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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 who are navigating herpes stigma. And let me tell y' all this, I just updated the website tremendously. There is now a men's herpes support group. There are, if you go there and you're interested in that, like you'll see a link that directs you to the additional resources for men. This includes some of the stuff that I used to do when I made Self a non profit which was dedicated to men's emotional wellness resources. And those men's emotional wellness resources are now directed on the Something Positive for Positive People website. So if you're looking for men's groups men's resources, you'll be able to find that on the website. So just go to the website. It's going to be super easy to navigate. Now my graphic designer who on me recently in a seven minute voice message, she won't hear this because I don't think she listens to the podcast, but she, she lit a fire under my ass and I got all my together. So the website is a lot easier to navigate. It'll be much easier to find what it is that you're looking for. I think that we did a real good job of stripping down things. I got really hyped up and excited when I was learning about Atomic language, which I'll still use, I'll use that personally and I'll let my podcast self be where I'm more so speak out loud and practice using that language and exploring that. And then whenever I'm working with my yoga therapy clients using that framework as it applies to yoga in order to support people and get them to a better place with their diagnosis. And a lot of times what it is that I will say I do, from support calls to support groups to yoga therapy, is really getting people to understand what their baseline is, the connection, the relationship to the nervous system and how that expresses itself in behaviors in the body and the mind. And I know a lot of people don't like to use spiritual language, but I believe that the nervous system is a manifestation of the spirit. What dysregulates us, what hypes us up, what slows us down, what makes us feel stagnant and stuck. And everything is about balance. And that's one of the things that I'm learning from yoga therapy, which I'll be done with my training in 2026. So I just went through and I checked in with my Instructor to make sure that I was on track to get everything squared away for 2026. So I'll be fully licensed, assuming I pass the test, which there's no reason I shouldn't pass the test. Yeah, I'll be fully ready to go come the end of 2026, going into 2027. So, yeah, be on the lookout for that. So what that means is that there will be more of a connection to yoga in the presentations that I create and talking about like this as a support resource. And I think I might have found the longevity of my career in utilizing yoga practices and yoga therapies specifically as a way of supporting people with their herpes diagnosis. Not just to minimize the symptoms of outbreaks or expressions of the virus and transmission, but also how people deal with the statement, the emotional wellness, the mental health piece. I want to shout out to all my practice clients that let me work with them, and then the clients that decided to stick with me because they found value in it, the ones who've left and come back. So, yeah, it's real validating that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Yesterday I did a workshop with Project safe, and this workshop was with Shout out to Tara Jones. Tara. Tara Jones of the Youth Sexpert program. I found out she was 25. I didn't know she was 25, but she came in with me to Project Safe here in Brooklyn, which is a youth organization that educates people, young people, and they have, like, young people as ambassadors for their program as well. And the overall goal was to go in, talk about herpes, herpes, stigma. But in order to meet the requirements for what they needed, there had to be a little bit more expansion on STIs. Like, we just had to really touch on it. But I didn't feel comfortable not doing that by myself. So I reached out to her and I've been seeing her work for a while and I've wanted to support, but every time that I'd want to do some type of a fundraising thing, the event, which is not sell or I had a lot of stuff that happened in the first half of this year, so I wasn't able to produce what I thought I would. So it was nice to be able to reach out to her and invite her along to. To present with me and be able to pay her directly for what she brought in, because Lord knows I don't like making presentations. So, yeah, between that and conducting the presentation, it was a really good experience. I'm glad that Project safe, you know, Reached out and wanted to have me come in and do this. So I thought about recording it, but I don't know. That didn't feel right. So what I'll do here then is instead just recap. This will be something that's for more of the health professionals, healthc care providers, therapists, educators. Some of the things that consistently come up when it comes to like the stigma minimization training or how do we eliminate stigma from our vocabulary and from our practices and marketing materials is the, the language. A lot of times language is something that people are confused by and we want to use the information that's out there, the data that exists. But a lot of the data and information that exists, especially regarding herpes and herpes stigma, it doesn't make sense and it's inconsistent. If you go to the World Health Organization or the NIH or the cdc, the American Sexual Health association, you'll see different things. And even if you go to something positive for positive people, like I always tell people, my disclaimer is that the people who take our surveys, the people who we hear from, these are people who are generally