SPFPP 342: Herpes identity crisis
Meet Courtney Brame, a Black Man living with herpes.
Courtney Brame, age 35 was diagnosed with genital HSV 2 in 2013 at the age of 23. When he was diagnosed with herpes, he was given a sheet of paper from the doctor that simply said various statistics…. Man listen, I ain’t about to sit up here and write this like I’m not writing it myself. I share my story living with herpes.
I’m Courtney. I love self-help, anime, podcasting and Yoga. These things make up more of me than my herpes diagnosis, which really is only relevant to me because of the work I do at my herpes stigma support organization I created, Something Positive for Positive People. This is a 501c3 non profit that has a weekly podcast where I interview people living with herpes about navigating aspects of stigma. This includes dating with herpes, sex with herpes, and overall just living with herpes.
I started this podcast in 2017 when I learned that people with herpes wanted to kill themselves because of their diagnosis. I set out to just give people a place to listen to people living with this virus just fine. Whether it’s oral herpes type 1 or genital herpes type 2 or any modification, my goal is to simply minimize the stigma of living with herpes, period. I don’t care if you’re Black living with herpes, green living with herpes, South African, Australian, or an Alien. Herpes stigma shouldn’t be something that makes anyone end their lives.
Since I started conducting surveys on people’s experiences with herpes and their mental health back in 2019, I consistently see that 36% of people DO in fact experience suicide ideation because of their genital herpes diagnosis. Notice I said genital herpes diagnosis and not HSV 2. I specifically said this because HSV 1 cases are on the rise genitally, yet doctors are still making a visual diagnosis of genital outbreaks as if they’re HSV 2. The only way to know what type of herpes you have is to get tested by a medical professional.
I will wander as I write this so try and keep up. I’m at more than 350 podcast episodes talking about herpes and our emotions underlying it as they directly impact stigma. In 2024 we finalized some survey data from more than 1,000 people living with herpes and 15% of them said that emotional stress was the leading contributor to them experiencing outbreaks (outbreaks are the physical, visible expressions of the herpes virus).
As a 500 hour registered Yoga teacher, I put together a series of 20 Yoga classes for people with herpes. for people to manage the emotional stress of navigating stigma. I combined this with a book that has been a tremendous help to me navigating the complex emotions of herpes stigma, Letting Go by David R. Hawkins. These classes are where we climb the emotions scale. I take a very Yin and relaxed approach to these Yoga and Meditation classes and speak to experiences people with herpes may have relating to stigma and their emotions about their diagnosis.
So about my experience as a Black Man living with genital herpes HSV 1 and HSV 2, I am on various podcasts where I speak about this experience and consistently what I often say is that it is in fact lonely. I have a unique experience having been open about my status longer than I’ve been hiding with it, and the few other Black Men living with herpes that I know would die before they tell another person who doesn’t need to know. So navigating this space has been lonely. It isn’t difficult except that my peers are just white women with herpes who outside our shared herpes experiences and advocacy issues, I can’t quite relate to.
Dating with herpes for me has been interesting because when you’re diagnosed, you think you’re going to pass herpes on to everyone you have sex with, and you assume they expect that if you touch them they’ll get it. The reality in dating with herpes that no one speaks about is that there’s really only one third of a chance you’ll be rejected.
What do I mean? Well think about it. You’re getting to know someone and then you see things progressing to becoming sexual. You tell them you have herpes and honestly they only have three response categories. The first is no thanks, which to many is a rejection, but in reality is just the other person saying themselves what you yourself if given that option may have said yourself, so please don’t be angry at them for doing something you yourself may have done. The second response which no one anticipates or is ever ready for is “me too”. The www.cdc.gov estimates that of the one in six people living with herpes, 90% of them don’t know they have it, so odds are that you’ll run into someone who has it whether they know it or not. Then the other response is just one of curiosity, “tell me more”. This response is one of interest in YOU as a person and perhaps wanting to move forward but just needing a little more education about it.
These are typical dating experiences for most, but since I don’t have the luxury of anonymity considering my work, I’ve disclosed my status through the early question when meeting someone new, “what do you do?”. Then, BAM I tell them I have herpes. What’s interesting is that When people ask me about my experience as a Black Man dating with herpes, I have more in common with a white woman dating with herpes because that’s my only reference point. So I typically tell people that dating with herpes is just like dating.
I’ve had the luxury of hiding behind the work I do at my nonprofit, Something Positive for Positive People (SPFPP) and I think I’ve hid so well, over the seven years this has been a thing, that I’m invisible to the main world. I don’t and haven’t faced any negativity being open about my status because I mean, who’s going to talk shit about someone being open about having herpes when it’s in the name of keeping people from wanting to kill themselves? You gotta be a real asshole to do that.
I started writing this because I Googled “Black Men with herpes” and a bunch of variations of that and neither myself or SPFPP came up in searches. I’m running a Google Ads campaign, I’ve been on a hundred podcasts sharing my story, I’ve been in news articles, I have a 100% on the SEO of my website www.spfpp.org which has my face on it and there’s no search results that show me and I got real pissed about that because I know I am not the only one WILLING to do this work as a Man, or as a Black Man.
I host a weekly podcast interviewing people with herpes and if you’re someone living with it, please reach out to me and share your story. I prefer people who wish to be on camera, but often times that’s too much for people so we keep it anonymous. You can visit www.spfpp.org/podcast to listen to the episodes.
My nonprofit supports people through Yoga, provides survey information to help with disclosure, we host virtual events to help people navigate stigma, and I train health professionals on taking a stigma-free sexual history and delivering a diagnosis. You can learn more about my work at spfpp.org. But I want to let you know that a Black Man living with herpes does exist and I’ve been pretty loud about it, it’s just a very stigmatized subject and people who find me don’t rave about it in fear of people assuming they have herpes, which is legit considering the only people looking for herpes information are generally newly diagnosed or telling someone they have it.
