Hello and welcome to Something Positive for Positive People.
I'm Courtney Brain. Something Positive for Positive
People is a nonprofit organization supporting people
who are navigating herpes. We do this in a variety of ways.
We offer one-on-one support cause not just for people with
herpes, but to people who might have recently been disclosed to
by a potential partner or loved one and they want to know how to
be supportive or how to move forward with them.
I'm a yoga therapist in training.
I emphasize the in training, but we also offer one-on-one yoga
therapy to give people an option for how to not just navigate the
stigma, but how to incorporate changes that align with wherever
they are in life. I use the sciences of yoga
applied to the situations and challenges that someone who is
dealing with a herpes diagnosis might be facing.
For example, a lot of times people that I talk to
one-on-one, they want to work through stigma and there's not
much of anything that talks about how exactly to do that on
the Internet. And so utilizing yoga therapy,
which yoga has been really useful for me because I find
that what it has done is give me what my baseline is and then be
able to use my stress, my external circumstances in order
to assess where I'm at internally going down to the
nervous system, right? So when we're having an
outbreak, for instance, there's probably a gentle whisper that
comes to us through the nervous system because herpes is a nerve
condition and that's what a lot of people really don't
understand. So when you deal with the
nervous system, you're dealing with the nerves, which might be
like the earliest sign of, hey, something's happening and then
you ignore that or you got a lot of stress happening for you and
you're not paying attention to the nervous system.
So maybe now you got a little dis ease or discomfort and you
don't really know why. Maybe it manifests as anxiety or
maybe it turns into what might feel like a potential outbreak
coming on and now you have more of a greater chance to pay
attention to it and then boom, outbreak, right.
So what I do is I teach people to get to their baseline and be
able to pay attention to that before it even gets to the point
where a physical, physical symptoms present themselves.
So right now I'm working with 1-2.
Damn, I got 5 clients. 6, I got 6 clients.
That's crazy. Wow.
All right, but I, I, I think I want to cap it at like 12:00.
We, we gonna cap it. I'm working with 12 people at a
time and I let everybody know, listen, if you work with me
after 12 weeks, it's because you like me.
And maybe we just need to see each other once a month or every
other week or something like that.
But yeah, I'm, there's an episode where I interviewed one
of my clients actually about what she's getting out of yoga
therapy. So this is something that you're
curious about. You can type Yoga Therapy in the
search box of the podcast tab of SP fpp.org.
And then last thing we got, we got the support group some
there's a women's group, there's a men's group that meets on
Monday. So the women's group is the 1st
and 3rd Monday, 7:30 PM Eastern Time.
And then the men's group is the 2nd and 4th Monday evening,
virtually 7:30 PM Eastern Time for the ladies group.
The next one that we have is going to be this upcoming
Monday, November 3rd. I'm going to have a guest.
I'm going to have a guest come into the support group who she's
going to share some of her personal experience with
successfully dating and entering a relationship post herpes
diagnosis. I'm sure we'll get some
questions about rejection. We'll get questions about how to
disclose and how that went for her.
But this is really your opportunity, though, for the
women's group to be able to talk to a woman who has herpes and
just like somebody who has the experience and I guess the
outcome that a lot of women maybe want to have a lot of
women who are dating with herpes who would like to just see what
is possible on the other end of that.
So I reached out to a few other women that I know who are in
relationships. And this may not be the first
time or the only time that this happens, but it's something that
I think will be useful. And then for the men's group,
y'all, So we've had two successful, 2 successful support
groups the month of October. This is when I started this,
right? And the women's groups both
great, consistent. The thing that came up there was
just disclosures. And then for the men's group, I
thought we did a really great job of defining what terms like
community support and stigma were we set a very solid
foundation. We, we got a good base week 1
and then we 2 don't nobody show up and people RSVPD and I, I
sent down a follow up e-mail. I, I don't know what it is where
the challenge of getting men to be consistent and support groups
like most of the women who showed up for the first one
showed up to the second one. And for the men, I don't know,
like maybe I'm not giving y'all what y'all need.
But The thing is this is being created like from scratch.
So I'm asking you all the questions and establishing the
foundation and the base of what these support groups are going
to be like. And the people who are helping
me to Co create what that looks like just didn't show up for the
second one. So it's like what I, I don't
even have the feedback on what went well, what didn't work,
like why you ain't coming back. So I'm, I'm gonna keep showing
up like that's, that's all. That's what I'm gonna do.
My Monday is 7:30 PM Eastern Time, except for November 10th,
November 10th. We're going to move that support
group to Thursday, November 6th at 7:30 PM Eastern Time.
I sent out the newsletter already for the month of
November. So that is out there.
So if any men want to join for the first support group for them
in the month of November, that'll be on November 6.
All right. Today's podcast episode is being
recorded on Halloween, October 31st.
And I was reminded of where I was.
What was that? Four years ago?
I was 2025. Yeah, I was reminded where I was
2021 on Halloween. So last night was October 30th
or Thursday. I just went out to, oh, actually
I got a story. So I was supposed to be in
Houston, TX this weekend. I was excited for this.
I used to live in Houston and I got a couple of really good
friends out there that I'll play the game with.
And that's kind of how we stay in touch.
And so we I've been making it a point to try and see them at
least twice a year. And so I was due for my second
time of year before one of my buddies goes out of the country
for a few weeks. And everything was fine.
I packed, I had all my stuff, the weather was good.
I made my ride to the airport. I was nervous about that, but I
made it, got there on time, got there early.
In fact, I got to go to the Chase Sapphire Reserve lounge
'cause I got a new credit card for something positive, for
positive people that came with a lot more like stuff that I would
use since I travel so much for the business.
And so I was able to go to the lounge.
I got in there, I did some work and y'all know how much I don't
like PowerPoint. So I got my PowerPoint done, not
PowerPoint, but just slides. So I have a, a, a solid template
to be able to just fill in for the subject matter on which I'm
going to be presenting on, which is typically herpes stigma.
I went to my gate. I got there.
