collective of experiences, and then the pleasure body. So I've been looking at. At creating boundaries and aligning myself with integrity in accordance to those things, as well as Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil. There are seven principles in there. They are definite, definiteness of purpose, mastering your environment, self discipline, harmony, man. What were the other ones? Ah, that's four of them. Exercising caution is fine. And then there's two more that I'm. I'm blanking on. But these are the guiding principles to my values, and I'm gonna work on those and be a little bit more transparent. And what I'm going through, because I've been hidden, I've been suppressing myself, and I recognize that. And today I'm feeling really light emotionally, energetically. Perhaps it was just the weight of everything that I had going on for the last eight days, arguably the last two months, just from moving and sharing space now with my girlfriend. And can I say that I don't know if I can say that or not, because, like, this place of, of trying to, like, re. Get to know each other. So I, I, I've been trying to, like, not talk about this, but I think maybe I need to talk about it, and that's all the more reason to. But, yeah, we broke up. Up prior to it was, like, February 5th or 6th. Ending the relationship and then, like, coming back into, like, what's gonna happen next. And so being real, I see this. The relationship is not a relationship, but it is a relationship. Like, we all have relationships, right? But what I About having, what the experience is right now, and I don't got to go into too many details, is that the relationship has ended as it was, and now there's this space of, okay, who am I? Who are you? And can a relationship continue if I am who I am and you are who you are now with new expectations. So they're saying one of them is complicated situations, right? Like, I'm, I'm treating it like I'm in a relationship and going really from there, and I'm working on what my boundaries are like so that I could do a better job of setting expectations. So there's so much that we've covered over the years in relation to herpes and dating, but not necessarily the self and relationships and relationships to do ourselves. And so I hope that this is a shift that y'all are willing to be on board with. I know the last episode I did, I talked about speaking more about relationships and having herpes, but it's really just about relationships, right? Like, so much of the content that's out there, I've been working so hard to weave in herpes. But this is more than that, right? Like, it's, it's about, you know, positivity, like, being positive, not just in regards to your sexual health status, but also in regards to your overall quality of life. And this is just one avenue of healing that we can all go down, and when we do so in community, it makes it a lot easier to navigate. So this space is hopefully a good community for y'all. I've needed this. I needed to be on my podcast. Like, I've, I've let myself slip away during hard times from what I've needed most. And what I think I've needed most is this self expression. I think I've needed this community engagement. I needed to engage with my purpose, because I think that part of, you know, what's led to some of the conflict in my relationship has been that what I would normally pour into this platform, this space. I've been making an effort to pour into my relationship. And yeah, like, it's been hard. It's been a struggle. And I take full accountability for the challenges that have presented themselves. And that's what I'm doing now. Like, I'm working on things and trying to get clear and better on boundaries because I haven't been. I haven't had to. It's just been me. I've been by myself. And I think that when you're single for a while, especially for me, having been someone who hasn't had any accountability from a partner, like, I was definitely reckless. I was reckless in the beginnings of that, but I have so much more dial back. And it feels really good to be able to just, like, breathe into this newfound lightness of integrity and being able to, like, try and not try because I know who I am. And now it's a matter of using boundaries to uphold my identity. That's what it is. Boundaries are a way of upholding my identity. I speak to y'all about identity validation and the importance of being able to be yourself and see yourself outside of your sexuality and sexual health status exclusively, but seeing yourself in the way that you want to be seen by your friends and your family and those relationships that are important to you. Um, and being able to be accepted. And that's something that I've been trying to figure out as well. Like, what is acceptance look like? Like, is it enabling? Is it, you know, just unconditional? I'll let you. I'll allow you and let you do whatever you want, regardless of consequences, or is it something else? Right. And I view acceptance as sort of a neutrality, as supportive and challenging. That's what acceptance is. It's a balance of support and challenging. And I think