So support ya boy by sharing this blog, donating at www.spfpp.org/donate and telling your friends about me and the work I’m doing. If you’re struggling with herpes I offer a one on one donation-based support call keeping it focused on the stigma of it. I’m not a therapist or medical professional, just a Black Man living with herpes who has a lot of perspective on it and I give damn good advice as long as you’re willing to open up to me. Sign up for a call at www.spfpp.org/herpes-support-call
Stay positive! Cause I damn sure ain’t got a choice.
To learn more about me and the work I do, feel free to bounce around on the website at the herpes stigma minimization content we’ve created over the years.
Episode 342 Transcript
The Many Hats of Advocacy and the Risk of Identity Fusion
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hello and welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that supports people navigating herpes stigma. And we teach people how to go about communicating about their sexual health. We also educate and train health professionals on delivering a stigmafree sexual history and incorporating stigmafree approaches into their health care with patients. Hello. I have been um I've been doing a lot. If you follow me on social media uh you see the updates. I'm Courtney Bra on Instagram now and hopefully on Tik Tok soon. We got to just make sure that that name is available. Uh it hasn't been for a really long time. I've been a lot of different things. And one thing that I will say that I am no longer is confused. Uh for a while, I was very much confused about my identity and the spaces I occupy. Y'all probably thought I meant something else.
00:01:43 Courtney Brame: Let me clarify. So I have been in all types of career fields, right? Like uh one of my first jobs was actually helping my dad with putting floors in. In high school, I sold cookies. I made $300 a week in 2006, 2007 baking and selling cookies. Um and after that, I worked at Kohl's. Um, I worked in retail. Uh but I worked very unconventionally. So I got a lot of unconventional jobs. And even there, I was at the night shift. like there were very few times where I was working the cash register. It was like Black Friday when they needed people. Uh and then after that uh my first jobs were in advertising. So I was in the advertising field. I've sold digital advertising. I've worked at ad agencies. Um, and that's been my career up until I left the corporate world. And I started to work as a personal trainer, which shortly after that led to me going into yoga teacher training and learning to teach yoga.
00:02:51 Courtney Brame: And then I started the podcast uh around that time and became this person running a nonprofit in the realm of sexual health, sex education, and now I'm like seen as a sex educator and a public health professional as well. Um and I also recently started yoga therapy school. So there have been a lot of different hats that I've worn. And with all these different hats that I've worn, I've been trying to figure out a place to squeeze all of these aspects of my identity in and the place that made the most sense to me has been through Something Positive for Positive People. So I often talk about that time where I wasn't recording podcasts. Um I did a podcast episode on that if you want to check that out. Um, and I now have clarity around where these things belong because I've tried to separate everything. I've tried to make everything make sense in one way. And over all this time, it's been tough.
00:03:57 Courtney Brame: It's been really challenging. And I have board members um, they very much are active and involved in my work. Uh, they look out for me. I have people around me who I consult things with. But for the most part, everything that is an action is done by me. I manage social media. I talk to people. I've taught the yoga yoga classes. I've done the workshops. And so much of my identity has been in the same way that I tell y'all don't make herpes your identity. I've made it my identity. I've just done it in a way that is for a cause or purpose or that has been healing and supportive to me. Whereas, you know, the inverse of that would be making it your identity and then avoiding actually living your life. So in a way like I've not really been living my life because there's been so much attachment to the the work around herpes and my identity as a person who has herpes who happens to be open about it who I allow others to dictate my identity and who I am exclusively in relation to my herpes diagnosis.
00:05:07 Courtney Brame: And there have been several times where you know people ask me “what do you do?” People ask me “who are you?” And my default has always been going to the herpes related work that I do, which don't get me wrong, it's a great conversation starter. Um, more often than not, people are curious and we engage in really good conversations and dialogue about it. I've had people tell me that they too have herpes and that they too had experienced suicide ideation or that they've never heard of anyone teaching yoga to people with herpes or who had a podcast about herpes or was using um this as something to support the healing of other people. And so much of my ego I would say has been tied into that because it's like okay well how can I do more of that? This is the thing that I'm supposed to be doing. This is the right thing. I need to continue to do more of this.
00:06:00 Courtney Brame: How can I stuff more of what I do into Something Positive for Positive People and make it better, make it more, make it bigger? And the reality is that this is an ugly thing. Uh nobody wants to have herpes. Herpes stigma is so complex that there will never be a place for all of the things that I want to put into Something Positive for Positive People to really be able to flourish. It's like I'm I'm trying to plant trees and grow and water trees in some things grow out of s***, but this isn't one of those things. And I've come to realize over the past several weeks, um, I started yoga therapy training. I remember when I was in yoga teacher training, there were lots of reflections for me that led to me doing things a little bit different than I had been. And it was very self-reflective of me. And I hadn't really had any opportunities or spaces where I uh, especially as a man, as a black man, could have these kinds of reflections because I've always been on goal mode.
Finding the Truth Inside Yourself
00:07:11 Courtney Brame: It's always been about, you know, everybody else and what other people expect of me. Um, and that started with make sure you go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job. And I think it kind of got a little confusing there. That's when I started to question things and go off the track of, you know, get the house, get the wife, have the kids, and retire, right? And I'm in that now. And so much of this is a little bit confusing to navigate simply because there hasn't really been a road map for me that anyone else at least in my immediate circle has navigated. Like I'm the only person that's bounced around and moved to different cities chasing my dream or following my intuition and leading with that. And I don't know other people who like… it's not a safe thing. And also, I have met some really self-aware people, but I don't know that they've been self-aware enough to know um that whatever it is that they're doing it's going to work out, right?
