Oh, we got right into it all right.
Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People.
I'm Courtney Brand. Something positive for Positive
people is A5O1C3 nonprofit organization supporting people
living with herpes and navigating sticky.
I'm making sure that this time the microphone is plugged in and
on because I apologize for how Part 1 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 1 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 do it 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 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. In 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 and 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 +1's negative
and they complement each other in order for whatever
experiences in between the positive and negative forces are
that exists, 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 of ground. So these two forces are trying
to connect with each other, 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 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 emotion.
So I, I, 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 the 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 got 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.
It's a very gentle whisper. And it comes from that place of
stillness that often times, 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 Saint Louis. I didn't belong in the life
pattern of what my parents had, right?
Like they had me, they got pregnant at 17.
They 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, we grew up together.
My dad's always been like a dad, but my mom and I, 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 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 like the job that they had.
Like these were my counter part. So it's me, you know, this
former college football player and then like 4 white women who
were hired, you know, so I won'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
tight 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 going
to laugh at this. I used to think I wanted five
kids because I'm one of five, but I'm technically I'm my 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 the middle piece, technically only child,
but one of five and oldest and only.
So it's an interesting dynamic with that for myself.
And so I used to think that I was like, yeah, I'm with five
kids. And you know, I'm, 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 1112 year old, you know, 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 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 and
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 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 OK, 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 the 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 AAI 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 often times 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 in that moment of being 18 because
that's where she became a parent, 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 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, I brought this upon myself.
The gods 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 shit, 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 OK, don't fuck this up.
Very don't fuck 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, 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 solidify 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, it's just there. It's not magnetic.
It's 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 get in 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 thirteen 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, we live in this
waves, and then we just 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, 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 miners.
And so in 1B, it's hot outside and the air conditioner goes
out. In 1B, Herpes is first going to
notify you via e-mail, Hey, our air conditioner went out,
supposed to be 90° 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
gentle whisper, right of hey, there needs to be some
maintenance here in the body. Then you missed that e-mail.
Next there's my there might be a second e-mail like 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, our hair ain't working.
And then after that, your tendon is going to not pay rent.
And then maybe they look for a new place to live and then bath.
There's your physical representation, There's your
physical expression of the herpes virus, right?
So a lot of what I think from 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 live by.
It was just very action driven. Everything was go, go, go.
In yoga, there's rajas, which means like motion or heat.
And then Thomas means like stillness and 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 sciatic 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 shit 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 out of the
shit, 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 shit 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, OK, 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 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 e-mail? 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 100%
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 and call him, he is
not going to answer the phone. This is more important to me
than the accountant call. So I'm going to finish this and
my phone or do not disturb. So I know he called a few times.
Jesus. OK, so look at me manifesting
the accountant call. Is this you?
What's more important to you, the accountant call or this
podcast? OK, 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 going to 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 message is that we would have gotten from the nervous
system of, hey, look at this thing.
Hey, I'm uncomfortable around certain people.
Are there certain environments that maybe we should 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 from 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 me
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 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 in my life.
Like the peaks and the valleys. The peaks and valleys were often
dictated on 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.
OK great, I'm accepted. I'm validated whenever someone
does accept me from 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 we begin to believe that
and how the beliefs begin to shape the behaviors of what
happens next. So the thought process is the
events that have been begin to formulate beliefs that drive the
behaviors that if you're way out here, just constantly go go go
chasing things and trying to secure 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 be, 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 a sense
of self love without the presence of another to either
experience or be experienced in whatever that is, in whatever
love is for a person. So the definition that I threw
out there, this is actually my son Copa or like life intention
was nurture your nature. So to love is to nurture ones
nature. It's not exclusively contingent
on another person being present and doing the nurturing.
It's more contingent on the 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 1'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 1'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, OK, like what? What does this what does this
mean? Why did God do this to me?
What I shouldn't have been dot dot dot and we look at our
actions that happen rather than looking at what our try not to
use these high level last 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 fuck out of here.
You get the fuck 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, OK, well I
guess this is it. Like I got to 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,
Corey, this is more than the podcast.
This is more than the podcast. And then I'm like, alright,
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 impressionable.
And I think that over the last God, it's been 2 weeks, I think
it's been 2-3 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 spend. 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 say to 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 abandoned 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, OK, I'm here. I'm here for this person.
I'm supporting them. I'm 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 not.
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 your, 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 your, 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 and efficiency, it rewards consistency and efficiency,
right? And I've seen that over the
years in 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, this I'm, I'm, I'm gone from thinking
that this is who I am to this is an extension of me.
And based on, you know, what I'm seeing reflected back to me, I'm
able to pull from it and go, OK, that aligns, that aligns, that
aligns, that aligns. But I'm also seeing the same way
that I have issues and something positive for positive people.
I have issues and 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 shit.
And I don't think I'm stuck and I don't think I'm doing the
wrong shit. I think that my awareness has
just not been here in the nucleus of Courtney and it's
something that, you know, I I, I, I got to get.
I got to give a credit when she wears due.