The A group was boarding. I was part of B group and I got
in, I got a good seat. There was nobody sitting in the
middle and we back off from the gate.
We back off from the gate on time and then we're sitting in
the, the, the air traffic, which is sitting there and we can't
take off. So the pilot told us it was
going to be about an hour and a half.
I was like, alright, cool. So I'm chilling.
I'm I'm scrolling Instagram, I'm watching anime and therefore,
you know, it is 2 1/2 hours and then they tell us that we're
going to refuel at the what's it called?
We, we had the dock. So and then they told us to
deplane and the last time I was told to deplane, we had a 7 hour
flight delay. And so we deplane, we hanging
out and people are like lined up to figure out what's going on.
And I'm, I'm listening to the lady not know what's happening.
And she's very cool, very calm. This is with Southwest.
And normally the last time that this happened, I got text
messages and updates about, you know, what was happening with
the plane. So I'm gonna go chill at the
lounge again. So I go back to the lounge and
there was a a wait. And.
They gave me a ticket to go to another lounge.
So I'm chilling at the other lounge.
I get some food and then I get a text to come to the other
lounge. All right, great.
I get that text. I go back to the lounge and I
wanted to be at and I was just going to hang out until it was
time to leave. And then I get there and they
check your boarding pass and the boarding pass show that my
flight took off 2 minutes ago. And I was like, what 'cause I I
watched one episode of anime, The walk was not even 5 minutes
from the gate to the lounge or from the lounge to the other
lounge. So I'll say that maybe 30
minutes, 30 to 40 minutes have gone by.
And in that amount of time, no notifications.
I've seen people walk away and then they were on the phone
talking about their work had booked their flight and they
don't have any information. So like I'm talking to people
and everything and all of a sudden, like the flight's just
boarded. The flight's boarded.
We were supposed to leave at 11. The flight's boarded at three O
4. Now the flight didn't leave for
another two hours, but I didn't know that that was happening.
So I get back to the gate and I'm, I'm in line.
I'm like, yo, what's going on? So apparently the flight had
already boarded and there there was no notifications or
anything. And so they called names and
they had like 20 people missing. And so they called me and then I
go up and everybody's always surprised that I'm Courtney
brain. They're looking for like a 5
foot white girl or something. And so I was like, hey, I'm
Courtney. And so she was going to print
out my boarding pass she's hand. So I was like, hey, I don't want
to go no more. And so she cancelled the flight
and told me to call customer relations.
Now, there were a lot of things that were happening.
It's just I didn't feel good about.
I know about the government shutdown.
I know a lot of employees are there, but they're not getting
paid. So there's also, you know, that
that part of it as well. And then there is also, as I
was, you know, looking at why we weren't leaving, they mentioned
that it was because of the weather.
I guess maybe the wind had shut down a lot of the runways and so
everybody was coming and going from the same runway and we
weren't leaving. Now, at this point in time, the
weather was significantly worse than when we were about to
leave. And I get it, like traffic might
have just like died down. So as you get more into the
afternoon, maybe fewer planes are coming and going.
But I I got a wave of anxiousness man.
And that's that wave of anxiousness is the same wave
that told me I needed to get the fuck out of the my my ex
girlfriend's apartment before that storm came.
And it's the same when they told me I need to get the fuck out of
or move my flight up from my, when I left from Saint Louis to
go out of town before the tornado had came and hit my
place. And it was the same wave or
similar wave of anxiousness that just came with like a big ass
warning sign. Another time that I was, I won't
say when this was, but I was out with some friends that, you
know, and we're drinking and everything.
And, you know, some people were doing other things and I ended
up like having to switch cars and robbing somebody.
I, I didn't know. And when we were in the car
riding, like, clearly he was not driving very safely.
And we got over one of those like high overpasses on a bridge
and he was swerving like a motherfucker.
And so like, the swerving came from him not paying attention to
the road. He was like talking to the girl
in the passenger seat. And I was like, I, I, I snapped.
I, I, I hate when I get like this, but I snapped.
I was like, yo, just pay attention to the road.
I don't think I said it like that, but that was what I said
he did. He paid attention to the road,
but he was still swerving and for where we were, I did last
thing I need. I got too much going for me
right now to go to jail to have any reason to be involved with
some fuck shit. And I didn't know this dude.
So I was like, hey, pull over at this QuikTrip.
So I we pulled over at the QuikTrip.
I was like all right, y'all good I'm an Uber home.
So I went in, got a hot dog, Uber home and the Uber was like
inconvenient as fuck. But my anxiety that I have went
away and that combination of things where I listen to my
nervous system, I don't know what might have been avoided.
I don't know if anything was avoided.
But I know that the, the more that we do a thing, the better
we get at it. And it was important for me to
honor that. It was important for me to
regardless of, you know, all right, that that 20-30 dollars
of an Uber ride, it was more important to me that I did that
than anything else. And everybody like they beat me
home. Everybody like, you know, gave
me shit for, you know, being paranoid or whatever.
But at the end of the day, like I respected myself for that
decision. And my friends were like, hey,
yeah, you got to trust your gut. You know, I not know what,
right. Like I felt supported.
Like, you know, friends tease you get your shit, but also
like, I was supported in the decision that I made.
So I, I, I can't, I can't go against that anymore.
And I think that speaking more to the nervous system and like,
it ain't just herpes and the possibility of an outbreak that
gives us these kind of signs. Like there is a fucking whole
undercurrent of things that connect us as humans that a lot
of us just ain't in tune with. And what I found is that yoga
and a lot of what I'm learning is I look at quantum physics and
spirituality and make these connections for me personally is
that, you know, the, the nervous system is a manifestation of
whatever quantum physics stuff we come from.
And then everything that happens with the nerves is the
communication network. And I think that our body
sensations, the five senses, our thoughts, our emotions, our
breath and how we breathe, our organ function and what happens
within the body, digestion. All of this is a just another
way for the soul to communicate. And the spiritual significance
of herpes is by far the most downloaded podcast episode.
