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Oh, we got right into it. All right, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Bray. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 non profit organization supporting people living with herpes and navigating stigma. I'm making sure that this time the microphone is plugged in and on because I apologize for how part one sounded. I listened to a little bit of it and, man, I felt like I was. I thought I was on, I really did. But I got the blue light, green light, so that means go, I'm just leaving the gym. And I got the apartment, this half to myself. So it felt like a good time to go ahead and drop in here and record this. So we got the transcription going and we got the recording happening, so I think we are good to go. Part one of what herpes taught me about authenticity, I think that was a lot of rambling. It definitely was. And I'm glad that I was able to get that and get it out because I was able to say some things that I think I hadn't been able to say out loud before. And, you know, sometimes when you say a thing, you also hear the thing for the first time, like in the thought state. It's not real, but then when you say it, it's like, oh, I said that. And some of those things really led me to explore my relationship to my herpes diagnosis and look at exactly how authenticity has been a thing that has supported me and helped me with getting to the place that I'm at now. And when I say the place that I'm at now, I don't mean I'm fully on the other side of it. I'm healed. And this is the end game of what it looks like to conquer herpes stigma. In fact, one of the more important things out of this is herpes has taught me to not necessarily look at things as good or bad. Because on one hand, when you get a herpes diagnosis, obviously this is the worst thing that ever happened, right? And then the best thing that could ever happen is you get rid of the worst thing that ever happened. But the reality is that prior to that diagnosis, there was a whole experience that was on the other end of the spectrum taking place there to where it had to create, like, an extreme response to whatever it was that was happening. So now the point of diagnosis has now created a whole new polarity that exists. And between that polarity, there's the. The. The bad of that, which is the negative, and then there's the potential for good, which is the positive. And it we, as we know, positive and negative are drawn together, right? And that force between the positive and negative, that pull them towards one another, it generates a field like a magnetic field. And it's on that spectrum that I think there's a constant, like up and down, back and forth. Guitar string is a really good example. When you pluck the guitar string, like, it creates the vibration that has its peaks and valleys. So in those peaks and valleys, you experience not just bad, unless that's where you place your awareness. And you're on this side of the negative or just good on this side or the positive. Right. I want you to throw that thought process out the window. I say that because that's what people can universally relate to. But the reality is that this isn't like a good or bad thing. It's a positive and a negative. You can have a positive perspective on this, or you can have a negative perspective on this. But the thing is, when you look at it that way, it's almost like you have to choose a side. And that's one of the steps that I had to take in order to get to a place of recognizing, oh, I don't choose one or the other. Right. You kind of bring your awareness outside of that duality, and you can see the whole of it. You see, oh, these two opposing. They're not opposing forces. They're just one's positive, one's negative, and they complement each other. In order for whatever experiences in between those, the positive and negative forces are that exist. Those can only take place with the positive and the negative. Right. I think I gave the definition last time, but I'm going to reiterate this a lot. Positive just means presence, and negative just means infinite potential. Right. So it's not good or bad. Right. The behavior of something with infinite potential is that it's very in motion. The thing about something that is positive and present is that it's very stable and consistent. It's still right. You can always rely on that thing to be there. Whereas with the negativity, it's very all over the place, chaotic, and it's looking for a place to ground. So these two forces are trying to connect with each other, merge and become whole. But the awareness that we have the neutron, if you will, of an atom. So we got the proton positive, electron negative, and then we've got the neutron awareness. That essentially creates the nucleus. That gives an orbit to what is constantly in motion and allows for that stillness that's there to be seen by the things that are constantly in Motion. So I give that framework. And, like, I think that's the highest level is I'm going to go with this because I recognize when I got my herpes diagnosis, where I was, in a sense, that I was naive and probably still am to some extent. But the naivety that I had was in relation to relationships. And I think that sex played a major part of what I maybe was oblivious to or naive to, because I didn't get herpes until after college, or I didn't know that I had herpes until after college. So I played college sports and I was an athlete. So, like, the opportunities were there. But it was strange that, like, nothing happened until after college when I was living at home with my grandmother. Right. And what I've come to realize is that our nervous systems really speak to us. Our nervous systems speak very gently. It's almost like a whisper, a very gentle whisper. And it comes from that place of stillness that oftentimes, if our awareness isn't really on that stillness, if we're not grounded, if we're not in our own, like, nucleus of an atom, right? And if we view ourselves as such, when our awareness is not here, we miss things. There are signals that come in. And in my case, I think that it was being involved with relationships and the relationship that I had to my body, that not just my body, but my body, my mind, my thought process, as well as my circumstances. Like, I didn't belong where I was. I didn't belong at my grandmother's house. I didn't belong in St. Louis. I didn't belong in the life pattern of what my parents had. Right. Like, they had me. They got pregnant at 17, had me when they were 18 years old. I'm grateful to have had such young parents because it feels like on one hand, you know, we grew up together. My dad's always been like a dad, but my mom and I lived with her, and we were more so raised by my grandfather. So I think that that has a lot to do with how I turned out. Completely different conversation. So looking at what was happening around that time for me, I think that I was very much chasing sex. It was. It was sex that I was chasing. And I think that when I got it, like, the way that I would get it was not through any kind of aligned or conscious relationships at all. It was just like, oh, cool, this person likes me. I think I like them, too. And then she and I would, you know, get together, get into a relationship. And I think that the core reason for getting into