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Hello, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brain. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. We do this in a variety of ways, from support calls to support groups to yoga therapy. I'm a yoga therapist in training. At this time I should complete all of my certification requirements in 2026 and that'll be what we do. And another thing we do is we educate medical professionals, mental health professionals, public health people, and as well as educators on herpes stigma and the experiences of people living with herpes. And more recently, I'm actually getting into public speaking and share my experience with STI and just using some real life examples and experiences to talk about how to navigate sexual conversations with romantic partners. Today's episode is going to be just explaining y' all what the support groups are and giving you a little bit of what's come out of them so far. So today I'm recording this on Saturday, November 8th, and I've been doing such a good job of not doing anything on the weekends for something positive for positive people. I think my ideal world is I'll work like 12 hours a day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then Monday, get a late start, Friday having early end and let that be what the schedule is. So if you have not heard from me over the weekends, because I'm trying not to reply to stuff over the weekend and that's a good starting point. But for me to remain consistent with the podcast episodes, that's something that's important to me. And this weekend I was supposed to be at Midwest Love Fest, but I decided not to go. I was going to go to Houston for Halloween weekend and I had a delay and it was weird that the delay was about to take off in worse weather than what it was originally. And I just didn't have a good, like, feeling about taking that flight. So I went with my gut, decided to cancel that. And now having to understand that like the government's been shut down and people are still flying despite these whatever the flight air controller people are not getting paid that, that don't feel good to me. Like I would, I would not feel good about working, doing a job, people still patronizing the system that has me under their thumb that hasn't paid me. And like now additional struggles are happening for me outside of that that are like completely preventable if people just got their checks. So I, I don't want to take part in that. I decided to just not fly until this is resolved and people are Getting paid again. And it sucks because I just got the tickets tsa, the lounge access for Chase Sapphire, and I was really looking forward to that, to being able to use the lounges now that I had to cancel my flight to Midwest Love Fest, my flight to home for Thanksgiving to visit St. Louis, because I. I don't see this being resolved by then either. So I'm just. I'm just in here. I'm chilling in New York. Fortunately, I'm somewhere I want to be. And yeah, this is. This has been. Because now, like, I. I can't go see partners that don't live here. And now when I think about it, like, most of my partners don't live here. So this is kind of lighting a little bit of a fire under my ass to get out, be social, meet people, make friends, build community, and also approach that cute girl that I want to talk to. So there's all these things that are playing a role in me not traveling that can work out for the better as well. So, speaking of the support groups, all right, October was the first month that I implemented the something positive for positive people support groups in a different way. Over the years, I've attempted to do these. I've tried to have a mental health professional host the support groups. I've tried making people sign up for a series of support sessions. I've tried to keep everything together. I've tried to make it free and accessible. Like, I've played around with so many things in order to get people to come show up consistently or even just come get what they need and leave. So what I've done this time is I. I created a screening process. Now, if me and you have a support call, I've talked to you. I know what you're there for, and I know that I will be able to communicate with you. Hey, here's what this is. Here's what it's about. What questions do you have? And answer those, rather than just giving a general overview of what the support group is, which is already on the website. But I need to confirm your understanding of what the support group is and make sure that you're somebody who wants that. Make sure you're someone who wants the community, that you want the camaraderie and that you are looking for something beyond a place to just be able to come and be heard about your experiences. While that is part of the healing process, that's not all this is about. And I find that even with the. The barriers in place to get people to show up and, like, make it you have to make a donation to the support group that you want to attend. Even that has somehow become like, not the best filter for some people. And I'm gonna say it's for the men. Like, I, I hate to, you know, throw y' all under the bus, but like I, I made, I make support groups that are accessible for everybody and nobody comes. And then I make them have a couple hoops to jump through. And now, you know, the women are showing up to the women support groups that are making. They're, they're following the process. They've had their support calls, they're making their donations, they're thinking about it or whatever it is they need. And I'll talk about how those are going. I think I want to talk about those first because there's a lot more there. And for the men's group, like, we had a strong start with interest from like 70 people because on the website now you can just sign up if you're interested and