SPFPP 240: Selfed

Woo! If you liked Manifesto, you'll love Selfed. The more I speak to it, the more clearly it begins to define the healing process in a way that makes sense. The uncoupling of identity from its association is the working definition I have for selfed. Looking at life as the pursuit of wholeness with the expected pursuit to look like what society labels you and the other for your sense of fulfillment. To be able to identify that exclusively in its evolved essence . . . I can't type this in a way that doesn't sound super woo woo, so I hope that my words in this podcast communicate effectively.

Episode 240 Transcript

Five Years of Podcasting and Audience Reflection

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: I don't know if y'all realize that, but we getting to a point where in regards to herpes and the experiences that people share about their diagnosis, I'm very confident in just saying that we've covered everything. like I don't necessarily know how to begin to ask these same questions in a way that is going to produce the answer that you may have come here looking for. And I know for many people uh you may not even know what question you want answered. Um and along the way of listening, you start to have answers to things that you may not have even thought to question yet. So that when it does surface in your mind, a common response would be, "Oh, I didn't even think about that." Right? So with that in mind, you know, ask yourself what are you here for now? If you're someone who's listened from episode one and you've made it to this point, where are you versus where you were when you started? Are you in a different place?

00:01:29 Courtney Brame: Do you feel more confident? Do you feel more knowledgeable? Do you feel equipped to navigate the stigma? Have you supported Something Positive for Positive People? Have you considered being a podcast guest? Have you reached out to me? Um, have you thought about potentially working with Something Positive for Positive People or at your organization? Have you told anybody about it? Have you left a podcast review? Have you left a rating? Have you expressed what you've gotten out of this so far? And this could be the first episode you're listening to. This could be the 250th episode that you listen to. Um and this could be the first time that you've even thought about any of these. And any anxiety that may come up for you feeling called out, please don't like don't feel called out uh just because I'm raising these questions to you. But it's a really good point to ask, you know, what are you here for?

00:02:28 Courtney Brame: What are you getting out of constant consumption of this content? Because what I want for you to be able to get out of this is to just see that you have options and to hear of uh such a variety of voices that represent this community that you have found yourself to be a part of. And if you're someone who might not know what their diagnosis is or you're here because someone told you to check out the podcast because maybe you're considering dating them um and they're a person who has herpes or maybe you're just waiting on your results and you want to see what this is all about. You know, I want for you to also be able to come here, get what you need, and then leave. There's no reason to continue for another five years to be interviewing people living with herpes. And I hope that if you have listened to the first few episodes that between then and now that I've changed. I hope that you've seen some growth between 28-year-old Courtney who was super nervous, naive, and just unaware of what I was doing or what my intention was in this space to now having become someone who is a lot more sure of who I am.

00:03:47 Courtney Brame: I had to put my phone on to not “disturb because” I just know it was going to go off. But my growth has come from speaking to as many people as I have about the same thing over and over again and hearing so many different perspectives and also being able to apply previous perspectives shared with me to the situations that people were entering or going into when they'd reach out to me for uh just guidance or just to check in and touch base. And I don't advertise this. I don't want for there to be an expectation that you can get quote coaching sessions from me, but I talk to everybody, you know, and at the end of the conversation like uh I ask people to donate if they feel like the information was valuable or if they come back later and say, "Oh my god, Courtney, this worked." or even if they say things didn't work out, you know, I just ask, "All right, well, whatever it is that you found value in, um, if you want, you can pay it forward and just make a donation to Something Positive for Positive People." And what I'm

The Next Chapter: Healthcare Interventions

00:04:51 Courtney Brame: hoping to accomplish with this money is to be able to start an intervention program that educates health care providers on how to take a sexual health history in a way that when people come in to get tested, they're uh, having their identity validated. They are being met with anti-stigmatizing information and dialogue from their health care provider directly, including understanding how common herpes is, the fact that they aren't being tested for it unless they're requesting it, and even then just speaking to the accuracy. so that the the the burden of educating our future partners doesn't exclusively fall on us and that we don't have to go through this entire process because what I see is that a lot of the folks that I've talked to who have received their diagnosis, the interaction with the healthcare provider has been an initial touch point of stigma from things like, "Oh, well, your husband is going to still, you know, love you or you're still going to be able to give your husband kids, like that kind of stuff. And oh, you just, you know, should find somebody else who has it, right?

