What was the most impactful were the stories told by each of us living with HIV. It would not have been nearly as successful without our voices.
Marcya Gullatte's blog
Those of us aging with HIV need to make our voices heard. When we are asked about our experiences, we need to be honest about what we are experiencing because polite responses and silence will not get us anywhere.
Have you ever felt invisible? As a child I felt invisible. In my home there were just three of us: my mother, my brother, and me.
HIV is not a crime, or is it? As of 2022, 35 states have laws that criminalize HIV exposure. Many of these laws are outdated and do not reflect today's scientific evidence. There are four different ways that these laws criminalize HIV.
Nearly 20 years ago I was coming off of a drug holiday and starting a new cocktail. 9/11 had just passed and I had exhausted what drug cocktails there were at the time for me. My CD4 count was dropping and my viral load was increasing. A new drug had hit the market and my doctor and I were ready to give it a try. Not long after I began this cocktail I started to get sick. Unfortunately, I first got sick in New York at the United Nations, where I was giving a presentation on perinatal transmission of HIV. I barely made it through the presentation, and for the next two years thereafter I lost my...
Fighting the darkness within is a daily challenge, but to stop fighting is death.
My life has hit some major bumps in the road. Many because I chose not to deal with traumatic events in my life. I allowed them to build up in an internal closet and wore a mask as if everything were alright. That closet became so full that it busted wide open and spilled out in a messy heap of Complex PTSD all over my life. This affected every aspect of my life: my jobs, my home, and my relationships. I felt isolated from the whole world as I had lost my jobs, home, car and I felt I had lost my own identity. I lived in Virginia and had very little of a social network because it wasn't my home...
Navigating relationships with HIV can be tricky. How do you meet a person? How do you decide when or if you should disclose your HIV status? The biggest question is: Will I be rejected or not? I have met people at school, at church outings, through friends and online dating. I don't know which are easier or harder. But I do like online dating because I can read the bio and learn more about the person through questions and online messaging. It is a great way to weed out the bad ones. I have met some of my very best friends through online dating. Through friends I can ask questions and hope to...
A mother and daughter should be close. The relationship should be a loving and nurturing one. A mother should be equated with the words safety and trust. These were not my experiences, but despite that I was loved. My mother told me as a young child how she regretted her pregnancy with me because it meant that she was stuck in an abusive marriage for another three years. Both my older brother and my mother were the victims of abuse by my father. The only harm he did towards me was hit my mother with a chair while she was pregnant with me, leaving me paralyzed on one side of my face and my left...