relationships was for the consistent access of sex. So I, I think about it and like I didn't have a lot of sexual partners pre diagnosis at all. I was constantly in relationships and then whenever, like there was a breakup or something, I would have like, I try to do things with somebody else. And sometimes it was successful, sometimes it wasn't. Most of the time it wasn't successful. And by success I mean it happening. So it wasn't often that that happened. But when I got my diagnosis, thinking about what was happening around that time, I had gotten done playing football, I graduated college, I got a job working as. I was basically a secretary. I was a secretary for I think a little bit over a year. And I worked with women who really liked the job that they had. Like these were my counterparts. So it was me, you know, this former college football player and then like four white women who were hired. You know, I wouldn't say they were hired for their looks, but they were very much like the, the old white men who were the managers at the place. They, they definitely had a type that they hired, right. And it is me. So I, I'm in this environment I don't belong in. And even in the dating and relationships that I had, I didn't belong in that relationship. You know, she and I, we were on two different pages about things. But also I didn't know what it was that I wanted around the time of my diagnosis. And I don't think that I ever really gave myself the opportunity to explore that. It was always what I was supposed to do based on my environment rather than what I want to do based on my inner world, my inner environment, what it is that I would like for myself. I used to think that y' all gonna laugh at. I used to think I wanted five kids because I'm one of five. But I'm technically, I'm not only I'm my parents only child together. My mom had a boy and a girl, my dad had two other boys. So I'm like the middle piece technically only child, but one of five and oldest and only. So it was an interesting dynamic with that for myself. And so I used to think that I was like, Yeah, I want five kids. And you know, I'm 37 right now. And when I was, when my dad was 37, he had a 18 year old turning 19, going to college in college actually, and then 11, 12 year old or no, he was 12 and 13, I think. And I can't imagine like I got roommates at 37 and I don't have, I don't have a consistent salary. You know, I feel like I'm just now figuring a lot of things out for myself that I wouldn't have been able to figure out at 18. But the. The pressure of what my dad experienced with becoming a parent, I think that that might have forced him into a locked in lifestyle that I. I was able to have the privilege and honor of learning from them. All right, I don't want to do this right now. And I was able to take the necessary precautions in order to not limit myself to the progression, the pathway that my parents ended up going down of having kids early and then like having to make sure that there was constant money coming in because you got to raise this kid, you got to do a lot of stuff that you don't want to do. Because I've been able to actually do a lot of the things that I want to do, everything that I need to do. So I don't have to tell myself, no, I don't have to justify it to anybody. And I'm learning to more so appreciate that, especially through the lens of my herpes diagnosis. Because I will say that getting herpes freed me from a cage that I didn't know I was in. Like I was in a cage of pursuing sexual partners. Because partially that's what I thought I was supposed to do. But then when it became a point where I felt like I can't do that anymore, that's where the work started. That's where I didn't consciously go into figuring out what's my relationship to sex. Like, it was, okay, I got herpes. Now I need to just try and make the relationships that I had work or I'm going to have to do a hard thing, which is telling people that I have herpes. I don't want to do that. And you get tired. I got tired of having to do that, y', all. And putting a. I want to make sure to really elaborate on the importance here of going through and looking at what was happening around the time of diagnosis, because that is oftentimes where we kind of get stuck. I make this. I make this joke to my mom about when she had me, she kind of like her life was kind of like screenshot and in that moment of being 18, because that's where she became apparent. Right? Like, I like to think that, you know, people mature, people grow, people develop. But I make this joke with my mom, but I think there might be a little bit of seriousness to it because I feel like that's the same case for me when I got my diagnosis. I think that I was screenshot into that person, and it was that person who. Everything that was happening around me, I wasn't listening to because you don't see it. You can't feel it, you can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it. You cannot experience what was happening around your diagnosis or the warning signals that might have come from your nervous system. You don't have that until it gets to a point where you're. I'm sorry, you don't have that if you don't have the awareness. So I was not aware. I was always very, what do I need to do for this person to make them like me and get what I want from them? How can I be as nice and not like the people that people talk bad about so that I can get what it is that I want? And I think that that version of me was collapsed and, like, frozen and stuck and solidified in that state. And many of us diagnosed with herpes. That's where we are, but we don't know it. Like, that's it. And we try to avoid this. We try to avoid this. And we're like, oh, herpes stigma. It's not my fault. Like, I. I brought this upon myself. The God's punishing me, right? And we. We don't take responsibility or we take responsibility for the wrong things. And so when I got my diagnosis, I think my story that I told myself was I did not want to be known as the person who was giving people herpes. And that's. That's who this is. That's this stuff. For anybody who's just listening, like, I'm holding the fist as, like, a solid. A solid representation of a physical particle of my identity. When I got my diagnosis, this person was very driven by sex and sexual relationships. This person was very. I want to use as simple language as possible. So if I do use things like people pleasing and all that kind of, I apologize. I don't have better language for it. But that person was very, well, what do you want to do? Like, I. Very safe. I use the analogy of how I played football when I got to college. Like, when I got to college, it was, okay, don't this up. Very don't this up. And there was no, like, expression of me. There was no breaking the rule to make the play like I would have done in high school because I was so severely afraid of what those consequences would bring out, that it was more important for me to play safe than it was for Me to just play. And anybody who's an athlete will understand that. I think that for the general population, the best way that I can say it is you don't take risks. So I. I wouldn't take risks. I was not a risk taker. And this, this version of me, like, solidified to a point where it's just. It's just like this, this rock, this, this rock that ain't got nothing to