NOTE from the Editor: The Well Project is thrilled to be working together with AIDS United as a part of their "Access2Care" initiative to share the stories of several HIV positive women, their journeys of getting into the life-saving care they need, and their experiences of attending the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. The A Girl Like Me blog posts on access to treatment will be cross posted on the AIDS United blog here. Why aren't we being adherent and why of the 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, are only 25 percent virally suppressed? I guess I have to start with...
MariaHIVMejia's blog
Here are the links to the vlogs in Spanish and English English one: Spanish one: View Maria's letter to HIV. love and light, Maria
I want to share this very important message with YOU! The youth! Please, HIV/AIDS is preventable. Your body is your temple and you have to take care of it! Use protection, love yourself and test yourself. And no matter how much you think you love someone, no one is worth your life! HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence, but it is a life sentence. I don't want any of you to go through what I have been through and going through..it's a looooooooong disease and you don't only have to worry about taking your meds that will make you feel tired every day of your life and take them NON-STOP!! But you have...
(But even sometimes my spirit has a limit!!) Sometimes I feel like I can't continue. I feel that the energy gets low. This is normal to me...it has always been like this. Ever since I was a teen I had this fear that I had to live every moment to the extreme. This is a good thing, but it can be a bad thing also for people living with HIV or any disease---and even for someone that is healthy. I think what happens to me is that I live on a constant roller coaster. Ever since I changed my eating habits and practice forgiveness-- trying to be in the light and send light to others that may not have...
WE NEED TO HAVE THE PASSION AS ACTIVISTS AND ADVOCATES THAT THOSE IN THE BEGINNING OF ACT UP DAYS DID! ACT UP = ACTION AND PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR OUR RIGHTS TOGETHER AS ONE! I want to start my blog talking about the story behind it for those that don't know what it is (from ACT UP's Wikipedia page): AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS (PWAs) and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of...
I want to say so many things to you -- maybe curse at you, maybe tell you how much you hurt my body, mind and soul. You have lived inside of me since I was 16 years old! You thought you were going to destroy me didn't you? As you did to so many friends and people that were family! You thought, Oh she has always been told she's a nothing and will never amount to nothing ... so she might just take her own life, destroy it with drugs or destroy others by giving it on purpose out of hate and bitterness. But no!!!!! You never won, never will win! Because I am one of those people that have been...
Current global statistics state that an estimated 34 million people globally are living with human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS. In the thirty years since the discovery of the virus, much has changed, yet so many continue to struggle to live with the disease, a disease that science still does not completely know how to fight. I get up and make my breakfast. I think about a birthday party I will attend over the weekend. I think about what I will wear, I think about the gift I will bring. I look into my living room, and laugh at my two Chihuahua’s, excited about something...
I just got back from my country Colombia and had a beautiful spiritual connection with mother nature...I disconnected from everything! This is so important for our health! Not only have I been really taking care of my body..I stopped smoking, started eating organic and very healthy...but learning to stop and look at the beautiful gift that is nature and connecting to it as one...this was a total spiritual medication for me. Sometimes as activists we get burned out and we need to stop! And this is not only for activists, it's for everyone..HIV positive or HIV negative..activist or non-activist...
Please see my video blog about what alternative treatments I did for the first 10 years without HIV medicine, and what I have been doing for the past 11 years--combining alternative treatment and HIV medicine: Que medicina naturista y alternativa use durante mis primeros 10 anos de ser positiva sin medicina para el vih , y que he hecho durante estos 11 anos tomando medicina alternativa en combinacion con los arvs In Spanish
Today I am remembering one of my biggest inspirations and warriors! Ryan White! He is an angel and someone that has inspired me to fight for injustice! He just wanted to go to school and fought for it when he was discriminated for having HIV! It is incredible to me that we are 30 years into this illness and the MILTON HERSHEY SCHOOL is not letting a young boy go to school because of his condition! This is not right and this is my opinion. As a person who talks to young people all the time, so many young people are having unprotected sex. And if they think that HIV is not going to affect them...