SPFPP 378: Declaration of Remembrance
2026 has been a hell of a ride ya’ll. For the first time, all of what I was doing just wasn’t working. All my effort and action taken just kept creating unnecessary resistance between what I chose and acquiring it. It took for me to be sat the fuck down by: a breakup from the woman who was supposed to be Courtney Jr’s mama, moving in with my grandma then moving out after a day into my own place, having that place for 2 months then losing it to a tornado after finally settling in. In sitting the fuck down, I was reminded by a voice that I can only describe as an echo of my nervous system that said “do nothing”. This has become a mantra of mine during times of uncertainty or where I’m lost on intention to just do nothing. Then, the echoes of my nervous system have a clear channel to vibrate through and I almost can feel what the next aligned action is.
The greatest lesson I got out of my sit down time is that I have a hard time not being liked by everyone. I have felt so many urges to defend myself in the narratives of others about me and that “do nothing” sensation emerges and almost instantly there have been blessings and pleasant experiences that validate my choice of inaction. Aligned engagement is a symptom of doing nothing. I have to accept that there are stories that people carry about me that have nothing to do with me, something to do with me, or their own avoidance of accountability and their role in the interaction. I got too much goin for me.
Let SPFPP Episode 368 be my declaration of remembrance. It’s my reminder I’m not reacting to the world around me. I’m aligning my inner world through my beliefs and behaviors for my external world to orient itself appropriately. I choose to lock in with sun-focused awareness sustaining my gravity, becoming with intention and what comes of that is just something I get to witness and enjoy without attachment or expectation.
This experience with depression was something with infinite potential as a teacher, arguably more potential for positive than herpes ever was or could be, and we see what I’ve done with that! The same way the sun became the star that it is through friction, pressure, heat, is the same way I’m becoming through stagnancy, expectations, failure. I’ve transmuted this mess into a MESSage (Shoutout to Ade for that one). And now watch me work!
Transcript:
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Courtney Brame: Welcome to something positive for positive people. I'm Courtney Brame. Something positive for positive people is a 5. 0, 1 c. 3. Nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes state.
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Courtney Brame: In addition to that, we also educate health professionals, mental health professionals, public health professionals, physicians, sex educators on herpes, stigma, and how to support people in that. If you go to the events, tab, what you'll see are opportunities to connect with community, whether that be virtually or in person. Check out those dates. We have a few things coming up. The next thing, I believe, is August 19, th
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Courtney Brame: which is a virtual panel discussion which I'll be facilitating in collaboration with herpes. Care, advocacy. I'll be hosting a panel with Dr. Ina Park, Dr. Terry Warren.
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Courtney Brame: Dr. Evely, Melima Decker, and a patient who I don't know if she wants her name out there. Her name's Hannah, but that'll be the other person that I'll be facilitating this panel for, and we'll be talking about herpes, and people are welcome to join that the 1st 45 ish minutes will be
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Courtney Brame: discussion and questions, and then the last 15 ish will be for people in the audience to be able to ask their questions as well. So I'm looking forward to that.
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Courtney Brame: The next thing that we have is well, actually, before that I'll be in Montreal, Canada, actually, Sunday, Sunday to Wednesday, July 30.th I'll be being interviewed or co-facilitating a panel Dr. Ina Park, and Jolene Hernandez, who is the creator of the no shameless Game film, will be presenting at Montreal's Sci World Congress, which is really exciting.
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Courtney Brame: I'm looking forward to being able to be a part of that, too. I don't know that anyone who's listening to this would go to something like that, because the admission fee, the Conference registration is high. So if you happen to be in Canada, Montreal, specifically and you are able to get out there like. I look forward to being able to connect with you and meet you there. On September 4th will be at 6 down south. That's September 4th through 7 and on the
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Courtney Brame: No. On the 6.th I believe it's the morning of my herpes hangout. It'll just be an open discussion. I have about 2 h to be able to just invite conversation and people to be able to ask questions and engage with one another about the experience of living with herpes and navigating stigma. The last time I put something together every time that I put something together we'd run out of time. People have requested more time.
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Courtney Brame: so I'm looking forward to being able to have a room full of people willing and ready, ready and able to talk about herpes from personal experiences.
