battling stigma

I attended the virtual USCHA conference this year put on by NMAC, supported by too many sponsors to name and I want to start by saying this: I love us. "Us" as in the HIV community.

I just attended USCHA 2021 (United States Conference on HIV and AIDS). I really enjoy these conferences, there's so much to learn and experience. This year, due to Covid, USCHA was virtual. I'm...

I honestly can't get over how entitled and disrespectful and disappointing some Black men continue to be. You have the audacity to call me your baby to get me in bed but would not defend me if I was...

For many of us living with HIV and coexisting with HIV, December 1 is every day! It is a date to celebrate and a date to commemorate.

It's World AIDS Day. Again. And I find myself in the soup of emotions that comes with this day every year. Grateful. Relieved. Sad. Inspired. Frustrated. Proud. Resolved. And too many other things to...

Para muchas de las personas que vivimos con VIH y que conviven con VIH, el 1 de diciembre es todos los días!

As a woman, I know what it feels like to be invisible. As a Black woman that feeling is sometimes intensified. It gets juxtaposed with occasionally being the person everyone is looking at, but not really seeing.

My birthday month, November, had a great start by doing what I like most, giving my HIV activism a boost. Between 4-7 November I was in Istanbul for a face-to-face 'Skills Training to Empower Patients...

This month Akira, my youngest son of 13 years old, and I travelled to Antwerp for a filmshoot for the 'Undetectable equals Untransmittable' (U=U) campaign in Belgium. Whilst in the train towards...

My name is Maria Mejia and this is my story with HIV! I kept my HIV diagnosis a secret from almost everyone for nearly 20 years. Diagnosed at 18 in 1991 and contracted HIV at the age of 15 in 1988, I...