SPFPP 365: Step Back for a Comeback
This episode is different from the usual SPFPP podcast. It’s a personal reflection on grief, burnout, and the hard but necessary work of setting boundaries. I open up about feeling emotionally drained, realizing how much I’ve neglected my own needs, and making the decision to step back and reassess my priorities.
I talk about the disappointment of canceling the SPFPP expo, the challenges of balancing personal healing with nonprofit work, and the patterns I’ve recognized in my life. I also share insights from my Yoga Therapy training that have helped me understand what I’m going through, and why changing my environment is crucial for my healing.
Topics Covered:
The impact of grief and why I’m prioritizing healing.
Lessons learned from burnout and overextending myself.
The importance of knowing your needs to set boundaries.
How I plan to realign SPFPP’s mission and my personal goals.
Why I canceled an event and what that decision taught me.
The role of environment in personal growth and well-being.
This episode is a reminder that healing isn’t linear, and sometimes the best thing we can do is pause, reflect, and trust the process.
Links & Resources:
Take the SPFPP Annual Herpes Survey – spfpp.org/herpes-survey
Join us for the NYC Social Event – March 6, 2025, at The House in Brooklyn.
Episode 365 Transcript
Navigating Grief and Canceling Events
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. Uh I'm your host, Courtney Brain. I think I just said that. Uh I am in a state of grief. Probably have been for a while. That's why you haven't heard many podcast episodes. And I've been doing that thing that you shouldn't do, uh, but you know, unfortunately, you have to do, which is just like powering through and doing the things that need to be done because I mean, stuff's got to get done. And so, um, I don't necessarily want to speak into specifics about what the grief is. Um, if you follow me closely or if you communicate with me, you know what that is. But, uh, I just had to do some very vulnerable things. Um, I had a podcast guest that I was supposed to have on. I'm in the same room that the Zoom room that uh, we were going to be recording in.
00:02:17 Courtney Brame: And I acknowledged that I'm not able to be as present as I normally am, but this conversation is important. And um yeah, she did her job. She did her job. She's a um I don't… I don't… damn I can't even, you know, recall what her title is, but she talks about abuse, domestic violence, and I was going to interview her for the podcast because she was at uh Baylor College of Medicine, HIV training. Um it was a training virtual that I got brought in to be a part of alongside one of my board members in order to speak on uh SEI communication sexual health um and talking among patients or talking from patients to provide or providers to patients. See, see, I'm scatterbrain. And I'm very grateful to my yoga therapy program because I have resources that help me understand that. Whereas, if I didn't understand what it is that I'm experiencing and going through, who knows how that would show up.
00:03:24 Courtney Brame: I'll probably be posting crazy stuff on social media and all types of unnecessary things that are less than healthy coping mechanisms. So, um I am going to be taking whatever time it is that I need away from the things that aren't a priority right now. Priority number one is healing the thing that I think is the source of the grief. Priority number two is going to be recalibrating my focus uh and aligning realigning and defining what is happening with Something Positive for Positive People. like not that too much is going to change, but to give you perspective, um this upcoming Saturday, uh March 8th, I was supposed to have an expo, another Something Positive for Positive People expo in North New Jersey. Um I got a venue, a space, I had a uh guest presenter who um is local to New Jersey as well. and we were planning on this for it's been a little bit over a month and I've posted about it. I've told people and uh they have flyers at the organization and we had one person sign up for a free ticket.
Recalibrating Focus and Returning to Baseline
00:04:54 Courtney Brame: So I went on ahead and just canceled the event. Um and yeah, now I really don't need to be back here in New York for a bit. So I'm going to take some time. I'm going to go and just reset myself at home. I'm going to be in St. Louis. Um, I don't have an end day. Uh, I didn't have much on the schedule for my part-time job teaching medical students to give genital exams. So, I'm going to just take some time. I'm going home. I'm going to see family and friends again. I was really recharging. And now, uh, I really need spend some alone time. Uh, and there's going to be a lot of that. Um, I've already worked out what that's going to look like and being able to do what I need to do in order to shift what my priority is. I think that for a while now, I've taken my focus, attentiveness, and prioritization away from what my priority should have been, and it shows.