it. Ain't no personality. You can't stick to it. It's just there. It's not magnetic. It's just there. And that's who I think I became. When I got my diagnosis and I lived in this way for about four years. The relationships that I would enter was like, damn, you know, I shouldn't be with this person. But you know what? Ain't no hostility of no. There was hostility. The emotional. I don't think the word emotional abuse really fits. Manipulation feels more accurate, right? The control that I experienced, but didn't see it as that because it's like, all right, well, we both getting something, right? But it wasn't a fit. The relationship at that time wasn't a fit. No, mind you, this was, you know, 13 years ago. It'll be 13 years for me that I've had herpes in about a month. We get stuck in this when before we might have been moving like this, like we live in this waves, and then we just collapse, collapse ourselves into this particle. And I think that through the waves of our existence, the freedom that we had, people feel like they lost that because now there's this solid thing that is only a physical manifestation of not listening to the warning signs of the nervous system, not listening to the nervous system being like, hey, can you bring your awareness here? I need you. I need your awareness here. There's something happening. I use this analogy of our bodies host a variety of bacteria, fungi, have parasites and viruses at an amount that if we were ever screened or tested for it, we might have antibodies for whatever it is, but we won't test positive. And the equivalent of that is, you're the landlord or you're the leasing office or the superintendent of an apartment complex. So we host these things. And let's say tenant 1B is herpes, the herpes simplex buyers. And so in 1B, it's hot outside and the air conditioner goes out. In 1B, herpes is first going to notify you via email. Hey, our air conditioner went out. Supposed to be 90 degrees next week. Can you come get this fixed? If you're not home, if you're not present and attuned to the needs of your nervous system because it might come to you in like a gentleman whisper right of, hey, there needs to be some maintenance here in the body. Then you miss that email. Next, there's my. There might be a second email, maybe there's a phone call. And if you're not in your body, if you're not aware, if your awareness is way out there somewhere else on what other people got going on, if you're chasing something, chasing validation, externally you're chasing or allowing yourself to be like sad because you're in an environment that you don't want to be in, or you're feeling helpless, or you're stagnant and you're unable to come home into your neutron awareness neutral self to be able to have the awareness of. All right, this is what's happening in my body now. You're going to start to get knocking at the door of the lease. And I was like, hey, come fix our ac. It's hot, it's hot, it's hot. Our air ain't working. And then after that your attendant is going to not pay rent. And then maybe they look for a new place to live. And then bam, there's your physical representation. There's your physical expression of the herpes virus, right? So a lot of what I think for myself was my awareness not being here, not being focused on who I am myself, not having boundaries, not really having any sort of code that I lived by. It was just very action driven. Everything was go, go, go. In yoga, there's rajas, which means like motion or he, and then Thomas means like stillness and cold. And then there's this state of satva where both of those are in balance. So if your awareness is aligned properly, then what happens is you give purpose to the motion and then you give an outlet for the stillness. Because we can move from that place of power when we're in that psychic state in a way that we're able to pick up on those gentle whispers. So when we're able to be in our nervous systems and we know our own code, our own boundaries, and we live from that place, what happens is that the rest of the world begins to orient itself to us and our external reality begins to look like our internal reality, which it always does. And that just may not be a favorable thing for the simple fact that we don't recognize the inconsistencies because we're not here. So we might have happen. We're like, damn, you Know why I can't get this person to commit? Why can't I, you know, find this thing? Why am I unhappy at this job? And when you start to have that curiosity, I think that that curiosity brings you back home. But then when you get back home and then you open up social media, boom, the awareness is gone. The awareness that was coming back home to, you know, your own internal organization of being. When you begin to let that those external forces like on out of the. It's very difficult to get back to whatever baseline is or get back into the nucleus to get back to self or center, right? So for me in that state, what was necessary was to incorporate more of that awareness to it. And as you give your attention to a thing, you start to see that maybe you don't like, but the solidness of this, it begins to start to unfold and you start to witness and experience like, oh, okay, this is what this really is. And then the unfolding of that is kind of bringing it back into the up and down wave function with a little bit of a reality there that we just have to do things a little bit differently. And doing things a little bit differently might look like examining those situations that you might have been in around the time of dying diagnosis, where you were again, just screenshot into that place with no real awareness of what or why this could be happening. Like, why did this happen to me? Because where was unit, the tenant in unit 1B, where they were knocking or where they were sending the email? You missed that message. Where you would have been. Where you would have been. My phone is ringing and it's a New York number. And I am a hundred percent positive that this is the accountant that I have been playing phone tag with for about a week and a half. And it is, it's Saturday morning at 11 and I'm positive that when I get off of here, call him. He is not going to answer the question. Phone. This is more important to me than the accountant call. So I'm going to finish this and my phone on do not disturb. So I know he called a few times. Jesus. Okay, so look at me manifesting the accountant call. Is this you? Hey Courtney, what's more important to you? The account call or this podcast? Okay, so because I don't know how to pause this and I don't want to, I don't want to recordings, I'm doing no editing, none of that. So we, we gonna have to deal with that later. Why did I see that? It just messed me up. So bringing our awareness to not Just the herpes, but the solidified narrative that we've created for ourselves, that has solidified beyond the nervous system and the messages that we would have gotten from the nervous system of, hey, look at this thing. Hey, look at, I'm uncomfortable around certain people or there are certain environments that maybe we shouldn't be participating in or taking part in. And when you're able to begin to look at that with curiosity, that sort of brings your awareness more home. And then at that point, like you got a choice. You can either be with that and