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Courtney Brame: November
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Courtney Brame: 7.th Through 9th Indianapolis is the Midwest Love Fest. I'll be there hosting another herpes hangout. It'll be very similar to what's going to be happening at 6 down South. I am excited to be one of the facilitators at that event, too, because the 9th is the day before my birthday, so I look forward to having something to do and look forward to and be in a place that
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Courtney Brame: I haven't been in years. I've been to Indianapolis before, and I
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Courtney Brame: I enjoyed it. It's a nice little food place, too. So yeah, I'm hyped for that as well. I think that's everything that's in the calendar, for now, if you haven't already, please consider joining one of the herpes support groups on the website. So right now, the men's group meets on the second Monday of every month at 7 30 Eastern time. Pm. And it's called atomic purpose. But I'm seeing that the word stigma for as wide and encompassing as it is.
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Courtney Brame: doesn't
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Courtney Brame: really hold any weight here because everyone's there because they have herpes. And that's what's bringing people in. So I'm gonna dial back a little bit
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Courtney Brame: and try to get out of the marketing, being exclusively on working with people beyond herpes. So I'm gonna lock in. I'm gonna lock in and become more condensed and focus on what it is that I produce, which is herpes, education, content, especially as it relates to stigma, being able to answer those questions around dating with herpes, relationships with herpes, sex with herpes.
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Courtney Brame: herpes, treatments, and being able to utilize a lot of the past, survey information that we've gotten and put that into more planned parenthoods, more resources that are credible out there. In addition to
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Courtney Brame: our ongoing advocacy efforts, the 1st Monday of every month at 7 30 Eastern time is another support group. It's just for people with herpes. There's no, it's not men, only this one is all encompassing, and both of these are free donations are absolutely encouraged.
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Courtney Brame: and then for the 3rd and 4, th for the 3rd and 4th Mondays. What I'm wanting to do is something where people have to be vetted and this will be more of a thing where people
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Courtney Brame: absolutely have to donate or become members of some sort to be able to access these support groups, so that it is something that is more personalized. I'm in the process of revamping the website to go back to being exclusively about herpes. Fortunately, I haven't removed or deleted anything, but I did make a lot of revisions to be more encompassing to stigma and identity, and I don't think that it's been specific enough to draw in the experiences that I want to draw in, because everyone who comes here
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Courtney Brame: has herpes or is looking for herpes. Related information. Ain't nobody coming here to learn about masculinity, emotional intelligence with men, gender, sexuality like these are things that come up in the conversation. These are things that come up in podcasts. But these aren't what the main focus is. So on a secondary or tertiary level, those topics get addressed. And I think that the intention right now needs to be on focusing on
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Courtney Brame: what I do. Well.
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Courtney Brame: and what this has been over the years. This started in 2017, because people living with herpes were having suicide ideation, and I wanted to explore that and bring my curiosity into a space creatively enough to be able to connect people to some form of community and give them choice in how they navigate their diagnosis and everything that comes after that. So this is what something positive for positive
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Courtney Brame: with people is, and I need to apologize, not just to y'all, but to myself, for deviating away from that. I want to say over the last 2 years over the last 2 years I've
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Courtney Brame: been very intentional about trying to
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Courtney Brame: just let this be what it was. I've tried to find a way out. I've tried to do other things, and that's not what I'm supposed to have been doing. And this year alone over the last 7 months we're in. Yeah, we're towards the end of June, July. We're at the end of July, going into August in a week.
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Courtney Brame: and I recognize how much I've been trying to change this. And that's not what I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm going to give y'all a full disclaimer. This podcast episode, no matter what I say, I'm going to post it. I've spent a lot of hours trying to record what I am hoping to be able to say and get across. And it's just been hard. It's been hard because there's been a lot of mixed emotions, and there's been a lot of what I thought that I was immune. I thought that I was immune to depression.
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Courtney Brame: I'm be real like I had an experience with depression. I don't like giving it a name. I don't like giving it any energy. And that's 1 thing about me is I don't give energy to or entertain things that I don't want to engage with. I do give presence and positivity to
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Courtney Brame: the things that are in my sphere that are worth engaging with. I had my breakup with my ex. I had moved back to my hometown that felt like a complete fucking failure. I had to
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Courtney Brame: move into a new place. I moved in with my grandmother. I was there for 2 days and was like this ain't gonna work. So I signed a lease before I even had a mattress. Moved into that place and found out my college roommate had passed away.