00:06:03 Courtney Brame: We can imagine some of the worst things that have been said to us and others and just go from there. But the overall intention now of Something Positive is to uh not eradicate or end or destroy stigma, all these violent terms. What I want to do is empower people to have the options that are available to them in order to navigate the stigma. And one of the ways that I want to do that is by partnering with health care organizations and clinicians and um medical facilities where someone may come in and receive a positive diagnosis. Someone may go in to get STI testing done. So, what I'm envisioning is being able to um give health care providers practice with discussing positive test results with individuals or with uh or even treating people uh of different identities. So, someone who might be trans, someone who may be non-binary, someone who may, you know, have a beard, but uh and and wear like a a dress or something where the healthcare provider will look at the person and think one thing and I want for them to not operate under the assumptions so that they don't invalidate the identities of the people that are coming into their uh facilities because there is a lot more um visibility to these communities of people and while we may not be exposed to them,

00:07:35 Courtney Brame: it doesn't mean they don't exist. It doesn't mean that they won't at some point walk into our health care facilities. And you know, for so long, Something Positive for Positive People has had this identity with uh attached to serving people with herpes, period. What this is is a sexual health communications platform. I mean, arguably a health communications platform, and it's intensely self-help. And as I look back on the past several episodes, um, they've been solo. I just haven't had people to interview. And it's just been me kind of talking about my experience as a person with herpes and just demonstrating by putting my healing, my life out loud on display to people just from interactions I have with people that I'm dating on dating apps and uh dealing with the trauma of my family, being in therapy, having moved across the country, running a business, being a Black man during a time where um you know being a man is now having a lot of different ideas like flung at it and it's being dissected and pulled apart all to me just challenging myself and asking myself the questions about what it means to exist and what it means to exist in the way that I do exist and I'm bringing people of various walks of life into this space in order

Becoming "Selfed" and the Masculine/Feminine Split

00:08:59 Courtney Brame: to give us the dialect of different communities of people on how to navigate communicating about our sexual health status, our health status, our preferences, our boundaries, our relationships and tensions, um, and our ability to navigate and exit abusive and healthy relationship dynamics. You know, I've lost some friends. And I don't even like using the phrase I've lost some friends because what I'm learning is the more connected I become with myself, the more disconnected I become from things that just don't align with me. Um I've lost a friend and like we just don't have the same lifestyle. Like they hit a different tax bracket lifestyle. Uh, and yeah, they do things that I just don't do, nor do I really care to surround myself with. I lost another friend over, you know, I don't even know what happened. I'm not supposed to know what happened. Let me say that. This someone I've known for years. So, in the development of going in and if you've listened to the manifesto podcast episode, like you you hear me speak a little bit to this and the way that I was processing, I have a lot more clarity on what it is now.

00:10:17 Courtney Brame: But I'm going within. I'm having an involution like evolution has worked its way outward for me to essentially uh develop the connection to my essence through the experiences that I've had with other people and the relationships that I've had the interactions experiences opportunities the successes the failures and all of that has only occurred in relation to other other people other like out there is what I want to say and then I'm on a place now of having tapped into this self-awareness that I have retracted my essence back into myself and I'm disengaging from a lot of what's out there, what was involved with my evolution and I'm pulling in the things that align with my values, my integrity, my my purpose. And as my essence brings itself back together, what I'm finding is that there is a new found sense of wholeness within me that I am so clearly able to articulate and speak to because historically I've only known myself in relation to others. I've never known myself in relation to myself. And I think that many of the people who've been on this journey with me, whether it been for the entirety of 5 years or if you just got here, I think that you can relate.

00:11:41 Courtney Brame: A lot of our identity is tied to our sexuality. And when we think about our sexuality, we often think intercourse. We often think sex. I had a conversation with Dr. Evelin Dacker, and that'll be on a podcast episode that is released later. Uh you'll be able to hear that. And what happens with that is that we only recognize ourselves in relation to other people in that context sexually. And when we hear sexuality, I think a lot of us jump to sex as in intercourse. We don't think about identity, gender expression, our attraction, um the way that we perform gender as well. The piece of sex education, how we navigate boundaries and relationships, how we relate to the other. Sexuality is one way of relating to the other. It's not just intercourse, right? And it's a way that we um embody pleasure and pleasure and sex tend to be linked together. And that's what like even if you Google what pleasure means, somehow it's connected to sex.