00:06:00 Courtney Brame: Um, and energetically, I'm a real big energy person. And for somebody who runs an organization called Something Positive for Positive People, like my positivity has been like it's been minimized. Speak of stigma minimization. And I've been running on reserves for a while, probably a few months, and doing just enough. I've been doing just enough to get by and do the bare minimum. I've been showing up for my yoga therapy clients. I've been missing class sessions. I've been late to calls and missing calls and that is not like me at all. So yeah, I'm uh dealing with the thing that I need to deal with in the way that I uh it's a new way. I think that this is a very new way for me to deal with grief now having had access to um Antonio I cannot say his last name. sauces sus. Um, but he does yoga for grief relief. Um, and I've been considering looking at one of his retreats.
00:07:12 Courtney Brame: I got invited for a scholarship, too. But I just couldn't make it because I had my expo, I think, or the… it was the Black Men's Emotional Wellness Symposium, one of those. And maybe if I had gone, like I would have recognized. I've been grieving for a long time. And what Kendrick Lamar say, “I grieve different”. So, I'mma listen to my little sad playlist. Uh, I'mma feel my feelings and um push through for tomorrow. I don't like that phrase, push through. I am going to be as present as I can be for the uh social that's tomorrow on Thursday in Brooklyn at the house. Uh me and Trisha aka safe s*** are going to host a social event for people with herpes. and we're just going to get together, mingle, talk, and just maybe have some music, dancing. If anybody wants to drink, they can. This is not a good time for me to drink.
00:08:04 Courtney Brame: I ain't doing that till I get around uh safer people and I know where I'm at. So, that's what I'mma do. I'mma wait till I get home. I'm have me a day off of my little my vices and then I got to get to it. Uh if that's like… I'm recognizing that there's various kinds of coping mechanisms for healing and getting through hard things and I'm human just like I think a lot of people are. You know, you may not recognize the thing in the moment, but hindsight 2020 is miraculous. It's very if we had that foresight paired with our hindsight, I think we get insight. Oh, that's profound. That's some s*** people be like for. Um, but no, all seriousness, um, yeah, I I've I've not been doing what I need to be doing. Uh, I've shifted what I've given to Something Positive for Positive People over the last eight years. It's been eight years now. Um, I was born somewhere else and that's not what I should have been doing.
The Difficulty of Naming Needs and Boundaries
00:09:29 Courtney Brame: Um, I recognized that it's important for me to be able to name my needs after becoming a person who has met my own needs or found people to support me in meeting whatever those needs are. I think that for a really long time I've been unable to name them or unwilling to name these needs and it's like they're either met or they're not and regardless it's me who's responsible for meeting them. So in not being able to identify and name what my needs are, what I've learned is that it is difficult to create boundaries around those needs. And not only am I creating the boundaries, but also being able to communicate the boundaries and then also be able to use those boundaries as a way of setting expectations. And I recognize that how we do one thing is how we do everything. And that's been the same thing here in regards to Something Positive for Positive People as well as a thing that I'm grieving. And in that what I see is um I haven't had to I really haven't had to state my needs.
00:10:46 Courtney Brame: Um and I think that I've believed that I don't need boundaries for a really long time. I've just believed that. And I think that I've drawn in and done a really good job of bringing in the kind of people who belong here, who belong in my space, who when I'm aligned with what I'm supposed to be doing, the opportunities, the relationships, the connections, everything has sort of just appeared in my orbit. And then I stopped doing that and all of a sudden my beliefs need to change. It's not even all of a sudden, but over time, like I'm trying to do things differently under the expectation that this is supposed to be better for me. And I had a recent experience of finding my notebooks from when I went home most recently. And I was reading through them. And as I read through them, I was able to see a lot of the work that I've done on myself to become the person that I am.
00:11:44 Courtney Brame: and not perfect. There wasn't no such thing as perfect. Far from it. And in the process of acknowledging, accepting, embracing my imperfections and learning along the way, you know, there's been I'm sure there's been more damage done than what I can verbalize and name or what's in my range of perspective. Um, but there's also been a lot of healing and I think that I've been hard on myself and I've been talking to family and friends about what's going on. And it's always a wonderful experience to have different perspectives because those different perspectives are… I ain't going to say like… make me feel better, but do make me feel like there are just things that I'm unable to communicate for whatever reasons, right? And regardless of word choice or like how things are said, I think that the thing that I run into consistently is that it is more important that a thing be done than a thing be done well. And along the way like we kind of learn and I've learned that from this simulation most recently.