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Courtney Brame: I don't know if this was intentional or not. And then I found I had my home just stripped away from me by a tornado
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Courtney Brame: tornado, came through and devastated the property. It was the building was condemned. I got my deposit back. I was out of my lease I had to deal with Fema. I had to deal with the insurance. I had to figure out where I was going to live, and I also, in addition to all of that, like, I haven't made any money this year. I worked a little bit. I did a couple of talks, but a lot of money that came in was already accounted for and paid out.
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Courtney Brame: So I paid accountants, because last year was the best year that something positive for positive people had ever had, and I needed to report my taxes a little bit differently, and so, to avoid being audited, I spent way too much money
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Courtney Brame: to get that taken care of, I think what it came out to was about 5.
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Courtney Brame: It was about 5 or $6,000, and that's 5 or $6,000 that I wasn't able to pay myself, and so I'm in a deficit like completely draining my savings that I had, and any money that I was able to pay myself from last year was spent between moving and then having to get new stuff, and then signing that lease and settling into the place that I was in.
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Courtney Brame: and then boom 2 months in a tornado hits. So I worked a little bit, but it wasn't enough to be able to cover everything, and for those who don't know. Fortunately I wasn't at home. I left town for the weekend. Something told me to move my flight up. I had intentions of going out of town like that following Tuesday, but there was a little voice in my head that I reconnected with that so familiar that, had I had such familiarity with, and it told me, when you move your flight up.
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Courtney Brame: I left at 11 Am. The tornado touched down a little bit after 2 Pm.
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Courtney Brame: And I couldn't be more grateful for not having been there, because both of the places that I would have been were destroyed. My home was completely destroyed.
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Courtney Brame: Kitchen was the safest place to be, but when, during a tornado, nobody goes into the fucking kitchen.
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Courtney Brame: and that's we'll just leave it. At that the gym. The windows were shattered out of it. I would have been in the back room. Maybe I would have tried to get to somewhere more safe, but that place itself was pretty protected, and I wasn't able to get into my place and get any of my things, and I think the most devastating part of that is that
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Courtney Brame: there were some things there of sentimental value that I wasn't able to get, and the
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Courtney Brame: thing that I learned from this is the importance of being able to let go. I lost a lot of stuff in that tornado and the significance of the quantity of things. The 98, 99% of the things that I lost have no significant value to me.
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Courtney Brame: But the 1%, the 2% of what I lost
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Courtney Brame: man. It. It carried a lot of weight, and one of those things was very significant to me
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Courtney Brame: in a sense that it was a tangible reminder of my grandmother, my grandmother, who kept my mom from getting an abortion with me.
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Courtney Brame: Now I've I've had a lot more of those pieces of that story put together, but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, and that one thing that I had to hold on to to remind me of her is gone.
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Courtney Brame: It's gone.
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Courtney Brame: and the interconnectedness of that in my past relationship with my ex-girlfriend, like, I think, that that was, there was a message there was a message in me losing that there was a message in me needing to be able to let go of that. And
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Courtney Brame: it's ugly. It's fucking ugly. And the process of me finally going back home because I was displaced out of state, and I just stayed with friends. I bounced around a little bit. I was in Houston, Texas, San Antonio, Texas. I was in San Jose. I was in Oakland for a few days. Unfortunately, there were a couple of conferences in there that I had to go to in Phoenix as well as Vegas.
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Courtney Brame: and then one of my friends, board member. Now friends, allowed for me to stay at her place while she was out of town during the month of June. So I had a lot of time to myself, and in that time to myself
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Courtney Brame: something that kept playing in my head was, Do nothing, do nothing.
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Courtney Brame: And there was such power in that, because I had been trying to figure out what happened in my relationship. Figure out what was next, figure out what to do with something positive for positive people as I was having these creative blocks, and I was concerned that everything that I post wasn't coming from a place that would. It would communicate what I wanted to communicate. I wasn't getting podcast guests, but in addition to that, I wasn't sharing, I wasn't being vulnerable.