00:08:17 Courtney Brame: And I feel that I really feel that in the core of my being. I feel that in my nervous system. And part of that has been through just the emotional awareness that's come from me doing some very unconventional things. Um, I'm a black heterosexual man that's been in all these sex positive spaces, non- monogamous spaces, as well as like uh into, you know, places that straight men typically don't belong. but also in working in sex education, being a man, being a black man too, you know, in this environment that likes to talk about us but doesn't necessarily talk to us in order to really make any kind of a significant impact. And so I see just how I was seven years ago before I really entered this space. I look at myself, you know, now and I look at myself then and where I am now. If I were to go back and have a conversation with myself, I wouldn't be trying to hear any of that stuff that I was trying to say.
00:09:24 Courtney Brame: I wouldn't be hearing that, oh, you know, you're going to get herpes and it'll be okay and that people who have herpes can have fulfilling lives. this whole thing about stigma being an issue. Even mental health is suicide ideation, right? Like to me, seven years ago, suicide was white people s***. And here I am now, seven years later, and I'm hosting men's emotional wellness symposiums, and I'm learning about men's struggle with suicide ideation and people having these experiences and black people too having these experiences. But there hasn't been anything in place that would have given me the steps along the way to get to this open-mindedness and receptiveness that I feel in this moment in this place that I'm at at 35 years old. I'll be 36 in November when I was 27 years old, 20 … even what it was, that 11 years ago when I first got my herpes diagnosis, um at 23/24 years old, right? Like you couldn't have told me that my life would have looked the way that it does.
00:10:29 Courtney Brame: Like in my mind, I was about to have five kids. I was going to be promoted at my job. And there were a lot of things that I just wasn't prepared for going into the world. And I had to experience the things that happened for me after my herpes diagnosis in order to learn and get the skills that led to me becoming who I am today. And I mentioned the steps in between. So, just to give you an example, yoga, for instance, I wouldn't have gone to a yoga class if you told me that, oh, well, yeah, it's going to help you with managing your emotions and all of that. I wasn't trying to hear that. I went to yoga because I thought it was good for stretching. Um, and I needed to stretch. And after I got my herpes diagnosis, I learned that yoga was good for stress management. So, I would go to a yoga class, I'm stretching, and this was my entry point.
00:11:25 Courtney Brame: And then after that, I feel just like different. I can't put words to it yet, but I know I feel different. And that's where the stress management comes in. And we're in there just stretching. And then we do shavasana at the end of class where we just lay there and rest after the uh yoga class. And I'm like, man, I really like that resting. I really need to make more time for that. We do breathing exercises and I learn, huh, I'm I'm I'm my posture is different. Like I feel like I'm taking more full breaths. I feel more alive. And then we go into meditation. And it's like, man, I'm loud in my head. I really need to work on calming my mind. And then we get into philosophies. It's like, yeah, I kind of agree with that, too. I find peace in that. And then I learned the language and the words.
00:12:06 Courtney Brame:And now a curiosity and interest has been developed because now I'm invested in it. Right? So, we've had from yoga being about stretching to stress management to breathing to meditating to sitting still to these philosophies. That's six, seven, eight steps right there before we get to the point of me being approached about entering a yoga teacher training. And in that yoga teacher training, I would say I probably hit like a huge growth point for myself because of all of the self-reflection that was there. Um, I incorporated a lot of what I learned from through yoga from not just the putting myself in postures or telling people here's how you get into this posture, here's how you do these things, but more so embodying, you know, what feels to be more true for me and detangling everything that isn't true for me and allowing for my identity, the work. When people say do the work, what they mean is you really have to detangle the truth from what is uh what's like other people's truths about you, not even truths because they're just opinions.
00:13:11 Courtney Brame: Only you know what your truth is. Um, I listen to this dating coach's name, Mr. Lucario. Shout out to him. And he says, "The truth is inside of you. It ain't nothing… there's nothing more true than that." And yoga was something that you know a seed was planted and then I find this content that's like validating that. So as you start to experience and explore your own truth what happens is that you start to be presented with opportunities for you to validate that truth or invalidate that truth which is essentially going against your values and who you are. And so I had all these layers of things that were not even layers, steps. Let's call them stepping stones to get to a place of being able to um enter the yoga world, right? Beyond cuz if you look at it, it's white women doing Pilates. If you see yoga presented to you in a lot of instances, you don't see the active listening components.
00:14:09 Courtney Brame: You don't hear about the philosophy of it. You don't hear about, you know, the practices to live a better life or to identify your own emotional responses to things that indicate to you, hey, you need to make a change. You don't listen to your body. You don't connect with it to know that this pain in your chest is actually because you're holding on to some type of anger because you're doing a lot of things that you don't want to be doing, but you're doing them anyway cuz you feel like you got to do them. And when we get to those feelings, we can start to really make some changes in our lives. And just making changes in our lives seems to be really vague. I'm using myself here as an example because one, it's my podcast. I can say whatever the hell I want to on my podcast, but two, this is what I have the most experience with. And I think that we live in a day and age where a lot of people have more experience with other people's lives, whether that be an influencer, celebrity.
Setting Firm Boundaries and Avoiding Distraction
00:15:04 Courtney Brame: You know more about these people than you know about yourself. And I found myself even today distracted because I didn't have barriers and resistances to recording this podcast episode because I mean the topic was supposed to be like one specific thing and that's just me being open and vulnerable about my identity crisis, right? And then it was just it was hard for me to do and I would catch myself just scrolling social media, scrolling Instagram and then I was like, "Oh, I need to talk about this. I need to talk about this”. And I started just talking about things. One of which was when you schedule for a donation-based support call, you need to make the donation before we schedule a call. I'm going to be very strict with that because now my girlfriend got on me about this. She said, “Courtney, you're too nice. You're too nice. I say this with love”. And I'm like, no, you know, people will do the right thing.