00:12:45 Courtney Brame: So we can't even acknowledge and recognize pleasure detached from the word sex. We can't uh look at the word sex detached from sexuality and identity detached from sexuality. So now when we look at our identities separate from sexuality which is what a herpes diagnosis has consistently uh proven to do to or for us. We have to deconstruct who we were in association with other people that we connect with intimately that we connect with sexually. And in that deconstruction we begin to identify ourselves. And in identifying ourselves, we start to see things that we may not like. like we had this tra uh projection of our selves and it sort of like that that essence went out into the world to identify itself in relation to other people and when we have the awareness that we don't know who we are in relation to ourselves that journey begins to come back inward and I I like to call this process Selfed um I had a podcast that ran about 30 something episodes that was called self I took a break from Something Positive for Positive People.

00:14:02 Courtney Brame: And I started to really just explore who I was aside from Something Positive for Positive People. And ultimately ended up coming to the conclusion that like I go in and out of being H on my chest and then being uh and then H on my chest being an extension of Courtney. And this has been something that I've brought up with my therapist a number of times. It keeps coming up that H on my chest is assertive, um, intentional, deliberate, social, uh, inspiring, a leader, um, handles rejection, has boundaries. All of these things I connect to who H on my chest is. Whereas Courtney's very go with the flow, very you empathetic, and I I listen and I'm very much in my feminine, if you will, if we look at it from a perspective of masculinity, femininity, right? But H on my chest is like boom, go, go, go. Let's get this done. And I feel like these two parts of myself have done a really good job of complimenting one another.

Integration, Dragon Ball Z, and the Illusion of Labels

00:15:09 Courtney Brame: But the reality is they can only go so far separated. And I think that I've sort of hit this peak with who H on my chest is. And Courtney, the feminine, right, if we're looking at it in perspective to my masculine, has to sort of level up and catch up. And that's what I've really been doing. I don't know if you all have noticed, but uh even my social media content, like I've taken I've set up hard boundaries uh to give myself like a 50/50 between H on my chest and Courtney between 9:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m. on my time zone, Pacific time. I'm not on social media. I'm not messaging people back. And I tend to wake up about 6:00 a.m. on a regular basis. And between 6 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., that's where Courtney gets Courtney's time. And what I'm finding is that when we detach this idea, this labeling from the masculine and feminine, which I mean, depending on what you believe or what you think, we're at one point whole until humans gave words to that which was masculine, that which was feminine.

00:16:19 Courtney Brame: Meaning that this is how the man is supposed to perform its essence, its expression. And here's how women are supposed to perform their essence or um their uh essence and expression. That's what I meant to say. But the reality is like in this binary state, the masculine only recognizes itself in relation to the feminine and the feminine and the masculine. And on this pursuit with one another, it's almost like they're seeking wholeness in one another. But what the goal is in that split is to have experiences awaken to the growth that has been uh allowed to be experienced through the expression in relation to the feminine or other in the rest of the world for it to come back within. So if masculine is my masculine, let's use my eye language being H on my chest and it expressing through Something Positive for Positive People. I've hit this point of like peak growth separate from Courtney, separate from the feminine. and my feminine has put so much of its trust into my masculine through being h on my chest.

00:17:45 Courtney Brame: However, there's no trust in me. So, like, how can these two reintegrate if my masculine has leveled up so much yet my feminine is where it is? It's not like I recognize myself in relation to others, like I'm a heterosexual man. Heterosexual heterosexual man. And I know that my relationships with women, my relationship to the feminine is like I have found myself to be extremely relatable to them. This could have to do with me being raised primarily by a woman who made me uh not want to be like my dad. It could be like this um the fact that I am emotionally aware and in tune with what's happening around me. Women tend to be more expressive emotionally. So therefore, we can connect, but it's not in the way that I inherently at my core want to be connected with them. I don't know. It could be a number of factors, but I recognize that in order for me to integrate like I can't, they're not able to.

