Episode 88: Perspective From My Ex's
So what do my ex’s have to do with this? Literally everything. I had this EXperience with anxiety, I EXplored the behavior and emotions behind them. Through this came a need to EXpress which I was not healthily doing before due to the lack of awareness. I took different action through that anxiety and used it as fuel for expression. Communicating this was challenging at first but the confidence that followed allowed me to share or EXchange with others in a vulnerable fashion which led to further EXpansion of my own perspective.
What do your Ex's have to teach you? Do we have the same ones making us EX-kimo siblings? haha that was a reach!
Stay Sex Positive!
Episode 88 Transcript
Got it. I am focused exclusively on Episode 88, as requested by your original prompt.
This is a highly introspective episode, detailing your journey through a major anxiety trigger—the impending loss of your primary income—and how you used that energy not to run away, but to run through the challenge. Your realization that you have been passing the microphone to others for their vulnerability, but avoiding it yourself, is a powerful moment of growth. The breakdown of your "Exes" framework (Experience, Explore, Express, Exchange, Expand) is an excellent, actionable tool for anyone dealing with sudden anxiety or life-altering news.
Here is the formatted payload for Episode 88.
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Navigating Anxiety, Non-Profit Status, and the Five "Exes" | SPFPP 88
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Courtney Brame reflects on losing his primary income, establishing SPFPP as a non-profit, and his new 5-step framework for processing anxiety.
Blog / Squarespace Excerpt
What do you do when a sudden life change triggers a massive wave of anxiety? In Episode 88 of Something Positive for Positive People, Courtney Brame steps into the solo spotlight to share a deeply personal update: the impending loss of his primary source of income. Instead of reverting to his old habit of running away from anxiety, Courtney explains how he channeled that fight-or-flight energy into building SPFPP into an official 501(c)(3) non-profit. Tune in to hear Courtney break down his new "Exes" framework for healing (Experience, Explore, Express, Exchange, Expand), why he decided against making SPFPP a for-profit entity, and his vision for funding therapy for newly diagnosed individuals.
Full Transcript
Intro and the "We Need a Button" Campaign
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is an intentionally inclusive hub of sex positive resources. I think that's the best way to describe us for where we are right now. We still have interviews with people who are living with herpes about disclosure, dating, relationships, their sexuality, as well as people who are living with HIV. And we also interview sex educators, people who represent sexual wellness organizations, and can help you with getting free to affordable condoms, barriers, lube, birth control, STI testing, and treatment as well. Part of the intentional inclusivity of what we're doing here at Something Positive for Positive People means advocating for all branches of sexuality.
Courtney Brame: While our main focus is experience-based sexual wellness and we're talking about sex education, I'm also very supportive of the LGBTQIA community. If I forgot a letter, I apologize. There's a campaign. I know that you all are aware that Waxo has been a longtime supporter of the podcast. What they're doing here is a campaign to bring awareness to the issues that queer people face surrounding their health care, demanding that major patient matching sites come up with a button or some kind of a way just to see if a doctor is in fact queer friendly. We need a button. It's a hashtag #we need a button. It's a social media movement.
Courtney Brame: So instead of where you would normally sign a petition, what Waxo is doing is they're asking everyone who supports this cause to take a belly and that's a butt selfie. Use the hashtag we need a button. Allies are encouraged to participate. I'm doing what I can to just show my support. You can look up the hashtag #weneedabutton to see my butt. So what we're going to do here now is play a clip from Josh Robbins who's an HIV advocate and part of the campaign we need a button brought to you by Waxo.
Courtney Brame: You get a feel for why this is important just listening to his own personal experience. Finding a great doctor that respects my sexuality isn't always easy. For example, I once went to a doctor for something pretty routine and I had my boyfriend with me. Naturally, I wanted my boyfriend in the exam room with me. But when the doctor came in, he just kept calling him my friend even after I introduced him as my partner. Was it the end of the world? No. But did it make me feel uncomfortable with this doctor? Yes. Sadly for LGBT folks, stories like mine aren't rare. They're the norm. And many times they're even worse experiences than I had. Again, that was Josh Robbins, an HIV advocate and part of Waxo's We Need a Button campaign.
