Hello, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People.
I'm Courtney Brain. Something positive for positive
people is A5O1C3 nonprofit organization supporting people
navigating herpes stigma. We do this in a variety of ways
from support calls to support groups to yoga therapy.
I'm a yoga therapist in training at this time.
I should complete all of my certification requirements in
2026 and that'll be what we do. And another thing we do is we
educate medical professionals, mental health professionals,
public health people and as well as educators on herpes stigma
and the experiences of people living with herpes.
And more recently, I'm actually getting into public speaking and
share my experience with SCIS and just using some real life
examples and experiences to talk about how to navigate sexual
health conversations with romantic partners.
Today's episode is going to be just explaining to y'all what
the support groups are and giving you a little bit of
what's come out of them so far. So today I'm recording this on
Saturday, November 8th and I've been doing such a good job of
not doing anything on the weekends for something positive
for positive people. I think my ideal world is I'll
work like 12 hours a day Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and
then Monday get a late start, Friday having early end and let
that be what the schedule is. So if you have not heard from me
over weekends, because I'm trying not to reply to stuff
over the weekend and that's a good starting point, but for me
to remain consistent with the podcast episodes, that's
something that's important to me.
And this weekend, I was supposed to be a Midwest love fest, but I
decided not to go. I was going to go to Houston for
Halloween weekend and I had a delay.
And it was weird that the delay was about to take off in worse
weather than what it was originally.
And I I just didn't have a good like feeling about taking that
flight. So I went with my gut and
decided to cancel that. And now having an understanding
that like the government's been shut down and people are still
flying despite these whatever the flight air controller,
people are not getting paid that, that don't feel good to me
like I would, I would not. Feel good about.
Working, doing the job, people still patronizing the system
that has me under their thumb, that hasn't paid me.
And like now additional struggles are happening for me
outside of that that are like completely preventable if people
just got their checks. So I, I don't want to take part
in that. I decided to just not fly until
this is resolved and people are getting paid again.
And it sucks because I just got the TSA, the lounge access for
Chase Sapphire and I was really looking forward to that, to
being able to use the lounges. And now that I had to cancel my
flight to Midwest Lovefest, my flight to home for Thanksgiving
to visit Saint Louis because I, I don't see this man resolved by
the end either. So I'm just, I'm just in here,
I'm chilling in New York. Fortunately I'm somewhere I want
to be. And yeah, this is, this is been
'cause now, like I, I can't go see partners that don't live
here. And now when I think about it,
like most of my partners don't live here, so this is kind of
lighting a little bit of a fire under my ass to get out, be
social, meet people, make friends, build community, and
also approach that cute girl that I want to talk to.
So there's all these things that are playing a role in me not
traveling that can work out for the better as well.
So Speaking of the support groups, alright, October was the
first month of that. I implemented the Something
Positive for Positive People support groups in a different
way. Over the years I've attempted to
do these. I've tried to have a mental
health professional host the support groups.
I've tried making people sign up for a a series of support
sessions. I've tried to keep everything
together. I've tried to make it free and
accessible. Like I've played around with so
many things in order to get people to come show up
consistently or even just come get what they need and leave.
So what I've done this time is I, I created the screening
process. Now if me and you have a support
call, I've talked to you. I know what you're there for and
I know that I will be able to communicate with you.
Hey, here's what this is. Here's what it's about.
What questions do you have? And answer those rather than
just giving a general overview of what the support group is,
which is already on the website. But I need to confirm your
understanding of what the support group is and make sure
that you're somebody who wants that.
Make sure you're someone who wants the community, that you
want the camaraderie, and that you are looking for something
beyond a place to just be able to come and be heard about your
experiences. While that is part of the
healing process, that's not all this is about.
And I find that even with the the barriers in place to get
people to show up and like make it, you have to make a donation
to the support group that you want to attend.
