SPFPP 359: 23 Years of Grief
Are you mistaking being open about herpes for true vulnerability? In Episode 359, Courtney Brame realizes that discussing his diagnosis is no longer the hardest thing he has to share. In a deeply personal and unscripted episode, Courtney reflects on 23 years of unprocessed grief surrounding the death of his grandmother, the complex emotions men face regarding abortion, and the difference between intellectual therapy and somatic healing. This episode is a raw look at what it actually takes to be vulnerable, why we need to validate our own identities, and how yoga therapy is shaping the future of SPFPP.
Episode 359 Transcript
The Mission of SPFPP and Identity Validation
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hello and welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People for the last almost eight years now has been a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Wait a minute. It hasn't been a nonprofit organization for that whole time. We're actually entering year six of being a nonprofit organization. Uh, as I started it in 2017, I was just interviewing people with herpes about their experiences because I saw that people with herpes wanted to kill themselves. People were posting different things online. They would talk about it in the chats of the dating site and the support groups. And I got curious. I applied that curiosity to this space of people with herpes. And I learned that actually that's a fairly common thing. Our last survey that we conducted, we saw that 36% of people with herpes wanted to end their lives. And that sucks. That's really hard, man.
00:01:59 Courtney Brame: And a lot of this is because of stigma. But what is stigma, right? Like we hear people say, "Oh, it's because of the stigma. Oh, the stigma sucks." But no one really understands what stigma is unless you live with the stigma. So, it's people who've had to deal with boundary violations, abusive relationships, um the feeling when someone has this disgust reaction after having had sex with you, knowing that you have herpes, and they may not or may not know what their status is. Navigating the emotions that come with people's behavioral responses to you in relation to herpes, that's what stigma is. So, I'm very fortunate to have had at this point um almost 400 podcast episodes, whether those be interviews or just insights and solo episodes. Uh I am very appreciative to everyone who's come on and shared their experience because that has trickled and evolved into other people being willing and able to share their experiences as well. All right, so uh setting expectations for this podcast episode.
00:03:08 Courtney Brame: I think it's important for me as well. I am going to give you all an update and then by the end of this I want to just give you something that you can go and apply today. All right. So I have had 97 or 98 recorded like audio but I've been tracking my support calls through this donation-based support call intake form. So, if you want to talk to me, if you want to have a conversation, if you want to uh vent, if you need advice, you can go to spfpp.org/herpes-support. And that's on the website. When you go there, you'll have a drop-down menu and it'll take you to the scheduling uh herpes support call page. So, it's been like 97 people that I've been able to document that I had conversations with. And these one-on-one support calls, I've not had anything to offer beyond those. So, I talk to people for 30 minutes to 45 minutes typically about a particular situation, support them through it, and then there's no followup.
Yoga Therapy in Practice
00:04:16 Courtney Brame: It's very rare that I hear from anyone twice. And like this past week, I did hear from someone twice. And when I heard from her, the conversation uh was just like I I don't want to, you know, disrespect her by putting her exact story out here, but the overview of it is that she disclosed to a guy, it was cool, they moved forward, they've been together for a while, and then he had his first outbreak. him having his first outbreak, she was met with a response that was different than what she was met with in the past. When she had her first outbreak and confided in her partner, uh she was met with abandonment in the first situation and this time not having experienced that, there was a little bit of a disconnect. And there is a lot to be said from a therapeutic lens of what that means, what that is. There's language. It's like there's the earth science and then there's the yoga science I would say and so much of the spiritual philosophy, the emotional philosophy, it has so much history to it.
00:05:20 Courtney Brame: Whereas with the brain cognitive science, like understanding why things happen, I don't think that that's as important to me as getting to the… what's happening, how to deal with it. I don't really care about the why or the how. I want to get to the root of it. So, as we were talking, you know, I heard her. I listened to her, validated her experiences, and then we just kind of went into a meditation. I just asked, "All right, well, let's take a breath. Like, let's pause here. Let's see what your body has to say about what's happening right now. Where are you feeling these feelings that you're having? What feelings are you having?" So, she told me what the feeling was and where the feeling was. And we just made space for that. And after having made the space for it, this was like 17 minutes into the call.
00:06:12 Courtney Brame: And I was like, "All right, how do you feel now?" She's like, "Oh my god, I feel so much better." That's it. Like that's all I need. I'm like, "Wait, are you sure? We got like 15 more minutes. What else do you need? Anything else?" She was like, "No, I'm good. That was really beautiful. That was nice. Like I feel better." I was like, "All right, cool." And that speaks to the power of yoga. And I know that historically, like I have a 500 hour yoga teacher certification. And uh I've been applying the things that I've been learning in my yoga therapy program. Shout out to Inner Peace Yoga Therapy. Um my 300 hour introductory course, which is why I've been so busy, y'all. Like I've not been able to be consistent with the podcast. I'm doing the things that I have to do. so that I can do the things that I want to do.
00:07:01 Courtney Brame: And part of what I have to do is uh study. I need to be reading. I need to be applying things and implementing things. And uh part of the implementation like I just have been trying it out lately. What I'm learning about grief. I've been applying to my one-on-one support calls. I really should document notes uh in those. But, uh, after having done this for almost 100 people this year, uh, it's safe to say that I have experience at the very least talking to people one-on-one about herpes and their diagnosis. Uh, I make the disclaimer, I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not a therapist. I don't have any licensure. So, people know what they’re getting into when they come here. And you'll probably see uh criticism of people like me for not having an academic background while just supporting people and healing and helping them. And I think that that criticism stems from like I'm f****** with other people's money, especially because this isn't something that I don't want to charge for this, but obviously I need to charge for this, right?