Courtney Brame: allies. You can get involved by just posting a selfie using the hashtag #weneedabutton so that we can get more awareness out here and just add your own personal story to a post. Use the hashtag we need a button. This is the digital form of a petition and hopefully we can create some social change. So I'm looking to the community here to Something Positive for Positive People community to support change and this is something that's important. And now let's get into this podcast episode with me. I have pondered when this solo episode was going to come for maybe a month and a half at the most. There was a brief period of time where I was experiencing a lot of anxiety. I didn't have the words until hindsight.
Triggered by Income Loss: Choosing Not to Run
Courtney Brame: The thing that triggered this anxiety was that my primary source of income. I've been given a little bit of a timeline at that point in time that triggered this response in me. It's like that whole flight or fight thing. And for me, normally what I've done in the past has been run to something else. It's not necessarily running away, but running to something else when things aren't working out my way. What I did instead was I decided to stick it out. I was told that after a certain day, the position would be moving and it'd be in-house and the jobs in Texas and I live in Missouri and with the way things are right now, I don't think that I would be able to take on a full-time job where I'm in an office setting for 40 hours a week and continue to train people, which has become my passion, and be able to do the functions of Something Positive for Positive People.
Courtney Brame: This was around Mother's Day when I got the news. Fortunately, it hasn't ended yet. It's been extended. But I remember during that time having this sense of worry and concern about what was going to happen, what I needed to force to happen, how is this going to impact me training people, how is this going to impact me hosting the podcast? All these different scenarios just ran through my mind. How's it going to impact my relationship with Chinese food is my comfort food. So, I got Chinese food and I got a lot of food. I'm big on variety. And I told Sierra, I was like, "Hey, I just need a day. Let's just take a day and let me grieve." I sat with that emotion of loss and what that would look like and what that would mean for me. And I don't know why I went to this negative, dark place if I'm going to have to get this full-time job. I'm no longer going to be able to do the podcast.
00:05:00 Courtney Brame: And these were all really irrational thoughts because I am a personal trainer. I basically work for myself and I know that my partner isn't going to let me be broke and working with them. So I have this support system behind me and I just let myself sink into this space of thinking that I was going to have to stop doing this. And to me, this has been since football, at least my main source of expression. And I think that that's always been useful to me for navigating any sort of anxiety. And again, I didn't have the language for it until I've gotten into this space.
Courtney Brame: So I'm going to have to stop doing things that I love, such as training people and helping people through their diagnosis, recording this podcast and having interesting conversations that I've been able to have. I really can't describe the feeling. And maybe it was depression. I don't know. I haven't seen anyone about it or anything. But I had my day and when I woke up I made a decision. Let's look at what can be done, what we will do.
Courtney Brame: And so a few things happened. I took that anxiety and used it. I didn't run away. I used it in what I have and expanded that. So what that looked like for me was following up with old clients. I've trained in the past and made sure that they're doing okay or checking to see if they wanted to come back into the gym. Fortunately, that meant checking in with new clients and getting new ones into the gym. So the income issue was irrelevant. It also meant using the money that I still had coming in from my other job to get the foundation set for Something Positive for Positive People to where it could be more structured and organized and I would be able to serve people a little bit better. And that's where the website came up. I got that uploaded so that people can now contact me if they just need help disclosing or anything like that, then they can just go through the website.