identify it, lean into it, explore it, see what's there, uncouple it away from what's, what's real, what's not real, or you can avoid it. And I think that those first four years, for me it was very much like not doing any of this. It was more getting further and further away from myself. Because when you're chasing or you're really in pursuit of a thing, there's really no, there's no incentive to not. Right? Like, what was the incentive for me to come back home to myself or have any kind of self awareness or look at what was happening? Meaning for me, it wasn't until this happened. And then when this happened and I got to see how it was controlling the, the way it functions of my life. Like the peaks and the valleys. The peaks and valleys were often dictated by herpes. Oh my God, someone accepts me for having herpes peak. Oh my God, this person rejected me for having herpes. Valley. And then you begin to develop more of a solidified story in those peaks and valleys. Okay, great, I'm accepted. I'm validated. Whenever someone does accept me for my herpes diagnosis and we have sex. Valley, damn, this is the story. Whenever I tell somebody, they're going to tell me no, they're going to reject me. And whatever it is that we begin to align our awareness to is really what it is that we start to believe about ourselves. Like we begin to believe that and how the beliefs begin to shape the behaviors of what happens next. So the thought processes, the events that happen, begin to formulate beliefs that drive behaviors that if you're way out here, just constantly go, go, go chasing things and trying to secure and maintain an identity that doesn't align with who you are anymore. You're never going to be able to see this for yourself. I wasn't able to see it for myself. And so as you begin to disidentify, bring your awareness to these things and then watch it kind of unravel and dissect what's true versus what's not true, you begin to see where your identity is now. Like it's fragmented and that that's a whole. Another, like, concept, identity fragmentation as it relates to stigma. But keeping this on track here and what this means for authenticity, like, people always just tell you be yourself, just be yourself. But if you don't know who that is, who you, If you only know yourself in relation to other people, what does that mean? So in one of the most recent women's support groups, what came up was love. Like, someone was like, I just need to learn to love myself. And so I asked, you know, hey, what is, what's everybody's definition of love? And I think one definition didn't have anything to do with other people, but the rest of them had to do with other people. So that inherently means that there cannot be love or, or a sense of self love without the presence of another to either experience or be experiencing whatever that is in whatever love is for a person. So the definition that I threw out there, this is actually my sankopo or like life intention, was nurture your nature. So to love is to nurture one's nature. It's not exclusively contingent on another person being present and doing the nurturing. It's more contingent on a person identifying and knowing what their nature is and then nurturing that, whether that be themselves nurturing their nature or if someone were to come into the picture for them to be nurturing to one's nature. Going back to, you know, the solidified, you know, identity collapse of our identities after herpes diagnosis and all of the stories that we tell ourselves and what was happening around that a lot of people have experienced an invalidation of identity. And it's in that invalidation of identity that one's nature is not nurtured. There's a whatever the opposite of that would be, right? So experiencing the opposite of the nurturing of one's nature, you're invalidating your own identity. And it's that in which people who you get your herpes diagnosis, and then it comes a point where it's like, okay, like what, what does this, what does this mean? Why did God do this to me? What I shouldn't have been? And we look at our actions that happen rather than looking into that, but are trying not to use these high level ass words. We're looking at our actions versus like the, our feelings, like what we're feeling. Because a lot of times, again, those subtle whispers will tell us, hey, get the out of here, you get the out of here, get away from this person, get away from this thing, get away from this place. And the more we do a thing, the better we get at it. So we might not listen to that. And then we get better at not listening to our intuition. And then we look up and we wonder how this happened. And in my case, not nurturing my nature looked like obtaining what my nature is from other people. Right? I use the example of like how my therapist told me I was polyamorous, how my ex told me I was polyamorous. And then it took for me to really bring my awareness to myself and be like, you know what? That don't fit. Like I've been saying non monogamous, or I can be monogamous. Like it doesn't matter to me for years. Like, I've been saying that for years. And then I let people tell me, and then I felt like, okay, well, I guess this is it. Like, I gotta believe that. And that behavior carried 13 years later from my initial herpes diagnosis even till now, of letting other people tell me who and what I am, what I'm supposed to be. And you know, one of my board members either she always says, corny, this is more than the podcast. This is more than a podcast. And then I'm like, all right, well, you know, maybe I should not do the podcast right now. I let other people's opinions. I've been very impressionable. Let's say that I've been very impression. And I think that over the last. God, it's been too weeks. I think it's been two, three weeks. I've not been impressionable. I've become more self sufficient is the best way that I can put it. Like, I'm not needing to take in energy, take in things from other people in order for me to maintain my spin. And like, I. This has been a hard thing because I've had to do things that I've never done. Like, I've had to. I've had to end relationships. I've had to hit the. I've had to say no. I've had to say no. And that's been such a hard thing for me because I want to save everybody, I want to fix everybody. I want to do what's right. And in aligning with the idea of nurturing my nature, it really. The idea of right and wrong aren't opposites, they're complementary forces. Right. There is no concept of right without the concept of wrong. And on that spectrum, again, this is where a lot of experiences can take place. And it feels wrong to leave somebody and abandon them or to have to walk away, especially if they're, like, going through a hard time, right? And then the right thing becomes staying and helping them and supporting them. But then in that same duality, the right thing in that context is, oh, okay, I'm here, I'm here for this person. I'm supporting them, I'm. I'm doing for them. And now the wrong thing in that is, what's the. What's the cost? What's the energetic trade off, right? The right thing being to nurture my nature, the wrong thing being in the how of it. Like, how do I nurture my nature in relation to, with a person, without a person. And you can see how it can become very conflicting when related to external