you'll get updates on the newsletter. I'm doing Mondays. First and third Mondays are for women. Second and fourth Mondays are for the men, all starting at 7:30pm Eastern Time. And we go as long as we need to. And right now it's looking like about 8 to 12 people. So that puts us at about 90 minutes. If it gets to more than 1620, I think that these will be two hour groups. And if we go beyond that, then figure something out. But yeah, I'm not one to prepare for what might not ever happen, so I'm building this out as I go. For the men. Yeah, like now that I'm naming a men's group, the men are more interested and just they showed up for the first one and then we not had two since then and ain't nobody came. So for the first one that nobody came to, which was. It was two weeks ago. That one was the last one in October and people signed up and then just didn't show. I had one guy show up and that was my friend. So we just shot the shift for about 20 minutes to see if anybody else would come and nobody showed up. And people did register for this one, the one after that. I had a conversation and I take responsibility on my end for the maybe not being so clear, but I, I can't, I can't keep being super duper flexible with the boundaries. The process is you donate to the support group that you want to be part of. I even tell people, I don't care what you donate. This is what gets you in the. On the Email list that I pull from. I have a lot of things that I am managing with the Something Positive for positive People platform as a whole. And I have a part time job outside of this and there's a lot I'm not going to go into, you know, every individual thing that I got going on. But these systems that are in place, they're in place for a reason and I need the people who want to be a part of this to respect that process. And even with the one on one support calls, like I've had people fill out the form and I'll reach out to them and an email will have a typo in it. So I'll call. This is why I asked for phone numbers. I'll text or call. Hey, I saw your form. This is Courtney from Something Positive. And they're like, what's that? I'm like oh, here we go. So I tell them what it is and they're like oh my God. Hahaha. I didn't sign that. I didn't sign up for this. And it's like dude. And I've had people like snap on me and be like how did you get my information? It's like literally you filled out the form or maybe somebody did it for you. I, I don't know. But I'm doing my part and following up, seeing if you want to call, that's it. So this, this, the processes that are in place make it easier for me to just navigate this without burning out. I'm not saying I'm feeling like I'm burning out by any means. And if I, I got more energy because these processes are in place now. I got more energy because more people are showing up to the support groups for the very things that you know, I would normally maybe post about on social media and maybe get some engagement about. And that's another thing. I've definitely pulled social media as much as I used to compared to how I used to post and how much I used to be active and got involved on there. Because now the website is much more functional. There were some changes that we made and I just, I just invested in making the website a lot more functional and making it a lot easier for people to navigate the website to find what it is that they need. So all of that said, like I need, I need people to please just respect the process. Sign up for the support call. It's donation optional, right? So you donate whatever it is, it makes you feel uncomfortable about missing the call. And even then people still miss the calls. Like when, when this happens. I'm not going to mess things up for Courtney. I'm not going to mess things up for something positive for positive people. I'm not going to mess things up for other people that have been wanting a call. I think the most calls I've had in a day has been seven. And then like consistently there's been like three. And I'm, I'm leaning away from doing weekends, I'm leaning away from that. And I don't know exactly how I'm going to, you know, figure that out. But right now it's very open ended and flexible to work around other people's schedules, which I'm so flexible for. But I, I'm going to, at some point need to be like, hey, listen, here's your windows. But I don't want to give too many instructions and be too rigid because I recognize it, you know, things do need to be flexible, especially for other people. So with that all said, like, let's, let's stop that there. Like, all right, that's my gripes. And this grunt men, if y' all come into the groups, there's a process. Sign up for a support call, make your donation to the men's support group, and then you have to put it in your calendar. The second and fourth Monday, 7:30pm Eastern Time, virtual. If you make your donation, I'll see the date that you made the donation, I'll see your email address, and that tells me what support group to add you to and it tells me, and it tells me who to send the email to. That's it. All right. From the women's support groups. I enjoy how, I enjoy the transparency, I enjoy the openness and how one of the things that stood out to me was I asked people to introduce themselves. Just your name, where you're located and would you like, what, what do you hope to get out of today? And the first time I asked this, it seemed like nobody heard that. Everybody gave their name and then they were like, I'm here. I was diagnosed this long ago. And I'm like, that, that wasn't a question. And so I let it ride. And at the end I was just like, hey, so ain't nobody answering the question. Everybody. Like, I know that this is a herpes support group, but part of what this healing process from stigma looks like is seeing yourself beyond your herpes status, seeing yourself