And I think that what happens is when we hit that, that struggle,
that suffering, whatever we want to call it when we get this
herpes diagnosis and we, we, we see the things that we have to
deal with a lot of times, that tragedy, that trauma, it makes
us look to spirituality. It makes us look within.
Because the thing about herpes is, ain't no answers out there
that we want. People look for a cure.
There is no cure. People look for.
How do I prevent a partner from getting this?
There is no way of preventing your partner from getting this
from you. And I use the analogy and you
know, I'm beating this thing into the ground, but our bodies
host a lot of viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and it manages
it right? Like we're, we're collections of
collections of things that are coexisting.
And when we have excess of any of these, that's where we need
to address it. The inflammations, the, the
infections, the, the, the disease, the symptoms and all of
that, right? That's when things have gotten
quote out of hand and we live in a world where we are pulled in
so many directions and our stress isn't limited to just our
internal world For us to be connected to it and go, oh, OK,
this relationship is actually doing me more harm than good.
Oh, the amount of time that I put into this activity needs to
be dialed back a lot. Or that thing that I got going
on that I used to really find a lot of joy from it.
It's not bringing me joy anymore.
And so looking at those things regularly require stillness.
Now when we work in the world where a lot of people, you know,
these people ain't getting paid. These people are working and not
being paid. Granted they're supposed to get
their back pay, but like, imagine having to show up for
work and it's work. And the one thing you get out of
your job? Is your money to be able to do
the things that you enjoy, you show up to work and then you
just don't get paid and you you do that like where where's the
line At what point are you going to focus on maintaining what you
have right? Like I talked to someone last
night and she's a government employee and I asked her what's
happening? Like what are you doing?
How do you how do you get by? She's like personal loans, she
said, deferring everything. And like eating up savings.
Well, she ain't say eating up savings what I'm assuming
because she ain't getting paid like that's that's and that's
assuming that she got a savings. A lot of people ain't got that.
And the going back to look at me, I was going to just forget
about what I was talking about originally.
But our body. Hosts all of these things,
right? And it's not just the physical
things that we host, right? We energetically hold a lot, we
emotionally hold a lot. We always, you know, considering
and thinking about other people as well and the other places
that we got to be the identities that we have and the mask that
we need to wear a lot of the times.
And so our bodies are these apartment complexes that your
tenants need to be taken care of You, the you, the
Superintendent, you, the landlord.
And when you have a tenant that let's let's say herpes is a
tenant, it's in one of the units and the air conditioner goes out
and then it's hot outside. First you get the message, hey,
our air conditioners out in unit whatever and then your.
Responsibility is to fix that. And let's say you're too busy or
you're, you're just not you, you, you getting your rent paid
every month from the tenants and you just going out and you
chilling, you drinking, you partying, you having a good
time, but you're not taking care of the responsibility that is
the apartment complex that you, you manage your body.
And so herpes, that tenant is like, all right, you know, our
air conditioner ain't getting fixed.
It's hot. We're not being cared for.
Let's go to the leasing office. Herpes goes to the leasing
office, maybe knocks on the door.
Ain't nobody there. They leave when a letter.
And then before you know it, too much time pass and rent ain't
getting paid because herpes is now looking for a new place to
live. And now it goes from the nerves
through the nervous system, or I'm sorry, from the nervous
system and through the nerves. And then it begins to travel
through the body. You may miss the signal of it
traveling because you're so disconnected from your body.
And then before you know it, that mug is on your skin.
And it's like, all right, this is your last chance.
You need to fix this air conditioner.
And this is where we get the the shedding that typically takes
place before an outbreak happens, like the noticeable
shedding where you feel that sensation coming along and then
you ignore it even more and then bam, now we.
Got an outbreak? And you can't ignore it.
And this is just herpes looking for a new home.
It's fine when you are taking care of yourself.
It's not fine when you are not taking.
Care of yourself. And, you know, I, I always think
go back and I always go back and forth about, you know, where,
whether or not I was aligned in places that I was when I was
living in Saint Louis, when I was living in New Jersey, when I
was living in Portland and I wasn't getting outbreaks.
And I, I, I, I don't regret any of those moves.
I don't regret any of those decisions because it was still
aligned for me to go through what it was that I went through
in order for me to have the experiences that I needed to
have, perhaps to be able to speak to and perhaps to be able
to become more related to people.
To have a failed, you know, relocation, a failed
relationship, a failed relocation again, a failed.
Like having a plan for being home again.
And that wasn't supposed to be what my story was for me going
back home and making that effort.
That was a part of the story, but it wasn't the story.
And I find a lot of I find a lot of peace in that.
I find a lot of peace in like looking back and being able to
say, you know, even from four years ago, because what's the
beautiful thing about this is it was October 30th in 2021, I want
to say, and I was wearing my Adventure Time costume and last
night I wore my Adventure Time costume.
I was fan and I had a, a ugly, a ugly breakup, an ugly
relationship. And, and this was with someone
who we were non monogamous and there was a lot of like issues
that she had with me personally that I knew about and that she
told me about. But these were things that
because they were mentioned, it was like, OK, great, it's on the
table. We, we deal with this, right.
And there were issues that I had with her and like her
relationships. And it was like, OK, this is on
the table. We both know we're we're going
to deal with it and. All of that.
Ended up I, I, I don't really know how to describe how he got
there, but what was expressed to me was like my happiness being
an issue. Like Courtney, you, you do what
you, you found a thing that you love, that you do, that you're
supposed to be doing. I haven't found that I'm jealous
of you. And it was my like, big Hey, I'm
jealous of you, my partner, my boyfriend, like we supposed to
be, you know, we in a relationship working towards
whatever long term, you know, looks like.
And that even just saying that now, man, like I'm going to tell
you how this don't be in a relationship with somebody who's
jealous of you, because I think that vocabulary, language, and
all of that is so it's, it's different across the spectrum.
It's very subjective, right? Because to me, my experience
with jealousy has been, oh, that person is doing something that I
wish I could do. Let me get better so that I can
also do that thing. It's there's a hint of
inspiration underneath of jealousy, or there can be a hint
of, I don't know. I I, I, I can't really say what
it is, but whenever I've been jealous of somebody, I just made
changes. I've never just been jealous of
somebody and then just been jealous, right.