Courtney Brame: that if people want to know what we do, if people want to buy t-shirts or anything, then they're able to do a lot of stuff through there. So now that releases a little bit of the time that I have to spend or feel obligated to spend on social media to make myself always accessible. Whereas, okay, I have an email coming in, people know when they can expect to hear from me. So there's still people who will and do message me via Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, and I get to those just as I see them. But now that there's a place that people are coming in and it's more streamlined and organized, that's one less area that's taking up the energy that I can put into the things that are also a priority because I can't continue to do that if I'm not able to, pay the bills that I have, So money was a huge stressor for me at that point in time.
Courtney Brame: And like I said, just being able to focus on the things that I could control was very important for me. So whenever I continue to get my workload from my primary source of income, just make sure that I'm taking care of that, do a good job, even if the position's going away, like that wasn't going to stop me from still upholding the standards and the expectations of the company. So it was nice that it still came in. So, I invested in some t-shirts. I made sure that I got the right sizes and sent some out to some people who did some promotion for me and some people that I just wanted to express my gratitude for helping us get to this place where we are right now with the podcast. And if you haven't checked out the last episode, we're at roughly 42,000 downloads total. This will be the 14th podcast episode posted.
Courtney Brame: We're celebrating more than almost 3,100 Instagram followers, which means a lot because so many people I know have expressed an unwillingness to follow me because I'm so open about my own HSV status. And people just by association would make the assumption that, if this person follows that person who's open about herpes, why else would they do that if they didn't have herpes? I mean, that's why a lot of sex educators follow me. A lot of people who are just into what it is that's being done through this podcast are into the topics. They follow me on social media. So, it's b*** at this point. I'm so grateful for the people who do make the decision to follow me and I engage with a lot of the people and I'm grateful for everybody who reaches out cuz I enjoy that connection.
Becoming a Non-Profit and Rejecting "For-Profit" Status
00:10:00 Courtney Brame: Those are some of the celebrations. And also another thing that came through that anxiety and me shifting it to be something useful was 501c3 nonprofit status. And I've gotten a question recently, why didn't you make it for profit? I'm just curious. What came out of my mouth immediately was just that I couldn't see this having the same impact as a profit organization. And I've thought about what that would look like. and being able to just grow the podcast alone and be able to have advertisers and just keep all that revenue coming in with the podcast as a media resource. selling commercials, there's a lot of good money. I seen firsthand how much money comes in for these podcast ads. And I had to prioritize what was true to my values. And the big thing for me is connection. I value the connecting piece of what I do through this more so than the money.
Courtney Brame: And I mean, I make enough. And like I said, it was very unrealistic of me to just make the assumption that I was just going to be poor, get kicked out of my house because I couldn't afford rent. It was really unreasonable for me to have the thoughts that I was having. But I mean, that was something that I had to look at. I had to examine that. I had to challenge that. And so, the reason I went with nonprofit status was just that I think that it has a lot more credibility. I'm able to connect with a lot more organizations. Being able to say Something Positive for Positive People to nonprofit and tell supporters, donors, advertisers, this is what your money is going towards. This dstigde-stigmitizationmatization of STI through these two formats. One is going to be helping the people who are diagnosed with herpes or HIV get connected to the support resources they need. So, I want to be able to pay for therapy for people who may not have access to insurance that covers their mental health so that they can sort through their diagnosis.
Courtney Brame: I want to help them become advocates for themselves. I'm not saying I want to create an army of people who are going to go in the comment section of any herpes or sex shaming post. I mean, that'd be pretty cool, but that's not what I'm doing. I just want people to be at a place where they are able to advocate for themselves. I don't want to see people who are stuck in relationships that are no good for them or that are toxic because of their diagnosis. I don't want to see people who have suicide ideation or make the attempts. I don't want to see any of that anymore. I mean, it's more important for me to be able to help at that level than it is anything else. I believe that through the nonprofit status, it gives me more accountability to do what it is that I'm setting out to do. That's just get the people who need help people suffering and often times we have relief for the physical symptoms and there's a very small percentage of people who have the most extreme symptoms after their diagnosis.