as a person first. Like, you're a person, you have a location that you are in, you're maybe looking forward to something, excited about something. If you're in this support group. Yeah, you're looking to get something out of it. But that. That. That. It was an interesting observation that everybody either responded to the first person who said that and that changed everything, or everybody was just so locked into the. The herpes stigma part of it. But after, you know, kind of addressing that, some of the things that we did was we went into just sort of setting the foundation. I recognize that I'm a man, and I'm facilitating a herpes support group for women. And that's actually been something that has been expressed to me privately as appreciated, which is. That's cool. I like that. And something that I recognize, too, is that all my support groups have been women support groups, except for, you know, the. I did a. A thing where I had men come and just, like, talk about their experience so I could find out what it is that we need collectively. Because while I am a man, my experience is significantly different than a lot of the men that I talk to about herpes or who do have herpes, because I'm open about it. And there's what, three of us, I believe there's Chris Pickering, and there was Adriel Dell. I don't think he's very active anymore. And then there's Rich Mancuso, who, I don't know if, you know, the algorithms just, like, Shadow banned him or what, but I haven't seen anything from him lately either. The only person I've seen consistently that's a man is Chris Pickering. Shout out to him as well. And, yeah, they. The women have appreciated that. And what's come up is we talk about disclosing. Now. I. I will continue to use the language of disclosing initially for the sake of this being language that everybody has access to, and this is what people know. But I really am working to get people out of this using that word disclose, because we ain't signing legal documents. We're not. It's not. It's nothing like that. We're having a discussion. And as we talk through disclosing our herpes status, what we see is that this really is more than a herpes conversation. It's a conversation about sexual health, and it's not a conversation exclusively about your sexual health. Is this thing still okay? I had to make sure this mic was on this new. I got these new microphones because I lost my other ones, and I didn't see that the light was on. We're not just confessing that we have herpes to somebody. We are discussing sexual health with somebody. And that can be as simple as, hey, so we get into a point where I see things moving forward, you know, sexually, and I take myself, my sexual health very seriously, especially before, you know, I start to have too much fun with somebody. So I want to just share that I got tested for these things this long ago, and this is what the results are. What about you? What about you? That's it, right? And you, you. You see that so quickly people are ready to start explaining or justifying, or we want to share stats or we want to explain how we got that. They don't think about you just as whatever you think they might think about a person with herpes. And the reality is everybody does have a sexual health status, and it's just a matter of, do you know what that is? And then you communicate that and let them ask questions. You want to be prepared with all this information when you might not even need to. You might be ready to know the. To share the transmission rates and with the medications and barrier uses and all these preventive medicine, preventive measures. And the reality is that we don't want to just overload a personal information. We want to give them what they need to know, which is that, you know, we have herpes, and they might possibly be exposed to it. And at that point, you're giving them a choice. When I talk about the power of choice, right, Like a lot of us, we got herpes and we don't know who gave it to us. Or maybe we weren't given that option of being able to consent to exposure. But the idea is that while our power may have been taken away from us, our power of choice, the way that we get that power back is by continuing to give people the option. When you give other people the option to make a choice, they now have the ability to choose. Whereas if you hadn't done that, they wouldn't have had the ability to choose. So we reclaim our power by allowing for other people to have the power of choice. And that also empowers us because now we choose who we wanted to share this information with. Right? And so this is something that has come up not just in the support groups, but also in yoga therapy, conversations that I've had with clients. You know, initially, like, everybody comes in for herpes, but then eventually we get to, right, like, we'll get into something about relationships. We'll start talking about sex, we'll start talking about even relationships with family and friends. And, you know, it gets to a point where I'm like, ah, I need to do a little bit more reading. Because. And I'm glad I'm still in yoga therapy training because it's not like I'm just given all the tools and now I gotta, like, orchestrate them. I'm still learning. And so I'll be in a class. And I'm like, oh, this applies. Let me ask about this. So I'm able to bring that into my yoga therapy sessions as well, which has been super helpful for me. Another thing that we talked about in the women's support groups was they wanted to hear from someone who had had success disclosing their status. And so I reached out to somebody, a friend of mine, like, real good friend of mine, we met in 2020, and short, she had gotten her diagnosis, she found me, and we had become friends. She's from St. Louis as well. And she eventually ended up disclosing to her now partner of four years. And