Even that has somehow become like not the best filter for
some people. And I'm gonna say it's for the
men. Like I, I, I hate to, you know,
throw y'all under the bus, but fuck, like I, I made, I make
support groups that are accessible for everybody and
nobody comes and then I make them have a couple hoops to jump
through. And now, you know, the women are
showing up to the women support groups that are making their,
they're following the process. They've had their support cause
they're making their donations, they're thinking about it or
whatever it is they need. And I'll talk about how those
are going. I think I want to talk about
those first because there's a lot more there.
And then for the men's group, like we had a strong start with
interest from like 70 people because on the website now you
can just sign up if you're interested and you'll get
updates on the newsletter. I'm doing Mondays first and
third Mondays are for women, 2nd and 4th Mondays are for the men,
all starting at 7:30 PM Eastern Time.
And we go as long as we need to. And right now it's looking like
about 8 to 12 people. So that puts us in about 90
minutes. If it gets to more than 1620, I
think that these will be to our groups.
And if we go beyond that, then we'll figure something out.
But yeah, I'm not wanting to prepare for what might not ever
happen. So I'm building this out as I
go. For the men.
Yeah. Like now that I'm naming a men's
group, the men are more interested and just they showed
up for the first one and then we not had two since then and ain't
nobody came. So for the first one and nobody
came to, which was a it was 2 weeks ago.
That one was the last one in October and people signed up and
then just didn't show. I had one guy show up and that
was my friend. So we just shot this shit for
about 20 minutes to see if anybody else will come and
nobody showed up and people did register for this one.
The one after that, I had a conversation and I take
responsibility on my end for maybe not being so clear, but I
can't, I can't keep being super duper flexible with the
boundaries. The process is you donate to the
support group that you want to be part of.
I even tell people I don't care what you donate.
This is what gets you in the on the e-mail list that I pull
from. I have a a lot of things that I
am managing with the something positive for positive people
platform as a whole. And I'll have a part time job
outside of this. And there's a lot I'm not going
to go into, you know, every individual thing that I got
going on. But these systems that are in
place, they're in place for a reason.
And I need the people who want to be a part of this to respect
that process. And even with the one-on-one
support, cause like I've had people fill out the form and
I'll reach out to them and an e-mail will have a typo in it.
So I'll call. This is why I ask for phone
numbers. I'll text or call, hey, I'll
start your form. This is Courtney from Something
Positive. And they're like, what's that?
And I'm like, oh, here we go. So I tell them what it is and
they're like, Oh my God, ha ha, ha.
I didn't sign that. I didn't sign up for this.
And it's like, dude, and I've had people like snap on me and
be like, how did you get my information?
It's like literally you filled out the form or maybe somebody
did it for you. I, I don't know, but I'm doing
my part in following up seeing if you want to call.
That's it. So this, this, the processes
that are in place make it easier for me to just navigate this
without burning out. I'm not saying I'm feeling like
I'm burning out by any means. And if I, I got more energy
because these processes are in place now I got more energy
because more people are showing up to the support groups for the
very things that, you know, I would normally maybe post about
on social media and maybe get some engagement about.
And that's another thing I've definitely pulled away from
social media as much as I used to, compared to how I used to
post and how much I used to be active and got involved on there
because now the website is much more functional.
There were some changes that we made and not just I just
invested in making the website a lot more functional and making
it a lot easier for people to navigate the website to find
what it is that they need. So all of that said, like I
need, I need people to please just respect the process.
Sign up for the support call. It's donation optional, right?
So you donate whatever it is, it makes you feel uncomfortable
about missing the call. And even then, people still miss
the calls. Like when, when this happens,
I'm not going to mess things up for Courtney.
I'm not going to mess things up for something positive for
positive people. I'm not going to mess things up
for other people that have been wanting a call.
I think the most calls I've had in a day has been 7 and then
like consistently there's been like 3.
And I'm, I'm, I'm leaning away from doing weekends.
I'm, I'm leaning away from that. And I don't know exactly how I'm
going to, you know, figure that out.
But right now it's very open-ended and flexible to work
around other people's schedules, which I'm, I'm so flexible for.
But I I'm going to at some point.