forces, external circumstances. And I think that regardless of, like, how it's felt in the process, it's not about what's right, what's wrong, it's about what's true, what's authentic. Right? And that, I think that that's the hardest part about authenticity is because not only are you pulling back, you know, whatever you've been pouring into, you've been pouring into things, and now you have to step back and really take inventory on what it is you've been pouring into, what you're, what the reciprocity is, what the big picture goal is, how does it align? How is it maintaining your own authenticity and truth and reality of who it is that you are and want to be? You know, I'm. I'm seeing consistently that nature rewards consistency, nature rewards evolution. So inefficiency, it rewards consistency and efficiency, right? And I've seen that over the years, and something positive for positive people. Like, as long as I've been consistent with and doing this, there's been an evolution that has occurred. And even for me like this, I've gone from thinking that this is who I am to this is an extension of me. And based on what I'm seeing reflected back to me, I'm able to pull from it and go, okay, that aligns, that aligns, that aligns, that aligns. But I'm also seeing the same way that I have issues in something positive for positive people. I have issues in relationships. And some of the things that have come up throughout the history of my relationships have been issues that have been presented in my face with something positive for positive people. And that has been a real hard reality because, you know, I've been doing this for nine years now, and I've been positive for herpes. For 13 years now. And to see that there have been things that have not changed tells me I've been stuck or I'm doing the wrong. And I don't think I'm stuck and I don't think I'm doing the wrong. I think that my awareness has just not been here in the nucleus of Courtney. And it's something that, you know, I, I gotta get. I gotta give her credit when she where is due. My ex was right. It was like when you need boundaries. And my thought process was always, well, why the do I need boundaries with somebody that like, I want in my space? Like, I love being able to invite people into my space, but also I'm understanding the energetics of what that means. When you allow someone this close proximity to you, you become more of them. So without the energetic boundaries of things, like, I'll use something positive for positive people. For example, I'll have a 30 minute support call that sometimes I'll let go into becoming a 90 minute support call. I'll have someone show up 10, 15 minutes late and then still give them their original time plus 15 minutes. And I gotta stop doing that. Like it, like today, like today it stops. I'm recording on a Saturday. I just so happen to like have the space, have the time. And this is something that needs to be done. And it just, it did. I felt called to, I felt called to just go ahead and get it over with. I gotta stop doing that. In regards to like making people be intentional with the 30 minutes that we have together, right? You come in, we got 30 minutes for the support call. So you coming in with a thing. If you need to vent, there are places for that. I am also here for it to an extent. But I'm here to help you. Help you. That's what I'm here to. I'm here to help you, help you. If you are unwilling to do the things that you know. You're telling me your situation. I'm giving you the thing that'll help you with the problem that you're presenting to me. If you don't want to do it, I can't help you. And that, that feels wrong of me. It feels wrong. My chest hurt. My chest just. He was like, oh, did you just say that? Did you really just say that? You just said you can't help somebody? Because that's been the thing. Like, I've given pity dick around the time of my diagnosis. I, I remember, I remember, like, don't nobody want no pity dick. Or I mean, people do, but like, ain't nobody trying to have sex out of pity or just like, oh, you know what? She liked me, and she's there, right? And that's been a thing that has carried very well into my 30s. And this was something that was going on my. My teenage years. I think about my first. Oh, my God, this is. It's heavy. So I'm gonna say this, and then we'll close that loop and then come back to the Supreme Court support. Cause. But one of my first relationships, I think that it's come from me being somebody who, like, I grew up, I was my mom's emotional boyfriend. So I've got this seemingly infinite capacity for emotional bandwidth to be able to, like, take on somebody else's. And I never knew what was happening, what that was, what that did to me up until very recently. And so in my 16, 17 years old, someone that I was dating and ended up in a relationship, we had a lot of heavy going on. I did not know how that was impacting me, but I thought I was being a good boyfriend because I was there for her, and I didn't leave or I didn't be like, hey, you need to deal with this on your own, right? And so fast forward into multiple relationships after that. Like, my. The healthiest people that I was in relationships with, there was nothing happening. There was no polarity. It just became kind of like this flat thing. It was very flat. And there was. There would be, like, conflict, I think, because there was no problem. I'm like, yo, this is peaceful. What you mean? But I've recognized that. I think I've lost sexual attraction when at least over the nine years, I've become more aware of this, because now, you know, this is what I do. Like, I hold the emotional space for a lot of people, especially day in, day out, and recognizing that when I have become an emotional boyfriend to somebody or like, an emotional support resource, that puts me in the mindset of what I do here. And I've now been able to identify, oh, that is a boundary. Because I don't date people that are, like, clients or in support groups or that I have calls with or anything like that. That's been a hard boundary. So that boundary has leaked into my dating life to where, in the event that somebody does, like, very early on, without really entering the bubble or earning a spot in that bubble, like, emotional venting, especially without a resolution, like, I've decided that I will help anybody who is willing to help themselves. I will help anybody willing to help themselves. And I think I Got that from watching One Piece because I learned that from Luffy. Luffy, Luffy, don't come to you and be like, what's wrong? How can I help? How can I fix your problems? Luffy is, in passing, chilling, minding his own business. Somebody needs help, they have to ask for help, and they have to be willing to fight for themselves. And like, that is something that I've adopted for myself and integrated into my own boundaries. Like, I ain't never had that before. You know, I'm 37 years old. I think I heard the word boundaries when I was what, 32, 34? It was, it was sometime around the pandemic that I started to really hear that word and understand what it meant because I was like, oh, why do I need to keep people out? I love having people in. I want to connect with everybody. And that don't work. That don't work. So as I've noticed in becoming an emotional, like, support, that has absolutely killed