My ex was right. It's like when you need
boundaries and my thought process was always, well, why
the fuck 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 1015
minutes late and then still give them their original time plus 15
minutes. And I got to stop doing that
shit. 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 got to 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 the 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, 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 fucking 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 remember, I remember like, don't nobody want no pity Dick?
I mean, people do, but like, ain't nobody trying to have sex
out of pity or just like, oh, you know what, she like 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 heavy. So I'm going to say this and
then we'll close that loop and then come back to the support
calls. But one of my first
relationships, I think that it's come from me being somebody who,
like, I grew up, I was my momma's emotional boyfriend.
So I've got this fucking seemingly infinite capacity for
emotional bandwidth to be able to like take on somebody else's
shit. And I never knew what was
happening, what that was, what they did to me up until very
recently. And so in my 1617 years old,
someone that I was dating and ended up in a relationship, we
had a lot of heavy shit 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 shit 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.
But I'm like, yo, this is peaceful, which 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, I think I got that from
watching One Piece because I, 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 shit before.
You know, I'm 37 years old. I think I heard the word bound
just when I was what, 3234 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 shit don't work.
That shit 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 words until 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 call
friends or your families, your community.
Then there's some 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
shit 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 the 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 and 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.
Jiu Jitsu Kaizen is 1 where they have a heavenly pack.
If you watch your Jiu Jitsu Kaizen, you know Toji and you
know my goddamnit mocking. 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 others. And in exchange, they have like
tremendous abilities, right? But they cut off they, they, the
agreement is like, OK, 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 giving
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 I also like
you can Google me. And if somebody, if I hook up
with somebody, don't tell them I have herpes and then they look
me up online and find out that I gave them herpes, that is a
lawsuit way to happen. So I now have to have that
conversation business wise, but personally it, it affirms my
values as a person of integrity that somebody who now also
right. It's not just a mindless sexual
thing that we use 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 as I could go 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 got to
pause. I got to 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, 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
Ave. 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 fucked
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 shit that you
ain't got no business doing it. Same thing with food.
Like I've changed how, I don't know if y'all can tell, but I'm
feeling strong and like see the muscles.
Yeah, with how I eat. So I'm, I'm into yoga, yoga
therapy and I've recognized that my dosha.
So these are like, you know, there's three primary types of
Vata, which is air and ether pizza, which is fire and water,
and then kapha, which is earth and water.
So I'm, 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 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 23233 for so long, like today I slept on the sky.
I was 220.6 almost at 219 gold and my body responds in that way
and my body's responsive to that.
So I went to the doctor for the first time in like 2-3 years and
I learned that I was pretty diabetic.
So I'm fortunately at a place where I can reverse.
As 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 shit, but not being mindful of it, I'm like, oh, I
work out. So I'm just down fucking 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 3 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 on 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, some culpa, which is like a, a essentially like a
lifelong intention and commitment.
So I've been listening to the Yoga Sutras 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
peaking 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 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 got to, we got to adjust that
shit. 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 fucking 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 often times we might be doing a lot of inconsistent
shit. 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, OK, you got to pick one.
People would be like, oh, I don't want to disclose, but I
should have disclosed. 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 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 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 to might be wrong for you.
And it's ultimately about nurturing your nature.
So identifying what your nature is and then nurturing 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, but 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, you got 24 hours, we'll reschedule within
the 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 we, I sent out a calendar invite, 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 positive people,
but also myself, like I, 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 got to reschedule.
You got you got 24 hours to think about what you did.
So yeah. And if you show up 510 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 2020 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 two existence to live by them
because I I don't like I mentioned, I've been on I was on
phone 90, 3 minutes with somebody for a 30 minute phone
call, right? We got to 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 or whatever it looks like for you to minimize stigma
within yourself. That's what I'm here for.
All right, 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 the 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 e-mail 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 1:00 PM and Friday at 1:00 PM All
right, So after 1:00 PM on Friday, Courtney's out of the
office until up until 1:00 PM on Monday.
All right, That's I got to do this.
I got to do this and I got to stick to it.
So for the men's group, I think this is I'm going to give it a
little bit of time. So I'm going to give it the
month of March. And if by the end of March, like
I'm seeing, you know, 1-2 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 4th 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
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 for
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.
It is the issue with the men's group.
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, then we got to we got to 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 11 AM with a
support group. We'll have like a 2 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 it is OK with being on
camera and navigating this conversation.
After that we have a documentary knowing 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 her piece.
And then I'll host the 2:00-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 21st, which is
a Saturday, let me know. The event is all day from 11:00
AM to 7:00 PM right now. We got a handful of people
coming. I think there might be 10 people
so far. The event space can probably
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 were 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 turn out, this might be something that we can
repeat on a consistent basis. I ain't going to 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 that's going to
be fun. I think it's going to 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 to come into this space
or Myspace 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 you all for being
part of this evolution over the years.
I'm really looking forward to how things are developing.
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 shit like what was happening?
Because yeah. And 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 me 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 didn't 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.