Setting Boundaries Around Support Calls
00:08:08 Courtney Brame: Uh, and it's important to me that the most accessible way that this can be done is through just offering a donation model. Uh, I got a lot to say about this and this podcast episode was supposed to be just me giving y'all an update, but I think that this is important to say and segue into, but the donation model here through a nonprofit aligns with me. And I I do this s*** where I go back and forth all the f****** time about… I need money so I need to do things that make me money and yet I want to be of service so I need to do the things that allow for me to make more money so that I can be of more service. And everyone who talks to me is telling me how much more money I can make if I just do this, you know, out of the nonprofit sector. And I I believe that s***. I know I can, but I don't know. I don't know that that just doesn't feel aligned for me.
00:09:15 Courtney Brame: And I think that things continue to come around full circle. There's people who I've helped three, four years ago who've come back and been like, "Hey, I can make this huge donation now." And it just makes it worth it. And there's people I talked to. There's people who donate a f****** dollar. And I had I have to set boundaries around that because the if you wanted to see a therapist, if you wanted to see someone who had all this schooling behind them and see them multiple times before getting what you'd get from a conversation with me in 30 minutes, you'd pay them upwards thousand plus dollars to not get to where we get to through this avenue. And so I want to be very clear that I'm gonna talk to everybody. If you reach out, we're gonna schedule an appointment and we're gonna have a conversation about the quality of what you get, whether you give $1. I honestly would rather people give no dollars because then that tells me, okay, well, you just don't have it.
00:10:13 Courtney Brame: You can't. And then like to give me a dollar and then show up on the call like talking about, yeah, I'm going on dates with this girl. We fly to each other. Like that's disrespectful. So people like that. I'm lumping y'all into Tuesdays. So, I will do one-on-one support calls for anybody on Tuesdays for under $15. I said like if it's under $15, we're not going to be able to do that. Cuz keep in mind, the money that comes in, I don't take all of that. This is an organization that needs to run. It's a one-man show. Like, I have to have Yeah. I got to pay my bills. And the people who or the the organization itself has things that are necessary to stay up like the the the website, the podcast, like the podcast itself doesn't cost anything, but the hub of resources, maintaining those, staying tax compliant. I I wrote out because one of my board members told me to write out everything that you do, how much it costs, how much time you put into it, and how much you get paid out of it.
00:11:13 Courtney Brame: Y'all, I'm not going to go into detail about it, but you can imagine based on my response what that looks like. So, it's very wonderful when the people who uh have the means to contribute more do contribute more because it does help for those who don't have it. And I don't want to go into a non-donation-based model. I'm saying that on the record because that's my truth. Um the the in in yoga there's a lot of philosophy that does align with me and resonate and it's like in my face now through yoga therapy before I think like I was hearing it I was internalizing it like into my body into my being but cognitively like when we think about it from a mental level what um it wasn't just on the front on the forefront of my mind it wasn't a conscious thing for me to live in this way apply these skills do these things, live in this way until now being in my yoga therapy training program because I see like, oh s***, what I have been doing has been holding space for people.
The Koshas and the Need for Intentionality
00:12:24 Courtney Brame: It's been like inviting them into their body's inner wisdom rather than being in their head. Uh there's the concept of the koshas. It's essentially that we have five layers of ourselves. We can call them sheets, layers, whatever. But there's five aspects of self. There's the physical body. There's the mind body. There is the um breath. I probably won't be in order. There's uh the breath or the life force energy. And then there's like the uh intuition, the inner wisdom, the body wisdom, and then there's like the spiritual self, the the joyful self, right? And so many people that I talk to are more in their heads than they are in their bodies. And so we kind of take that as a path inward in order to get into the body and into the body's inner wisdom and then be able to connect at deeper levels with what that that joy what what brings us joy, what makes us happy, what we feel like is our sense of purpose and what we want to be doing.
00:13:27 Courtney Brame: Because a lot of us just aren't really conscious of what we're doing. And I'm guilty of that. even me. Like I look up, it was last November. I looked up and I was like, "What the f*** am I doing?" I was about to head to Australia and I had this wonderful person that I'm in a relationship with now. And I was about to leave her for like a month and do whatever it is that I wanted to do rather than being invested in and developing that relationship. And I'm so grateful to have made that decision now because here we are a year later. We've still been together and it's been very f****** pleasant to have this consistency with someone. I ain't saying the whole relationship been pleasant like, we be beefing sometimes, don't get me wrong, but uh that that unconsciousness is what I see a lot of people have. And one of the things that drew me to my girlfriend is her intentionality.
00:14:24 Courtney Brame: And I find that a lot of my work is asking people what their intentions are. But I've never really been able to have the language to guide them into identifying what that intention is. So much of what we do is unconscious, unintentional, and we find ourselves, we just look up and we're in a situation and we don't like the situation that we're in. And by that point, you know, this is where people start to find out about their herpes diagnosis. They find Courtney and they're like, "What do I do?" And it's like a a a seamless f****** conveyor belt that takes people from getting a diagnosis to eventually finding out about stigma and then from there people, you know, do what they do. But the people who are finding me, at least the 97 people that have filled out a one-on-one support form, right? Like they come here maybe not knowing what they need or thinking they need one thing and then finding out it's something else. And a lot of the work that I'm doing now is more directly engaging with people because y'all I I had a moment where I was going to stop doing this s***.