00:13:09 Courtney Brame: Um I got feedback a lot of the feedback was we need to have more lectures. They would like some examples of using stigma-free language for the clinicians that are part of the simulation and that they really really enjoyed the role play. But then I got a phone call uh regarding how they wish that people wish that expectations were a lot more clear. And I think that that's something that I run into a lot even in my personal life. Um because I've done this thing where I'm like, "Oh, okay." Like that's a thing that needs to happen. Let's do that. And then along the way, we figure it out. Like that's how my life has worked out well for me. I've learned a lot. There's been successes. There's been things that are important to me that have been accomplished along the way because there's been so many times in the past where I've planned and then things just don't go my way and then we got to plan again for things accommodating.
Action, Inaction, and Recurring Patterns
00:14:10 Courtney Brame: But it's so much more efficient and effective for me that we just take action. You know, one of the codes I live by is I never want to look back on a thing and say, "Why didn't I like why didn't I take action? Why didn't I do a thing? Why didn't I speak up? Why didn't I say something?" I would rather look back on my life if there are any regrets and be able to say, "Damn, why did I do it this way?" I never want to look back and have regret about taking inaction. I would rather have taken wrong action. And there's a lot of times in my life where I think about having taken no action versus wrong action. And even wrong action has probably had worse consequences than taking no action. But it very much feels like I'm living with integrity in order to be able to say that, right? Like why? I remember more times I didn't do a thing than I've done a thing wrong.
00:15:14 Courtney Brame: But I've learned from said wrong thing and been able to take the lesson, embody it, incorporate it in how I do things moving forward. Like I always say, I don't make the same mistake twice. And yeah, I feel like I do though. um looking at my journals and reflecting on a lot of what I'm reading and seeing, I'm finding myself in a pattern that I've been in a few times before. And one of my yoga therapy clients, shout out to Ally, appreciate you. Uh she said this to me and it stuck. And she said, "We don't just sort of beat the game of the lesson, right? Like we have a lesson, it shows itself again and again and again and we expect it to just stop. It's like, all right, I've seen this before." Like, "I beat the game. Get it out of my face." But what it is is that from the previous time, we should have learned something to apply to the next time that we're met with that pattern.
00:16:10 Courtney Brame: So, we get better at handling the pattern as it comes up. And I think that my history with patterns is an attempt to avoid dealing with things that I've had to deal with in the past by putting myself in different environments and situations and telling myself like, "Oh, okay. Well, if this is the setting and environment, then the assumptions are blank. And that's kind of the same thing with my career field. It is the same thing with my career field. It is the same thing in my personal life that there are and have been a lot of just assumptions about things. Um, and that's on my part. Like I assume that okay well if this thing has branches and leaves on it then it's a tree because there's other trees around it. But that may not be the case. You know just because it looks like a tree doesn't make it a tree. This has happened a lot of times for many of the opportunities that I've had.
00:17:16 Courtney Brame: And you know um yeah businesswise, personal wise. Yeah, it's been… it's been really weird for me because on one hand, one thing's going really well or seeming really well and then the other's not. And it's it's regardless of how connected I think everything is. I think I took on an “all or no” approach as if I can only do full throttle 100%. So it was full throttle 100% in my relationship with Something Positive for Positive People and then in my personal life. So it's one or the other. And I think that what boundaries are going to do for me and being able to know my needs and communicate what these boundaries are, set expectations, is it's going to get me out of this all or nothing pattern of I need to pour everything into only this and allow for me to evenly distribute what I have to pour and also be able to find healthy ways of filling my energetic cup because I think that people and things are typically what we pour into energetically.