Need to be like, hey listen. Here's your windows.
But I don't want to give too many instructions and be too
rigid because I recognize it. You know?
Things do need to be flexible, especially for other people.
So with that all said, like let's let's stop that there.
Like all right, that's my gripes and disgruntledness.
Men, if y'all come into the groups, there's a process.
Sign up for support call, make your donation to the men's
support group and then you have to put it in your calendar the
2nd and 4th Monday, 7:30 PM Eastern Time virtual.
If you make your donation, I'll see the date that you made the
donation. I'll see your e-mail address and
it tells me what support group to add you to and it tells me
and it tells me who to send the e-mail to.
That's it. All right, from the women's
support groups. I enjoy how I enjoy the
transparency. I enjoy the openness and how it
one of the things that stood out to me was I asked people to
introduce themselves just your name, where you're located and
what you like. What, what, what do you hope to
get out of today? And the first time I asked this,
it seemed like nobody heard that everybody gave their name.
And then they were like, I'm here.
I was diagnosed this long ago. And I'm like that that wasn't a
question. And so I let it ride.
And at the end I was just like, hey, so ain't nobody answered
the question. Everybody, like I know that this
is a herpes support group, but part of what this healing
process from stigma looks like is seeing yourself behind your
herpes status, seeing yourself as a person first, like you're a
person, you have a location that you are in.
You're maybe looking forward to something, excited about
something. If you're in this support group,
yeah, you're looking to get something out of it.
But that, that, that it was an interesting observation that
everybody either responded to the first person who said that
and that changed everything or everybody was just so locked
into the, the herpes stigma part of it.
But after, you know, kind of addressing that, some of the
things that we did was we went into just sort of setting the,
the foundation. I recognize that I'm a man and
I'm facilitating A herpes support group for women.
And that's actually been something that has been
expressed to me privately as appreciated, which is that's
cool. I like that.
And something that I recognize too, is that all my support
groups have been women support groups except for, you know,
the, I did a, a thing where I had men come and just like talk
about their experience so I could find out what it is that
we need collectively. Because while I am a man, my
experience is significantly different than a lot of the men
that I talked to about herpes or who do have herpes because I'm
hoping about it. And there's what, three of us, I
believe there's Chris Pickering and there was Adriel Dale.
I don't think he's very active anymore.
And then there's Rich Mancuso, who I don't know if you know the
algorithms just like shadow band him or what?
But I haven't seen anything from him lately either.
The only person I've seen consistently that's a man is
Chris Pickering. Shout out to him as well.
And yeah, they, the women have appreciated that.
And what's come up is we talk about disclosing.
Now I, I will continue to use the language of disclosing
initially for the sake of this being language that everybody
has access to and this is what people know.
But I really am working to get people out of using that word
disclose 'cause we ain't signing legal documents.
We're not, it's not, it's nothing like that.
We're having a discussion, and as we talked through disclosing
our herpes status, what we see is that this really is more than
a herpes conversation. It's a conversation about sexual
health, and it's not a conversation of exclusively
about your sexual health. Is this thing still on?
OK, I got to make sure this mic was on, this new.
I got these new microphones because I lost my other ones and
I didn't see that the light was on.
We're not just confessing that we have herpes to somebody.
We are discussing sexual health with somebody.
And that can be as simple as, hey, so we, we getting to a
point where I see things moving forward, you know, sexually and
I take myself, my sexual health very seriously, especially
before, you know, I start to have too much fun with somebody.
So I want to add, just share that I got tested for these
things this long ago and this was what the results are.
What about you? What about you?
That's it, right? And you, you, you see that so
quickly. People are ready to start
explaining or justifying what we want to share stats or we want
to explain how we got it so that they don't think about you just
as whatever you think they might think.
About a hurt. Person with herpes and the
reality is everybody does have a sexual health status and it's
just a matter of do you know what that is?
And then you communicate that and let them ask questions.