00:15:29 Courtney Brame: I was going to stop doing the podcast. I was like, "Okay, well, because I do these events and the people who show up are medical professionals, maybe that's who I need to serve. I need to focus on the medical professionals, which I did for a while. I was able to get some money. I was able to get some funding. I went to some speaking events. and only to learn that through yoga therapy. I like this way more. I do. I do. I love one-on-one conversations. I wish we could record them and share them with the world. Uh I want to shift Something Positive for Positive People into a show, whether that just be a virtual show on YouTube or if it's a Zoom that the link goes out for once a month for people to join and attend live. Not to say that everybody who attends has to have herpes or even will have herpes, but like that s***'s irrelevant at this point because so much of the conversations that I have one-on-one aren't even about herpes.
00:16:21 Courtney Brame: It's about how people relate. It's about how they communicate. It's about what they really want. And the fact that they often don't know what they really want and that that is okay because that's what our roles are with one another is to discover that. So, I feel like um I really do feel like I am where I'm supposed to be. And for all of the flip-flopping that has happened throughout the course of this show, like I've been wanting to do non- monogamous conversations monogamous people need to have. I've been wanting to do more hands-on practice of identifying your safety and pleasure needs. I've been wanting to do this survey, the research. I've been wanting to just do yoga for people with herpes. There have been so many things that I've just like trial and error, tried and failed. And I don't even want to say I failed, but I've tried and then learned from them. And these are things that I've been excited about.
Aligning the Future of SPFPP
00:17:17 Courtney Brame: I've been wanting to bring to the world and make them fruicious and fruitful. Why did I say fruious? Fergalicious. That's how my brain works, y'all. That's crazy. Um, but excuse me. Like I want to just point out and acknowledge that I'm very excited and in that excitement I I am all over the place and I recognize that I'm all over the place and f*** man like it feels as if I've settled into where I'm supposed to be. So I journal and I journaled yesterday. It was yesterday morning. Let me see if I can find the page. And I wrote out, you know, what do things look like for me? So, from a business perspective, Something Positive for Positive People, I run the herpes disclosure workshops. I have the Something Positive for Positive People expo. I have training for providers, which we have our first one in February in Arizona.
00:18:17 Courtney Brame: I have wanted to do a monthly show instead of the podcast, but here I am recording a podcast, so technically there's both of those happening. There's the survey that we're creating to have that ongoing research so people can see, you know, numerically from a quantitative standpoint what the experiences are of people living with herpes. Maybe they can look during a particular time period. But being able to continuously accumulate that information is going to be helpful. I'm in the process of writing a book about letting go of herpes stigma and applying yoga therapy to that so that people have that as a resource. If you're curious about yoga therapy, even if it's not with me, like find out. See if you can meet with and talk to a yoga therapist. There's yoga therapy for cancer care, yoga therapy for pain care management, yoga therapy for stress and anxiety. There are all these modalities of it. And I am creating right now the one that is for herpes stigma.
00:19:11 Courtney Brame: And who knows, this might even branch out to something else. I don't know. But from where we at now, like I'm doing case studies and I have people who are willing to work with me, who are doing the exercises, who are sharing the value of these things and I'm f****** hype. I'm hype. Um, and so like those are the things that I'm doing for Something Positive. I'm also in yoga therapy training, which I always forget to make note of. And I'm also running the organization self which is for men's emotional wellness because that's something that has been helpful to me emotional wellness going through yoga teacher training being in the yoga therapy training program understanding the landscapes of emotions philosophy behind them the real meaning how they show up in the body like understanding this I guess somatic experience has made me a much more not just empathetic person but just understanding of my own self so that I and do the things that I need to do for myself and be of service to other people.
00:20:11 Courtney Brame: And so I'm even looking at how I do my social media now. I want to weave yoga and yoga therapy into my Something Positive for Positive People work and on the social media page of Courtney Bra talking more about this emotional wellness yoga in general but really applying it to the yoga therapy because I do want people to like benefit like people be lost and people don't know where to go people don't know what to do and so many therapists that I've talked to and wanted to work with don't want to be known as the yoga therapist or I'm sorry the herpes therapist. I want to be known as a yoga therapist. So, I'm working, y'all. And I apologize. That's what this is. This is an apology for the inconsistency. I have not been consistent. It's been… what, 3 weeks since the last podcast episode. And I did record one on my birthday, which was November 10th, coming up on what would have been or what was the 23rd anniversary of my grandmother's death.
23 Years of Unprocessed Grief
00:21:09 Courtney Brame: So, my grandmother um she passed away when I was 12 going into 13 and her funeral was on my 13th birthday in 2020 in 2001. And that was f****** hard. The last 23 years of me grieving and I've learned from talking to my therapist, hey, maybe you should do these things. and also in combination with being in a yoga teacher training especially around that time acknowledging that the emotions were really big for me around then. So it was very like I'm not going to do this again. So I done stopped and re-recorded this s*** like several times now. And I think that is probably more important that I leave in these moments where I think about my relationship to my grandmother and I do get emotional. Um my grandmother is the person who fought for my mom to have me. Everybody around my mom wanted her to get an abortion and my grandmother, you know, gave my mom space to really think that through. And she was the only person to my understanding of what happened who fought for me.