Like if there was a time where I was fucking jealous of like
light skinned dudes because they, they seem they got all the
girls in in school. There was a time that I was
jealous of light skinned dudes and all.
I've been dark my whole life. I can't remember when I wasn't,
I can't remember the time where I wasn't dark.
And in those instances, right, like, all right, well, shit,
what is it about? I'm I got curious.
So like some of my friends were like in Devon.
Devon, one of my best friends, he'd been light skinned his
whole life. Nick, you know, RIP, you know,
these were friends of mine who were light skinned and like we
got cool and it was never anything against any of them.
Like I never sought to make them dark skinned or make them not
what they were. I wanted to understand them.
And that's been my relationship with jealousy.
But I understand everybody ain't got that path.
Everybody ain't got that playing sports, right?
Like, different people in different positions.
Just, man, I'm jealous of how good you are.
Let me get better. I'm jealous of you for starting.
Let me get better so I can start.
Jealousy for me has always been a notification bell.
Dean. All right, You know, this
person's good at something. What can I learn from them?
And it sparked my curiosity, but in relationships like, I guess I
just thought that like, and this is some my own like naivete.
I run a nonprofit called something positive for positive
people. And this is the most negative
circumstance, at least that I know of that exists.
Don't nobody want herpes. Don't nobody want to be here.
But as I said before, right, Like we transmute trauma and
herpes and stigma into healing. We transmute all that shit into
healing. Anything that comes your way
negatively, right? Like negative.
Negative ain't bad. I don't know where that shit
started from. Negative is means absent,
positive means present. There's a presence.
And when we get to the point of like good and evil, no, it's
useful. And then it's maybe useful.
It's just by default not useful because it has an absent charge.
But what happens when you give presents to that, which is,
excuse me, what happens when you give presents and attention to
that, which is use? I don't want to call it useless,
but like, it's infinite potential.
Negativity is infinite potential.
You can, you can flip a negative into any fucking thing you want.
I managed to flip someone literally telling me, Courtney,
you are, I'm jealous of you. Somebody told me that and then
told me why. And I was able to be like, oh,
great. So you're inspired and you're
going to do, you're going to do better.
You're going to find what it is that you want to be doing for
yourself. Nope.
So I was reminded that some a a friend of mine, she sent me a
selfie from that that time. And I remember going, Oh, I
remember this day because we had a massive fall, like publicly
massive falling out. Man, that, that shit was wild.
And yeah, I, I just, I'm glad that I can laugh about it now
because at the time I was furious, man.
I was sad. I cried.
I still got the voice recording. I left myself to make sure I
ain't go back to that relationship.
I had the voice recording. I recorded.
I was like, all right, here's what just happened.
I will never forget this. And she did my ass dirty.
And then the next day I moved to Portland, OR and my life just
just changed. And I just, I noticed like
patterns there. There's been patterns for me in
those relationships that, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to
make this podcast episode, you know, focus of dealing with
rejection. And I think that that particular
story of jealousy specifically is important because that is, to
me at least, a form of rejection in my experience.
And I got to stop looking at shit from such a naive
perspective. I will take whatever is given to
me and make it useful and take the positive and then, you know,
put the presence into the negativity of the infinite
potential to make it something positive.
You can do that idealistically. You can do that with energy,
like energy can't be created nor destroyed.
But what happens is I believe that the quality of presence,
the quality and the intensity of emotion that we give to a thing,
our passion, right? What we pour into a thing makes
it manifest and take form. That form that it takes then
becomes a shell. It becomes a solidified, you
know, a person in our life. It may become an activity, it
might become a fucking business. It might become a something
positive for positive people. You know what this had to
become? This ain't just me, y'all.
This ain't just me. This ain't just the energetic
intensity and emotion from Courtney that made a whole
fucking nonprofit organization and platform the podcast.
Yes, I love getting to interview people.
I love getting to talk to people of all different kinds of walks
of life to learn from them. Like, all right, how have you
navigated this? Because that gives me more
perspective to draw from and more of the infinite potential
for me to be able to put myself in in the shoes of another
person and empathize and be able to pour myself into that.
OK, what's the what's the good out of this?
And this helps me with asking the questions.
It helps me with listening. It helps me with being a great
person for that, that I wouldn't need it when I was diagnosed
with herpes. That's helpful.
And that's my thing. That's my, I ain't going to say
my superpower necessarily, but it it listening is a superpower.
It's damn sure a gift, especially in a time where
people's attention again, it's just so scattered and all over
the place and people are disconnected from their nervous
system. So when I think about being in a
relationship with somebody who says I'm jealous of you, like
she said it, but I look back, how many relationships have I
been in where that may have been the case and they just didn't
say it like that wasn't the language that was used.
Courtney, I'm jealous of you. And it's not exclusively
rejection or a fear of rejection or an avoidance of rejection.
It can be an obliviousness to rejection.
It can be a self rejection. You can be so adamant about
making a relationship work. You can be so adamant about
making a job work. You can be so adamant about
your, your place in a friend group or a community and making
that work and just dismiss the rejections that are there
because it'll happen again and again and again.
And one of the things that I wrote down in my notes to talk
about is like what you do being more important than who you are
in some cases, like how identity politics play a role.
Like I'll give this example. At the end of the day, I'm a
black man and there's, there's a word for what black men are.
And I've been in a lot of queer spaces.
I've been in a lot of women dominated spaces.
And over the years, like I've always been reminded in some
form or fashion that I'm a man. You know, whether that be how
people talk about men in these spaces, whether that be how I
remember. I just remembered a thing.
I was invited to something. It was, it was a handful of, I
hate that I'm about to say this. It was a handful of lesbian
women or queer women. And then it was me.
And like, I had a friend there. I was like, hey, I don't know if
I should go to this. She's like, no, what do you
mean? Like it would really mean a lot
to me if you would go. I was like, all right, that's my
friend talking back. I go to this.