not doing well because of their diagnosis. So we're not really able to get a reflection of the entire population of people who have herpes and know that they have herpes. Okay? So a lot of what I try and stick to are the psychological, mental health, the emotional wellness effects and anything that can be recorded. If they can report the frequency or intensity of their herpes outbreaks, if a know that they have or have not passed herpes on to a partner, this is the kind of information that we can get, that we can report on and we can further investigate. But beyond that, like, I don't believe that there's a way for us to quantify transmission rates like accurately because it does depend on so many things. And I'm learning from my yoga therapy clients, which they share with me their experiences with outbreaks and what's going on with them around the outbreaks time. Like that's really all we got to report on. You really got to follow people and stay with them and, and like track over the course of. I mean, I guess we can do a year, but I don't know, man. I think the, the course of, from the time a person receives their diagnosis to the time that they seek out support, report that that window of time is so inconsistent that we can't really, you know, find out, okay, if this number of people were diagnosed, this number of people had outbreaks or symptoms at this location and you know, Go down the list of what it is that you would be tracking. I don't think that we can get that consistently enough. At least I can't, not without a significant amount of time on my hands and a significant amount of funding to really be able to just do this, because I am curious. But at the same time, I also recognize the irrelevance of it. People ask me all the time about transmission rates. Oh, well, you know, if I wear a condom, if I take the medication, does that bring the transmission rate down? Yeah, maybe. But if you stressing about bringing the transmission rate down and stress is the number one cause for outbreaks, what are you really doing? And also, like, I always tell people, the person who doesn't have herpes, they have to like you more than they don't want herpes. And also, like for you, if that's something that you're consistently worrying about and stressing over, then that is going to increase the likelihood of you passing herpes on to them or having an outbreak even. Because again, this is one of those things where stress, it invites outbreaks. So having to talk to people, talking to educators and like, explain that the information that people want a, doesn't exist because people want to know how to prevent transmission. There is no preventing herpes transmission. And so the only thing that we're really left with is how do we get people to that realization? How do we do so in a way that language allows for us to do so without inviting any stigma? Words like protection, because, you know, that implies an inherent danger of something as pleasurable, as fun, as connecting, as beautiful as sex can be. The word safe also does that. Words like disease, you know, like the word infection to me ain't no different. But I know we're going from STD to sti, and an infection is more accurate because you can have an infection, you can have a virus and not have any symptoms, whereas the disease has the symptoms. So I get that. I understand that. But there's a lot to be said for not just how we say what we say, but it's also the words that we use. And it's very situational. I like to remove violent terms from the. The language we use when we talk about sex and sexual health, when we talk about even ending stigma or destroying stigma or eradicating ending. The words that we use are things that have. They have like a weight to them. And one of the exercises that I like to do is a simple meditation where we begin to explore what stigma feels like by consciously looking at the difference. Role the different roles we play in life, our different ident. And then we throw stigma in there. But we kind of move ourselves into stigma to feel what that feels like and not be those other aspects of ourselves. And then we can kind of relate the weight of those identities up against what it feels like to be stigmatized. So we also did that. And this gives an idea of what stigma feels like to a person who's experiencing it. And the way out of it being to validate their identity outside of stigma, which oftentimes is just reminding them that they are a sibling, someone's offspring, maybe a parent, someone who has hobbies or a particular career. They're a colleague, they're someone's teacher, a student. Right. And these are the kinds of things that we do in the workshops. And one of the things that's really expensive to do, but I want to do more of. I'm hoping to hear back about this grant that I applied for, which will be at the end of this month. Fingers crossed, because this will be the big thing that I've wanted to do, which is hiring sex educators to be patient actors, so that we can go into clinics, we can go into therapy practices. And I'll give them a script for us to prepare, like a backstory. And these people are going to consult with us and communicate with us, delivering a diagnosis, answering our questions about scis. Maybe we're newly diagnosed, and we just want to know what our options are in terms of being able to practice sex that is more safe. Safer with our potential partners. So I think that that is. That is. I don't want to say I think that is the next step of what this advocacy looks like. But I just got to be. I got to strip things down. So when you go to the website, you'll see that you might not even notice, but a lot of stuff has been stripped down from the website and organized in a way where it's much easier to navigate. We got the home page. If you want to learn about something positive, if you