00:18:45 Courtney Brame: So like the analogy here is when we look at the masculine feminine, we think man, woman, we think that when these two come together, what happens is that there's the ultimate sense of creation, the creation of new life. My masculine, my feminine have separated. My masculine has separated and created on its own a sexual health communication platform that arguably is saving lives, therefore inherently giving people the opportunities to create for themselves as well. And then when you look at what my feminine has created, it's like taking the crumbs of my masculine and experiencing like small pleasures. What I believe happens is when I'm able to level up my feminine as I have been lately uh more so by being more taking that insight like I'm emotionally checking myself. I'm looking at my masculinity not from a lens of femininity but from a lens of vulnerability and being vulnerable has historically not been something that the masculine uh is allowed to do or given permission to do. But it was the feminine in me, you know, by our language and definitions that allowed for me to vulnerably reach out to my mom, reach out to my dad, and ask them to validate me.

00:20:04 Courtney Brame: And I think that that's something that has leveled up my feminine. That's leveled up Courtney in a way to where I'm more of a match for my masculine. If you are someone you know who watches Dragon Ball Z, Goku and Vegeta are the two uh main like good guys of the show. They didn't start that way. They were very not in sync, but they fuse. Like they do a little dance and they fuse together and they form more of an ultimate warrior. And if they're not in sync, if they don't perform this dance individually and then connect perfectly with their fingertips touching, then they don't fuse well. They don't make the ultimate warrior. In fact, their power levels decrease significantly if they're off by any bit and don't match. That's where I feel there's this barrier between me being able to consistently be H on my chest versus me consistently being Courtney. like I phase in and out and there's a little bit of a conflict and they're not able to connect and I try to bring them together and when I've tried in the past it's not worked out successfully.

00:21:16 Courtney Brame: You know, of course there's like spurts of inspiration and like, oh man, this works, but I'll see it in relationships like not really progressing in the way that I feel like they should. Um, and I see it in my ability to be social or inability to be social where that mismatch occurs. So, my masculine has leveled up to a point where my feminine has not. And as I involve or I have my involution as Courtney, being able to explore the depths of my trauma, my emotions, my like my triggers, why I respond to things the way that I do, why I feel the way I feel about the things that I do. I have evolved internally on the inside and I use the word involution and you'll hear me say involve and I hate that involve means what it does like when someone else is involved in the thing because this is an involving internally. I'm evolving internally. Wow, I'm butchering this. But I'm seeing that because of the vulnerability, which has historically been a feminine thing.

00:22:35 Courtney Brame: Like my masculine, I've been able to look at that and really understand it and challenge it more because I've leveled up my feminine. So now my masculine and my feminine are able to recognize and see one another. They've leveled up individually to where when they reconnect, this is going to create a whole new level of integration. And like if we look at whatever you believe about the origins of the universe, right? Everything was together, connected. There was no need for language. We call it the unspoken, the unnamed. And I believe that out of boredom, this s*** just split up. It was like, I'm bored. and it began to experience itself and experience itself in another. So this othering that happened one time has had a trickle effect into our reality through this illusion of separateness and separation in our bodies and we continue to like slap labels and identities on things, you know, and there's usefulness to it because we simplify.

00:23:42 Courtney Brame: We make ourselves visible to others that are like us. But what that does is further differentiate like it further others in a way. And when I split down, you know, or try and break it down to the core, what language I find to be most useful is descriptive language. Language that uses verbs to describe things. You know, when you say that someone is relaxed or someone is very calming, we're describing them, but we're not labeling them. And the less labeling we can do for ourselves, the more we get to the core of our essence, that that that connectedness, that allness, right? That wholeness. So my masculine, my feminine have found wholeness within themselves. And it's going to be an ongoing process, but I'm feeling like it's more matching to a point where I can integrate the two and allow for there to not be a separation between H on my chest and Courtney brain because I manifested uh H on my chest as a result of the over-calibration of femininity in Courtney.

Trusting the Masculine and the Roe v. Wade Reflection

00:24:57 Courtney Brame: The feminine traits, if you will. So much of that manifested who H on my chest is. And I'm happy about that because then I think about a rubber band. The further back you pull that rubber band before it snaps, when you let it go, it's able to go that much further. So the drawback of the suffering, if you will, my feminine suffering manifested this H on my chest character that I had to after manifesting, you know, build, invest in, create, give an outlet. And all of a sudden, I looked up and I put so much in the H on my chest that I didn't recognize myself. I didn't recognize Courtney anymore. And I experienced this before with a breakup after a partner and I went our separate ways. I asked myself, "All right, well, what do I want to do?" Crickets. Everything that came up was what my partner wanted to do. And I had this realization that I was just so entangled in that particular relationship, my identity as that person's partner.