Shifting Focus to Healing and SPFPP's Future
00:18:43 Courtney Brame: And for me, I've looked to people to fill my cup. Feel my cup. No, fill it. And uh I need to step away and fill my own cup and then enjoy sharing what I filled my cup up with with people. So yeah, it's going to be a process for me. Um I leave from New Jersey on Friday and I go back to St. Louis. I'm going to take my stuff to my grandmother's house and yeah, I'm going to spend a lot of time. I'll have an office space just like a sanctuary for myself. Um, shout out to Carl for always telling me I always got a place there. I always got a place at home. Um, but it's temporary. I don't want to do what I did before where I go home, get caught up, and stay home and look up and five years go past without me having done much of what, you know, aligns for my purpose.
00:19:47 Courtney Brame: And I say that, but I've been able to do a lot for people over those years that I was just at home. Um, starting Something Positive for Positive People. And now like maybe this is part of the hero's journey. And when I say the hero's journey, I mean like bad things happen. A person goes off into the world. My bad thing may be, let's call it my herpes diagnosis. go out into the world and try to conquer something like finding a sense of purpose which was living life. Like it wasn't really any more uh complex than that. It was super simple. And along the way, I got all these old bumps and bruises and s***. And um I've also picked up these skills and these tools. I learned about simulated patients. I learned that they don't talk about sex in sexual health. Uh I learned that there's like no men learning how to talk about sex and like being one of I don't know how many of us there are but as far as talking about sexual health communication, right?
00:20:52 Courtney Brame: It's just me. It's just my lived experiences. And in these lived experiences, I see that there's tools and resources that I wish that I had available regardless of what I've learned on my own, regardless of the trial and error myself and what I've just been able to pick up from workshops and books and podcasts. Like, it's not enough. And I am in a very unique position to be able to recreate and distribute those kinds of things, more of those kinds of things in the settings that matter and give people the tools to be able to talk to men about their sex and sexual health and all this other stuff. Like there's a lot of just things that I've gotten sidetracked from. And even this podcast is probably like a sidetrack thing, but I think I need to get this out. I need to say what I'm saying right now uh for the sake of getting it off my chest. I was listening to a Childish Gambino interview clip and he was talking about working with Erica Badu and he asked her, he was like, you know, how do you do this?
00:22:01 Courtney Brame: Like the pressure of making great music for people like how do you make what they want? And she told him, she said, I I feed them and how they eat it, it's up to them. Like I make what I like to eat. They can eat it with a fork. They can eat it fast. They can eat it while they clean it. Whatever it is like the product that is made is making what I like, what I need and they take it in how they take it in. And that was a really powerful quote for me because I've been also doing that both with people um and in my relationship with Something Positive for Positive People. I've been trying to do all these events and it's hard to get people to show up to the events. But I know damn well that like more of who follows and engages with Something Positive for Positive People it's global. It's not just like oh I have such a large community in this place and you know I feel that way for sure about New York.
00:23:00 Courtney Brame: Like New York is the website numbers are there. Um but it's difficult to get people to show up. I don't really have support from support groups and um the dating site that exists. So, a lot of this is just gorilla warfare. Not warfare. Oh my god. Guerilla marketing tactics. Um, figuring this out on my own. And when you figure things out on your own, like you get good at figuring things out on your own. And it also gets boring. Not boring, um, challenging. Like I want to bring people in. I want to bring somebody in to help and be more involved. And I think that even among that, like I've gotten sidetracked from what's important here, and what's most important here is that I serve the people directly affected by herpes and I advocate in the right spaces. Um, and also I got to take care of my yoga therapy school stuff.
00:23:59 Courtney Brame: Uh, which I've been neglecting. Again, just a grieving brain. I can say that now because of what I learned in yoga therapy school. So when they like “Courtney, where's your homework?” You're like, grieving brain. Y'all taught me that. But no, seriously, it's tough as somebody who I know was 30 whenever the pandemic started. I think a little bit after that, I got into therapy and uh I'm back in therapy. I took a two-year break to do some things on my own. Probably should have been in there the whole time, but money and also like I think it's important to be able to do things on your own, too, right? Like the integration versus implementation thing, right? Like there's a need to learn things, but then we also have to be able to show that we've learned something from them. And that's what I've been doing over the last almost two years, n probably year and a half, more more so.