Courtney Brame: And while I wish I could do more for them or be able to help them, I mean, maybe there are people who just can't get access to the medicine and that's something that we'll be able to help with in the future, but as of now, I just really want to start within and end the stigma from within our own community. On the other side of that, I think that it's important to be able to create an atmosphere where people are able to educate themselves about sexuality, sexual wellness by having access to these free resources and affordable resources of other nonprofit organizations or organizations that just provide free condoms, lube, birth control, other barriers, STI testing, STI treatment, as well as additional
Courtney Brame: sex education tools. There's some great sex educators out there. A lot of them we've had on the podcast and if you want to connect with them, you can just scroll through any of the podcast episodes and you'll see them. I want to uplift and expand the reach of their services. Imagine a world where I have herpes and if I want to go and disclose to someone, the burden isn't solely on me. one to start that conversation, two to follow up with what's to be expected. Imagine going in and getting tested and understanding based on your behaviors, your activity, okay, I need to get tested every 3 months or in between partners, whatever your frequency of STI testing is. And in there, you're also met with information that helps you understand, okay, this is how herpes works.
Courtney Brame: Because a lot of us don't find out how herpes works until we have herpes in here. We have to learn how it works. For example, I didn't know the physical symptoms were called outbreaks. I thought that my dick would just permanently look like the surface of a meteor. That is so vivid and accurate at the same time. Sorry if you're someone who hasn't seen that before, but that's just an outbreak. my s*** goes back to looking like whatever a penis is supposed to look like. And that's something that we just don't know unless we have a reason to look for it. So by expanding the reach and services of sex educators, I'm hoping that the people who do disclose are able to get into a safer atmosphere to where they can just be like, "Hey, I have herpes. Here's what it means." And the other person can be like, I know about that. So all we need to do is dot dot."
00:15:00 Courtney Brame: And then you make the decision moving forward and it's consensual and it's met with respect and a little bit of empathy and compassion and people just feel safer doing so. There's a very high probability of more people disclosing, less people being in a negative state of mind and emotional space after a diagnosis when these conversations are able to be had and when people feel safe having these conversations as well. So that's the two-fold plan. And I want to use this podcast as not only a platform to get these things accomplished to where people can safely reach out for the after care post diagnosis but also a place where people can get experience-based information about what it means to live with an SCI help navigating sexual relationships with people despite a diagnosis and managing outbreaks.
Stepping Into Vulnerability and the Five "Exes"
Courtney Brame: There's so many unique experiences that I did not expect for us to be able to get on this podcast and yet we did. And I thank each and every one of you who have listened. If you're listening to this point right now, you don't hear me ramble for almost 17 minutes. If you don't take anything else away from this, thank you. And I haven't even begun talking about what I wanted to talk about. So that's crazy. Right now, I did come to the realization that I do have this vehicle for self-expression, and I've used it for others to come on and express themselves from a very vulnerable space. And while that's awesome, that is also not fair for me to continue to ask people to do that and not do it myself.
Courtney Brame: So, I wanted to just make sure y'all were aware that that was a struggle for me over the last several weeks that I was dealing with. I did some things to help me sort through it and it took for me to sit down and write, which was something that I had been neglecting in order to realize what needed to happen. And it really came down to my ex's experience, expression, exchange, and y'all thought I was talking about something else, but that's what I had to do when that anxiety hit. I had that experience and I had to explore what that meant for me. And then I had to find a way to express it. And the way that I expressed it was through writing so that I can get a better understanding of it as it came out, the way that I chose for it to come out. And it came out in the form of getting the 501c3.
Courtney Brame: It came out in the form of me continuing to just take care of business, me tapping into what was already there and utilizing the potential that I had just been overlooking because I was about to run away instead of going in rather than running to something else. I just had to run through what was going on and be there in the whole area of exchanging. I think that the expression is necessary, but the exchange part is just being able to communicate those emotions outside myself and inside myself. I'm having this internal exchange of what's happening, what can we do about it, and then being able to go to Sierra and say, "Hey, this is what I'm feeling. Help me verify this and go into my business partner. This is what I'm feeling. Let's make sense of this." The expansion took place naturally throughout this whole process.