00:26:07 Courtney Brame: And I've seen it again and again and again and again. And in hindsight, it took for me to boost my masculine enough to be willing to apply that assertiveness, that intentionality, that decisiveness, and lead myself into being able to trust myself because my feminine is not trusting. And I think that this is a huge reflection of reality in society, that the feminine doesn't trust the masculine and the masculine doesn't trust itself. If masculine is a trait of leading and leadership, HR on my chest does a damn good job bringing all these people together to trust me essentially so I don't know how to lead people to what they need for their healing. And Courtney, you know, being actually H on my chest has this distrust in self and distrust in the masculine to the point where it's like I'm looking for trust in others. I'm looking for validation that I'm a leader through others, that I can be trusted. I look for that in others. And this breaking away these boundaries that I've set for myself, this challenging of my masculinity, this challenging of my identity and looking at masculinity from a lens of vulnerability has allowed for me to begin to practice trusting myself.

00:27:42 Courtney Brame: I've learned to become present with whatever emotions there are that I'm feeling, be present with whatever actions that I had to do. And I think that this overturning of Rover versus Wade really triggered that growth point for me. A number of things triggered a growth point for me. But I think most recently that because that happened, my masculine is like my H on my chest and in me is like what do I do? What can I do? Something needs to get done. Take action. And then the feminine in me was just like okay well like let's listen. Let's see what you know: what do women need right now? What does the feminine need right now? And I had to calm my masculine down to take no action to listen. And what I ultimately was able to learn from listening was that there's just not a trust in the masculine. I've seen so many women who posted for all the men who are being quiet right now, you know, like I see you like I see how quiet you are and the masculine's over here like well I don't know what to do.

00:28:46 Courtney Brame: Like any action seems like the wrong action and that comes from a mis a distrust in self because when the masculine knows what is right, it should be able to lead. It should be able to say and do and take action. And part of uh this vulnerability lens was knowing that I had to shut up for a minute and listen and hold space and not offer to just try and fix this or be like, "Okay, well, here's what we're going to do. Uh uh I'll just always wear a condom. I'll always pull out. I won't ejaculate in you. Um if uh we need to, we can drive to another state. Like those are the practical things that I thought and the ability to hold space for the feminine and actually hear the feminine and like observe the feminine and understand that, you know, this was much more than about just being able to get an abortion. is about rights. This is about perpetuating this idea that the feminine cannot trust the masculine and the decision of the feminine was made on behalf of the masculine for whatever reason.

00:29:56 Courtney Brame: Like it doesn't it doesn't make sense. But this was something that triggered that for me. And I don't uh I don't know that had that not happened that this thought process would have triggered for me as fast because that is an intense like there was a shift in the world like an activation like a global trigger even though yeah this effects in the United States but like other people are going to and have modeled you know what's done here. Ain't no telling how long. But what I want for people, I want for people to come here. I want people to get what they need and I want them to leave. If you stay here, it means that perhaps you have not been applying what it is that is being taught here. And so I'm hoping that my further expressions, examples of my life can offer to you what this experience has been offering to me. I'm not, I'm not, this is not me saying goodbye by any means.

00:31:09 Courtney Brame: Like I'm just to make that clear. This isn't oh, I'm done podcasting. No, I love podcasting. I'm having a great time doing it. And what I'm finding is that people are actually getting a lot more from the solo podcast episodes or at least telling me that they're getting more out of these than uh I've heard from people in regards to podcast episodes where I'm interviewing someone about her. And just taking it back, you know, this whole aspect of self, like I'm using self as a definition of acquiring a connection and awareness to your essence that was all at one point. All that which is undefined. It's been whole. Like we get into our bodies and we wake up as whatever babies and then we grow up and we have these experiences. We evolve. Our bodies change going through their natural course of developing into a body and our experiences hit a certain point and then we awaken and in our awakening to consciousness and the the essence of ourselves, we look for fulfillment.