00:15:52 Courtney Brame: People will do what they say they're going to do and they'll donate. But it's been way too many times now where, you know, we have these calls. I meet my end of the bargain, but other people haven't met theirs. So, we Yeah, you got to make your donation before we have our donation-based support call. That's why the word donation based is in there. But, I ended up making a story post about that. And then also talking about the algorithm of social media because as I was scrolling, I recognized that since being in a relationship and like unfollowing things that are more, you know, just like more sexual, more sexually charged because I'm seeing sexual energy as creative energy. And I recognize how social media and media in general, the way that it's designed, like I look at the content I put out. I don't put out anything that really distracts you or pulls you away. I put out content that sends you on that journey within uh the self-reflective portion um the the components about, you know, real information and truth.
00:16:57 Courtney Brame: And I don't support what the algorithm's intention is, which is to keep you engaged with the content for long. I encourage you to get off that. I encourage you to go and do your own thing. I encourage you to show up to a thing that you know, an event of some sort that may give you a sense of community in a way that you don't have to rely on what social media presents or uh what um distractions or anything like that. Like I'm recommending books you should read and listen to and I'm sending people away from the place that the algorithm is designed to steer you into. So, uh in doing that, oh, I'm sorry. I made the post about that and I was still just sitting there like I did not want to do this and I realized what was happening for me. Um, I always say the hardest part about running a business isn't actually running a business. It's, you know, telling other people that you're running a business, especially when you compound something as complex as stigma to it because I do a lot of great work.
00:17:59 Courtney Brame: I know that I'm the best. You can't tell me there's anybody out there that's providing you with better herpes stigma support than I am. And if you met them, please introduce me to them because I would love to learn from them. And these at this point, I'm not going to say thousands, I'm going to say hundreds of like one- on-one support calls. Um, it's very much become uh it's very much become like my test of truth because I say, "Yeah, I'm the best." Like I I know what I have to offer. I know what value I'm bringing to it. Uh because people come to me and they're like, "Oh, I'm here for herpes." And then by the time they leave, they're like, "Damn, actually, it ain't the herpes at all." Like, I'm gonna have to talk about it. Yeah, but man, this is stuff my therapist hasn't even told me. This is stuff I'm paying my therapist $200 a session for. And that's, you know, use your therapist.
00:18:50 Courtney Brame: Like, you should go to your therapist, right? But it's for me what I'm learning about myself is that I'm invalidating myself, my own identity as someone who is offering these truthful resources and helpful guidance to that that's actually going to, you know, make an impact on your life, right? If you decide to implement it. I don't want to do the shortcuts. I don't want to, oh well, sign up for my ebook, sign up for my course, do this, right? I want to see people go off and live the kind of life that they want to live for themselves. But I'm getting very sidetracked. The direction that I wanted to go with this is um again just coming back to my own personal identity crisis of needing to instead of pushing everything into Something Positive for Positive People start to separate you know what this is for. So uh I've come to the realization that y'all don't really want yoga classes.
The Problem With Seeking a Cure Before Finding Acceptance
00:19:58 Courtney Brame: Y'all don't really want support groups. Y'all don't what y'all want is a cure. I get that. And it's constantly, you know, I see the success of people in other organizations like the headway that they're making. Um and people are really like caught up in or subscribed to and will pay for hope. Like there's money being thrown towards cures that before we get to a cure, we got seven or eight steps. The same way that before I could get to a place of being at peace with my herpes diagnosis and being as emotionally aware as I am and healthy as I am overall and being as impactful to individuals as I am, I needed to go through those seven eight steps before I got to yoga in the way that I'm in it now. And it's the same way for a cure for herpes, right? And people will throw their money at uh you know the hope for getting to that place of enlightenment.
00:20:57 Courtney Brame: They'll throw their money at the hope for a place of getting that herpes cure. But why don't we invest in, and I'm not saying throw your money at me, like even if you just tell me, Courtney, I listened to your podcast episode on this and I took your advice and it changed my life. Thank you. That's cool. You ain't even got to tell me. Like, as long as you do it and you are good with the results that you're getting or the results that you've gotten, yay. I celebrate that with you. I'm going to celebrate with you. I'm going to ask you if I can share the post because again I struggle with being able to show people what I'm doing. I can tell people what's happening all day. I can record transcripts of calls. I won't record anything without anybody's consent, but the podcast is its own thing. But when I have these one-on-one support calls, like there's a lot of healing and impact that's happening that I can't show people.
00:21:47 Courtney Brame: Um but when we highlight you know the the the the destination right that when the destination becomes highlighted that's what people are are selling and sold on but like this whole thing is a journey and in my personal opinion I believe that the first step for us getting to that place of a cure is to first accept that there isn't one. I think that a lot of people are in denial of the fact that there is not a cure for herpes. We have not seen herpes herpes test come back positive. Somebody goes and does a thing and gets cured and then it comes back negative and this person is able to have sex and not pass the virus on because it's no longer in their system. We don't even have tests that definitively say yes, you have herpes. No, you don't have herpes. So, I think that's really what the starting point is. Why don't we get a test that says yes, you have herpes or no, you there is no herpes here.
00:22:46 Courtney Brame: Then from there, we can start to test people because a lot of people aren't being tested for it and don't know that they're not being tested for it. People go in, they say, "Test me for everything." And all of their results come back negative. A partner finds out they have herpes and they're like, "Hey, I only been having sex with you. I got herpes." And then they're like, "No, no way. That couldn't have happened." and they go get tested and find out, oh, you can pass herpes on. I haven't been tested for all these years and you can pass it on to somebody if you haven't had an outbreak. And then the education begins, right? So, what happens if we get an accurate test, we get people tested at least annually for the virus, and then we begin to just simply before that even just start to accept that herpes is one a tricky virus. As my board member Dr. Evelyn Decker says, she says herpes is a tricky virus.