want to learn about Courtney, you can do that. If you want to understand the. The training like I'm describing here, you can do that. We've got a blog I need to start adding more to. I've blogged about the main questions that people have about discord and dating and then transmission rates. But I. I can probably post more there, and I'm going to invest a lot more time on the website than I have been on Instagram, because Instagram has not been. Instagram ain't been cool with me. Lately, I would say even I might have noticed it maybe two years ago, but it's been consistently just not aligned. It's not been showing my content to people. And so I'm better off just investing more into the website. So I put a little bit of money into it. Shout out to Jenny for making the website look good, making it easier to navigate and giving me the feedback that I needed in order to light the fire into my ass to get going. Because yeah, this is how people are finding something positive for positive people and this is where the opportunities are being created. This is where how we're able to keep things going. So yeah, if you are someone who works at a clinic, some sort of a health organization, public health, sexual health, mental health, education, if you provide any training, please reach out. If you know of any conferences that would make sense for something positive for positive people to be represented at, please reach out, let me know like it is. I'm doing this by myself and I reach out for help when I can. When I can pay people to do things, I reach out to them and help me do the things. But I'm doing everything I can. I don't see myself burning out. I don't see myself stepping away from this. So please don't like feel any kind of sense of urgency or anything. But it is a lot, It's a lot that I do. And the Tara asked me yesterday, she was like, so what are the pillars of something positive for positive people, y'? All? I'm in yoga therapy training. I do have my 500 hour yoga teacher certification, which is it. It fuels the approach I take to the support offerings that I have. And I also have the stigma free training with the patient actors, which is a whole program to manage off. I host the support calls. There's now a weekly support group, one for men, one for women. These meet Mondays at 7:30pm Eastern Time. @ this moment, anyone who wants to be in the group, you have to be vetted first. So we have to have a support call. And after the support call, that's when you can get added to the group. And then when you're in the group, it's required that you make a donation for each of the ones that you attend. Don't matter how much, I just want you to. I want commitment. I need commitment. I'm tired of people not showing up to things. I'm tired of people telling me, oh, you should do this and they're not doing it. I am the person who's facilitating the men's group as well. As the women's group, these are separate just because I. I notice. And in talking to other people, we've noticed the same things where we'll have a support group for everybody, but then men don't show up. We'll have a support group for men, and then women will be like, why? We ain't got what? So. Oh, that's my experience. I can't say that that's the case for everybody. But there's alternatives. If you are a woman who doesn't want to be at Courtney's support group because I'm a man. Cool. We have alternative options for that as well. So, yeah, this, this episode really feels more like an update to what's been going on. But I also really just like, if you are somebody who wants to help out, can help out. Tell me who to talk to. Just give me, give me the name. You ain't got to do nothing else. If you can make a warm introduction to one of these health care organizations. One of these public health organizations. I'm connected to the National Coalition of STD Directors. I'm connected to the National Coalition for Sexual Health. I'm connected to the American Sexual Health Association. Like all of the acronyms, as far as I know, I'm connected to. I'm applying to speak at conferences and present at these places. I have my first HBCU that I'm talking to Historically Black College in Baltimore coming up next month. And I'm. I'm doing more of these things. I'm looking for more of these things because these, these was keeping the lights on. These are progressing the mission. And the more of those things I do, the less that I gotta look for. Because looking for this is really what's kicking my ass, to be completely honest. And I want to shout out to Dr. Ina park, who's a former board member of something positive for positive people. She had to step down, unfortunately, to have like a lot of other obligations. And with her obligations, she was still able to support me personally, inviting me as well as Jolene, who created the no Shame in this game film documentary out to Montreal, Canada, this past July, I think it was July. And we got to present. And that's what turned into a couple of really nice opportunities for me. So I'm very fortunate and blessed to have people who do just point me in the directions of things. Shout out to. I think it's Amari, sex ed. She's like a sex education administrator of some sort of admin by Amari on Instagram, who connected me to someone who writes For Cosmo. I want to say, I think it's Cosmo, she said, and giving me the opportunity to share my experience as somebody who's living with herpes. And yeah, this, this, this life of mine is fueled by community. I don't do this for money. Like, I, I need the money. Yes. The donations that come in, awesome. The paid opportunities make it a lot more efficient and easy for me because unless I got to worry about the more it is I can do so that I, I got friends who were like, Courtney, yeah, yo, you should do this. This is how you can make more money. Get into the stock