so I reached out to her, I was like, hey, would you be willing to. And she was like, yes. And she showed up like. This was at the request of one of the group members who just so happened to not show up to this meeting after making the request for it. But, yeah, I brought her in and the lady ladies had access to her for about 30, 40 minutes of the support group to be able to ask questions and hear about her experience and to. To have these questions answered that they had. One of the big things that there were, like, three big takeaways, if I can remember. I know one was defining what a successful disclosure is. A successful disclosure is not one that ends in a sexual relationship. It doesn't end in having sex. It doesn't end with the other person saying that they're okay with you having herpes. The success is more internally motivated. It is a successful disclosure because you made the decision to be vulnerable and extend that piece of information about yourself to someone. You found someone who you deem to be someone worth giving that information to. That's what makes a disclosure successful. And so you. You got to see the wheels turning for a lot of the ladies who were there. And they were like, oh, okay. And then you know that this was some of the feedback that we had talked about too, at the end about how much of a perspective shift that was for some. For some of the ladies. Another thing was sharing statistics. So we'd be so ready to share statistics in order to increase our chances of not being told no or reject it. And what our guest said was, I, I don't do that because I don't want to be reduced to a statistic if the The. If the. Your choice comes down to the risk factor or a number on a sheet of paper, then that's not the kind of relationship that I want to have. And I. I commended the hell out of her for that one. Because I don't talk about statistics. I don't talk about transmission rates. I just need to know that you like me or want to have sex with me more than you do not want to get herpes. That's all I need to know. And I mean, that's really what it comes down to, because any of the information that's out there, someone's asking for statistics, the main thing that they want to know is how do I prevent myself from getting herpes? That's really what this comes down to. People want to know, what can I do to prevent myself from getting herpes? And the word prevention does not apply here. We're minimizing the possibility. We're minimizing the risk by communicating. You know, some people choose to wear condoms. Some people don't wear condoms. Some people. And these are things that, you know, partners can mutually agree on and still not pass it on. You can be with somebody with herpes and not get herpes. And that's a statistic. Think that if there was one at all that was highlighted and supported, we have that on something positive for positive people. I think there were 72% of people who said that they've not passed herpes on to a partner, at least to their knowledge. So that's something that I think really needs to be studied more. But, yeah, to be reduced down to a statistic, that's not something that we should be striving for. So, yeah, if you. If it helps you to have that information, all right, cool, have it. But if you. I don't want to keep giving all this away. Come to a support group. Yeah, come to a support group. But, yeah, this is how they go. Like, I. We come in, and I like to ask people, what do you need today? Not only that, but it's just, what do you want to get out of today's support group? And then what do you have to give to today's support group? Because sometimes you might just want to listen in. You might be having a rough time. You could have not had a conversation go well with the potential partner, but it's. It's a discussion, not a disclosure. It's a conversation. It's not a confession. Like, let these things replay in your mind, because this. This is not nearly as negatively impactful as what we think. And that I'M using negative incorrectly. When I speak about the word negative, I mean infinite potential. When I talk about positive, I mean presence. Just by the one of the definitions of Google, like positive means presence, negative means absence. As simple as that. And with the absence right, there's the possibility of potential. And speaking of potential. So I was going to talk about this today about the raw, the raw material of potential. I ended up making that a self podcast episode because it felt too like spiritual. But I think that I should go and talk about the raw material that makes up the rejection, that makes up the, that, that fear, that fear of being rejected. And yeah, speak more to that. But ah, this, the support groups, I can't give you one on one what is to be received from the support groups. I can't give you community. I can tell you it's out there, I can tell you it exists. But I mean I'm really just facilitating the space and I might, you know, answer a question or ask a question, but I'm giving people what they ask for in these settings and environments. And you know, what you put into a thing, that thing takes form like what you pour into. You know, if you're pouring, you, you want to get something out of this. But there's always an exchange, there's always a trade off. Your money, your energy, your time, your awareness, right? Whatever it is that you give to this platform is going to help mold what it is that you are able to become in terms of your identity in order to be able to, you know, let go of that. And as you begin to change and, and evolve and grow, what happens is you let go of that fear, that intense emotion that you maybe have here. Because a lot of people come here because they scared. A lot of people get scared shitless and they think they're going to be alone forever. And then you have those feelings, those