00:23:38 Courtney Brame: It lives in the nerves. It presents on the skin and it spreads by skin-to-skin contact. And a lot of people don't know this, right? And two, refuse… because of stigma, refuse to educate themselves or be educated by others because we like to just run with what we think we know. And what we think we know is actually not accurate because we're not even getting the experiences of the people who are living with the virus themselves. And that's part of the work that I'm doing, those first three steps, is being able to integrate people's lived experiences as y'all allow me to share the podcast guests who come on and are anonymous or who are fine with being open about it. Thank y'all. the people who go uh and invest their time into taking these surveys that we put together. Like that's what this is working towards. I'm not giving false hope for a cure, especially in this lifetime. If we can get these first three, four, five steps taken care of where people are, you know, more accepting of their diagnosis and the reality of living with herpes and decide to just make some health changes to where, you know, you create a healthy enough environment for herpes to live in your body along with the other however many viruses and bacteria that live in the body that we don't uh we don't, you know, get upset about,
00:25:06 Courtney Brame: that we don't like to stigmatize, right? Like how much bacteria in our gut helps us with digestion. How many viruses live in us that are, you know, handling other things? Our immune system keeps things at bay, not eliminating these things, right? Our body is an ecosystem of ecosystems. And I tell people to think of your body as an apartment complex that hosts all these tenants. These tendons are the bacteria, the viruses that don't go away from soap and water or uh drinking water and eating well, right? And what herpes does is it just lives in the nerves. And as long as the building is being upheld well, the plumbing's good, the electric's good, and the uh the all of that is taken care of, then the temperature is maintained. These are things that contribute metaphorically that are stressors. So if you're overly stressed, if you're not getting your nutrition, if your mental health is trash, if you're not eating and getting the nutrients that your body needs, your body needs.
00:26:10 Courtney Brame: Everybody's different. We all need different things, right? So if you aren't aware of your baseline and able to stay at it, herpes is going to come knocking on the surface of the skin and be like, "Hey, let me out of here. It's hot in here. Uh, I'm paying my rent on time. I'm taking care of business on my end. You're not taking care of business on your end. You need to fix this air conditioner.” And then that's when it wants to get out. It wants to find a new place to live. And that's where you get our high probabilities of transmission. That's where you get your anti- uh not anti, you get your um you get your your shedding, your viral shedding. Um asymptomatic, that's the word I was looking for. You get your asymptomatic viral shedding. And that's when people get herpes when we're not taking care of ourselves. Um, I've done these surveys.
00:26:58 Courtney Brame: I'm asking people. I'm asking questions. I'm interviewing people. But nobody know I'm doing it. Nobody knows that this work is being done because the people who are most impacted by this work are not willing and able to share about it. And this is just because of stigma. Stigma is literally the thing that is in the way of the cure. Because until we can accept, all right, this is what stigma is. And you do the work of, you know, detangling what's true from sig stigma, I'm looking like I'm peeling a banana, but we're untangling the stories that we've made up, the media stories, and what other people have said or convinced us to believe about what a person with herpes looks like, what they sound like, what their life must be like. When we detangle our truth from those made up stories, from the misconceptions, from the falsehoods, that's when we can start to talk about curing herpes.
00:27:56 Courtney Brame: But if we don't do that, what incentive do the powers that be have to do anything different? It works. People get diagnosed. They immediately start paying for daily antivirals. They take the medication because they (a) don't want to have to tell somebody because they're embarrassed because of what people think about people with herpes universally, and then (b) like they think these stressors contribute to more outbreaks. And the less that we actually know about the virus from people's lived experiences, uh the less we understand stigma, the less we understand, hey, this is just how it works. This is all it is. And we see that the less we begin to see herpes for exactly what it is, the less likely there is going to be a need for any kind of change. I'm going to put it like this. If this is the most genius business plan, think about it. You have this virus that people think that they're protected from if they just wear a condom.
00:28:59 Courtney Brame: So, people using or not using condoms, right, still go on to get herpes, have no idea they're at risk for it. People don't know that they're not being tested for it unless they specifically ask. The tests are trash, but then when you do get um exposed to it, it's going to be very unlikely that you know who it came from. So, it's not like you're going to tell the person like, "Hey, I think you gave me herpes." Right? And we live in a climate where our next available sexual partner is literally a swipe away. So, we can have had several partners within the time period at which herpes takes to incubate and then because of shame and stigma, we're like, "Oh, I don't know who it was actually. Maybe I I shouldn't tell anybody." So now, whoever else might have had it or been exposed to it doesn't know for them to go and get tested and then get treated or whatever. But there will come a time though when they find out, bam, the psychological impact is going to be so intense that they immediately get on antiviral.
00:30:01 Courtney Brame: So, I've got customers for life. As long as people don't find Something Positive for Positive People to be impactful, as long as they don't go within, as long as they focus on the SNL skits that make fun of herpes, the ignorant comments that people make in uh people's um underneath people's posts about herpes or when they try to educate or when they are like doing really good education from an entertaining perspective, right? as long as we had this kind of ignorance out there and people don't know that people with herpes are saying that they want to end their lives. And it's not because they're in such pain or because of this virus, but it's because of the stigma of it. It's because of who they see themselves to be and they think that they have no hope of, you know, finding love or being in a relationship or they don't want to tell their partner that they cheated on that, hey, I to I I got herpes because I cheated on you, right?
Moving Out of Hiding and Taking True Action
00:30:59 Courtney Brame: So people are really holding on to and maintaining these lies to themselves and repressing these real emotions and it's being expressed as oh my god like, I just need to find a cure and all my problems are going to go away. Let me tell y'all something. I was diagnosed with herpes in 2013. It's been 11 years. Had I been waiting on a cure, what where would we be? the the thousands of conversations that I've had with people about herpes that the the however many hundreds of one-on-one calls or conversations and and posts and you know the inspiration that has come through Something Positive for Positive People through me had I laid down and been like man this is just going to be my life I can't wait till they get a cure and just start throwing my money at cures like where else could that money have gone it went to this platform it went to this phone, this laptop, this this place I'm in now because I have to and I say have to.