You want to be prepared with all this information when you might
not even need to, you might be ready to know the to share the
transmission rates and with the medications and barrier uses and
all these preventive preventive measures.
And the reality is that we don't want to just overload a personal
information. We want to give them what they
need to know, which is that, you know, we have herpes and they
might possibly be exposed to it. And at that point you're giving
them a choice. When I talk about the power of
choice, right? Like a lot of us, we got herpes
and we don't know who gave it to us, or maybe we weren't given
that option of being able to consent to exposure.
But the idea is that while our power may have been taken away
from us, our power of choice, the way that we get that power
back is by continuing to give people the option.
When you give other people the option to make a choice, they
now have the ability to choose, whereas if you hadn't done that,
they wouldn't have had the ability to choose.
So we reclaim our power by allowing for other people to
have the power of choice. And that also empowers us
because now we choose who we wanted to share this information
with, right? And so this is something that
has come up not just in the support groups, but also in yoga
therapy conversations that I've had with clients.
You know, initially, like everybody comes in for herpes,
but then eventually we get to write like we'll get into
something about relationships. We'll start talking about sex,
We'll start talking about even relationships with family and
friends. And, you know, it get to a point
where I'm like, I need to do a little bit more reading because,
and I'm glad I'm still in yoga therapy training because it's
not like I'm just giving all the tools.
And now I got to like orchestrate them.
I'm still learning. And so I'll be in a class and
I'm like, oh, this applies. Let me ask about this.
So I'm able to bring that into my yoga therapy sessions as
well, which has been super helpful for me.
Another thing that we talked about in the women's support
groups was they wanted to hear from someone who had had success
disclosing their status. And so I reached out to
somebody, a friend of mine, like a real good friend of mine.
We met in 2020 and shortly after she had gotten her diagnosis,
she found me and we have become friends.
She's from Saint Louis as well. And she eventually ended up
disclosing to her now partner of four years.
And so I reached out to, I was like, hey, would you be willing
to? And she was like, yes.
And she showed up like this was at the request of one of the
group members who just so happened to not show up to this
meeting after making the request for it.
But yeah, I brought her in and the ladies had access to her for
about 30-40 minutes of the support group to be able to ask
questions and hear about her experience and to to have these
questions answered that they had.
One of the big things that there were like 3 big takeaways if I
can remember, I know 1 was defining what a successful
disclosure is. A successful disclosure is not
one that ends in a sexual relationship.
It doesn't end in having sex. It doesn't end with the other
person saying that they're OK with you having herpes.
The success is more internally motivated.
It is a successful disclosure because you made the decision to
be vulnerable and extend that piece of information about
yourself to someone You found someone who you deemed to be
someone worth giving that information to.
That's what makes a disclosure successful.
And so you, you got to see the wheels turning for a lot of the
ladies who were there and they were like, okay.
And then you know that this was some of the feedback that we had
talked about too at the end about how much of A perspective
shift that was for some, for some of the ladies.
Another thing was sharing statistics.
So we'd be so ready to share statistics in order to increase
our chances of not being told no or rejected.
And what our guest said was I, I don't do that because I don't
want to be reduced to a statistic.
If the, the, if the your choice comes down to the risk factor or
a number on a sheet of paper, then that's not the kind of
relationship that I want to have.
And I, I commended the hell out of her for that one because I
don't talk about statistics. I don't talk about transmission
rates. I just need to know that you
like me or want to have sex with me more than you do not want to
get herpes. That's all I need to know.
And I mean, that's really what it comes down to because any of
the information that's out there, someone's asking for
statistics, the main thing that they want to know is how do I
prevent myself from getting herpes?
That's really what this comes down to.
People want to know what can I do to prevent myself from
getting herpes? And the word prevention does not
apply here. We're minimizing the
possibility. We're minimizing the risk by
communicating, you know, and some people choose to wear
condoms, some people don't wear condoms.
Some people, and these are things that, you know, partners
can mutually agree on and still not pass it on.
You can be with somebody with herpes and not get herpes.