that's what transcends enabling versus not enabling. Right. So for a person to be able to be themselves with. In someone else's presence. Right. And to have a level of acceptance that it is safe to be that. And there's also the challenge that creates accountability and there's the support, which I think is a. It. It's different than enabling. Right? So, yeah, that's where I'm at. That's where I'm at in life. I think it was important that I. I named that. I've had a lot of very supportive conversations and people around me have been really good to me and, like, showing me as well that, like, I'm more than what I'm identifying with. With. Right. Like, a lot of my identification has still been. If it hasn't been herpes, it's been sex and my sexuality. And I was challenged by a good friend of mine to a few good friends of mine, actually this has been a reoccurring thing. But look at my relationship with sexuality, not necessarily just sex, and you know, decide what sexuality is. And you know, I look at mine as, you know, I look at sex and sexuality as at its core, creation. And if we look at whatever it is that you believe about God, whether you do or don't believe in God or higher power, whatever, I think that we've got this creation that only can occur when the two sides, the masculine, feminine, yin yang, whatever, come together. You bring the masculine and feminine together and the greatest thing that you can create is another being, right? So if you separate the masculine and the feminine, what is the greatest bit of creation, right? So when we look at, when we look inside and internally we go and we can create things that have the purpose of being experienced anew by others, right? I look at my relationship with God that as I ask myself and I ask people that sometimes, like, why do you think God made this? If there's a guy, right, let's play around with that. Can you imagine knowing everything and nothing being new or exciting? Like, how boring would it be to just exist? So I think that all of this was created out of boredom, right? Like if you know everything, that the most fun game you can play is not knowing everything and being on this journey to remember that that's where you are. So however many life cycles and expressions of existence that exist, like all of this is God. I'm watching these birds just kind of fly around with each other and I look at them and I'm like, that's me. Or I was that. Or I am that. But time doesn't necessarily exist to God. It exists within the limitations of what our being is, right? So we've got these bodies that have, have like a clock on them of natural progression that changes according to life circumstances, right? And at any given moment that can just go away. And I, I think that it's important that I live that way. And I've not been living in that way. I've been living. Yoga philosophy has this. The clacious or the root causes of suffering. Fear of death, Avoidance, ignorance, ego and aversion. Oh, look at me. Fear of death, of ignorance. Oh, attachment. I, I said one thing twice, but attachment is the other one. And I've been suffering in all of those. And I've been listening to the book Letting Go And I've been letting go of the things that I found myself most attached to, where my ego has been rampant, where I've been ignorant, where I've just been fearful. And I think in doing so, that's why I'm able to come and now record this podcast episode. Because I've tried, I've tried to record some podcast episodes and they've just not been good. They've turned into other things and they've not been genuine. And I recognize that when I am genuine, when I show up in this way where, where you know, it ain't no filters in how I speak. Like, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And I've felt like I've not been able to do that lately. And I've now become supported and pushed and challenged by the people around me to do this and how necessary it is. Especially now when politically, you know, there's a lot of things that are threatening to a lot of people's well being. And you know, herpes is becoming less of an important thing especially, but it is still an important thing because it affects one of the avenues of healing for us, which might be sex, sexuality, and our ability to have relationships and connect with people. So I'm looking at this from a new lens, and that new lens being that this is a lot bigger than what I got going on. So no matter what, I need to show up, and I just show up how I show up. It's more important to me that I be real than I be right? So I want to just name this now and take accountability and say to y'all, like, consistency is key. I got my eyes closed while I'm saying this, but it's almost like I'm praying, speaking as a spell for myself to remain consistent in what I'm doing, doing what I say I'm gonna do. So if I don't do nothing else, it is gonna be show up real and be consistent, right? And if there are things that I can't say name, hey, I can't talk about this because it's also strange, you know, having relationships with people or a relationship relationships and wanting