00:22:30 Courtney Brame: So here we are 23 years after her funeral on my birthday and every year I have these emotional responses. I have like this um I get weird. is the best way to describe it. But as I learned more about grief, I realized that that's what I've been doing. Like I've not been grieving, but I've been grieving over the last 23 years. And I remember when I looked in the casket, so they didn't want me to see her in the hospital. And so I never went to the hospital. I just knew my grandma was here. And then all of a sudden, she wasn't. And the next time I saw her was in a casket. And that did not look like my f****** grandma. And I remember I laughed. I was like, "That ain't my f****** grandma." Like, "Y'all joking." And that's what, denial, the first stage of grief. But that really didn't look like her.
00:23:22 Courtney Brame: And for the next, let's say, 20 years, I would just get weird around my birthday. And I didn't know what that weirdness was. And it took for me to begin, as I started doing this podcast. I think uh I don't know if it shows up around my birthday in episodes, but I would I would just be weird. Like things would just be weird. That's the best way I can describe it. Up until like 2020, 2021 when I got into yoga teacher training and seeing a therapist that there became yoga teacher training offered the opportunity for emotions to have space and come up and then therapy gave me a language around like what that was and then some. So in my teacher training, the space was made for the feelings and I started to be able to have that practice of talking about those feelings with my therapist at the time. So for the last maybe four years, I've been able to bring conscious awareness into that time.
00:24:37 Courtney Brame: And it's usually around October, October, November through my birthday. And it's like the day after my birthday or the day of like I'm good. And I have a lot of just really cryptic memories of that day when I was 13 years old, for example. Everybody's still like singing happy birthday to me as if it, you know, it was an afterthought. I didn't expect anybody f****** sing happy birthday to me. My grandma just we just were at her funeral and here we are like y'all bringing out a cake and everybody's like sad and trying to sing and do something that's supposed to be cheery. So yeah, I have very conflicted emotions around my birthday between the sadness, between the loss, between the death, between those things and the fact that I made it another year and I should be celebrating my life. But I also understand the undercurrent of that. The undercurrent of that being that this person fought for me and this was the first woman to fight for me.
00:25:32 Courtney Brame: It wasn't my mom, you know, like that's a very hard realization to have is that, you know, the the person who brought you into this world. You know, everybody around her wanted her to not bring you into this world except for this woman who is no longer here. And I wish that I was able to have a conversation with my grandmother and get closure and clarity on why my grandma was crazy, y'all. My grandma was bipolar and I believe she was also schizophrenic or maybe she was schizophrenic and not bipolar. I forget what it was. But I talked to my mom yesterday and she said that my grandmother had uh passed away from complications with COPD. And I forget what that is, but I believe that's something with um your heart. My grandma smoked cigarettes out the ass, so I ain't really surprised. But this woman who didn't know me, like I'm so like I'm sad that she can't be here and see what her hope brought into fruition.
00:26:45 Courtney Brame: She didn't f****** know me. She had no way of knowing what I was going to be doing with my life, who I was going to become. And I think for the last several years, I have just been stuck, man. I've been stuck. And the last two weeks, like we talk about this this politics s***, like Donald Trump is now going to be the president, you know, whatever, whatever. But the hot topic around that was abortion rights. Can you imagine as a n**** that wasn't aborted, the the triggering, the constant like messaging shoved in my face is like I should be able to get an abortion whenever the f*** I want to. Nobody should ask questions. And how conflicting that is, especially as someone who is in the sex education space where this is something that's threatening. And I'll be clear like I do believe that it should be the person's choice if someone is pregnant. And we also like there's so many conflicts of things between consent and when the parent has to have consent for the child and then when the person has consent like age is a factor.
The Complexity of Men's Roles in the Abortion Conversation
00:28:04 Courtney Brame: All these factors are there. My mama was pregnant with me at 17 years old and made it to 18 and then had me. And so as a first off, as a man to constantly be flooded with, you know, the abortion stuff, I I I don't really get much say in that. And especially as a man who's been with someone who had an abortion, like there's no space for conversation about things like that. Like how does the man who is not supposed to have a say in this supposed to navigate the complex emotions of well maybe if I tried harder? Like I I I think about this s*** regularly. I would have to teach my first kid how to drive right now. And I love the life that I have, but I'm also the kind of person who whatever the kind of life I would have needed to have, I would have had. And I think that I'm brushed up against that challenge, too, of Yeah.
00:29:17 Courtney Brame: It wasn't me getting the abortion. She did what she thought was best for her. But also it's like did I try hard enough? Like I wanted to be there with her when she went to go through the abortion. I know how Planned Parenthood be when m************ be outside shouting at you, shaming you and everything. I wanted to be there with her and she didn't want me there. And I can't help but think that she didn't want me there simply because she wouldn't have wanted to do it if I was there. Like she would have wanted to go through it. And this is someone who has said, "I don't want to have kids, but I could see myself having kids with you." And damn, dude. Like I guess this needed to come out. Like I didn't want to talk about this s***. especially in this much detail just because it doesn't it doesn't feel like the place to do it.
00:30:12 Courtney Brame: No, it's not safe for me as a man to talk about my experience with abortion, but it's my f****** experience, man. And it it it's very um it's it's disrespectful to me at least to have these two powers that be of the right and the left who have these very opposite views overtly about abortion. And I think that most people, let's say 90% of people are reasonable in being able to hear, okay, past this point of pregnancy, you can't get an abortion. Up to this point and under these circumstances, you can get an abortion. That is the most sensible thing. But looking at what yoga has to say about government, uh there's not a lot of sensibility in politics, in government. There's just not a lot of intentionality and consciousness. They make these general ass rules that apply to the people in their spheres of life and experience that people who are way the f*** outside that and outliers have to adhere to creating these cycles of trauma for people who come after them or who are around them.