And that's a statistic that if there was one at all that was
highlighted and supported, we have that on something positive
for positive people. I think it was 72% of people who
said that they've not passed herpes on to a partner, at least
to their knowledge. So that's something that I think
really needs to be studied more. But yeah, I had to be reduced
down to a statistic. That's not something that we
should be striving for. So, yeah, if you, if it helps
you to have that information, All right, cool habit.
But if you. I don't want to keep giving all
this shit away, I come to a support group.
Yeah, come to a support group. But yeah, this is how they go.
Like I, we, we come in and I like to ask people, what do you
need today? Not only that, but it, it's just
what do you want to get out of today's support group?
And then what do you have to give to today's support group?
Because sometimes you might just want to listen to it.
You might be having a rough time.
You could have not had a conversation go well with the
potential partner. But it is, it's a discussion,
not a disclosure. It's a conversation.
It's not a confession. Like let these things replay in
your mind because this this is not nearly as.
Negatively impactful is what we think and that I'm using
negative incorrectly. When I speak about the word
negative, I mean infinite potential.
When I talk about positive, I mean presence.
I'm just by the one of the definitions of Google, like
positive means presence, negative means absence is simple
as that. And with the absence, right,
there's the possibility of potential and Speaking of
potential, So I was going to talk about this today about the
raw, the raw material of potential.
I ended up making that a self podcast episode because it felt
too like spiritual. But I think that I should go and
talk about the raw material that makes up a rejection, that makes
up the that that fear, that fear of being rejected.
And yeah, speak more to that, but this, the support groups, I
can't give you one-on-one what is to be received from the
support groups. I can't give you community.
I can tell you it's out there. I can tell you it exists.
But I mean, I'm, I'm really just facilitating this space and I
might, you know, answer a question or ask a question, but
I'm, I'm giving people what they ask for in these settings and
environments. And you know, what you put into
a thing, that thing takes form, like what you pour into, you
know, if you're pouring you, you, you want to get something
out of this, but there's always an exchange, there's always a
trade off. Your money, your energy, your
time, your awareness, right? Whatever it is that you give to
this platform is going to help mold what it is that you are
able to become in terms of your identity in order to be able to,
you know, let go of that. And as you begin to change and
and evolve and grow, what happens is you let go of that
fear, that intense emotion that you maybe have here because a
lot of people come here because they're scared.
A lot of people get scared shitless and they think they're
going to be alone forever. And then you have those
feelings, those intense emotions that are fear based.
You're scared of rejection. You're scared you're never going
to have a relationship, scared you might not have kids, you're
scared that you're so young that it's going to mess up dating for
you and you have to date somebody that's old and already
has herpes, right? Like all of these fear and shame
based beliefs are the raw material of what it is that we
believe to be true about ourselves now that we have
herpes. And as soon as you come into
these spaces and you hear from other people, you get a little
hope and inspiration, you start to release the container of what
that raw material is that makes up the label of rejection or
fear or shame or what your life has to look like now.
And that identity can be released so that the energy of
all that accumulated raw material can now take form into
something that is more aligned. Because as you get hope and as
you show up and as you repeat that pattern of behavior of
consistently being here, you demonstrating to yourself like,
hey, this is who I am now. This is what my nervous system,
my body, my mind, my emotions, my spirit, this is what aligns
for them. And therefore what you have to
give begins to accumulate and take form, perhaps in the form
of healing. Maybe in the?
Form of a partner, maybe in the form of situations where you got
people coming at you who out the woodworks, right?
Just wanting to be in a relationship with you on the
date you want to take you out. I believe in shit because I'm
living it and I'm being a lot more conscious and mindful of it
now to examine with a lot more intentionality what it is and
I'm letting go of what it is I'm attaching to.
Because you can unconsciously be attaching to the raw materials
that make up your surrounding environment and form an identity
around that, but you can always consciously let go.
I'm I'm ready for the time where I unconsciously let go.
I think that's happening in my dreams now because things
happening in my dreams, I wake up and I'm like, what was that?