intense emotions that are fear based. You're scared of rejection, you're scared you're never going to have a relationship, scared you might not have kids. You're scared that you're so young that it's going to mess up dating for you. And you have to date somebody that's old and already has herpes. Right? Like all of these fear and shame based beliefs are the raw material of what it is that we believe to be true about ourselves now that we have herpes. And as soon as you come into these spaces and you hear from other people, people, you get a little hope and inspiration. You start to release the container of what that raw material is that makes up the label of rejection or fear or shame or what your life has to look like now. And that identity can be released so that the energy of all that accumulated raw material can now take form into something that is more aligned. Because as you get hope and as you show up and as you repeat that pattern of behavior of consistently being here, you demonstrate demonstrating to yourself, like, hey, this is who I am now. This is what my nervous system, my body, my mind, my emotions, my spirit. This is what aligns for them. And therefore, what you have to give begins to accumulate and take form, perhaps in the form of healing, maybe in the form of a partner, maybe in the form of situations where you got people coming at you, who out the woodworks, right? Just wanting to be in a relationship with you, wanting to date you, want to take you out. I believe this because I'm living it, and I'm being a lot more conscious and mindful of it now to examine with a lot more intentionality what it is that I'm letting go of, what it is I'm attaching to. Because you can unconsciously be attaching the. The raw materials that make up your surrounding environment and form an identity around that, but you can always consciously let go. I'm. I'm ready for the time where I unconsciously let go. I think that's happening in my dreams now, because things happening in my dreams. I wake up and I'm like, what was that? But that's my own thing, keeping this tied to the support group, right? Like, I think that we coming together, we cumulatively invest our money, our energy, our time and our attention, awareness into healing and that mutual investment. Napoleon Hill talks about this in Outwitting the Devil, how two minds are greater than one. And there's a statement in the Bible that's like, should anyone minds two or more come together and gather in my name, then whatever it is they ask for will be given. You show up in these communities, I'm not gonna say you're gonna, like, meet Prince Charming or Princess Charming, and, you know, you're gonna walk out of here and go outside, and somebody's tired, gonna be popping. It's gonna be like, somebody attractive that you can help, and you. You have a love story. Am I saying that? I'm saying that you may feel a little bit more inspired for that to happen. You might be a little bit more capable of removing that again, that raw material from the labels that we now subscribe to because of our diagnosis. And to do that with other people, to see it done, to have them See it done by you. I think that expedites the process. That's why I always say community is the cure for is stigma. Herpes. Stigma is a byproduct of the stigma that people in general, that society has about sex. Everybody having it, but don't nobody want to talk about it, don't nobody know how to communicate about it. How strange is it that you want to talk about your health when it comes to something that's supposed to feel good? You know what else feel good? Adrenaline jumping out of a plane for some people, skydiving, mountain biking down a steep hill, almost dying. Right. And those are pleasurable things for people. Sex is a pleasurable thing for people. So we should be able to talk about what, what we need in order to have positive health outcome or set ourselves up to have as positive of a health outcome as possible. So, yeah, I think that that's what people are getting out of it. I had a couple of people write to me, especially after that last support group unexpectedly. I didn't ask for anything, so I was very blessed to be able to read that. But yeah, I feel like I'm locked in. I'm aligned to giving people what they asking for. The yoga therapy clients, things are going great there. I got, I got people who. Doing what I'm asking them to do, and I'll be able to put together some case studies about their progression and like, how useful things have been or have not been. Even. Like, I ain't got no problem being transparent. I know it's people that, you know, we, we might talk just because they like talking, talking and who have no intention, they might have no intention of doing what I'm asking them to do when we get off these calls in between. But yeah, I find that that community support is the kind of support that I wish that I had when I was diagnosed. So I believe that people are getting through this a lot quicker and easier than they would if this resource wasn't available to them. And there's still support groups, there's still people living with herpes who are facilitating and organizing the spaces for people to just convene. And those, those are good for where a person might be at that time. But I know that this one is different in the sense of one, there's a bigger cause behind this. Right. While I'm not in politics, I'm damn sure in the medical field, I'm at these conferences. Like, I'm invested in this. And this year, I have not been able to pay myself this year. And I'm Not, I'm not saying that to complain. I'm saying that to speak to how invested I am. I'm very fortunate to have been able to, you know, have my insurance money from when I lost my home in the tornado. I'm very fortunate to have a part time job where I get paid very well for working like two to three