00:31:28 Courtney Brame: So, it's it's very frustrating that there's not more reasonability in it because on one side it's yeah, I should be able whenever the f*** I want. On the other side, it's like that's life from the time that sperm exits the meatal opening and enters into the vaginal wall. That's life. Get the f*** out of here. Like, let's be real and let's be reasonable, right? Like if I were at the point of conception, if I'm that sperm swimming to the egg, let's be honest, n***** have billions of abortions a year, if we're going by this logic, because the sperm cells are life force, right? So, that's an argument in itself. How many unborn babies we got in socks, on backs, in belly buttons, in mouths, in asses, uh in hands, on keyboards, right? That's not what we're talking about. So it really… it pains me that the conversation is not just between people who are reasonable. There's this side, that side, and then those of us who are reasonable as someone who wasn't aborted being someone who is not I'm not f****** taking a side and saying proabortion, pro no, that's not what I'm saying.
00:32:51 Courtney Brame: circumstantially this needs to happen that needs to happen and we need to have like reasonable you know parameters for that because right now there are none and had one side or the other had it their had the other side the side that I'm supposed to be on had their way I wouldn't f****** be here and it is really hard for me to fathom how people who weren't aborted don't have more like reasonable views around abortion and the way that people talk about it because it's very f****** disrespectful to people who can't have kids want to have kids for people who have the gift of life and fertility to be like I like I look at f****** hip-hop music. I pop a plan B. f*** that baby. f*** that kid. I let him like it. It sends this message to the opposition and the general population that people just want abortion access because they want abortion access. And that frustrates me because like there's a way to go about doing things.
00:34:03 Courtney Brame: Like you can get that. You can do whatever the f*** you want behind closed doors. If that's how you choose to live your life, cool. But we can't expect laws to be made and to be taken seriously when y'all looking at it like a joke. And we can't force people to do s*** they don't want to do. If my mom didn't want me here, I don't know that I would want to be here under the protection and and pro proclivity. I don't even know if that's the word of a parent who doesn't want me here. So, situationally, right, that's abortion. And I I guess maybe I just needed to f****** say that. But I'm also not supposed to know what the backstory is to me getting here. And I recognize like how knowing that has really f***** me up. I have been looking for the love, the unconditional love of my grandmother who has been diagnosed mentally ill.
Honoring Grandmother's Sacrifice and Recognizing Personal Demons
00:35:14 Courtney Brame: Delusional. Delusional as f***, y'all. Like my grandma saw demons. I asked my dad one day. I said, "Dad, am I going? Is that genetic? Like am I going to look up and and be seeing demons and s*** one day?" And you know, now understanding that I do see demons. I see people's demons. f***... that just gave me chills. Okay, never said that out loud before. But I, people reveal their demons to me. I see the ugliest sides of people and people trust me with that and I have a responsibility to it. And you know this genetic thing that I was scared of making me crazy. It has made me f****** crazy. I obsessively do the work that I do. I don't really take time for myself. I really don't value money in the sense of how I should value money according to what the media says.
00:36:11 Courtney Brame: And instead I choose to invest my time, money, attention, energy into this work that I do even at the expense of some arguments within my relationship because this feels like what I'm supposed to be doing. And it it's gotten me in trouble not just leaning into and accepting that because I've been looking for this love that my grandmother gave to me unconditionally before I love in the wrong people in the wrong spaces where it's not reciprocated in relationships like arguably I was not monogamous because of my grandma issue not my mama issue because of my grandma issue. Grandma's issue being I can't show her. I can't thank her. And that f****** kills me. I cannot thank my grandmother for fighting for me. A lot of us have our moms who, you know, went through hell and back to bring us into this world, who were in pain, who almost died on the hospital table, whatever, and never tell them thank you. Here I have this woman who protected my mother from her parents who fought.
00:37:23 Courtney Brame: I don't, I don't know what that fight looks like. I just hear the stories. And I can't tell her thank you. I can't show her what her effort did. And I think that maybe this is why I have an issue myself with the way I support people. I talk to them. I give them, you know, this support that they need. And then I don't hear from people. I don't know if they're okay. And like I had to like come to terms with that one hard because I care. I give a f*** because someone gave a f*** about me that I didn't know a stranger. That's why it's so easy for me to give a f*** about strangers and just the lens of being able to view, be with, experience my emotions has given me the tools and resources that I need in order to be with my emotions. I've been doing this s***.
00:38:22 Courtney Brame: And in yoga, like the throat, the throat chakra, any issues there typically revolve around communication and needing to say a thing that needs to be said, but perhaps fear keeps you from doing that. And this is a very scary thing because I don't know who's going to hear this. I don't know who's going to hear this and be like, "Oh my god, Courtney's pro-life. He's conservative." Like, no, that's not what I'm saying. And you can also, it's so easy to just mix s*** up or only share a clip of something and then people take that narrative and run with it. That's not what I'm saying at all. I am saying I wasn't aborted. The person who is responsible for that, I can't thank them. And I'm f****** grieving. And how the election impacted me probably a lot more than it will ever impact some of the people who are yelling about needing to be able to get an abortion because these are people who may absolutely never need to get an abortion.