00:31:59 Courtney Brame: And I say that I mean that that is very intentional language. I am in a place of purpose. When I try to walk away from this s***, y'all don't let me. And I'm very thankful to y'all because I think that I needed this just as much as the people who have most greatly benefited from Something Positive for Positive People have as well… like we mutually have the same side… different side of the same coin. For me, it's been like a positive trajectory. For others, it's been like, you know, maybe starting out negative and getting a little bit better, a little bit better. And I'm thankful to the people who've expressed the importance of this to them because what that's done is it's held me accountable for doing what I say I will. held me accountable for remaining consistent and disciplined with coming on here and sharing these experiences. My therapist um we worked together from 2020 to 2023 and what we talked about was he said uh he said I wasn't really being vulnerable.
00:33:03 Courtney Brame: He was like yeah you ain't really being vulnerable like you just you talking about herpes. you talk about your experience with herpes and I'd see it because I would hide behind the experiences of people who are living with herpes. I'd be like, "Oh yeah, people with herpes experienced this. People with herpes, da da da. People with herpes tell me da da da." And just to give you an idea of the inner work I've done, this goes back to my childhood. My parents were separated as long as I can remember. I heard the story. My dad told me it was when I was a baby that they weren't together. So to me, I've always grown up thinking everybody had stepparents. Everybody's parents, you know, just make you and then they go do their thing. But I remember my mom would always tell me to tell your dad you need a blank. Tell your dad you need some school clothes.
00:33:46 Courtney Brame: Tell your dad you need a Halloween costume. Tell your dad that you need a ride from football practice. And my way of asking would always be, “hey dad, my mom said da da da”. “My mama said I need…” “my mama said I need”. “My mama said I need”. And I was hiding my own feelings of rejection behind “my mama said”, So if you said no or if you didn't do it, I'm not being rejected. My mom is because this is an ask on her behalf. Same thing here, right? I'm not able to receive criticism directly. Like if you have anything negative to say about me for starting a nonprofit and podcast for people who have herpes because they wanted to kill themselves after their diagnosis, you're a f****** a******. I have a complete immunity based on that logic, right? Like that was a childhood thing manifesting here all these years later at age 35. Something I remember doing at least when I was in single digits.
00:34:44 Courtney Brame: I remember doing this. And this is the importance of doing the work so that you can untangle the truth from the narratives that you've been fed the subjective realities of, you know, or the opinions of other people. Because in addition to that, like I told myself a story that, oh, my dad just doesn't listen to me. My dad doesn't do what I ask him to. I can't ask him for anything. And the reality is after talking to my dad and untangling the truth, he was like, "You never asked me for anything, right? Like I didn't think you needed anything. You were so independent and we had this conversation." So now instead of having this conversation with each and every one of y'all, I'm recognizing that I no longer need to hide behind Something Positive for Positive People. And shout out to Jordan, one of my other board members as well for uh kind of like planting or watering a seed of telling me that Courtney people like you don't have to put everything into Something Positive for Positive People.
00:35:45 Courtney Brame: People will want to come to an event that's hosted by Courtney that isn't herpes related. And I really sat with that and it is… here we are months later now because she said this a few months ago and I feel it now. I understand what that means. I understand that like I don't have to hide behind these things and the what my therapist said to me about hiding or uh not truly being vulnerable is absolutely true and I ain't going to say I'm done with it like there's still going to always be work to be done but I'm aware enough I said aware like pointed at my head but I'm aware enough in my my core in my heart that excuse me I'm aware enough to know that something's got to age. I know that I got to stop hiding. And that's me. I'm working on that. Like, I'm hiding these brilliant skills of interviewing people, of podcasting, of being curious, and drawing out these very f****** powerful and vulnerable conversations and realizations from people who I'm interviewing people, everyday people.
00:36:52 Courtney Brame: These are people who have never been interviewed before. Y'all, I'm f****** amazing at my job, interviewing people and being curious about people. And it translates not just on the podcast, but also in the one-on-one calls and also in when I'm making friends or meeting new people and getting them to discover new things about themselves. And I do this in a very short period of time. It's efficient and I'm very aware of the undercurrent of conversations. Not just the things that a person might be saying, but also the things that they're not saying. What's the emotional undercurrent of their words and their silences, right? This is a f****** superpower. Like, I don't know too many people who know how to do that. Like, I shout out to my boy AJ. I think that he might be the only other person that I know who has been able to do this because he's done it with me. But I say this because if you are somebody who, you know, has made your herpes diagnosis your identity, you might not even know you made herpes your identity.
00:37:57 Courtney Brame: It's going to take for you to look at what you've missed out on, what you're missing, what you lack. Um, and the only way to get to that place like the first thing you got to do is look at what you have. I said this before, what you have is what you want. I think I spoke to that on a self podcast episode which I brought back and I'll talk about that later. Um what you have is what you want because otherwise you wouldn't be the person you are receiving and holding on to these things, right? Like it plays out in our relationships, right? You say I want this and imply you don't have it, but then you look around and you have something that's not that. So, it's important to be able to identify just how impactful your herpes your relationship to your herpes diagnosis may be. And the only way to really do that is to start reflecting and ask these questions. So, like this ain't me selling y'all on doing a donationbased support call.