00:24:54 Courtney Brame: It's been more than a year and a half since I've seen and talked to my therapist prior to getting back into it with him. And yeah, he came at me and was like, "Here's what's going on with you." And he hit me with the perspective of something that was just deep down that I kind of knew and I was in denial of. And part of grieving is denial, uh, bargaining. And there's all these steps of it, but what he touched on made me angry. And this is one of the reasons that I do appreciate healing modalities and and and therapy as well as my own self-reflective work because yeah, I can ask myself the questions. I can find out why I do this thing? Oh, this is connected to this, right? I can do all of that. But for somebody to cuz he is also a sassy gay Black man and he hit me with… he just hit me with the real questions and real statements man like like nobody else can.
00:25:54 Courtney Brame: And so uh I think that between having experienced that anger and burning that up now comes the sadness. I think that I need to feel sad and I'm working with him on boundaries for myself. And I'm I'm telling y'all this, man, because if I don't just get this s*** out right here, right now, it's gonna spill out in podcast episodes in the future. It's going to spill out when y'all engage with me on social media. I already just had a recent like back and forth with somebody where I was trying to be my like peppy self and s***. And I think it was interpreted wrong uh just based on how the text the messages went. And I could be completely wrong because again like a grieving brain like… it's, it's I need to get to baseline. I need to get back to my baseline. I know what I would normally like to do right now. I'm not going to do that thing or those things because they're not healthy behaviors.
Protecting Energy and Avoiding Identity Invalidation
00:26:56 Courtney Brame: So, I'm making the space right now to just feel to to just feel what it is that I need to. Um, yeah. I Yeah. So, um, without I guess talking specifically about it because I don't want to. I don't, I don't want to. Um, and my reasoning for it is that I know the core of what the issue is, what my issues are, and this is what I plan to step away and work on for myself because I'm going to be a better person as a whole for it. And it'll show up in my work when I am able to get past this whole like being needless s*** because it hasn't served me. It served me, but also it hasn't served me in a matter of like most important of what's most important, what's a priority to me. Um because also like if you don't know what your needs are, how can you prioritize them, right? Because then everything's a priority.
00:28:05 Courtney Brame: So nothing's a priority. So, it's very critical for me right now to be able to step back, step away, go into the Fortress of Solitude for a little bit and then lean into the people that have been supportive to me and like confide in them and and have these positively supportive and healing modalities for me rather than coping strategies and mechanisms. All right. So, yeah, there's a lot of things that I want to just pour out and say, but I think that the pressure it's depressurized a little bit, me being able to come here and, you know, say these things. And while it didn't have anything to do with Something Positive for Positive People or herpes at all, like I think that me having to, you know, cancel the interview that I should have been having right now on this recording, this Zoom meeting link and everything, I think that that speaks volumes to it needing to come out uh consciously rather than unconsciously. Um, and I push people away or turn people off from Something Positive.
00:29:20 Courtney Brame: But yeah, this is me being real. Like I don't Like I I even told the lady I was like, "Hey, this is really hard for me to cancel because I'm the kind of person who we set a date, we set a time, like let's show let's do this. We got to do this." And she was like, "No, take care of yourself. Like I'll be here. We can reschedule." And so I just took her up on that. And I actually am kind of glad that I did because what if this s*** came out then? Oh man, I can't imagine she'd just been sitting there like, "You want to talk to me about this?" No. But I appreciate that. Her name's Thesa. So when you see that podcast episode come up, uh we'll probably have some laughs about that. But one thing I can say is that while, you know, I'm sad, like I'm also excited because I know what this means for me.
00:30:14 Courtney Brame: I think that our environment plays a huge role in things. Like I've been in New Jersey and I've been really fighting to, you know, like forcing myself into a bubble, an environment, community that I haven't just naturally been able to fall into. And I think that I've been very I've I've separated and created space for myself from what makes me happy, what play is for me. I've very much consciously disconnected from what's playing for me and immersed myself in the important, the heavy, the the big stuff. and I've not allowed myself permission to play and engage with the small stuff. I've been reading a lot about um sexual energy as well. Um can I pull this up? Probably not. Nope. Damn, I can't. Yeah, I can. I gotta go back pretty far. So, me and ChatGPT have been having a lot of conversations. So, y'all y'all probably heard about this like… the Noof app, don't masturbate, use your sexual energy this way, whatever.