days a month. And I'm able to support myself off of that because a lot of the shit that I do has not been paid. And I've been throwing some opportunities too for public speaking and that's been a new avenue as well. So the money that comes in really been going to me, traveling to these things and being able to do a lot of the free things that I've been able to do. And I, I love the book Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. Because in the book another thing he talks about is one of the laws of the universe is a law of compensation, right? So he says, be ready to give, render a service before getting anything in return. And I think that over the last eight years there's been a lot of. I, I used to make an identity around giving away free shit. Yeah, I really was, I really had an identity around that. And it took me until this year, it took me until this year to come out with the clarity of people don't value that. People just don't value free. And yeah, like this last 60 days, the last 30 to 60 days, you know, people have been registering for support calls. They've been showing up to the support calls. People can come into the support groups and yeah, like all that that I've been trying to do before, I think maybe I was just doing too much much and not giving people the opportunity to decide for themselves how much value a thing has. Because I'm inherently telling y', all, hey, this ain't got no value. I'm showing up, I'm doing this thing. And if you want to give, you can, but if you don't, you don't have to. So now, I mean, there's recommended amounts, but it's like if, if you want something, like, come on, you got to donate. And there are still people who give $0 for things. Not a problem. But that's not the process for getting into the support groups and then for the support calls, what I'm seeing is that the people who, who have given no money, these are the people who missed the calls more often. Like, let me see if I can pull up real quick. I want to see how many support calls I've had Because it's been a lot. Here we go. Support calls, sign ups for perspective. Okay, so this year, before I moved from New Jersey, I had 14. When I was living in, in New Jersey, I had 14 support calls. All right. When I moved to St. Louis, I had 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 support calls. After the tornado, I had. Between then and then, I found a place. All right, I had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 support calls before I found my home in New York. Okay, so since then there have been what's 3, 40. I've had 97. 97 support calls since moving to New York City. And I know I said 97, but between, between September. Yeah, there were 97. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. 84 of those were between September and now. So that's, that's about an average of 2, 230 minute support calls a day of people who sign up. Right. And of those like 1, 2, 3, 4, somebody gave $1. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Yeah, it's been maybe like 10 people. Wait. Yeah, 10 people who just didn't, who didn't donate. And I don't know how many came. Next year, I think I want to keep up with. I wish I could find a way to know who did what or who signed up. And like, I want to be able to check in with people later down the road and see if they use the guidance. But I always suspect that, you know, I hear from a person once and I really don't need to hear from them again because I give them the answers to the question that they would spend a lot of time on the Internet looking for. So the support, y' all just, just check it out. If you don't like it, you ain't got to keep coming. You know, I want people to continue to show up. I want people to give value from being in the space. But that may not always be the case. It might not. I might not be the best support option for you, but on the website you'll see that there are other options that I am aware of that exist. And yeah, please check those out. Now closing out this conversation about support groups for the men. The men's group. We started out so strong. I love that, you know, people came in, they were real open about what it is that they needed and what they were hoping to get out of it. There was a little bit of the oversharing dumping, but I allowed that because oftentimes we don't have the opportunity or the space to really be able to speak as freely as we do in the men's group. We defined what support looks like. We define what community looks like, and we decided what. We co created a definition of what stigma was. And I was so ready for the second and third support groups to be able to just add on and build from that. But now it just feels like I. I gotta start over again or, you know, just keep the momentum going from what the ladies are showing. And I really don't want to make this into any kind of a competition, but the women are showing up and, like, even asking where the men at. People asking me about, like, matchmaking service services and dating and stuff like that, and it's like, y', all, I can't. I can't endorse anybody that's not consistent. That's one thing I've learned not just in, you know, my personal life, but also in my work life. I don't work with people who have not proven to be consistent in some capacity. Like, even, you know, people who open up about having herpes, they might make a post or something, and I look to see what they do. Like, I'll watch you on social media for a bit and see how consistent you are, but before I invite you into this space, because I've had people show up, be real enthusiastic and passionate about, you know, what this is, and then just disappear. And now these links on my website that I got to go back and get off the website, that's messing up my SEO rankings. And I had to do that. I had to go through and do a lot of cleanup. And I