00:39:17 Courtney Brame: Yes, there are people, women who have gotten abortions. There are women who will need abortions. There are probably some women who are in the process of getting one even as I'm recording this podcast. There are women who want to have kids and are excited about this but have to get an abortion due to ectopic pregnancy or due to miscarriage. Uh there are so many perspectives on this that exist beyond what I'm able to speak to in the short time that I am going to be speaking to it here. And I just got to name that man. There's no space for men to share their experiences with something like this. And it is also a men's issue. Like I I feel some guilt because people like come to me and talk about this s*** and I'm like supposed to on the surface like be yeah f*** all the opposition to what your beliefs are. And I feel like I'm hiding something by not being true to the fact that I wasn't aborted and I know the backstory of what went into that.
00:40:26 Courtney Brame: Like I'm f****** grateful. I wish that I could tell my grandma thank you because I've lived my f****** life probably since I was 13 looking for a way to thank my grandmother and people pleasing and being too nice and overgiving and undersharing for the sake of not overburdening people and feeling like I need to prove to myself to the world that I belong here and the reality is I will never be able to prove that to the one f****** person that I want to know that I can't say across from my grandmother and say, "Grandma, thank you for fighting for me. I love you. Look at what you did. Look, you did this." I talk that s*** about life being not about what happens to you, but what happens through you. And that s*** sound good, but on in practicality, like that s*** is so difficult to live because I can't reciprocate that from my grandmother. What happened through her was my father who came with my mom.
00:41:29 Courtney Brame: I'm trying to say this in a nice way. Who had sex with my mom around Valentine's Day in 1988 and got her pregnant and he didn't make sacrifices. He didn't go to college for track. My mom didn't get to live out her youth because she became a mom. She had to start working. And I know these things, but it's my grandma. I can thank them. I tell them thank you. I acknowledge their sacrifices for me to be here. But I cannot say grandma, I know what happened. Thank you. Why did you do that? And maybe I won't like the answer. I watched that movie Prometheus where they were hunting down like their creators and they finally found their creators and they didn't have answers for them. They were just like, "Oh, we were trying to kill y'all. Like, we wanted y'all to come here so we knew where y'all were at so we could find y'all and destroy y'all asses.
00:42:27 Courtney Brame: That's some f***** up s*** to think about." So, from that perspective, it's like, "Ooh, okay. Well, maybe my grandma doesn't know. Maybe she saw demons and you know what I'm saying? I don't know. I don't f****** know." And it kills me, y'all. It kills me and it shows in my behavior as you know being non- monogamous and having had the opportunities to go out and openly explore finding someone who was going to give me that same unconditional love that I would have received from my grandma. That's what that might be, what I was doing and through sex because of how I saw my mom engage with men. She prioritized her sexual partners seemingly over nonsexual friendships and partnerships. So that was just what I learned. And again, like self-reflection, the yoga therapy, it wasn't therapy where we talked about this or got to this point. It was through yoga training and my moving and breathing and meditating that my body was able to bring this s*** to the surface.
00:43:31 Courtney Brame: And for me to be like, "Huh, I'm aware of this. What is this? What were my thoughts with that? Oh s*** … I have thoughts about that. To see that the election was f****** triggering for me because the main topic was abortion, which I mean there are several topics that need to be brought to the surface, but I don't know that especially being around my birthday, like it wasn't the best time for me to engage. So yes, I was triggered. And I want to shout out, thank you to everybody who did reach out to me, you know, who maybe they didn't think that it was triggering for the reason that it was triggering by any means. Uh, like Trump won and that is alarming to a lot of people. What was more triggering to me and alarming is the conflicting emotions that I have of grieving my grandmother who fought for me to not get aborted in the midst of the conversation of hey we need to be able to get abortions whenever we want to.
The Physics of the Grieving Brain
00:44:31 Courtney Brame: That's conflicting. And on top of that grieving process, man, like it is very difficult to explain grief. I'm even I've gone through a module in my yoga therapy training about it and I understand it you know a little bit better but I do need more time and experience with it and I'm currently reading the grieving brain to understand you know what does happen on a neurological level when we're grieving and the lady said I forget the author but she says that in grief like our brain has adjusted to a reality and it's like the thing that is fixed and should be there is no longer there and your brain has to now learn this new reality. So like our body is responding everything is responding as if this thing is still there but the brain is having to compute because on a sensory level that thing is not there. Uh she used the example of ordering food at a restaurant and then the waitress comes back and she only brings back an empty plate.
00:45:32 Courtney Brame: You're like what the f*** is this? Like I ordered something. I had expectations. I was supposed to eat. like you've got this whole future that now has to be grieved because you were going to eat that steak. You were going to put that steak sauce on there. You were going to eat the potato uh and get a bite of the spinach and then put a bite of the steak on there and then eat it. You were going to have a conversation and it was just disrupted. That event of not having food on a plate after you ordered food disrupted everything. So now having the understanding of the one person who wanted me here more than anybody else did at that time who was so invested I I don't even I don't know I don't know what all went into that. I just have the objective stories from my mom's perspective, my dad's perspective, my grandparents perspective. That's it. That's all I got.
00:46:24 Courtney Brame: And part of the grief is like me trying to formulate that story. Me asking my mom, "What happened around that time? What happened to my grandmother?" Me asking my dad like, "Hey, do you feel like this? Like, do you have strong feelings?" Talking to my brothers, like, man, what did y'all feel when that happened? I'm trying to piece puzzle pieces together. And that's part of what this grief is. And on top of that, y'all, my girlfriend's grandmother's in the hospital and they're saying she might not make it. And my girlfriend's sister's birthday is coming up. And she was concerned about them not having the funeral on her birthday, 23 f****** years later, right? And I'm met with this in my face. Election, abortion, now the grieving grandma. This is the hardest birthday time frame that I have ever had. And I'm like, you know, I'm I'm recognizing too that I am healing because I'm able to be there with them and, you know, support them, help out uh with the dog, uh feeding the animals, um while they go to the hospital, taking care of my girlfriend, like making sure that, you know, she has food, trying to keep the house clean, not stressing her out, and doing the kinds of things that you just do when you're in a relationship.