market. I, I honestly don't give a about that. As long as I can. My living expenses are about 1500amonth. That's it. Like, I just me 1500amonth, and I don't know how the I'm able to do that. And a lot of the stuff that I want to do off of 1500amonth and I just accredited to just alignment and being connected to what I perceive as to be God, as to be the universe, you know, whatever language it is that you want to use, Quantum mechanics, physics. But in aligning myself with the nature of the flow of what my life experiences and has. Has formed me into and what's been formed in terms of my personality, my identity, I find that a lot more stuff has been happening just more fluidly for me. So, yeah, man, that's, that's it. Like, if y' all know of opportunities, please send them my way so that I can do more of what I've done yesterday. And I'm getting better at it to where I don't need to bring somebody in with me. I've. I'm used to bringing in people just because I like connecting. Like, connecting is more important to me than how much money I'm getting. I ain't got no problem with splitting. Whatever the cost, whatever the money coming in is, in order to give somebody else the opportunity to share the spotlight, stage speaking opportunity, whatever it is, I ain't got no problem with that. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for more of these. I'm looking for more of these opportunities. If you find them, if you know them, let me know. All right? And what this includes is a lot of just speaking to the lived experiences of people who are struggling with and navigating herpes stigma, teaching people how to talk about it, and the people who are in the educational or clinical settings. How do you talk about this with patients? A lot of people always get, like, unique questions. There was someone who said someone that they knew had gotten herpes on his foot from, like, walking around the resort. Went to the doctor, and the doctor told him, no, that's herpes. But they were able to freeze it off. I was like, all right. You know, I hear about the, like, wrestlers getting herpes from the yoga mask, but that didn't sound right to me. So I asked. I was like, you sure it was hsv, not hpv? And then some time with pass, and she checked, and she was like, oh, yeah, it was hpv. It was hpv. I was like, cool. So, you know, there's no telling how long this kind of experience, this. This story can exist and grow and evolve over time. And then, you know, we. We think these things. That's really how stigma works. It's oftentimes that we don't have accurate or the. The right information to be able to call something what it is. So now we've got this ripple effect because the information that I was given is what I'm using and sharing as lived experience. Experience. As I'm talking to people, as I'm telling them, oh, hey, you know, this is what I heard. And this is where that cycle of stigma continues. It continues to perpetuate. And it's not intentionally. It's not out of malice. It's just out of not really knowing the most accurate bit of information or not having all of the information, not having the right information. And a lot of what I'm learning, my role is, is to really, like, clean that up, to just clean up that space of misinformation and stigmatization, and to do so through my own lived experiences. Like, I don't. I ain't got no problem telling the story about how I got herpes, when I got herpes, how I went through that process. And, you know, even most recently, I shared my own experience, my story, whatever recent episode that was, and I got some good feedback from that. Just, like, being real and being honest about what my experience has been speaking about. That. That four years between my diagnosis and then discovering the. Discovering something positive for positive people, or, I'm sorry, not something positive, but discovering positive singles and learning that there's this resource out there that despite how good it is at connection, connecting people with herpes still fuels and perpetuates stigma. And it does so by I. I'm on them now because they kicked me off the website and they won't return my email. And I know why they kicked me off. I'm up their money they ain't making no money off of me because I'm literally telling people, hey, you don't need to only date people with herpes so y' all can kick rocks. Like, I'm. I'm over it. I'm done trying to, like, work with y' all and work together. Y' all ain't got no discussion. Desire to minimize the impacts of stadium. Like, everything y' all doing is just to save face and keep people in this cycle. Like, screw y'. All. And, yeah, I was gonna get back on there for my own selfish intentions. I ain't gonna lie to you. But I was also gonna talk about the usefulness of something positive for positive people. So, yeah, that's. That's it. I don't want to come here and just, like, be bitching about any thing, but this is important work to me. This is important to me. And it doesn't even always feel like work when it's aligned. It just feels like I'm showing up and just being myself. And, you know, maybe that's how some of the past influence or influencers have felt throughout history or the people who've led movements. But, like, all I really want to do is just empower people with choice. You can. Once you learn that it's a choice of I'm going to continue to be stigmatized and let stigma run my life, or I am not going to, then that's it. That's all I want to do. That's what I feel like my work is, is to just live in a way that empowers people with choice to live out loud in such a way that people also feel inspired to live out loud in their own way. And the return on investment in that is. It's. It's. I can't put a dollar value to that. I can't. And it's. It's been this nurturing of my own nature that I'm finding. Whoa, that thing was