And there were a series of events that happened while I was
there that felt like rejections. But because I went and I knew I
shouldn't have, this is another one of those signs where like my
nervous system was like, Hey, you probably shouldn't do this.
And I didn't listen. I I should have trusted it and
dealt with the consequences of not going there because now,
like I don't have that friend anymore.
But going to this thing there was, you know, the one thing
that I would say that happened was, you know, I'm, I'm giving
to the group as best I can, playing the games.
I'm, you know, buying the foods on my card and like trusting
that people don't give me the money back, making things easy.
And I remember, you know, one of the nights there, I went out.
I was like, hey, anybody wanna go to the hot tub?
Anybody go to the hot tub? I go to the hot tub.
I'm in the hot tub for a solid 45 minutes to an hour.
I get out, I hop in the shower, I'm done showering.
I'm drying off. And I hear a lot of giggling and
stuff from the hot tub. I look outside and everybody's
in the hot tub. And I was just like, wow, that's
interesting. And so I just was like, you know
what, fuck this, I'm going to go to sleep.
And was like, maybe it's just a coincidence, right?
You try and take the positive out of things.
But what, what, what positive is it in that?
Like, here's what happened. I invited everybody, Hey, I'm
going to the hot tub. I go to the hot tub.
I'm in there for 45 minutes to an hour.
I leave, I start showering as I'm drying off, everybody's in
the hot tub. And that, that, that sums up
like how the weekend went. And I shouldn't have been there.
And I think, you know, the body keeps the score, right?
It ain't just the body, it's the nervous system.
You know, the body will, you know, get to a point where
sometimes the body be too late. The body might be too late.
And the nervous system can only, you know, communicate so much.
It's a whisper. If you ain't in tune with it, if
you ain't connected to it, you going to miss shit?
And you know my my ex telling me, hey Courtney, I'm jealous of
you. That ain't the only form of
rejection that came, I'm sure. Like looking back, there were
many points where it was almost like I can't be as good as you
so I need to make you worse than me.
And I never looked at jealousy like that.
And I know we got different words, jealousy and envy, right?
But the words, the words are the words I'm just describing like
the, the, the actions and everything that's behind it.
And these were the words that were given to me.
And then even in my most recent relationship, right?
Like this, this person told me I struggle with jealousy.
And while it was never overtly said like I was in hindsight now
right here, like I again, I've been in therapy sometimes twice
a week talking about these things.
And the only people who ever know everything that happened in
their relationship are my therapist and then one of my
good friends who he was happening to go through
something similar. Just because I don't want, I
don't want to, you know, talk bad about nobody, even if that
means that like whatever's been said about me has had the
impacts that it's had. Because like I said before,
people have noticeably treated me differently.
And all I can do is just look at, I look at the information
that I got. I can't sit here and be naive to
the fact that, you know, I just because I respect or have
respect and reverence for, you know, people and what they got
going on, that don't mean the same thing for me.
And people that you know, I thought were friends, they might
not they, they everybody ain't my friend.
And I had to learn that and listening to the nervous system
and I had to learn that every time I don't listen to my
nervous system, I'm rejecting myself.
And I'm, I'm, I'm happy. I'm, I'm feeling good.
Like regardless of how I sound like it's about to be 6:00 AM or
a little bit after 6:00 AM right now and I got my little sleepy
voice on and whatnot, but I'm, I'm actually happy.
And it feels so fucking uncomfortable for me to be happy
because it feels so lonely and isolating because everybody
ain't happy. And we live in a time where it
it's so easy to find shit to be pissed off about.
It's so easy to give your joy away and subscribe to things
that don't bring you joy. I went to a Brandon Kyle
Goodman's whole church whole spell HEAUX with a friend of
mine and well shit I guess at the time 2 friends of mine.
And it was at this whole church where I got to say something out
loud for the first time in a room full of people that I ain't
never said before. So Brandon Kyle Goodman is I
guess sex educator and they're non binary and black and it
looked like me look like a black man.
And the exercise that they did was they had everybody or they
offered the opportunity for people to raise their hand and
just say out loud something that they're, they've experienced
shame with. And the reoccurring thing for me
is experiencing shame around how happy I am, my happiness, my joy
in life because everybody ain't. And I'm around a lot of negative
people, but negative isn't bad. Negative just means infinite
potential. And you can't, you can't pull
potential out of people. It's just something that you got
to be yourself and inspire from people.
And then that inspiration, while my intention might be
inspiration, what somebody else can be receiving might be
jealousy. It can't can it can trigger
them. My happiness shouldn't trigger
anybody. And I think it did several
times. And when that happens, what do I
do? Damn the light?
Try and make the other person happy, therefore making myself
miserable and therefore showing them how unhappy they are and
making them more miserable. And then we in this like misery
cycle. But I will say, man, being in
yoga therapy training, being involved in some type of a
consistent yoga practice and learning.
Shout out the yoga buzz. Shout out to all my teachers
that I've had. Shout out the Inner Peace yoga
therapy because I think that these things kept me, kept
reminding me, kept reminding me. Stop, be still, breathe, check
in with your nervous system, move your body, observe your
thoughts, meditate. And it was all of these that
allow for me to catch the baseline of where my stress is.
And I'm a happy person. I am a positive person.
I am a present person. I got to practice this shit
every day of my life because that's a choice.
I choose to. I choose to be present.
I choose to stay positive. I choose to take the negative
and not disregarded or be like, Oh no, I know, ain't no place
for this. I choose to give presents to it
and interrogate it with curiosity and kindness, even at
the expense of rejecting myself. But when I recognize that that's
what was happening, can't get so sucked into it, I got to
remember my happiness. The same thing that brings
people in, it makes people want to be here and it makes people,
you know, want to be in the space should never be.
The same thing that makes people, you know, jealous or
envious or or hateful in a way that it's like I need to make
you worse 'cause that's what jealousy does.
But also what jealousy was for me was inspiring.