00:31:37 Courtney Brame: And something that I've been grasping with myself lately is sexual energy as a whole… like, not just as sex intercourse but uh as creativity as vital life force right and I try to see like well what is it that I get out of sex right and it's not just sex like work relationships right I think that we have our energy and we pour what we pour into who and what we pour it into. And so for myself for a really long time, I've poured into Something Positive for Positive People what I would have to give into a relationship. And when relationships would come up historically, like I wouldn't prioritize a relationship. And that would be why some of them have not gone anywhere because obviously I've been in relationships but when I look at how I've not, how I've been historically showing up like I've been able to really hit the gas on Something Positive for Positive People and then make space for play. Uh, I'd always have something, someone, somewhere to look forward to and have like immersive weekends or time of engaging in that sexual energy, whether that be in Sex Down South.
00:33:05 Courtney Brame: Sex Down South's a great example. Um, or if it's like meeting up with a partner and just being able to chill and relax and just experience the pleasantness of, you know, good company. And I've, for a really long time just been trying to like force that kind of energy for myself in ways that I haven't before. And I think part of me was just like this is actually what is good for me, right? Like not doing those things is going to be better for me because those things are bad because they're externally driven. But then also within a relationship with myself, my partner or well not myself, my partner or my business, then it's still like seeking that feeling, that sensation externally. And um Teal Swan is somebody I follow on YouTube. I always listen to her YouTube shorts. And one of the things that she said is like she's very counterculture in spirituality, which I really like because of the unconventionality of it. And one of the things that she says is like we need people.
00:34:13 Courtney Brame: Like we don't learn lessons without people. So these external things that we get our needs met from what it is that we need like we shouldn't be demonized for it. And that really gave me a sense of lightness and a sense of relief because I didn't know what I didn't know that I was okay. Like I felt like it was wrong for me to be who I am or for who I've become. Like I think that's the worst s*** in the world is when somebody makes you feel like who you are or is bad especially when you've worked so hard to become who you are. It's not like I just looked up and you know I was this person, right? Like this took a lot of work and a lot of the work that I've done in order to become this. Like this s*** ain't easy. Don't nobody f****** teach you how to do this. Don't nobody… It's resources are out there. It's stuff out there, but then like you read some s***, you find out that so and so is not who they say they are, and that discredits everything that they've done.
00:35:16 Courtney Brame: And now you got to find somebody else, find something else to go into. Man, man, it's been… I just… I don't, I don't like that feeling. I think now I'm uncovering some new stuff here. Um I don't like the feeling of I don't like the feeling of identity invalidation. God damn, that's what it is. So I I talk about how I've learned, you know, what why people have suicide ideation. And it's that I think that it's an invalidation of identity. Not to say that I have suicide ideation, but the feelings that I have are an intense resistance to my environment as it is. Like my environment in a way of like consciously trying to view what I've learned to view as good as bad so that I can do something better or different that's supposed to be healthier or better. And I got to get back into myself because I don't believe that. And there's a direct conflict of behaviors and beliefs within myself.
Learning from Napoleon Hill and Trusting Intuition
00:36:41 Courtney Brame: Um, and the environment that I'm in is like forcing me to recognize and acknowledge that now. And there's a lot of s*** … that's just like happening here in my inner world as a result of my external world. And my external world when I've been alone has been f****** hard. It's been really, really difficult. But I've made it. I made it. And I think that in those moments, like I've, I've worn myself out emotionally because of course the grass always looks greener on the other side. When you’re single, social media tells you how awesome the relationship is. When you're in a relationship, social media tells you what you're missing out on being single. And that's just unfortunately how the algorithm works. It plays on our emotional states and I think people do that s*** too. People are taught by the algorithm like what's good, what's bad, what's cool, what's popular, right? And people's own inner beliefs have their own conflicts and we deal with those sometimes by projecting them.
