"STAYING ALIVE 2007"

This past week I had the opportunity to attend the “Staying Alive” conference hosted and sponsored by NAPWA, also known as the National Association of People With AIDS, in Cleveland, Ohio this past week. I was grateful to be accompanied by 4 beautiful young people who I feel are like “children” of mine. I feel like I can be very frank and state that although I have been working in Community Development and Organizing for over 10 years and have been working in HIV/AIDS Prevention/Education for about 5 years, my background provided nothing to prepare me for the experience that lay ahead of me at this conference. Within this summary I will touch upon some of the points that impacted me the most.

As long as I have been in this field (HIV/AIDS) I have never felt victimized when people would assume my HIV status as being positive. Most often I would find a sense of comfort and validation, because that means that people are paying attention to me and that my presence is impacting those around me. Plus, I mean, shouldn’t we all more or less assume people are HIV positive? Checking into the hotel and feeling like I was truly one of very few HIV negative people in the room had a profound effect on me mentally and emotionally. Never have I been in such a setting before, considering most of my work in HIV has been on the “prevention/education” side. I do, however, have the understanding that “prevention” is not just for HIV negative people, but for HIV positive individuals as well. It’s about preventing the spread of HIV which applies to everyone.

I, again, have never felt like I needed to defend my HIV status, and this conference truly reinforced that for me. From the conferences’ very beginning, people engaged me just like I was HIV positive, and there was such a strong sense of empowerment and belonging that I felt from those gestures and energy, that to some degree I put out of my mind that my sero-status was different from most of the people present. Having numerous conversations with many people who have been infected by HIV due to rape, being infected from birth, having contracted the virus through consensual sex with someone unaware of their own status, a few stories of women contracting HIV from invetro-fertilization, and even a very emotional story of a person who contracted the virus from a needle stick by a medical professional who was trying to save their life.

I sat back after hearing some of these stories and really asked myself, “how is this possible?” During some of the workshops with the youth there was a creative writing component, in which the youth were able to put their thoughts on paper about how and what they would say to their loved ones if they were about to be put to death. One of the youth wrote (and later spoke to me) about his piece. He mentioned that he had no relationship with his father, and that he has a varied relationship with his mother. This youth confessed to me that he contracted the virus after being rapped at a very early age. It wasn’t until years later that his health began to decline and while in the hospital he was tested for everything. He, his doctors, and mother couldn’t come to any resolution and then asked if he had ever had sex. He reluctantly and embarrassed said that he was still a virgin, not remembering at the time that he had been raped as a child. His mother insisted that he go ahead and be tested for HIV anyway just to rule that out. No one could have imagined the result would come back positive. These stories really touched me in very deep ways allowing me to empathize with people in truly unique manner and also further empowered me to continue the work that I do and even take it up a notch.

In other workshops, the youth learned about the media and the advantages/disadvantages of coming out with their status, a creative performance workshop where the youth exercised their minds and let go of their inhibitions to embrace inner peace and freedom, skills building/human relations and how to incorporate passion into your career objectives to make them work for you, and several other workshops which challenged them mentally and emotionally to think outside of the box, and even a workshop of self-care and how to keep yourself healthy.

It is my sincere hope that all people will learn from each other and become empowered in their lives through the impact of others in their lives, and by the prevalence of trials and successes we all encounter and endure through this existence. As human beings, we often define our existence through our struggles….I hope you define yours through empowerment.