sexual attraction for me. And I don't know that I've ever been able to really put it into work words until like yesterday. Literally yesterday, saying it out loud. And another thing that in seeing someone, I, I saw a dating and relationships coach and we were talking about polyamory. And that was part of what affirmed that I'm not polyamorous, but that I had like, more language around how to communicate who I am, how I do relationships to other people. She mentioned appropriately placing people and that, that close knit thing, right? Like, that's where people can, you know, vent or have access to me in a certain way. But even that, like, that is very exclusive and has to, it has other boundaries there as well. Like, it has to be reciprocal as well. But then there's the placement of people that maybe you, you call friends or your families, your community. Then there's the people that, like, if I go dancing, there's people that I might see regularly that I would dance with. But these aren't the people who have like, venting one on one privileges and emotional access to me. Or if I go out to a bar, I'm sure this happens to people all the time where somebody just tells you their life story and their trauma and like dump that on you. I, not I, I, I have to stop saying this is the last time I'll say it. I don't want to be an asshole. Like, to be an asshole to me has been synonymous with prioritizing self and preserving energy. And now that I see, like, how God works, how authenticity works, how, you know, we are Rewarded for our behaviors. I have become a much more selfish person in that sense, but not in the hateful way, not in a violent or aggressive way, but just in a way that works. And it's protecting my energy. And this is something that I've learned from herpes, so protecting my atomic structure because at the end of the day, we are protons, neutrons, electrons, right? Like that. That's, that's essentially what we are. And the way that these things operate are the rules that we have to live by. And so maximum evolution, minimum effort, minimum waste. And I have wasted a lot of energy in the pursuit of sexual partners. And going back to the herpes diagnosis, like, I see that now and I've been. I watch anime, lots of anime. And there are so many metaphors and synonymous things that parallel real life. Jujutsu Kaizen is one where they have heavenly pack. If you watch jujutsu kaisen, you know Toji and you know my God damn it, Maki. And they have heavenly packs. They don't have any cursed energy. And they are solidified in this like straight up state where they are unaffected by the negative energy of with others. And in exchange they have like tremendous abilities, right? But they cut off. They. The agreement is like, okay, now you don't get to use cursed energy. So everybody else has cursed energy except for like a couple of characters, right? And that's the exchange for that, like superpower, the superhuman ability. Herpes has cut me off from being able to just free willy, have sexual experiences with people that are from an unconscious place. And I didn't realize this at the time, unconsciously I've been navigating it in the right way or the, the way that it should be used because it's kind of given me a reason to be authentic. Because now I can't not tell somebody I have herpes. Not just because I have herpes and if I give it to them, that would suck, but because also, like, you can google me and if somebody, if I hook up with somebody, don't tell them I had herpes and then they look me up online and find out that I gave them herpes, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. So I now have to have that conversation business wise. But personally, it, it affirms my values as a person of integrity, as somebody who now also. Right. It's not just a mindless sexual thing that weeds those people out. So there aren't going to be any energy drains of somebody who just wants to have sex with me because I'm a strong muscular I have a, A black man physique, body. And what comes with that? Like, because I can throw them around or be rough with them or say whatever and do whatever it is. There now has to be a little bit of intentionality and conscientiousness to it. There has to be a conversation, some communication. There might have to be more of an alignment there to some extent, even whether short term, long term, whatever it is. Now both people involved gotta pause. I gotta pause and go, is this person somebody I can trust to tell this to? And the other person has to, you know, go, all right, well, what's, what's my intention here? And it brings it. It cuts off a lot of unintentionality. So my heavenly pact in that sense is now having developed this, this pressure builder because now a waste of energy from just casually hooking up unconsciously, that's been choked off. So now the energy that normally would have been leaked from that avenue is not able to go there. So there's like a pressure build up that now the energy has to go elsewhere. And doing that in a few other places too. Like, I. I think I'm done drinking. I know I'm done getting up, that's for sure, but I think I'm done drinking. So that's like one more way where unconscious energy can leak. Because you might just be mindlessly doing that. You ain't got no business doing. Same thing with food. Like, I've changed how. I don't know if y' all can tell, but I'm feeling strong. See the muscles. Yeah. With how I eat. So I'm. I'm into yoga, yoga therapy. And I've recognized that I. My dosha. So these are like, you know, there's three primary types. Vata, which is air, and ether, Pitta, which is fire and water. And then kapha, which, which is earth and water. So I'm very kapha dominant. There's some pizza in my personality. But what that means essentially is that I'm very strong, stable, grounded, like sturdy, consistent. There's a lot of the qualities of earth and water there. I'm easy going, laid back, and I am supposed to eat like, certain things, and I'm not supposed to eat certain things. And it's just like off of the yogic makeup of my body. And since honoring that, like, I was stuck at 230, 233 for so long. Like today I stepped on this guy was 220.6 almost at 219 gold. And my body responds in that way. My body's responsive to that. So I went to the doctor for the first time in like two, three years and I learned that I was pre diabetic. So I'm fortunately at a place where I can reverse this. I mentioned in 2021 I had a buck ton of sugar in a short period of time, changed up my sugar intake and then I was able to stop myself from crossing that line. And then lately I would have sweets here and there and like some sugary, but not being mindful of it. I'm like, oh, I work out so I can just down a sleeve of Oreos and that, that, that ain't how that works. So I've had to make some lifestyle changes just over the last like three weeks, honestly. And it's been going well and taking care of myself. Blood pressure has always been a thing. I tried to fast for Ramadan, which was three days ago and two days before that I started. I was like, yeah, let me see if I can do this. Can I fast from all while the sun is up. And I started doing some research and learned that having pre diabetes and high blood pressure and all his muscle, I can't do that. Like I need to be drinking water throughout the day. So I was like