Courtney Brame: It was just expansion. And what I wrote, and I'm paraphrasing this here, if the overall goal for me Connection is probably my highest priority in life. It's not really about money- it will come. I can't imagine what it would be like for me to be rich. So, having enough is having enough is just going to happen. But my primary goal is to connect. Then I feel that I connect most when there's this healing process happening when I'm healing myself and assisting along the path of others who are conscious of their own healing needing to take place. We help heal each other. So this podcast, this platform, Something Positive for Positive People. I'm not just healing other people.
Courtney Brame: I mean, I feel like maybe I'm helping to facilitate something that's already happening in someone and just reflecting it back to them because this is my own healing process. I have my own stuff to work through. And I've mistaken my biggest challenge right now in life to be patient. But it's really presence. Going back to that anxiety example I gave you. My whole anxiety was just trauma from the past of not having enough and then trauma of the future looking not having enough. And all the while had I just sat still and been present I would have realized everything is okay right now. The job hadn't been taken away. I was given a heads up that it would be taken away in the future. How long? Who knows?
00:20:00 Courtney Brame: But had I been present, I would have been able to just make the decisions that needed to be made a little bit sooner. Maybe I would have taken to my journal and wrote through what I was experiencing and acted accordingly right then and there. But that's what this process was for me. It was just going through and having experience and then expressing that and then having my exchanges so that I could expand. I withdrew over that time and there were a few important things that came up and happened that I wasn't able to be fully involved with and present as a result of just how I was feeling. I've not learned how to feel my emotions. This was something that nobody taught me. What I was taught was “be strong, be invincible”. But those little blows, they add up.
Courtney Brame: And while on the surface, you may look strong, look tough, look hard, but that s*** leaves dents when you try and play tough and play hard for so long. Nobody tells you about that internal damage that's happening as a result of constantly being beat up and just taking it and repressing whatever it is that you're feeling. And then all of a sudden, that s*** comes out in the form of running away from things. And that's what I've done. I've done that in relationships. I've done that at work, in my career. I've done it with passion. It's just like I'm just going to go do something else,
Courtney Brame: I'm done with this s**. This time I didn't. This time I was patient. This time I allowed myself to be present and that since birthed where we are now. That presence birthed the nonprofit Something Positive for Positive People. What's funny too is that I remember I worked at the Houston Chronicle. I was 25 26 years old. I forget. Time escapes me.
Courtney Brame: And I remember thinking to myself, damn, I should work at a nonprofit because I'm not being a good human having to sell people stuff that and we won't go into too much detail there, but I wasn't feeling that I was delivering what I was selling. Whereas with a goodwill-based organization, it's just a matter of being like, hey, here's the reality of the situation we're in, and you have the ability to help. Will you? yes or no. And I felt more fitted for something like that. I'm 30 now. It's 2019 and I founded a nonprofit. I just don't work for one. I now have that responsibility and that accountability of being the face of a nonprofit organization.
Courtney Brame: And all because of that decision to not run away. Damn. It's like looking back on this now, I feel really good about that. And I will say there are times where I feel guilty for not being able to help everyone the way that I should be able to help them right now. I'll give you a perfect example. Someone reached out to me. This is why I'm thinking about this now. They needed something that Something Positive for Positive People should be able to provide.
Courtney Brame: And without going into too many details, let me know that there's another level of service that needs to be provided to people that I'm just not at a place to be able to provide right now. The reason that I felt bad was, they said, "Thank you for helping at the end of it all." And I was like, what? I don't really feel like that. Thank you was genuine because I didn't do anything. I didn't give you what you came here for. I wasn't able to really help you and I apologize for that. They said I was still thankful, but that's just being nice. Maybe I'm hard on myself, maybe. But it just made me feel like I'm not doing enough in a way because I know that there's so much more that can be done.