scary. These lantern buzz. All right, so there's these things in New York called lantern flies. They're, like, pretty red. Like, when they jump and fly, they're bright red. But apparently they're like an invasive species that, like, eliminates or endangers some type of trees or something. So people see them, and it just maliciously kill them. Whenever I think about that, I think about that episode of Black Mirror where the soldiers, like, were brainwashed into believing that the people of this culture in these villages were ant people, like, aliens. And one of the soldiers, his brain short circuited, and he was getting his Cognition back. And he saw real people, but everybody else was seeing like alien bug people. And so he was like, whoa, these are people. They're just poor. They're just like not, you know, modernized. They're just in this land living in huts and, or like broken down buildings, but like, they got families. And so he's not killing these people. And so fast forward and they try and like fix him or whatever. And yeah, basically that's it. So I'm like looking at these things, I'm like, yo, what is this misinformation? Like, have I been given misinformation about lantern flies? Because it's never felt right to like, kill them. And it scares me how much, like, adrenaline kicks in people and they feel like, rewarded, like they did some good in the world for stomping on these lantern flies. Like, I don't know, bro. And my whole atomic living language and what I'm learning when you fuse that with yoga, is that everything does have a purpose, you know, even if its purpose is destruction. Like, even with getting sick, even with getting a parasite. Right. It's a sign that something has to change. You have to do something different. So the invitation of things that are seemingly purposeless, illness, disease, disruption of rhythm, that's all it does. It's. It's designed to redirect you to whatever your rhythm is. So I don't know if killing these things is the, the way that we, you know, take care of nature, but something ain't right about it. I. I'm asking questions and I shout out to the Black Mirror creator for that episode because it made me look at a lot different than I would before. So, yeah, I just ask questions. That's it. And a lot of my teaching is it comes from a lens of curiosity. So I, Yeah, if you're somebody who's looking for somebody to come in and talk to your organization about how to be stigma free or how to minimize stigma in your practice or with your patients, your clients. I'm in a much better place than I was several months ago when people were reaching out to me and asking me about this. So I can, like, I can, I can speak to this a lot better now. Look at this guy. See, there's one right here. Just chilling. Where are you going, though? Like, why do you walk on the sidewalk when you see, what are you looking for? What do you see over there? Because then, like, if I try and raise my foot to stump on it, it jumps. I don't know. I just. Let me see. I'm a follow it for a little bit while I finish this podcast episode recording and see what it does. But, yeah, it's kind of big, though, so I don't know. Anyways, yeah, I very much just, like, appreciate everybody's. Who, everybody's involvement, the community that this has been. This has really given me a sense of purpose. It's given an outlet for my anger. While I'm not, like an angry person, the anger that I have toward suicide that I have toward people, not people feeling like they don't have a choice. Like, that anger that I feel is directed towards something, and it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be as focused, it wouldn't be as aligned as it is. It wouldn't be what it is had it not been for people's willingness to share their experiences with me. So I. I appreciate y'. All. I appreciate the people who come here and you listen to the podcast, you support the podcast, maybe you reach out for a support call, maybe you join the support group, maybe you share the resources, maybe you introduce me to somebody who later brings me in to speak. And I, like I said, I appreciate that. Thank you for that. And I'm. I'm doing what I'm. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, I feel. I feel different. I feel lighter. I feel like I got some. Some personal validation as well from just yesterday and being able to. To do the presenting that I've done and maintaining the connections, Relationships that I have, it's. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So, yeah, presentation yesterday went well. We want more of this. That. I guess that's it. Like, this don't really feel like a podcast episode. Like, I ain't. I don't know if I'm, like, running out of. To say, which I've thought about before. Like, I'm running out of things to say. Say. So if you, somebody that wants to be interviewed on the podcast and you are ready to share your experience, know that you can do it anonymously. You don't have to be anonymous if you don't want to, but I invite you to talk to me. Reach out. Go to SPFPP.org podcast scroll down to the guest intake form, fill that in for me, and we can get things set up to where you can be a guest on the Something Positive, Positive People podcast. I'm looking for people to share their experiences. If you are someone who is living with herpes, if you are someone who is dating someone living with herpes, if you are somebody who works with people living with herpes any aspect or avenue of herpes. Stigma education. If you got anything to contribute or if you got any input for us, please don't hesitate to reach out. I need guests or otherwise we going to get more of these. I'mma just talk about something that's been going on, and that'll be the podcast episode. So if y' all want to see this thing, contribute or continue, contribute. All right, till next time, stay present.