to also be mindful of them and like keeping their business out of things and, and doing that. I think that what's happened is I've created a whole ass new Persona that fortunately y'all haven't really gotten to see. But it, it's shown up in my personal relationships and I, I gotta, I gotta shake that off and I gotta get to being me. There's no going Back to who I was. There's only, you know, integration and the implementing, the implementation of, of, you know, who I am. I think that that's it. There's the implementation of the integration that's been occurring over this bit of time that I've been struggling. So all that said, y'all, we got the herpes stigma conference May 22. We have some changes to the schedule that I'll try and get announced. And I got to promote that. I got to promote the next Something Positive Expo which is going to be in Newark, N.J. on Newark, Newark, N.J. on March 8, which is a Saturday, March 6. We got the Social in Brooklyn. I have some virtual things that are coming up as well. So just check out the events tab and they'll be there. And I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I'll be in Canada, Montreal at the end of July for a conference with Dr. Ina Park Mark as well as Jolene who made the no Shame in his game film. Oh, and June, early June is Sci Engage in Phoenix, Arizona. So I'll be back out there as well for that. And I'm teaching yoga to sexual health related organizations. I was very excited to be able to have an opportunity to revisit that. For those who don't know, I'm a 500 hour registered certified yoga instructor and I'm in yoga therapy training. I just completed my introductory course which was 300 hours. Now I only got 500 to go and I will be international IAYT, International association for Yoga Therapists certified. And I had a. I'mma had that stamp on everything. So yeah, this ain't coaching. This ain't, you know, the licensed mental health professional therapy. But it's yoga therapy which is just an integration of yoga into, into a therapeutic approach one on one to support you in your healing of the physical body, the mind, your breathing, meditating, self reflection and being able to use those as reference points to help you through navigating dating stigma or herpes stigma, whether that be dating, relationship, sex and your physical symptoms, emotional wellness, whatever. We also got the survey. We're taking responses. If you can please take that, participate because that data is going to fuel my ability to get funding to be able to continue to do free for y'all. I love being able to do free, but I got to be able to get paid for it. All right, if you need a support call, one on one donation based support calls, I had somebody donate one cent. Don't matter. Everybody get the same 30 minutes if whatever you got to give. Please do. We're gonna make it work. I feel like that person might have just been being an and trolling because I haven't heard back, but I just told him. I was like, hey, you know, once I get your $0.01 donation, I'll send the calendar wondering, like, I think it costs more money to send me one cent than it is. You know what? I ain't going into all of that. Whatever it is that you give is really just. It's accountability, right? Like, how much do you want out of it? How much are you willing to invest? Because the value that you put in you determine the value of what you get out of it. I don't. All I can do is show up as I do and listen to your. You make sure to get what you're coming in for that. Making sure to get that to you. And yeah, like, that's. That's all I got. That's all I can do in that 30 minutes of our time together. And then if we need more, that looks like so, yeah, man, I'm. I'm very much just riding a high right now of the good that's happening. And I encourage everybody else to do the same. I hope that y'all are taking care of yourselves. Herpes aside, man, just love people. Please, please love people. It sound like some real hippie today, don't it? I guess this is who I am. Like, I'm telling you, like, my shoulders drop. I'm feeling like more safe and secure in myself. I feel like this sense of freedom. I feel very loved on and supported by the people around me, man. And it's been rough. It's been a rough ass two months. It's been a rough two months and now there's. There's light. There's light at the end of the tongue. I'm in that. I'm stepped into it. Like, I'm looking back and I'm like, damn, that was a dark ass cave I was in. But now we on the other side of it. So, yeah, please hit me up. Mental health professionals, clinicians for these stigma free trainings, inquiries. I want to make this work. I want to make this accessible and available to everybody and be able to get us better health care, better stigma free, minimal stigma minimization from our health practitioners to the general public, as well as people who are living with herpes. So hola at me. That concludes this episode of Something positive for positive People. Please, like, Rate, Review, Share subscribe to this podcast. I can't thank y'all enough for being part of it, y'all, until next time.