Courtney Brame: I'm just** around or there's times where I'm focused on something else or I feel even guilty for going to bed early, or going to work out and just setting my phone down and not touching it and allowing myself to have that hour for me to just lift weights. And I hate cardio, so I'm not even going to sit up here and lie and say running. But I know how ridiculous that is. I know it. I had to visit my connection to my exes. I had to after that experience begin to explore and then express it via talking through it out loud and then communicate it in a way that stemmed from what I was feeling. After that, I was able to expand into a new range of thinking. And it's not that I'm not doing enough.
00:25:00 Courtney Brame: It's that there is potential there that just hasn't been explored. There's so much that can be done that it's a little bit overwhelming for me and it's just I have people who offer to help, but I really do want to be able to get to a place where I can accommodate these people for their service, for their time, for the resources that they provide. So, I accept the help to a certain extent, but there's more that can be done and I'm working on and I'm working through it. And this is all part of that process. I learned just from our conversation with Ella Dawson that we got to be able to take care of ourselves. We have to, especially as activists, advocates, as business owners, as nonprofit founders, whatever it is that we're doing, we have to take care of ourselves. We cannot pour from an empty cup.
The Pitcher and the Waterfall: Recharging Your Energy
Courtney Brame: So, it's important that you spend time at the waterfall, the river, whatever it is that continues to keep yourself full as the pitcher because you're pouring into so many other cups. And I had to remind myself that it's important to be able to set these boundaries for myself. I choose not to modify it, needing to recharge. I feel like this identification with something that doesn't need to necessarily recharge this infinite connection to energy or some s*** the more connected I am, the more charged I always am. While some of those connections can be draining, I think that it's important to understand this whole idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Courtney Brame: So when you identify with energy, you're identifying with the infinite or whatever what people call the universe or God. So in that identification that everything's connected and we have the ability to choose consciously what kind of connections we want to have these exchanges with. We can put ourselves in spaces to experience particular exchanges of connection. And I gave this example of being mindful of where you are exchanging that energy. You have to take accountability for the energy you bring into the room. Oprah says this. And you also have to take responsibility for the energy you allow into your space because no matter what it's going to be exchanged. Somebody comes into a room giving you a bad vibe, you're allowing that bad vibe.
Courtney Brame: It could be just something's off and maybe we need to have an exchange to communicate what that feeling is. But the point being the more connected I feel that itself is charging. So to have been able to come into this space and feel as connected as powerful as I am, I have to be able to maximize the potential of the connection that I have and the tools that I have. So Something Positive for Positive People as a podcast has not been my tool of expression. It's been a tool that I've passed around for others expression and in doing so I've become so f****** connected now.
Courtney Brame: Imagine if I begin using this to express maybe that'll enhance connections or welcome more exchanges for more connection and being able to be vulnerable here and give you guys an idea of who's behind Something Positive for Positive People. It helps keep me in line with my accountability and maintaining the integrity of being who I say I am. And it keeps me on a schedule of being able to express myself. While I may forget to write and sort out my thoughts, I know that I have to deliver a podcast every week because that's what I committed to. That's what I said I was going to do. So, you bet I'm going to be in here recording that podcast and giving this kind of an update or just being able to get this expression out there.
Courtney Brame: The timing of it, it's been perfect because I didn't have the words for what was happening to me at that point in time. And I'm so grateful for the people who checked in on me, but I usually don't tell people when things aren't going so, there might be three, four people who know that I was tripping for a brief period of time. I went through this process. I connected with my exes and I got to a place where I was able to put it in words and in hindsight, many good things and that's really why I missed the celebratory 3K post. And shout out to my boyfriend who has herpes Instagram page and reposted something and 400 followers that was really really fast.