00:38:54 Courtney Brame: If you want to, yay, cool. Come do it. But what this is is more so about me uh being open and vulnerable myself and sharing here's how I recognize my identity has been so interconnected with my herpes diagnosis. Here are ways that I've violated my own boundaries. Here are ways that I've violated myself. Here are ways that I've invalidated my own identity as a person as a man. as a man who, you know, is uh being of service. At least in my personal opinion, I think I'm being of service. And I feel that because in the conversations that I have, I see people's posture changes. People like to come in on these calls and they're like this or they come to these interviews, they're like this. Eventually, they're like this. Eventually, they get real open. And I see that and I feel that. And I my I really genuinely believe that when people listen to this podcast and now like being able to see my face sometimes when I have guests that let me record and when I remember to do this, I think that this really does radiate and activate people in a way that they begin to challenge
00:40:02 Courtney Brame: their own internalized stigma. They begin to activate their own faith in themselves and begin to live in their own truth. This is funny because my mom said that uh she used to say I had a dream that you were like a public speaker. I never want to be a public speaker. I thought I was just like a behind the scenes advertising creative guy which I am. I am making commercials. Um or I have had those experiences making commercials. Um but here I am feeling that like I really feel that I feel you know like podcasting has helped me. Herpes education advocacy has helped me to really identify who I am. uh in addition to who I'm not. And who I'm not is I'm not my f****** diagnosis. I'll tell you that right now. Um the experiences, the skills that came after I received my diagnosis, those make up parts of me, but that itself is not who I am.
Expanding the Mission and Redefining Support
00:40:57 Courtney Brame: And I very much can communicate now way better than I could before what Something Positive for Positive People is. What we're doing with Something Positive for Positive People moving forward is we're going to continue to, you know, do these surveys. So, we're going to do the research because it helps with our advocacy efforts to integrate the lived experiences of people who have herpes into STI uh or sexual sexuality education so that people are able to take those nonsexual components of our lived experiences and what we learned after that we didn't have that if we had before might have changed the trajectory of our mental health or emotional well-being as well. We want to integrate those into uh sexuality education so that it translates into SCI prevention. It ain't no reason that by now I ain't got funding from the CDC to to implement this and talk about this more and have a bigger platform and make this a more uh a more expansive community resource. like I'm running how much of the the conference that I did the Something Positive conference we sold like $7,000 in tickets and then we had about $5,000 in um sponsorships and then we were able to pay our presenters uh and we were able to take some of that money and invest into another expo where we're going to have more community engagement where we're going to be able to support people in navigating these conversations about sexual health and disclosing their HSV status and asking people about theirs that very things that directly impact the STI
00:42:32 Courtney Brame: rates. People aren't talking about STI nearly as much as it should be. And here we are. We have this work that's being done. And it again, it's just me. Like, I'm learning to ask for help. Shout out to my board member Amber who's telling me, Courtney, you need to find some volunteers. You need to get some interns. like you need help until we can get to a place of acquiring funding to be able to go off and do, you know, more of the work that is being done. And I'm listening. I hear y'all. I hear everybody. I listen. But at the end of the day, I feel very much like this is still something that other people aren't nearly as invested in as I am. Like I said, I tried to walk away. I can't walk away from this because when I do, somebody tells me, “Courtney, please don't stop doing what you're doing.
00:43:22 Courtney Brame: I was going to end my life and I found your podcast and it saved my life. Thank you. Here's a donation”. Sometimes everybody else said, "Here's a donation." But people, you know, have thanked me. People been like, "Oh, yeah. I found the love of my life and I had the confidence to disclose thanks to you." And I can't show this. And that's like part of what the struggle is. So, before it sounds like I'm just bitching and complaining about people not telling people that this exists, I want to be clear that there are very wonderful things that happened. Uh, we got a $10,000 uh donation from Dr. Evelin Dacker to uh go on and conduct a pilot project for one of the training sessions to be able to have a simulated experience using sex educators to give medical uh professionals practice taking a history under a specific type of circumstance. So I'm going to be doing that in February and that is essentially what the business plan is for Something Positive for Positive People.
00:44:19 Courtney Brame: And then the podcast, the research that we're doing, I'm going to continue to interview people and host the podcast and uh also be able to offer the donation-based one-on-one herpes support calls. Um, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a mental health professional. Like I'm an emotional wellness practitioner. Um, I utilize my yoga. I utilize my own personal experiences and the experiences that have been shared with me as we navigate these conversations. Um, and these donation based calls are going to be 30 minutes. You make a donation, we schedule the call, we have the call, and if you want more, I have to direct you somewhere else. Because oftentimes people come for herpes and they leave with the realization that there's a lot more that needs to be done and there might even be a lot more self inquiry there. And that is where we get back to the identity piece because I'm now separating that from Something Positive for Positive People. I love y'all to death.
00:45:18 Courtney Brame: I'm sorry, but I can't keep giving y'all what you would pay 200 plus dollars to your therapist for uh for an hour and a half and only getting like $15, $20, right? So partially, yes, this is a money thing. I ain't going to sit up here and act like it ain't like it's a money thing. And more importantly, it's a time thing. So that 90 minutes that I'm speaking to someone for them forgetting to donate because a lot of people forget to donate. Uh or you know $20 for an hour and a half of like this deep self-reflection and like the relief of you know getting to emotionally exhaust yourself and like that cuz that's what it is. A lot of it is in fact emotional labor. A lot of it is thankless. I don't care. Like my childhood trauma has equipped me to have this seemingly infinite capacity for emotional uh emotional um emotional what's the word I'm looking for? Like I'm an emotional lightning rod.
00:46:15 Courtney Brame: Like I'm a lot of people's emotional boyfriend and I recognize that. Um I can't I ain't I ain't going to keep tricking my emotional intelligence for free. I look right in the camera and say that. Right. So, we got 30 minutes of whatever you donate for a donation-based support call and then after that we got to talk about the separateness of it and that's something that I'm working on now with my own business. Um, I'm not doing speaking engagements through Something Positive for Positive People anymore. That's coming through Courtney. So, if you want Courtney to speak about herpes and unless we're doing the training, right? We do the training. That's Something Positive for Positive People. If we're doing the donation based cause or Something Positive for Positive People, but if you need ongoing consultations, you want to practice your disclosure, like the things that I've tried to push into Something Positive for Positive People and now they're they're going to be Courtney things.