00:32:19 Courtney Brame: And once we recognize that a lot of what's been happening, a lot of what's around us is not necessarily fulfilling, we enter this state of chaos and suffering and we try to find ourselves in places to be happy. We look for pleasure and we pursue pleasure. And what I think the reality is is that we have to surrender to the retraction like there's an expansion that occurs naturally of our essence into the world and it goes through this retraction phase and as it retracts inside of us again masculine feminine going within itself without its relation to the world around it. We begin to see ourselves how we see ourselves and we can either get out of our way or we can be resistant and put up the obstacles in a way that will prevent us from seeing ourselves that'll prevent us from becoming self because that's what it is. I think that the self has split itself, self- split itself, the self split into masculine, feminine. And having split into masculine, feminine, what ended up occurring was this separation, this binary, this this uh the separation, the binary, this uh labeling and naming of verbs and actions and qualities and traits that should be applied to one or the other and not and the other.

00:33:55 Courtney Brame: And what life is is just like an unlearning of that and unlabeling and un-identifying to get to the point where none of that matters. We realize that everything's connected. We recognize our power and our thoughts, our beliefs, our behaviors, our actions, our expression. And once we get selfed the unlabeling unraveling un-identifying from the expectations of our relationships to others and we can just be being even that is a word slapped onto wholeness and the all connected but it's where we have to get to and we use this language in order to embody actions and values that we can live by these codes that we can live by with integrity that aligns with our truth because the truth is we are all connected. The truth is there is a source and the essence of that source exists in us all and it's just uniquely expressing itself through our bodies through our actions, our creativity. And we get real creative, you know, once we come to that point of drawing our essence back within us from it being out there into the world only to recognize and acknowledge it itself in relation to the other.

00:35:26 Courtney Brame: So when it's within and we see ourselves as we are, we see our truth. We begin to express that. Becoming selfed is an un-othering. It's self education, self-discovery, self-exploration, self-awareness, self-experience, self-expression. We are all on this trajectory of becoming “selfed” and it's really a matter of being able, being willing, to decide where you identify and then be able to go in so that you can expand from there and begin to retract, draw in your own essence and experience that in all of its glory. And what you'll notice is just a reintegration into wholeness. The whole idea of separation is not an illusion. We're here to be able to experience others and experience ourselves in the um in the experience of others. So without that split, without that othering, you know, we wouldn't be able to grow, we wouldn't be able to heal, we wouldn't be able to expand. And that's what we're doing right here. That's why we're here on this earth.

Moon Knight, Reintegration, and Finding Peace

00:36:59 Courtney Brame: You know, unfortunately, we just forgot. But there's a remembering occurring through this process of becoming self. And I don't know if I like it, it feels like a memory. Like me saying this doesn't feel like something that you know I'm speaking to now, but it feels like I've spoken to it before. Think about how many times I've stuttered or said um or paused and been like uh like uh or tried to fumble through this podcast. This s*** is flowing through me naturally. I don't even know where it's coming from. I journalled earlier and let me see what it say? I don't think I'mma read this whole thing, but a lot of what I said was what I wrote down on this paper. You know, the question was just who am I now on July 3rd, 2022. And I just really spoke to this whole aspect of performing identity and working my way back into self being whole. You know, you're not only whole in relation to that which you've split apart from.

00:38:08 Courtney Brame: You are whole within yourself. And if you have chosen to separate and split yourself into, you know, someone who can perform tasks and someone who, you know, needs help performing tasks, then you're on a path of going in within both of those identities. And a perfect example is Moonnight on Disney Plus. It's a Marvel show. If you haven't watched it, watch it. But the main character has multiple personalities, Mark Steven. You get to a point where you learn that Mark had to create Stephen for a reason because Mark wasn't able to do what Steven does. And I think that that's what I've done. Like H on my chest, I can't tell you how many rejections I've experienced. As Courtney, I can't tell you how many rejections I haven't experienced because I haven't had the opportunity to do so. I wouldn't even put myself in a position to experience rejection. And because of my ability to see myself in relation to the other and also see the other, there are things that I now know that I can be better at.

00:39:24 Courtney Brame: I can do better. I like these things about Courtney. I like these things about H on my chest. What will happen if I start to go into the extremes of exploring those things within myself and then be able to bring those together? What would happen? There would be a new found sense of wholeness. One that was not achievable just by remaining whole. So it took for this separation and experiencing in order to reintegrate. And when we all get to a point of reintegration, we will experience a whole new level of wholeness, a whole new level of experiencing the masculine, experiencing the feminine, experiencing what it is to be selfed. And that's to me like that's peace. Connectedness is peace. And for so long, I've been in this chaos mode of this illusion of disconnectedness. I've been disconnected from myself. And I did it to myself, you know, and I only became aware of it in hindsight looking back at my herpes diagnosis and like how I couldn't deal with that.