disappointed. And that's what led me to begin a, some, some culpa, which is like a, essentially like a lifelong intention and commitment. So I've been listening to the yoga sutures of Patanjali and I've been doing a lot more trying to understand quantum physics a lot better and just looking at how on an atomic structural level those things form so that I can live my life around that. So moving forward on the podcast, I think that I'll talk more about that because I think that it's really, really helpful and looking at the whole maximum potential output with minimal waste for maximum efficiency and peing evolution like I'm, I'm trimming a lot of the fat not just in my life, but also for something positive for positive people. One thing is the wait. That's for the end of this. Let me bring things back to a conclusion first. I caught myself. What herpes taught me about authenticity is the core of this, right? So it's not just be yourself. It's not just be yourself. It's bring that curiosity and then find out the truth. Bring in the curiosity and find out the truth of the stories that we tell ourselves. And where things are inconsistent, we gotta, we gotta adjust that. We really do. We have to bring our awareness and attention to the thing because again, where we got Our diagnosis may have screenshot us into who we think we are or who we used to be. And we may feel like we can't be that person anymore because we're not supposed to be, we're supposed to evolve, we're supposed to grow, we're supposed to expand, right? And for people who feel like depressed or sad or just stuck, like that's why we're not working towards a thing which is our own natural evolution. And oftentimes we might be doing a lot of inconsistent. Like, people will say to me all the time like, oh, you know, I want a relationship eventually, but right now I want to do, it's like, okay, you gotta pick one. People would be like, oh, I don't want to disclose, but I should disclose. Like, pick one, pick one. Like, I, I, I hate to, you know, be that way, but it's the push pull of this or that that creates all of these stories and thoughts and ways to navigate a thing. Because I can't work with someone who doesn't know where they're working from. You know, I can see, you know, the we're going this way or that way by eliminating things by half until we get to, you know, a range of what, where we're going to either move forward or not move forward. But like, that's the extent of it. I can't, I can't do more than that. Like, if a person is unwilling to help themselves, I cannot participate in that and offer any kind of help because all I'm going to do is cause harm or confusion even, right? So when it comes to what I've learned from my herpes diagnosis about authenticity is that it's not this duality of right, wrong, it's the complementary. Like you have to apply your awareness to it because then right and wrong becomes objective. What's right for you might be wrong to them might be wrong for you. And it's ultimately about nurturing your nature. So identifying what your nature is and then nurturing that, that by bringing in curiosity, by bringing in a willingness to identify what's true for you and then being able to establish a code and live from there. That is what herpes taught me about authenticity. So now translating all of this to something positive for positive people, what to expect moving forward. I think I mentioned some of the boundaries that translate from dating into this space or how they flip, flop and leap. But what's most important is that we now within those 30 minute windows, that we maximize the time that we have together by people coming in with their own intention. Like I'll try and make this as clear as possible that coming into it, I need to know if there was one thing that you wanted to get out of our time together, what would that one thing be? Right. So I typically ask everybody this question before we start our call now. Like I want to make sure people have that going into it. The other thing is the timing. So if the people are late, if people miss and we just got to reschedule, like you got 24 hours, we'll reschedule within a 24 hour block. I've been having a lot of people lately who just don't show up or will be like, oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was a different time. So how. I sent out a calendar invite. I said I sent out a calendar invite. How did you miss this? And so that, that's leaking energy for me. It's, it's taking away from the evolution of not just something positive for, for positive people, but also myself. Like, I really take this seriously. This is important to me and it's important that I treat it like it's important to me. So 30 minute calls. In the event that you miss or if you're late, we just gotta reschedule. You got, you got 24 hours to think about what you did. So. Yeah. And if you show up five, ten minutes late, we, we booked that 30 minutes. It's that 30 minute time is what you've reserved now. Stuff comes up, if a thing happens, let me know. And again, we just reschedule within 20, 20 outside of the 24 hour window. Right. So these are things I can say out loud because it's important for me to like, I think I need to speak these to existence, to live by them. Because I, I don't. Like I mentioned, I've been on, I was on the phone 90 minutes with somebody for a 30 minute phone call. Right? We gotta come here. If you come here, I am. You have to be a person who is ready to do something for yourself. If you come to vent, I'll listen to you. But I am going to present you with next steps and solutions. I'm not going to be somebody that will enable you to just not do anything. Because that's not my role, that's not my place. There are plenty of places on the Internet for that. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would take your money to listen to you. I'm not, I'm here for a reason. I'm here to support you into the next stage of whatever it looks like for you to minimize stigma within yourself. That's what I'm here for. So after a support call, if you feel like you still need more, you can work with me as a yoga therapy client or you can participate in a support group. That's the transition of the next steps. And then the other thing, as far as the support groups go, I am having difficulty with men showing up consistently to the support group. So the process is the process for a reason. You make the donation to whichever support group you want to participate in. The next upcoming support group is what you will get a calendar invite for. That calendar invite, if this is your first time, might go to your spam folder. So when you donate, whatever email you use to make the donation, that is where the calendar invite will go. It will go to you within 20, usually within 24 hours. But let's say 72 hours because of the weekends. I'm not. I'm not doing weekend things anymore. And if, you know, you reach out outside that window, you'll hear from me between Monday at 1:00pm and Friday at 1:00pm all right, so after 1:00pm on Friday, Courtney's out of the office until up until 1pm on Monday. All right, that's. I gotta do this. I gotta do this, and I gotta stick to it. So for the men's group, I think this is. I'm gonna give it a little bit of time. So I'm gonna give it the month of March. And if by the end of March, like, I'm seeing, you know, one, two