00:38:01 Courtney Brame: We might project them on our businesses. might project them on people closest to us or the communities that we're part of. And I feel like that's something that I've done like, I've been doing that and it's not mine is what I mean by like my environment. I've been listening to Napoleon Hills Outwitting the Devil again and he talks about these seven principles, right? One of them is definiteness of purpose, exercising caution, how important our environment is, self-discipline, mastering the emotion of sex, harmony, um especially in our relationships. I do not remember what number seven is. I always forget the seventh one, whether it be one of those ones that I just said or the one that I didn't say. But in that, what um motorcycle or bike? Okay, excuse me. Sidetracked. Grieving brain, right? Squirrel. Uh, but in reviewing those, right, like I'm I'm looking at myself and I'm like, damn, you know, I've been doing a lot of not those things.
00:39:14 Courtney Brame: And the environment has been a really key part for me. like I have not been able to be myself in the environment that I've been in and it's just not been conducive to me. Um it's not been something that I have been able to maintain my momentum of growth and I believed for myself that maybe doing something different was growing. Maybe I outgrew things like sex positivity or non monogamy or like being active on social media and Instagram. I really really think that like, that is part of why I'm grieving right now is that my beliefs changed because I really wanted something that I think that there that I was convinced that there was only one way to get. I think that's b******* because I've worked so hard to learn that that's not the case. To unlearn that is the case and then to learn that I now have to unlearn those things and like to relearn that what I knew in the beginning was actually right. It just needed it to be done differently.
00:40:33 Courtney Brame: No. No. Like I am, I'm way more powerful than that. Like I'm not, you know, I think I said this earlier. I'm only human but I'm not like I'm I really truly believe that you know this body is the vehicle of experiencing this part of whatever it is the electrical current that runs through the nervous system of this body that is moving and speaking and having the experience and I really you know I'm working to not identify with anything because that's what all the spiritual teachers say to do like un-identify with that which you are identified and it's like uh my environment has tried to like force me into identifying with a lot of things and trying to get me to un-identify with things that you know that that have actually served me. So yeah, I don't… I don't have any desire to go into specifics of things. I'm not good at that. I know what I feel. I know what I experience.
00:41:48 Courtney Brame: I know what I've experienced. And also understand that feelings are subjective and that people can experience completely different things from the same exact situation just based on their proximity to the core of whatever it is. And so I feel like that's where I'm at right now and I need to change my environment. I need to really not self-abandon… whatever the opposite of self-abandonment is, do that. Um, and be present with myself, be present with my grief, be present with my healing process, be present with my purpose, and be present in delivering the things that I promised that I was going to deliver. And really make work what I know I can make work. Um, and just yeah, this is just going to be the upcoming challenge. So, uh, if y'all listen to this, I want to just express my gratitude for your willingness to hear me, um, and listen, you know, if any of this resonates with y'all, like I don't know that I really need, you know, the sorry, what's going on?
00:43:05 Courtney Brame: Um, if you follow me, you know, but yeah, I'm not. I don't want to feed that. I want to feed what's happening moving forward. Um, again, yoga therapy, the peer support calls, the podcast, and then my training for health professionals, focusing on yoga therapy training, and working part-time as I can with the priority being my own personal healing. Um, so I hope y'all continue to rock with your boys, support Something Positive, and and yeah, whenever I do have any virtual event type things, I hope that y'all will attend. I would love to see y'all there. Uh, but I definitely need to stop trying to work with other people. I'm over, I almost said something. I need to just trust myself. I need to trust myself. That's what we're going to say. But we got that survey still up and running on the herpes survey tab. So, if you check that out and please contribute, partake in the survey.
00:44:03 Courtney Brame: We need as many responses as we can get so that we can show that we're speaking from the experiences that y'all are sharing. Um, again, tomorrow, Thursday, at 7:00 p.m., we're at the house in Brooklyn, New York. Me and Trisha, aka Safe s***, we're going to be hosting an in-person social event, just uh something for people with herpes, people who follow her, people who follow me, come grab a drink, say hi, start a conversation. Um, and then yeah, that's that's it y'all. Thank y'all for letting me grieve and letting this be like an act of grief instead of me bitching on social media about some b******* or being on there and responding to things and all of that. Uh this is… this is my one of… my part of my space and healing and all that good stuff. All right. So, till next time, uh, the next podcast episode, I'll be in a different environment and I'll probably be in a different mood. So, just bear with me as I get my s*** back together, y'all, because it's not together. I'm not okay. All right, y'all. Till next time.
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