I ain't never tore nobody down. And you know, you got to ask
yourself. Because our inner world is the
projection, the projector for what's happening around us.
So I look at, you know, applying for grant applications and how
often I get rejected. I, I ain't got a grant yet.
The, the first thing I moved out to Portland, OR for I thought
was a grant that was a sponsorship.
They liked what I was doing and they were able to just give me
$10,000. The, the, the big donations that
I got, I thought those were grants.
Those just came from people, organizations that got money.
These were just fat ass donations.
That's crazy to think about. It's it's crazy to say out loud,
but in eight years of running something positive for positive
people, somehow, I don't know how, but it's just, I guess
this, this trust. Maybe it's my naivete or maybe
it's my consistently with consistency with turning
negatives into positives. But along the way, like somehow
we've been able to keep doing this shit somehow.
You know, when I need podcast guests, they come out the blue.
When I need something to talk about, I'm able to just turn
this motherfucking mic on and I just start saying shit.
And the however many y'all, I think the average is like 110
people on Spotify per episode. However many y'all listening, if
y'all come check in once and never heard back from y'all
again, that means you getting what you need.
For those who stick around, that mean you're getting what you
need. I'm I'm done, I'm done rejecting
myself. I'm done trying to control shit
and I'm also done like welcoming in, you know, for too long.
Like I everybody can come here, anybody can come in, anybody can
come in. I'll talk to anybody, but
everybody can't stay and then everybody can't stay.
That's not me being mean, but like this is something I learned
from my last relationship well after the breakup.
Something I learned is like I am open about my life.
I am vulnerable to somebody presenting themselves as
perfectly aligned with me and then not being that.
And I'm not an asshole for stepping away.
I can't stay in relationships because, you know, if I need
space and somebody has abandonment issues or ain't
anxious and it's like I need, I need closeness when I need
space. Like we got to prioritize what
it is that we need. However, we need to get that.
And that same thing goes for not just your romantic platonic
relationships, but it also goes with things.
You know, I maybe sometimes need space away from, well, I don't
need no space away from my job. I need that money, but I had to
take space away from grant applications and decided like,
that's not what I'm doing. Even Instagram social media,
like trying to make content that people will see related to
herpes education, that shit was draining.
I never knew how draining that was for me until I started to
invest the money, energy, attention, and time that I would
normally put into Instagram, and I put that into the website.
I invested. I invested in something that I
believed in. And going back to the thing
about energy, right, what they say in Full Metal Alchemist,
they speak about the law of equivalent exchange.
For anything to be obtained, something of equal or greater
value has to be exchanged. You got to give up something and
life, man, this is just a whole thing of catch and or attach and
release. Attach and release because what
we energetically pour into takes form and we form an attachment
to it and we got to release that shit like I the day that
something positive for positive people is no longer needed for
what I've invested into this mother fucker over the last
eight years. Whatever the energy build up
that releases from me releasing my attachment and the format
this is in, whatever that ends up looking like.
Let's say they cure herpes tomorrow.
I can't wait to see what I make out of this because I got so
much faith in it. There's so much faith, and the
intensity of emotion that is invested in it is the same thing
with my last relationship. I poured everything I had into
that relationship and it took form.
It took form, you know, and somebody that was going to give
me everything that I wanted. And then that relationship ended
and the form wasn't there anymore.
Like her body, her mind, her energy, her spirit, like that's,
that's removed from my orbit. But that energy isn't.
Yeah, she ain't take that with her.
That's mine, you know, and I don't even like to call it mine,
but it's been stored. The investment there when it
freed up, right. Like I got, I got like 18 grand
from losing my apartment in the tornado.
And I think that, you know, it might have been about that for
my whole moving to New Jersey, moving away from New Jersey,
moving while I was in New Jersey.
You know, when that, when, when that form released, what came
from the form was still there and they needed to go somewhere
else. So there was the money, you
know, the, the move across the country.
I was like, all right, Courtney, now you can move to New York.
You can move to Brooklyn now. And now you can you, you can
have your identity as a polyamorous black man, a little
too polyamorous black man. I don't know that this would
have been available to me sooner.
Now you can do the work that you're supposed to do.
Now you can focus on your yoga therapy training.
Now you got the attention, now you can focus on your own
emotions and how you feel to get to your baseline because you
tried for so long to do that for somebody else.
And the the shell that I was able to feel that energy with
because we're just moving. It can't be created nor
destroyed. But what we give value to, like
the value that we give to someone, something is a direct
response to our emotions, whether those emotions are
positive or negative. It's our presence.
How much presence do we give to a thing?
Avoidance is also presence. Because think about it like how
often we avoid death and we avoid people.
We avoid discomfort. But yeah, we still see that
shit. But what happens when we
release, when we remove the shell of that which we've poured
the emotion of fear into what they saying out waiting the
devil? He said if people only knew that
that which they feared if converted to shit.
What did he say if if what we were afraid of if we began to
like. Here's my analogy.
I don't know exactly what he said, but you know, when you get
excited about something, that feeling in your gut, or, you
know, when you're scared shitless or something, that
feeling in your gut is the same feeling.
We assign a narrative to it. We give it a story.
And when we are afraid of something, that's just that
excitement bubbling up. What if we were like, huh, you
know, it's kind of a being afraid of this.
Here's how. Here's the story I'm gonna tell.
No, it's shit to be afraid of. Don't get me wrong, you won't
see me fucking around with no, no poisonous snakes and holding
them and playing with them and shit.
You will not see me do that. That is a healthy fear.
But the fear of being alone, like I, I've embraced that.
Like I'm happy. And if I'm going to be alone
because I'm happy, because other people don't like my happiness
or are triggered by it, then I'll be alone.
Like that don't scare me anymore.
And ever since releasing that, like, it's like I removed the
the cap. The cap just removed itself
because I wasn't subscribing to that belief.
I don't have an identity around a fearful person of being alone.
Now that energy's freed up to make sure I'm not alone in any
way. But that shit can't be there if
I keep rejecting myself. It can't be there if I reject
who I really AM. And that's where, you know,
identity comes in. I mentioned earlier, you know,
at what point does identity politics play a role in things?