people here, there, I might just have to keep it at support calls because it's not. It's a waste. It's a waste. Like, I'm making myself available and accessible the second and fourth Monday of every month. And, you know, there's 20 plus women. Well, last time there was like 14, I want to say. But there's consistently been about 20 women who come to their support support groups. And it makes more sense for me to give them what it is that they need more of, because if there's so many of them, I might as well use those second and fourth Mondays to just have smaller groups or to be able to make more space for the people who do want to participate. So I'm not. I'm unable to see exactly what it is. That is the issue with the men's group. I. I don't. I don't know. I don't know what the issue is with the consistency. Maybe it's just that the men are coming. They're, you know, saying what they Got to say, they take the advice, they go implement it and then that's it, or it's something else. So I started those support groups separately in October. We'll, we'll see what happens over the course of the month of March. But as of right now, we got, I think four people that are signed up. But yeah, if, if there's no consistency at this point after October, November, December, January, February, March, after six months and we gotta, we gotta cut it. And yeah, the support calls are still available. Yoga therapy is still an option. I'll be done with that this year. But podcast wise, I'm only doing solo episodes now for however long. I don't know what'll happen. Maybe somebody will pop up and be like, yeah, Courtney, let me have. I want to be on your podcast, but to make this efficient because especially social media has not been friendly to me. That avenue of getting information out about the organization, about what we got going on, it's useless at this point. It's useless unless I'm willing to do some shit that I'm not willing to do, which I'm not. So you'll see, like there are pin posts. I may go on there to share a thing, to post that's relevant to something that's going on. Maybe if we have an event, I'll buy some ads. But that's like the only usefulness of that in person events. So speaking of not wasting energy, the in person events, I have something March 21st in New York. This is an in person support group. We'll start at 11am with a support group. We'll have like a two hour break where we're going to do some live demos of practicing, disclosing, discussing herpes with a partner that will be recorded. So if people want to participate, let me know. But as of right now, I'm probably going to be the person that's like doing this with somebody who happens to be there and is okay with being on camera, navigating this conversation. After that we have a documentary showing of the no Shame in this Game film from I think we finished recording in 2022, I want to say, but a lot of people haven't seen it because it's not, it's not widely available. So we're paying her to come in and do the documentary screening. There's a couple of us who are in it. There's going to be a little panel after the showing and then we've got a one woman show from Lauren. It's called Deal Breaker. And she essentially has creatively Given her experience of what it's like to live with herpes. And then I'll host a 2 ish hour workshop giving people private practice discussing sexual health and their herpes status with a potential partner. It's going to be a role play where people can act. So if you are somebody who enjoys that and you happen to be in New York March 21, which is a Saturday, let me know. The event is all day from 11am to 7pm Right now we got a handful of people coming. I think there might be 10 people. So far the event space can comfortably hold about 80. So we'll see what can happen here. I'm putting this together by myself. I'm not working with anybody on it. I put the ad out, I'm using the website. There's been people I've never seen or heard of before who are registered for the event. So I'm hyped to see that this is, you know, what's happening. There are, it's donation based. So there's options. I just want to cover the cost of the event space to be completely honest. So there's options on the website of how you can donate, how much you can donate. But go to spfpp.org expo and then you'll see that there. So if this is something that gets a reasonable turnout, this might be something that we can repeat on a continuous, consistent basis. I ain't gonna say like a monthly or anything, but I know that people are very much craving more in person stuff. There's a lot of people who have been expressing interest who are in New York, New Jersey. So hopefully people show up because I think this can be fun. I think it's gonna be a real fun event if people are willing to show up to it. But yeah, I think that the expression of boundaries is important to maintaining authenticity because the, the ultimate goal is peak evolution, maximum efficiency and minimal waste, right? Minimal waste, minimal effort. And that's, that's how I'm choosing to live life moving forward. And you know, it might not be as broad of a spectrum to get people, people to come into this space or my space even, but I think that this will shape the quality of the people that come into the space that I interact with and engage with more than anything else just by exerting, exercising these boundaries and being able to honor those and hold true to them. So yeah, thank y' all for being part of this evolution over the years. Really looking forward to, forward to how things are developed. My chest just twitched. It was chest day. That's Why I thought my heart was beating fast again because I was scared of something. But, yeah, I would like to know what you think of this episode. Like, are people listening to this? Like, what's happening? Because. Yeah, I. I think that continuing to do the podcast gives me an incentive to keep the website relevant, and that's more valuable than Instagram and TikTok are or have been. Like, I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me because of something that they saw on Instagram and decided to get involved with the organization beyond the capacity of just reading something and moving on about their business. The survey people aren't taking the survey, so that's starting to feel like a waste of time as well. I mean, I. I ain't bitching. I. I do not want this to come off as being bitching. This is me trimming the fat, cleaning up something positive for positive people so that this can be a much more smoothly run, more efficient organization and resource for people to be able to come get what they need and then going about their business. All right, so that concludes this episode of something positive for positive people. I would like feedback, if you have any, because I. I want. I need to know what y' all need. I mean, unless this is good. But I'm envisioning more just recaps from things like support calls, anonymously, of course, and takeaways from the support groups, just so that we have, like, a consistent flow of content without things getting repetitive, really. So let me know what y' all think about that, and if, you know, maybe you have a topic in mind that you want me to talk about, reach out, let me know. Send that to me. I'm happy to explore that. All right, till next time, stay present.