But that's my own thing. Keeping this tied to the support
group, right? Like I think that we coming
together, we cumulatively invest our money, our energy, our time
and our attention awareness into healing and that mutual
investment. Napoleon Hill talks about this
in how within the devil how 2 minds are greater than one and
there's a statement in the Bible that's like should any minds two
or more come together and gather in my name, then whatever it is
that ask for will be given. You show up in these
communities. I'm not going to say you going
to like meet Prince Charming or Princess Charming and you know
you're going to walk out of here and go outside and somebody's
tired going to be pop and it's going to be like somebody
attractive that you can help and you you have a love story.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you may feel a
little bit more inspired for that to happen.
You might be a little bit more capable of removing that, again,
that raw material from the labels that we now subscribe to
because of our diagnosis. And to do that with other
people, to see it done, to have them see it done by you, I think
that expedites the process. That's why I always say
community is a cure for stigma. Herpes stigma is a byproduct of
the stigma that people in general that society has about
sex, everybody having it, but don't nobody want to talk about
it. Don't nobody know how to
communicate about it. How strange is it that you want
to talk about your health when it comes to something that's
supposed to feel good? You know what else feel good?
Adrenaline, jumping out of a plane for some people,
skydiving, mountain biking down a steep hill, almost dying,
right. And those are pleasurable things
for people. Sex is a pleasurable thing for
people. So we should be able to talk
about what what we need in order to have positive health outcomes
or set ourselves up to have as positive of a health outcome as
possible. So yeah, I think that that's
what people are getting out of it.
I had a couple of people write to me, especially after that
last support group unexpectedly. I didn't ask for anything.
So I was very blessed to be able to read that.
But yeah, I feel like I'm locked in.
I'm aligned to giving people what they asking for.
The yoga therapy clients, things are going great there.
I got, I got people who doing what I'm asking them to do and
I'll be able to put together some case studies about their
progression and like how useful things have been or have not
been even. Like I ain't got no problem
being transparent. I know it's people that, you
know, we, we might talk just because they like talking and
who have no intention. They might have no intention of,
of, of doing what I'm asking them to do when we get off these
calls in between. But yeah, I find that that
community support is the kind of support that I wish that I had
when I was diagnosed. So I believe that people are
getting through this a lot quicker and easier than they
would if this resource wasn't available to them.
And there's still support groups, there's still people
living with herpes who are facilitating and organizing the
spaces for people to just convene.
And those, those are good for where a person might be at that
time. But I, I know that this one is
different in the sense of one, there's a bigger cause behind
this, right? While I'm not in politics, I'm
damn sure in the medical field, I'm at these conferences like
I'm invested in this and this year I have not been able to pay
myself this year. And I'm not, I'm not saying that
to complain. I'm saying that to speak to how
invested I am. I'm very fortunate to have been
able to, you know, have my insurance money from when I lost
my home in the tornado. I'm very fortunate to have a
part time job where I get paid very well for working like 2 to
three days a month and I'm able to support myself off of that
because a lot of the shit that I do has not been paid.
And I've been throwing some opportunities too for public
speaking and that's been a new Ave. as well.
So the money that comes in really been going to me
traveling to these things and being able to do a lot of the
free things that I've been able to do.
And then I, I love the book Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon
Hill, because in the book, another thing he talks about is
one of the laws of the universe. It's a lot of compensation,
right? So he says be ready to give,
render a service before getting anything in return.
And I think that over the last eight years, there's been a lot
of I used to make an identity around giving away free shit.
I really was. I really had an.
Identity around that. And it took me until this year,
it took me until this year to come out with the clarity of
people don't value that. People just don't value free
shit. And yeah, like this last 60
days, the last 30 to 60 days, you know, people have been
registering for support calls. They've been showing up to the
support calls. People can come into the support
groups and yeah, like all that shit that I've been trying to do
before, I think maybe I was just doing too much and not giving
people the opportunity to decide for themselves how much value a
thing has. Because I'm inherently telling
y'all, hey, this ain't got no value.