00:30:00 Courtney Brame: And then I also had the 104 at the time a thousand downloads or Something Positive for Positive People 104th episode like all of these things that should have been celebrated I missed and it was just because I was not in the right place. And I'm really pumped and thankful for the guest who came on because if you listen to those podcast episodes it doesn't sound like I missed a beat. And that's how I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing because that was me being present in those podcast episodes that were recently recorded. And these were some damn good episodes. Best work that I feel I've ever put out. And I can't wait to release Christiey's episode next week actually because this was the first one that I've had since just leveling myself out. I felt like a lot was coming in at one time and I just had all these knots that were just getting tangled up.
Courtney Brame: And then I was able to breathe and then get to a place where I could just massage those knots out and allow them to untangle themselves and Focusing on one thing at a time and just be present with each of those things individually. And here we are- Something Positive for Positive People is a nonprofit organization. I credit my connection to my exes. I think we got the title of the episode. experience, explore, express, exchange, expand. And that's value, my alignment, whatever you want to call it. I am motivated by connection. I learned this about myself through that process. I had to go through something in order for something to come through me.
Courtney Brame: And it's the same thing in terms of being diagnosed with herpes. And while I spent all that time in emotional pain, I didn't have outbreaks. I had my first outbreak and then maybe another one when I got fired from a job a while ago. But dealing with that pain and finally choosing to heal myself put me on this path. And also, by the way, just happened to help other people with their own healing process. And I plan to continue to do this as long as it's needed. I'd love to be able to wake up one day and it be like an announcement on TV that herpes is no longer stigmatized. It's not cool to make fun of people with STDs. That would be so dope. Then I can move on and apply the same things that I've learned here to other things.
Conclusion and Future Plans
Courtney Brame: And I'm happy that I was able to choose to make this kind of stuff happen because it's changing me. It's expanding me and it's making me more connected. I love y'all. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I jump all over the place from time to time, but this was something I felt like I needed to get out. This was for me to express and put out and just hold myself accountable for living. I'm living this experience. Express, exchange, expand through that. That's where my healing, my connection comes from. That concludes this episode of Something Positive for Positive People. While I sound like I was crying or getting sad or whatever, the emotions at the time were real, but the cracking in my voice was just as a result of being hot and not wanting to stop and take a drink of water. You can hear the air conditioner running in the back. So, I apologize for that. But, this was good for me.
Courtney Brame: It was good for me to be able to express this and offer more of an opportunity to connect with the listeners by just giving those vulnerable moments and applying my own takeaways to the world because I have so many people who come on here and share and use this as a tool of connection like I already mentioned and this is a tool for others to express. So why not use it for myself? This is going to be something that I make an effort to do monthly. So there will be at least one solo episode per month where we go through something like this. And it may not always. Maybe it will be herpes related. Maybe there will be a Q&A. Who knows? You got to stick around to find out. And please continue to show your support by leaving reviews on those podcast players. Check out the website spf.org. Tell everybody about it. And if you know someone who is struggling with their HSV or HIV diagnosis, please send them to the website and just have them fill out the contact form letting me know what they're struggling with and I'll do my best to connect with them. Right now, we are raising money.
Courtney Brame: We don't have a lot, but the goal is to be able to get people therapy so that they can sort through their diagnosis and at the very least be able to advocate for themselves. And on the other side of that, I want to help connect people to support groups. There are dozens out there that I can think of off the top of my head and I want to be able to get people in those spaces so that you're not alone. As far as uplifting the reach and services of sex educators and sex positive organizations. That's something that is just going to happen alongside this element of Something Positive for Positive People. I'll be continuing to interview those people and add those resources to the directory which is coming. I just need more exposure, more support.
00:35:00 Courtney Brame: And the more exposure that we get, the more attractive we become to advertisers who can then become sponsors/donors so that we have more money coming in so we can begin to help people on a more massive level. Thank you for listening. Till next time, stay sex positive.
Meeting ended after 00:35:44