00:40:33 Courtney Brame: So I had to create a personality, a persona that could deal with that. And that's who H on my chest is. H on my chest has proven himself to be the ultimate embodiment of masculinity with that willingness to look inside from a lens of vulnerability and to grow and to develop and develop this trust within himself. And Courtney has decided, wow, I want to be more like H on my chest. Let me do that, too. And now I can integrate these two beings. And I'm watching the world, y'all. The world is responding to me differently. I firmly believe that in prioritizing the needs of the spirit, what happens is the body, the needs of the body tend to take care of themselves, you know, and prioritizing, you know, that growth, my purpose seemingly. I live in a place where I'm experiencing a lot more peace. In that peace, I'm finding so much more pleasure in the little things such as my own company, such as being able to just I can do things like I can buy concert tickets, I can go places, I can go and just experience myself because for so long like I've looked for leadership and deciding what are we going to do?

00:42:01 Courtney Brame: Oh, what's going to happen? What was going to be the entertainment tonight? Now, you know, I have fun. I have fun by myself. When other people can be a part of it, it's enjoyable. And I'm at a point of like my two halves, Courtney and H on my chest. They're touching. And even on Instagram today, I made a post. It was me with my shirt off and like I don't even look at myself. Like I work out because, you know, that's just something I have to have a routine. I have my routine. I do these things. cuz I looked at myself, I was like, "Damn, I look good." I took a picture, posted that along with some other things. I posted something uh on abortion rights that I found to be useful. I posted a couple of other things I did. I went to a festival.

00:42:47 Courtney Brame: I had some jerk chicken. I listened to some music. I went to a lesbian bar with one of my best friends. Um, a lot of I posted a screenshot of the manifesto podcast episode about masculinity, my definition of masculinity. and viewing it from a lens of vulnerability. So, lots of just positive things from me making the decision to integrate these two parts of myself. And who knows, maybe even in the integration, I'm going to see more reflected from the world around me. I'm going to see reflected within myself that there's more to evolve into. There's like I'm I'm after this retraction of my essence and the the connecting to it, building a selfrust, allowing for my feminine to trust my masculine and vice versa and for my masculine to protect my feminine's expression or you know to learn from this involutionary airy process that my feminine doesn't need protecting that in fact the whole idea of masculine and feminine is an illusion and that all there is is the self.

00:44:02 Courtney Brame: The self that creatively expresses itself in a way that inspires for others to creatively express themselves. And that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here. That's why I got herpes. That's why I was the person that started Something Positive for Positive People because my life experiences have led me to the place of being able to offer the opportunity for other people to heal through their own diagnosis in the way that they choose to. So, that's what I'm going for. You know, if you don't know why you're here, I hope that helps you with answering some of those questions about why you're here or about why you think you might be here. Cuz there's this selfness, this self, this integration. This is great. I can't wait to see what happens next. This is a good place to stop. I don't have to make it into an hour-long podcast episode, but um I thank you. Thank you for being here.

00:45:07 Courtney Brame: Thank you for listening. And I hope that you'll take into consideration um you know things that I said at the beginning of the podcast as far as uh paying this forward. If you haven't reached out, if you haven't contributed, if you um are just nervous, whatever, like hit me up, reach out. You know, you can donate. There's a number of ways that you can support it. Share this content because once we get to a point of being able to reconnect to our identities in relation to ourselves, we then become the kind of people who can better connect with others. And there might be some who don't want to connect with us because of that. Like because we shine such a bright light in our own expression that it's blinding to those who haven't been willing or able to see themselves. Therefore, they can't see us as holy. So, we are whole. We just got to remember that s***. So, as we begin to bring all of our awareness inside rather than taking our awareness outside of us and viewing ourselves in relation to the other. Really begin to just surrender and let go of those aspects of our identities that we only know in relation to others. Thank you for listening. I'm on social media at H on my Chest. Please like, rate, review, subscribe to this podcast episode if you found it useful. Share it with someone. And um yeah, I thank you. I just really appreciate you sharing this journey with me and giving me the confidence and freedom to be able to do so. Till next time, stay sex positive.

Transcription ended after 00:47:52