00:47:40 Courtney Brame: And her sister asked me, she was like, you know, have you ever had something like this? And I just f****** I didn't cry. I kept it together. I was like, this doesn't feel like the right way to talk about this, but yeah, my grandma's funeral was on my 13th birthday. She's like, oh my god. And I remember that every year. I think about it every year. And the way that I was able to talk about it this time was significantly different. Some healing happened. And I'm so grateful for the spaces that have been held for me. I'm thankful to my girlfriend because she gave me the most memorable birthday gift, y'all. My grandmother bought me Pokemon cards. I was in my single digits of age cuz I was in elementary school cuz I remember I traded the card. Uh I had a holographic Charizard. This was the card to get right.
00:48:40 Courtney Brame: I got it from Target and I traded it. I traded it for the three legendary birds. Zabdos, Articuno, Moltres, and I don't even know what happened to those cards, but this was like one of my memories of my grandmother was her getting me that Charizard. So after my grief module in training, I told my girlfriend, "Hey, look, I think I'm going to need to cry." Like, I held it all weekend talking about grief and understanding it. And I miss my grandmother. Like, I miss her and the experiences that we didn't get to have together, especially now knowing how influential she was to me being here. And I told her about the Charizard and I cried. I cried in her lap. I was like, "I miss my grandmother." And I don't cry, especially in front of people. And I did. I I let that s*** out. And that was over the summer.
00:49:38 Courtney Brame: Fast forward to now. I woke up on my birthday morning. She has a card for me. I open the envelope and I open the card and a f****** The Pokemon card slips out and I just start crying. I started… I gave her a hug and it was a holographic Charizard. I don't want to know what she had to do to get that f****** card. I do not want to know. And I told her this, too. I was like, I don't want to know what you had to do to get this, but this is literally the best gift because I'm feeling like I'm forgetting her. I'm feeling like I'm forgetting my grandmother. And while I've only had 13 years with her, like I have 36 years of life now because of her, because of her values, her psychological state, her being, who she is. This I was allowed to happen through her so that this can happen through me. And you know, I'm glad I'm recording this on audio cuz I'm making faces for sure.
00:50:48 Courtney Brame: And when you hear these pauses, I kind of stare off a little bit. And I just remember my grandma's face when she was alive. My grandma's pretty tall. She's like 5'11, you know? I'd be a little bit taller than her now. Uh people think I'm 6'2 for whatever f****** reason, but I'm absolutely 6 foot even. And I just wish that this adult me could just show her like, "Grandma, look at this. Look at this podcast. Look at this nonprofit. I got two nonprofits and I talked to 97 people this year." And for 30 minutes or 45 minutes to an hour and I helped them. I helped them with their herpes stigma diagnosis and their mental health. She would be so f****** proud of me. And I do it because I want to. I'm making a living out of doing a thing that I'm supposed to do.
The Nuance of Abortion and Honesty in Advocacy
00:51:54 Courtney Brame: And that's something that I'm really proud of. I feel like I need to make like some clarifying statements real quick cuz I I one of my biggest fears y'all is getting cancelled over some s*** that I didn't say. So, just a recap, men do need to be able to talk about their experiences around abortion. Women wouldn't need to get abortions if it wasn't for men. I'll just say that there. Like, if men were to only have sex with women who wanted children that they also wanted children with when they wanted children, and this is all consented to, we wouldn't even be having a conversation about abortion. So, I I see how conservatives see s*** got out of hand. We got to undo all this s*** with extreme measures. I understand. I understand how this system works. And it doesn't make sense. It makes sense because if you follow the money, it makes sense financially, but it does not make sense in terms of what's good overall for the people in general.
00:52:56 Courtney Brame: I was not aborted and I know the backstory. I think a lot of people don't. I just have this is a rarity that I know the backstory of my birth and what abortion had to do with it. Like I you know it's not my story to tell but this I'm sure I know that this wasn't the hardest decision that my mom had to make about having kids or not having kids. I know that. So, I thought that those were things very important to mention, especially as someone who is also speaking to men's emotional health and emotional wellness because this is an abortion is a big part of my emotional health story and experience. And I don't think people make space to really listen to what men have to say. And that's kind of how that's a contributor to why we are where we are with the presidency. men being unheard, women are also unheard. Like, we can't just dive into extremes of s*** all the time because when we do that, we get extreme responses and we don't get reasonable ones.
00:54:05 Courtney Brame: We don't get reasonable circumstances and situations and conversations and like just real s***. And that's what I'm, that's what I stand for. I stand for real s***. My grandma's was responsible for the birth of real s*** coming through into fruition into the world. And I I f****** God, I love my grandma and I'm cherishing my holographic Charizard for the rest of my life. What else did I need to clarify? I feel like there was something else. Yeah, like, please talk to people, like ask questions. Like I said, like I I had an ex who got an abortion and I feel like I got that abortion with her and I feel responsible for the abortion and there's no space or place for men who know like my mom told me a story about uh a guy that she knew that his mom told her told him. He's like, I don't know what it is, but you got a baby out there somewhere.