At the end of the day, like I am, I'm a black man.
I'm not queer. And I've been in a lot of spaces
where it ain't men or a lot of men.
And the men that are there might be trans men or they're queer
men or gay men. And it just ain't been no place
for me there. And the more that I've shown up
into those spaces, the more I've been rejecting my identity
myself, right? Like there's something to learn
from it. But like I've, I've gone into
these spaces and I've tried to do, I tried to do, I tried to
perform my way into acceptance and who I am and that don't take
precedence my intentions, my values, my consistency, those
intangible things don't mean shit in identity politics.
And so like me doing I, I got to release that form.
I got to release that I've invested to me.
I've invested a lot into these spaces and now I got to free
that up for whatever the next thing is.
Same way I had to release that friendship.
I poured a lot into that friendship that I had until that
weekend at the cabin or whatever the fuck it was.
The cabin. Yeah.
And since releasing that, I mean, the attachment to Portland
was gone and I was able to leave.
I was able to pour into, you know, what I thought was going
to be the rest of my life. And when you pour into
something, you create an identity that you really think
man, like it's going to be the rest of my life.
That was a big ass energy charge that the process of letting go
has been a bitch. It hurt, but I did it.
And the rejection that comes from the self rejection that
comes from attachment, it can't nobody make me feel the way that
I made myself feel ever. I don't give a fuck who you are.
Your rejection of me, it ain't got shit on what I've been
experienced for myself. Rejecting myself, staying in and
attaching to things that need to to have been long before
released and maybe they hit they peak and stagnants is something
that I recognize. It's like feels like death to
me. What feels like death to you?
Like, well, I don't believe that we actually like, we just die
and we, you know, that that's it.
Like these bodies are the manifestation of an attachment
to practice, attachment and release or detachment, right?
Attach, release, attach, release, attach, release.
That's the rhythm of life. We breathe in, we breathe out.
Attach release, attach release, attach release.
And I believe that that's how we deal with rejection.
Hey, damn, I'm getting to know this person.
I'm going to pour some money, energy, attention and time into
them, you know, and then we going to pour into that.
We going to have attention, the attraction, right?
We going to play with it. We got it.
And this is probably why the attractive people are so
attractive to us, because this is what they do, whether they
know it or not, whether they name it or they don't, they
listen to their nervous system. It's an attached release,
attached release. I'm, I'm fucking proud of
myself. I'm happy.
They sound more like a self podcast than anything because
it's so personal. But I, I'm, I'm learning, man.
Like the more I just talk, see y'all, and not try and do this
whole like, oh, let me maintain a level of professionalism.
The more I do this, the more people open up to me faster, the
more I'm able to get to the root of what their concerns are.
The more that you know, yoga therapy is able to be a thing
where we pull from the I pull from the person that I'm working
with, what I need in order to make them a better client, in
order to make me a better yoga therapist.
And you know, I love this shit. And there's an ongoing grieving
process of all of the things and the people that I've been
attached to that I haven't been released fully.
And it's a process you, you keep doing that and you connect to
your nervous system. And there's always going to be
more to let go of. David R Hawkins, he said, he
said, damn, what did he say? Oh, the letting go book, the
whole book letting go. There's always more to be let go
of. And when things are good, that's
when you want to keep surrendering.
That's when you want to keep releasing that which you're
attached to. And the release is releasing
your your energetic monetary chronological.
I don't, I don't know, like the word for time.
I know time got a lot of different words.
Kronos but your money, energy, attention and time.
Shout out to coach Greg Adams. You know, when you allow for the
attachments to to remove themselves because that's what
they want to do. Everything's attaching and
releasing. You look at atoms and how
electrons they're they're rolling the atom, right?
They pick up a charge, they hit the orbit as it aligns.
And then they they go, they send a message like, hey, here's
what's happening over here. There's something that is more
aligned for what this atom is becoming than what I am.
And it sends out the information for another electron to pick up
and be like, oh, bad, I want to be here.
And I see that. I couldn't see that before.
And that's because I was holding on.
I was attached not just to that relationship, but to my identity
as who I was going to become as a father.
The father that I would have been, the husband that I would
have been, the nonprofit founder that I would have been, the the
New Jersey resident that I would have been.
And I apply that to everything else.
Now, me making a decision to get out of that car when dude was
swerving, me making a decision to leave the relationship.
Well, leave the house because she broke up with me for me to
leave the house, her place. I left her place when I did me
moving my flight up and getting out of Saint Louis when I did me
not getting on that plane yesterday.
I'll be damned if I don't listen to myself again.
I'll be damned if I reject myself again.
Exiting space is that you know, it's been it's been nine months.
It's been nine months since like I've had involvement with, you
know, these spaces where we ain't got it going all of that
too much. But I noticed that I've been
treated differently. Like there's, I've been reminded
I'm not a woman because in spaces where my ex and I shared,
like I've clearly been kind of just elbowed out despite what
I've done in the spaces or what I've contributed because I it's,
it's who I am. The identity thing.
Then that felt the same way as it did with the hot tub.
It felt the same way as when I worked for white people in
corporate America. At the end of the day, you still
you still a black man and I will never stop believing it at the
nature of a thing is more important than the form of a
thing. And that's where this attached
release concept like really thrives because the nature is
what we pour into it. We nurture our nature and the
universe does that. The universe nurtures our nature
and we should always be becoming whatever it is that we're
becoming and we will be given or that in which we pour into the
world energetically, emotionally, what we give
attention and presence and awareness to will always take
form and it will always align to where we are in that moment.
And all we got to do is attach, release, attach, release,
attach, release. Even in a relationship with one
person, like you're not the same person the entirety of the
relationship y'all are molding one another.
You're nurturing each other's, you're nurturing each other's
nature. Something positive for positive
people. It's nurturing my nature as
somebody who's curious, creative, who values connection,
community, choice. It's a 6th to see.
I forgot what it was. Consistency.