00:47:07 Courtney Brame: And I feel very good about this. I feel very confident in this. So, the one-on-one ongoing calls if you're somebody who is curious about or interested in going deeper than just the herpes conversation and talking about, you know, my experience and cuz it's been done. The podcasts are out there. There's plenty of free content. There's the social media page. There's a podcast that I've been on, the press page of Something Positive for Positive People exists. You can scroll through all of that and get that. It is most important to me that the time that we spend together is for you to get what it is that you want out of that. All right? And after that, like I got to get what I need to get out of that. So, I'm separating the… the I guess we would call it coaching. I'm separating the yoga I don't even like teaching like yoga classes in the traditional sense.
00:47:56 Courtney Brame: Um but I am currently in yoga therapy school and learning to utilize the uh science of yoga to support people with restoring uh emotional balance. So there are yoga classes uh if you're a member of Something Positive for Positive People. The letting go yoga series is classes of yin yoga meditation for you to work through the emotions that come with the herpes diagnosis. Other than that, you can reach out to me and we can have a conversation about what ongoing conversations and communication can look like if you need help with your disclosures and things like that. That can be included in the donation-based call. But overall, like if we need to get to know you and like get to the core of issues and you know you say you got a therapist and your therapist is working for you, hey, I'm not going to pressure you, but I do a damn good job at what I do. And um I got goals and I'm in a place now where I put myself in a situation where I doubled my rent and my income is like half of what it was when I was in Portland.
The Path Forward: Choice, Action, and Integration
00:48:59 Courtney Brame: And so um yeah, this puts me in a position where not only and this is something that I think is useful to people as well. It is really easy to get complacent. It's easy to get stuck where you are. It's easy to just you know go with the inertia this inertia toward the inertia of you know life and just kind of drifting into where you end up. But then it's another thing to be proactive in choice. I like to think that I empower people with choice. So when you talk to me, you're going to see options and then you're going to have the responsibility and accountability of making a choice. So even listening to this podcast, if you listen to this point of the episode, you have a choice to make, right? So that choice being how are you going to navigate these experiences moving forward, right? So I put my experiences out there. I've shared the parallel. My experience with herpes has been, you know, identifying with my diagnosis.
00:49:53 Courtney Brame: your experience with herpes may have been identified with your diagnosis. So, we're we're we're two sides, same coin. So, for you, what does it look like to begin to take the steps to get out of that thought process to identify who you are aside from your herpes diagnosis? Who are you outside of that? Because I'm learning who I am. I'm Courtney m************ brain, emotional wellness practitioner. I use yoga. I use sex education. These are the ways that I demonstrate that. I advocate for herpes um stigma education awareness and I advocate for men's emotional wellness and I started another nonprofit called self. Uh you can go to get self.org s e l f d is what it is um getself.org and the podcast self is uh coming back and that's that's turning into what it's turning into which is a men's emotional wellness resource. So that's what I'm about y'all. like I'm doing these things and I'm finally able to identify and break free what I've so mindlessly identified with all this time which is my herpes diagnosis.
00:51:08 Courtney Brame: And so in separating that, like I'm seeing myself um I'm working with uh Jordan to do a workshop on uh intentional relationships and dating and what it looks like to do that. And like I said, I talked about, you know, all the steps that need to be taken before we can get to a place of a cure. I think I didn't finish that. So after you know we get people accepting you know their status and a good test and people are tested uh on an annual basis know their status are more educated I think a lot more people will stop taking the antivirals as often farm sales go down and then they need to do something they need to make a better medication or then they need to make a vaccine and then when it like is not doing this on the budget then that's when we get that cure that's probably already in existence but even then like why would we want to cure something that isn't really causing a problem. It's the psychological component of it that's causing problems for people and that won't be healed.
00:52:04 Courtney Brame: We are going to have a wonderful time with therapists if people don't have the threat or fear of getting herpes because then people are going to start to experience other more harmful things like heartbreak, right? So yeah, people looking at herpes is the worst thing that ever happened to them. And if herpes is the worst thing that's ever happened to you, you got a good life. I mean that. So that's uh that's a really good place to leave it. I think that I can stop here. Um if you feel inspired by this podcast episode, please go to www.spfpp.org/donate and you can make a donation to support it. You can become a member and access the yoga classes and the events that we host. Uh September 29th is the Safe Sex Expo in New York City and we're going to be offering workshops on introductions to spicing up your sex life. If you're somebody who's been kink curious, but going to a sex club or a play party has traditionally been way too much for you, um, and you don't want to, you don't feel comfortable in that environment, the Safe Sex Expo is a really good entry point into learning little things like how to maybe talk dirty or do some
00:53:20 Courtney Brame: light spanking or to explore your senses in a way that can be uh, it's a way to redefine pleasure. Let me say that. Like we look at pleasure and we think about it from a sex perspective, but pleasure can be a number of different things. So, we got some workshop facilitators that are going to support us, like leading us into some group activities that will help you with being able to dip your toe into the kink world. That's all I'll say about that. And then July 17th, um there's a virtual and in person. It's sort of like a herpes disclosure workshop. I'm going to do a live podcast recording with Nikita Fernandez who is a sex therapist who also has herpes and she's going to um share some of her experience and then we'll break off and we'll just practice telling each other we have herpes. Um if you're able to join us in person, please do. Tickets are $25. You can get those on the events tab of spf.org which is spf.org/events. And um if you can't attend live, you'll be able to attend virtually. It's at 7:30 Eastern time. 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. It's about an hour and 15 minutes. The first 30 minutes will probably be the podcast and the next 45 will be mingling and roleplaying that disclosure. All right. Um, till next time, stay pleasure positive. That's what we running with. That's what we going to run with. Pleasure positive.
Transcription ended after 00:57:35