00:55:12 Courtney Brame: You need to go find it. And this man found my mom, showed up to him, was like, "Is that my kid?" Cuz she thought I was his. She thought or he thought that I was his kid. Uh which I hope not. But I'm my dad's kid cuz I'm my grandmother's grandson. But she told me this story about, you know, he was like, "My mama told me like I got a kid out here somewhere and I am that him?" I'm like, it's about the age and about the time where we were messing around with. She's like, "No, this ain't your kid." Come to find out, like, my mom got an abortion. Like, and it might have been with that guy's kid. So, I know way too much more than I should. And I think that this might be like the spiritual s***. My grandmother saw demons. I see demons or the ugliest aspects of people and hold space for that in their stories in whatever it is that they share.
00:56:18 Courtney Brame: And maybe a lot of men, you know, are afraid of talking about this kind of s***, but because of the criticism, like I guess what I've learned from my herpes diagnosis is people don't make fun of me. People don't criticize me for my herpes diagnosis because it is my intention, right? Regardless of the impact, like my intention is people with herpes want to kill themselves. So like, yeah, I'm open about my experience so people don't want to f****** kill themselves. So perhaps me being open about my experience as a man, I guess, navigating these dialogues around abortion won't invite the criticism that I expect. Perhaps it's something that can be a conversation even with someone who is, you know, open about and talking about abortion because maybe women feel like they need to be as extreme as they are because men don't talk about it. So, if I'm going to do this s*** where I'm leading these conversations and being vulnerable, not just in the sex sense anymore, but also in the the yoga sense, in the emotional wellness sense, the herpes stigma, like the mental health, the men, like we we got to there's a lot to be done and it's hard for me to speak to because I'm speaking to it for the first time in a lot of cases.
00:57:41 Courtney Brame: like I don't feel safe in, you know, like I I don't feel like I can say the things that need to be said. I don't feel like I can speak my truth when it brushes up against topics or when it brushes up against these kinds of topics. And see, even that, like that's avoidant as f*** for me to say these kinds of topics and not just call it what it is, abortion rights or healthcare for women. Like all this s*** gets lumped into things and then we miss like the oneoffs. We miss the important things. We miss the connections that absolutely should be made. And I think that this is why my throat's been sore lately is because this is something that needs to be said that needs to be talked about. And perhaps this perspective will invite other men who have feelings to explore what those feelings are so that they can be more supportive partners to them in their relationship so they can be more empathetic to the world and the nature of abortion and abortion access.
Embracing True Vulnerability and Closing
00:58:50 Courtney Brame: So yeah, I this turned into so much s*** that it wasn't supposed to turn into. You see how grief This is a great example of grief, y'all. I didn't expect that and I ran with it. I've been trying to record this podcast for five, four or five times now. I stopped it, hit re-record because I was like, "f*** it. Don't nobody need to hear me talk about that." That's not what people come here for. People come here for herpes support, but I think that maybe people actually do come here for the vulnerability and the realness and the real conversations. And I want to shout out I'm going just say you know who I'm talking about, my man. We message on WhatsApp and I appreciate the real conversations that you offer to me. Um, I appreciate that you encourage me to keep hosting this podcast cuz it's been a dozen times where I've been like, "Man, ain't nobody listening to this s***, man. f*** this s***." How often can I talk about herpes?
00:59:47 Courtney Brame: And here we have grief. Like this isn't a podcast episode about herpes. It isn't a podcast episode about abortion. This is a podcast episode about grief and the avenues at which that s*** plays out. Like you can heal and you can do harm and you can grieve all at the same time. And my whole thing is harm reduction. And part of one is it aa is non- stealing. A himsa I think is no harm, nonviolence. And I guess like I'm harming myself. If we look at the yamas and niyamas, I forget which one it is, but like there's how you engage with the world and your own self engagement uh and beliefs. And one of those concepts is do no harm. It's non-harming. So I aim to minimize harm as best I can both to the world and myself. And I think that my responsibility in that is to be vulnerable. And this is what vulnerability is.
01:00:45 Courtney Brame: Vulnerability is. My therapist was right. f****** Derek. He was like, "You're not really vulnerable." Like, it's easy for me to talk about herpes at this point, especially when other people are doing the talking and I'm just facilitating the conversation. What's actually vulnerable is this s***. Saying the things that might get you canceled, that might impact your income, that might make you hated, that might get you broken up with. like these are what I'm scared of. So, this is why I've been afraid of my grief. This is why I've been grieving unconsciously rather than consciously. And now here we are an hour into a podcast episode that was just supposed to be me saying, "Hey y'all, I'm offering yoga therapy." Now, if y'all interested, go to the website spf.org/yoga-apy. And I'm a yoga therapist in training to offer these things. And I got stuff that's going to be coming up to help support y'all.
01:01:39 Courtney Brame: And I hope that this vulnerability with my experience of grief invites you to explore your own experiences with grief as well. Y'all, I got a call to take actually like right now. So, I'm going to save this, hit send, and I appreciate if you listen to this point. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And I would like for you to just let me know that you listened. Let me know that you heard this. Let me know how it was received. If you can give me any feedback, just let me know, y'all. Appreciate y'all. Thanks for being here and I dedicate this podcast episode to my grandmother, Patricia Anne Johnson. Thank you for Thank you for helping me get here and for everything that's happening through you, through me, through y'all, right? We all connected and I hope that we are able to just acknowledge that and stay that way, y'all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Transcription ended after 01:02:59
