My name is Connie Rose and I was living in Indiana during the time I found out I was positive - in a small farming community snug in the hip of the bible belt. I was only 21 years old with a 10-month old baby girl that I had unknowingly breastfed while being HIV-Positive. She is, by the grace of god and a very low viral load, HIV-Negative.
I lived the first 17 years of my "HIV life" alone, with only the people around me being allowed to talk about me and my story of HIV, but I could not. I moved away so that I could have a chance at something better. Because there is life after HIV. It is not the end of the world; it is only the beginning of a new lifestyle.
I am now in my 40s. My daughter is in her 20s, I am a grandmother to the most perfect little man in the world and I am living out West as a blogger and online media content creator, as an HIV/AIDS activist who's changing hearts and minds, one blog at a time.
Why Connie wants to be part of A Girl Like Me: I want to blog for A Girl Like Me because it is one of the most encouraging combined force of powerful women speaking out and showing bravery - sometimes in the face of unimaginable fear - that I have ever seen in my life. Reading the stories from The Well Project over the last couple of years has empowered me privately in my own life and advocacy and I want to do that for others. Thank you to all the sisters before me that helped grow this valuable resource into what it is today, and I hope to add my voice to it and help take the volume up a notch on our war cry. Always remember you are #warriorstrong.