think that that's why people are so much more easily able to find us. So that consistency is key, and I think that maybe that needs to be one of the screening questions for the men's group, especially because, like, the women have already signed up for the next support group on November 17th. And, like, we a week out. We a little bit more than a week out. But the process is simple. I outlined it. I put it in screenshots in the newsletter. Everybody got the email, who signed up for the email, or who has signed up for a support call. They got it. It. You got it. All I ask is that you put this in your calendar yourself. Just don't. Don't make me do more work. I cannot. I do not want to burn out. I have a really solid flow going right now. Everything is. Is smooth. The process is understood by people, and I'm able to now integrate a few more things One of the things that I'm going to be working on here now is I'm looking for people who want to have like a play date and a role play of disclosing and talking about our sexual health status with one another so that people have like a real example of what this can look like. Me sitting across with somebody. We just finished dinner and, you know, we might be touching each other's leg under the table or whatever, A little eye contact and then, hey, you know, let's go upstairs. All right, well, wait, wait, wait. Before, you know, we're gonna talk about condoms. Like, oh, that's what you wanted to do. All right, yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Right? I'm looking forward to that. I'm most excited about that because I think that that's going to be really valuable and fun. I'm watching One Piece right now and I don't see myself being able to do anything extra until I, I get to like, I gotta get through this. I'm watching the anime One Piece. I've never seen it before, and it's really good. I'm at episode like 70 right now. I just started season two and I'm on episode 63. I'm trying to get through 10 a day and over the weekends I want to get through 20. So, yeah, my days are packed. My days are packed now. But the reason that I'm, the reason that I'm so like, hype about that, that demo, that role play is because we don't have that. We don't, we don't see the, the role plays of disclosure and discussing our health, our sexual health status without it looking like a confession. So we can do some do's and don'ts. Maybe I just need to rent out like a studio space and that'll be the content that I make for Tick Tock and Instagram. And I just got to find some people that are comfortable with that because I. That's the hardest part, right? Like, people ain't even gotta say they got herpes. I think they just make the connection of knowing me or being connected to me or whatever. And then like, that's, that's that. So I'm gonna ask around and see if there's people around me who will be down to do that. I could set the ring camera. Ring camera? I don't have a ring camera. The ring light up, throw these little bitty microphones on them. You can barely see this. No, you, you can see it. You can, can say it very well. And yeah, that that's going to be one of the next things coming up. So if you, somebody who wants to support this, if you want to get involved, if you want to donate to this particular thing, you can just donate to the general fund because I think I'm gonna have to rent out of space and people buying tickets to the New York City event December 12th from 5:00pm to 9:00pm, the Karaoke event. I just revised it to where now it's, it's karaoke. That's what we're doing. We're doing karaoke, 20 entry minimum. And if you want to help support at a higher level, you got the options to be able to do that. But yeah, people buying tickets so we could have fun a little bit over a month from now. It's a Friday night, 5pm to 9pm in Brooklyn, zip codes 11206. If you're listening to this, like, I'm not gonna tell you where it is because I don't think I can. But when you register, you'll see where it is and I'll send out the newsletter to explain that to the people who register. So looking forward to it. I know we got people coming in from out of town for this. People coming in from out of town for this 400 episode party. So I look forward to it. And yeah, that concludes this episode of something positive for positive people. Again, I just wanted to share the, what the support groups have been so far, what they've been even about the process is you make a donation based support call, we talk about what you need to talk about. I, I, I, I've had people come in and say, I'm just doing this to get into the support group. That's cool. But if you, you're, you're wanting a support group because you need support, what is the thing that you need support with? Like, let's be ready to talk about that. All right. This ain't just like I'm asking you questions to find out if I can send you the link or not. And you're not finding out if you qualify to get into the Cool kids club. That's not what this is. It's giving you the support that you need initially. And so now when we come into here, you aren't exclusively here for that, to get that out of the group. Like now you're here because you want to be and you want the community and that's part of your story. And you're able to say this out loud in another way without saying it for the first time and maybe not breaking down crying and everything. Okay. All right, y'. All. Oh, my birthday Monday. So, yeah, if y' all want to make some donations to something positive for positive people to help me make that little dream come true, that'd be cool. I'm gonna go see K. Trinada tomorrow night. Well, tomorrow night being November 9th, and on November 10th, IMMA probably just be answering my phone calls all day from family and friends and getting caught up with people, so I look forward to that. Until next time, stay present.