SCHEDULE A SUPPORT CALL

If you followed the process of submitting the form, scheduling a time within our availability and submitted your donation between Monday and Friday, you’ll hear from us really quickly.Sometimes so fast that people miss the email. If you submitted the form after 1pm Est Friday, then you won’t hear from us until Monday after 1pm Est.

Me! Hi I’m Courtney Brame! I’ll be the one contacting you via email from Courtney@spfpp.org. Yes I’m a real person (which surprisingly people don’t expect).

I (Courtney) am happy to point you in the direction of alternative support options if for any reason you don’t want me as your support person. Some people prefer to speak with a woman or a member of the LGBT+ community. I listed the the options I’m aware of on the support group page of the site.

If you followed the process of submitting the form and your donation but haven’t heard from us within 72 hours then something happened and you should follow up immediately. There could have been a typo in your email, which if there is, we contact you by the phone number you have listed. Outside that, we can’t follow up, so please reach out if you’ve followed the steps and haven’t heard back. If you sent your form but didn’t send your donation, that could be a reason as well. We received the notification once the two step process is complete. Please note If you did not donate, you will not hear from us to set up a call. This is how we filter through the spam emails and people who aren’t serious.

Yes it is. I find that people are shocked by the fact that I’m a real person who’s on these calls and sometimes that reality scares people too, and they don’t show up. Please know that I’m a real person hopefully with some kind of credibility at this point and that you can trust that this is a real service.

I have your information from the form, but 9/10 times by the time we’re on the phone, emotions have settled or shifted and what’s on the form is irrelevant for people. Because of this, I open our calls by asking “If there were one thing you wanted to make sure we got out of our time together today, what would that one thing be?”. So if you know this coming in,when we have a very efficient call and that keeps us on track for bringing it to completion. Most importantly, you get a 30 minute call. Please be on time.

If you scheduled a call with us and the time no longer works, just reply to our email thread and offer an alternative. This is a 30 minute conversation so please do not stretch it out over several days with back and forth emails about scheduling. I work around YOUR availability, so please don’t inquire on ours as it is listed in the support call intake form what our windows are.

Depending on your needs, which hopefully would have been fulfilled on the call, you may be directed to working with us in some other capacity as a Yoga Therapy client or attend our virtual support groups. Or maybe you just needed to vent and be heard. Or you just needed to know how to tell a partner. There’s a wide range of possible outcomes that really just depend on what you want from the call.

Speaking as Courtney for the organization, we want people to neutralize their internalized stigma and go out into the world in that state to continue to do so. Speaking as Courtney, the human, I really want people to come get what they need and leave. I want people to come away from the support call to be challenged to actively decide for themselves how they want to live their lives without running it through the “well now that I have herpes…” belief systems. Challenge the stigma. Challenge your beliefs with your behaviors. When you think poorly of yourself, take an action that disrupts that. I want people to LIVE. I see that 36% of people who’ve taken out surveys since 2019 have expressed suicide ideation because of theirdiagnosis. I want that number to zero and if I gotta have a 30 minute conversation myself with people to get them there then so be it.