This is a space where those intangible aspects of my being,
my identity, are validated and being shaped and molded into
whatever the fuck it is that is going to come from this.
I'm being shown that I'm seeing it.
I love this. I love that I get to do this.
I'm happy as fuck. And it was in that room,
Brandon, Cal Goodman, where I was able to say, you know, I got
shame around that. And so now there's another
release of energy that I was attached to.
I was attached to my identity as somebody being overly humble,
being somebody who who's sad, who's not living life feels bad
because, oh, you know, what are some people who can't?
We need this. I need your joy.
I need your happiness. I need your pleasure.
I need for you to shine that light.
Don't fucking damn it, because when you shine, other people
might get jealous, but they might get jealous the way I get
jealous. And what I mean by that is
inspired. I mean that shit.
Don't let rejection make you shrivel up and shrink into a
fetal position and hide that big beautiful light of yours.
Be inspiring. Be inspired, let mother fuckers
be jealous of you. That's theirs to deal with.
You ain't got to be, no, you ain't got to be any type of way.
You ain't got to make nobody worse than you in order for you
to feel better about yourself. And don't be in relationships
like that. I've done it plenty of times.
You know, I just only been in therapy really talking about it
because I know that if I was taught, if I was in therapy
while I was in any of these relationships, it wouldn't have
worked out. You get your ass out of that
relationship. He wouldn't say that, but he'd
have made me say this one over. I ain't know what I was going.
I ain't know what I was going to be getting into.
But I wanted to just like speak to rejection.
And I think that self rejection was probably the biggest piece
of this because that's really what it is When you're not in
your rhythm, when you're not practicing attach, release,
attach, release, you holding on, you're developing an identity
and that identity that you develop that aligns with or that
you know, it's holding on to something that needs to be
released is keeping you from yourself.
You're outside yourself like you that that's one of the masks
that you put on. And you maybe just keep that
mask on a little bit too long. Go watch the movie The Mask and
you'll see that that identity he becomes when he put that mask on
and become a different person, like he likes that.
But you know when you take the mask off, that's still who you
are. But recognize that the mask is
there for you to be able to put on, but also for you to be able
to take off these identities that form that take form because
of our energetic investment. Even my identity as a now
polyamorous person, I know that there's an attachment there.
And I know that that's something that, you know, it's constantly
having to be let go of and released.
Like I don't have to prove to nobody or perform my, my
polyamory. You know, there might be times
when I'm not seeing all of my partners, You know, even just
like this past weekend, I was supposed to see some partners
even when I was traveling. And now, like I'm not.
And if I were attached to my daddy as a polyamorous person, I
might have went against my nervous system and tried to
force some shit and created pressure that would have, you
know, and felt like rejecting to myself or even my yeah, that
would have felt rejected to myself.
Or even now, like getting off that plane and not traveling,
being able to go home. I am I really polyamorous?
Well I'm not. I'm not seeing all of my
partners right now and I should have.
I'm not making enough money to be able to just hop on the next
flight for however much money more to be able to see them.
No, that ain't how I work. I think I gave a lot of fucking
gems when this episode and also I feel like more comfortable
talking about my personal experiences again.
So I I look forward to, you know, being able to do more of
that and being able to like speak as freely as I once did
before, because now I do have a lot more clarity after my time
in therapy and then being in yoga therapy and like also
realizing like who I am and releasing that shame last
weekend about just being happy because that's what's been
holding me back. That's why I ain't been, you
know, as active personally on social media.
You've seen that I probably, if you followed me on social media,
Courtney Bram on Instagram, you'll see that like a lot of
the posts have been like re shares of other people's stuff.
It ain't been me talking about my life and how happy I am and
what I'm doing. Think the last big thing I did
was share that I'll be consuming BlackBerry smoothies, but I
don't move to New York. I don't lost 2025 lbs.
I am dating the way that I want to be dating.
I'm having the best sex in my life.
I have some very beautiful partners inside and out, and
they're inspiring. Ain't nobody jealous of me.
Ain't nobody saying it, ain't nobody showing it.
Everybody is just fucking supportive.
And I feel like that support behind me allows for me to
really be able to dive into and double down on what I'm doing.
Something positive for positive people.
If you've seen the newsletter for this past month, that
motherfucker got a 400% increase in donations and like 300
something percent increase in visibility because I have my
nature nurtured. And that's just like the, the
one tangible thing. I'm working.
I always say like if I work 2, if I work two days a month in my
other job, I can pay my rent. And that's really like the
baseline of what I've been trying to do.
I'm working, I'm working fuck ton like I'm I'm doing okay, I'm
doing okay and I'm able to do. I used to always say that I
wanted to be able to whenever somebody asked me for money,
like I wanted to make the time to get them food.
I've done that once, like somebody stopped me on my way
from the gym to go to Taco Bell. And you know, like I've been
able to give money to people that are homeless.
I've been able to do like charitable things.
And something that I learned is you don't get the money to do it
and then do it. You start doing this shit and
then like, oh, OK, like this is who you are, so we going to keep
this going for you. Like to be able to do that is a
fucking blessing. It's a privilege, but also it's
a choice. So I'm, I'm man, I'm fucking
happy and I ain't showing it and I'm I'm, I'm, I'm scared to show
it. I'm I'm overly humbling myself
to not create a circumstance of jealousy like I have in my
relationships, not to so I was sorted so as not to attract
somebody that's like, oh, look at all that joy.
Let me make him less than so I can feel better about myself.
And I'm also not dim in my light because that is what that form
of rejection is. It felt good.
This felt good y'all, this felt good.
This felt like when I get out of recording self podcast episodes,
I might have to do like a little recap for myself on there and
but I I really hope that y'all find this useful.
I'm about to be 37. I'm about to be a 37 year old
black man living with herpes. I started this nonprofit podcast
when I was 2829 years old and here we are like we going in the
we going into nine years of doing this man.
All right, I got I gotta go because it's been longer than
the hour. I appreciate y'all.
Thank you for making the space and the time to listen to this.
Till next time y'all stay present.