I'm showing up. I'm doing this thing.
And if you want to give, you can.
But if you don't, you don't have to.
So now, I mean, there's recommended amounts, but it's
like if you, if you want something like, come on, you got
to donate. And there's still people who
give $0.00 for things, not a problem.
But that's not the process for getting into the support groups.
And then for the support calls, what I'm saying is that the
people who who have given no money, these are the people who
missed the calls more often. Like let me see if I can pull up
real quick. I want to see how many support
calls I've had because it's been a lot.
Here we go. Support calls, sign ups for
perspective. OK, so this year before I moved
from New Jersey, I had 14. When I was living in in New
Jersey, I had 14 support calls right when I moved to Saint
Louis, I had 34567891011121314151617181920
support calls. After the tornado I had between
then and then I found a place alright.
I had 12345678 support calls before I found my home in New
York. OK, so since then there have
been what's 340? I've had 9797 support calls
since moving to New York City and I, I know I said 97, but
between between September, yeah, there were 971234567891011121384
of those were between September and now.
So that's, that's about an average of 2, 230 minutes
support calls a day of people who sign up, right.
And of those like 1234, somebody gave one dollar 5678910 yeah,
it's been maybe like 10 people. Wait, yeah, 10 people who just
didn't, who didn't donate. And I don't know how many came
next year. I think I want to keep up with,
I wish I could find a way to know who did what or who signed
up and like, I want to be able to check in with people later
down the road and see if they use the guidance.
But I always suspect that, you know, I heard from a person once
and I really don't need to hear from them again because I'd give
them the answers to the question that they would spend a lot of
time on the Internet looking for.
So the support, y'all just just check it out.
If you don't like it, you ain't got to keep coming.
You know, I want people to continue to show up.
I want people to get value from being in the space.
But that may not always be the case.
It might not, I might not be the best support option for you.
But on the website, you'll see that there are other options
that I am aware of that exist. And yeah, please check those
out. Now, closing out this
conversation about support groups for the men, the men's
group, we started out so strong. I love that.
You know, people came in, they were real open about what it is
that they needed and what they were hoping to get out of it.
There was a little bit of the the oversharing dumping, but I
allowed that because often times we don't have the opportunity or
the space to really be able to speak as freely as we do.
In the men's group. We defined what support looks
like, we defined what community looks like and we decided what
we Co created a definition of what stigma was and.
I was so ready. For the second and third support
groups to be able to just add on and build from that, but now it
just feels like. I got to start.
Over again. Or, you know, just keep the
momentum going from what the ladies are showing.
And I really don't want to make this into any kind of a
competition, but the women are showing up and like even asking
where the men at people asking me about like matchmaking
services and dating and stuff like that.
And it's like, y'all, I can't, I can't endorse anybody that's not
consistent. That's one thing I've learned,
not just in. You know, my personal life, but
also in my work life, I don't work with people who have not
proven to be consistent in some capacity.
Like even, you know, people who open up about having herpes,
they might make a post or something and I look to see what
they do. Like, I'll watch you on social
media for a bit and see how consistent you are before I
invite you into this space because I've had people show up,
be real enthusiastic and passionate about, you know, what
this is, and then just disappear.
And now these links on my website that I got to go back
and get off the website, that's messing up my SEO rankings.
And I had to do that. I had to go through and do a lot
of cleanup. And I think that that's why
people are so much more easily able to find us.
So that consistency is key. And I think that maybe that
needs to be one of the screening questions for the men's group,
especially because like the women have already signed up for
the next support group on November 17th and like the we a
week out. We a little bit more than a week
out. But the process is simple.
I outlined it, I put it in screenshots in the newsletter.
Everybody got the e-mail, who signed up for the e-mail or who
is signed up for a support call. They got it.
You got it. All I ask is that you put this
in your calendar yourself. Just don't.
Don't make me do more work. I cannot.
I do not want to burnout. I have a really solid flow.
Going right now. Everything is is smooth.
The process is understood by. People.
