The lights have come out all over town, in the department stores, on the city lampposts, and in homes and yards across the country. How I used to love those lights, along with everything else that made the holidays festive: annoying dinners with family, shopping in crowded stores, and watching memorized Christmas specials… but it was still special.
KatieAdsila's blog
It was a normal quiet Monday night when I got the first email. It was after eleven o’clock and I was winding down for the night while watching tv, who could be emailing me I wondered, pinkfoxxphoenix?? Who the hell is this?
I may never forget the night I got the email from Bruce Richman (founder and Executive Director of the Prevention Access Campaign U=U) asking if I would be interested in joining a campaign.
I love September, because it’s that time of year again, time for the end of summer conference on the sands of Fort Walton…Positive Living. I love this conference and look forward to going every year, because of all the HIV conferences, this one is special, let me tell you why by sharing my experience with Positive Living that began four years ago.
Touchdown… I finally land in Huntsville International Airport at 10:00 pm. I felt like it was two in the morning and I walked all the way to Huntsville from Orlando on foot. I was exhausted, but what a week it had been. As I walked into the hotel upon my arrival I was awed by its size. I felt lost as I scanned the room for a familiar face and it didn't take long for one to emerge. Bruce Richman came up to me and greeted me with a hug and I felt instantly at ease knowing that I wasn't alone. He showed me around the hotel where everything would be, helped me to get registered for the conference...
I'm sitting here thinking about an upcoming conference that I'll be attending in the next few weeks, thinking about my schedule, my expectations and anticipations, but mostly about the people I'm excited to see and others I'm eager to meet. I love these conferences, these gatherings of community. Community is a wonderful thing, it gives us a sense of belonging and security in commonality. We're comforted in knowing that we're not alone and have strength and support in numbers with common goals, and familial-like bonds form. These are important issues to us as human beings so we seek community...
I remember being in the seventh grade living on Cape Cod in the early 80's, and the fear of AIDS that gripped society at the time. Stigma was a monster in those days, greater than the Boogeyman under your bed, just being perceived as gay meant that you had the deadly disease and thus a danger to all who came in contact with you. I was in middle school in Bourne at the time, and having a deep southern accent didn't make me very popular. I was teased and bullied relentlessly; one of their favorite names they loved to call me was "FarmAIDS". This was the first year of Willie Nelson's Farm Aid...
I'm still a very young advocate, having just gotten into HIV advocacy a year and a half ago, but I'm no newbie to depression. As a transgender individual I've lived with deep and debilitating clinical depression since I was eight years old. I should be an expert on the topic by now, you might think anyways. Over the past year I've been doing pretty good, despite having gone through a divorce after twenty three years and my children effectively disowning me. My therapist and my meds have really done their job for the most part, but sometimes I still really struggle and lately I've been going...
I first heard the Undetectable equals Untransmittable message in 2016 and it changed everything about how I felt about myself. I was diagnosed in June of 2000 so that’s 16 years of living in the dark; for 16 years I felt like and saw myself as a living, walking, breathing bottle of poison. For the first few years I was even too afraid to have much to do with my own children, so terrified that I could pass it on to them. HIV education wasn’t very sufficient in those days, at least not for me. I was basically given a few simple rules to follow to keep everyone in my proximity safe and then sent...
Long Term Survivor day is coming up soon, a day when we celebrate the longevity, the courage, the strength and especially the wisdom of those who have lived with the disease for many years, through the days of lesser knowledge and fewer HIV meds, huge cocktails and greater stigma and fear. Long term survivors have shown us which medicines work and what regimens don't, the effects of HIV on the body and mind over time, and what methods of prevention are most effective. We have learned much from them in the past and we ever benefit from their experience. I sat and wondered just how many years...