And I'm able to now integrate a few more things.
One of the things that I'm going to be working on here now is I'm
looking for people who want to have like a play date and
overall play of disclosing and talking.
About our sexual health status with one another so that people.
Have like a real example of what this can look like me sitting
across to somebody. We just finished dinner and you
know, we might be touching each other's leg under the table or
whatever, little eye contact. And.
Hey, you know. Let's go upstairs.
All right, but wait, wait, wait before you know, we going to
talk about condoms like, oh, that's what you wanted to do
all. Right.
Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that right?
I'm looking forward to that. I'm most excited about that
because I think that that's going to be really valuable and
fine. I'm watching One Piece right now
and I don't see myself being able to do anything extra until
I I get to like I got to get through this.
I'm watching the anime one piece.
I've never seen it before and it's really fucking good.
I'm at episode like 70 right now just started season 2 and I'm on
episode 63. I'm trying to get through 10 a
day and over the weekends I want to get through 20.
So yeah, my, my days are packed. My days are packed now, but the
reason that I'm the reason that I'm so like hype about that,
that demo, that role play is because we don't have that.
We don't. We don't see the the role plays
of disclosure and discussing our health, our sexual health status
without it looking like a fucking confession.
So we can do some do's and don'ts.
Maybe I just need to run out like a studio space and that'll
be the content that I make for TikTok and Instagram.
And I just got to find some people that are comfortable with
that because I had that's the hardest part, right?
Like people ain't even got to say they got hurt because I
think they just make the connection of knowing me or
being connected to me or whatever.
And then like that's, that's that.
So I'm going to ask around and see if there's people around me
who would be down to do that. I can set the ring camera up.
Ring camera. I don't have a ring camera.
The ring light up, throw these little bitty microphones on
them. You can barely see this.
No, you you can see it. You can see it very well.
And yeah, that that's going to be one of the next things coming
up. So if you somebody who wants to
support this, if you want to get involved, if you want to donate
to this particular thing, you can just donate to the general
fine. Because I I think I'm going to
have to rent out a space and shit.
People buying tickets to the New York City event, December 12th
from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The karaoke event, I just
revised it to where now it's karaoke.
That's what we're doing. We're doing karaoke, $20 entry
minimum. And if you want to help support
at a higher level, you got the options to be able to do that.
But yeah, people buying tickets. So we've been to have fun a
little bit over a month from now.
It's a Friday night, 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM in Brooklyn.
Zip code is 112 O 6. If you listen to this, like I'm
not going to tell you where it is because I don't think I can,
But when you register, you'll see where it is and I'll send
out the newsletter to explain that to the people who are
registered. So looking forward to it.
I know we got people coming in from out of town for this,
people coming in from out of town for this 400 episode party.
So I look forward to it. And yeah, that concludes this
episode of Something Positive for Positive People.
Again, I just wanted to share the what the support groups have
been so far. What they've been about the
process is you make a donation based support call.
We talked about what you need to talk about.
I, I, I, I've had people come in and say, I'm just doing this to
get into the support group. That's cool.
But if you you're you're wanting a support group because you need
support, what is the thing that you need support with?
Like, let's be ready to talk about that.
All right, this angels, like I'm asking you questions to find out
if I can send you the link or not.
And you not finding out if you qualify to get into the cool
kids club. That's not what this is.
It's giving you the support that you need initially.
And so now when we come into here, you aren't exclusively
here for that, to get that out of the group.
Like now you're here because you want to be in, you want the
community and that's part of your story.
And you're able to say this out loud in another way without
saying it for the first time and maybe not breaking down crying
and everything. OK All right, y'all, oh, my
birthday Monday. So yeah, if y'all want to make
some donations something. Positive for positive.
People to help me make that Little Dream come true.
That'd be cool. I'm going to go see Katrinata
tomorrow night or tomorrow night being November 9th and on
November 10th I'm a probably just be answering my phone calls
all day from family and friends and getting caught up with
people so I look forward to that.
Till next time, stay present.