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Courtney Brame: And even among trying to be vulnerable. Something just never really sat well with me. I wasn't myself. I haven't been myself for about 6 months.
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Courtney Brame: I haven't been myself low key. I mean, throughout the course of the relationship that I was in, as it relates to y'all, as it relates to something positive. If you listen to those episodes during those years like I was very much
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Courtney Brame: speaking to
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Courtney Brame: how my relationship was going, how I was looking, and that was my experience. My experience was positive, and it was present like I was there, and I was choosing to be there, and I felt like I could do anything while I was in that relationship.
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Courtney Brame: and upon getting out of the relationship the experiences that I've heard that my ex has shared up until the point where I just cut off listening to it felt like we had 2 completely different experiences, and so the part of me that likes being liked
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Courtney Brame: went into empathy mode, went into absorbing the things that she was saying, and like contorting my own experiences, and regurgitating that to my friends and family in a way that it just never really sat right with my nervous system. It never sat right with who I am in my core because
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Courtney Brame: we had unique experiences, and the more that I heard about what she was sharing because I've been blocked, I don't know directly what's being said. I just know what's been shared with me and the way that it's been presented. It wasn't the same.
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Courtney Brame: That wasn't what my experience was, and a lot of my
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Courtney Brame: transition process through the grief, through figuring out how to show up where I know I'm supposed to be was shaped by that.
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Courtney Brame: And so I spent a lot of recordings trying to record stuff. I've posted things and taken them down. I've been mindful of what I liked and what I've watched, and over time it's just
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Courtney Brame: eaten at me. It's really eaten at me.
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Courtney Brame: And
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Courtney Brame: I think today, after having taken 3 weeks off from anything extra for something positive. I've said no to things. The only things that I've continued to do were things that were already in the calendar. So we had Dr. Evelyn Dacker Stars talk, which was Monday. I still held one of the support groups. I had to cancel another one, because travel, and as I was settling into my place like I moved. You can see the backgrounds change yet again. But this is this is what I do
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Courtney Brame: I adapt, and there's a balance between adapting and then actually being
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Courtney Brame: and becoming who I am, and I think what life has done is, it's it's accumulated a lot of gunk over myself like this just fucking goop that has calcified. And in that what happens with
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Courtney Brame: relationships, what happens with
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Courtney Brame: emotions and experiences is that metaphorically like I've learned to. Despite my work in identity.
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Courtney Brame: Right? I talk about how herpes fractures our identity, and we become fragmented. We become, you know, not just our identification, our identifiers as culture.
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Courtney Brame: skin, color, race income, political views, gender sexuality. Right? Like that's 7 things right there. And there's so many more things that our presence, our identity becomes fragmented and fractured in all these ways that when we go through life that process of pulling things in and integrating them.
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Courtney Brame: it's like the friction, the heat, the pressure, the expectations, as we begin to come back and find ourselves into wholeness, is the same process that I believe metaphorically, scars go through. And we're not these identifiers. These are
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Courtney Brame: manifestations of being in existence that allow for us to communicate with other stars and expressions of light. Our souls. When we think about the nervous system, it's just really that electrical current that runs through the nerves of the body, the nervous system that sends signals that block signals because of emotions, and it expresses itself in the body. These are signals.
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Courtney Brame: I believe that the body, the emotions, language, these are manifestations of what we were a long time ago, before time became documented for the sake of being able to get it right to communicate, to inspire more consciousness, to inspire being
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Courtney Brame: so, our nervous systems are constantly communicating and expressing something, and the signals that we're sending to one another from across time space. The galaxy, like I'm in Brooklyn, New York. It's 12 0. 5 Pm. Eastern time. By the time the 1st person hears this it may be about an hour from now. But people can hear this
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Courtney Brame: days, months, years later, down the road, and it can inspire something that resonates. And that's what the communication is capable of across time, space.
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Courtney Brame: And so I've learned to
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Courtney Brame: get to the core of being able to identify with that with that that soul like I am a soul. I am a spirit, I am, whatever the fuck stars are made up of that that light that we call it.
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Courtney Brame: and that energy is something that I've allowed to just get calcified in the material of this world. The experiences, the pain from heartbreak, the pain from loss, the grief, the feelings of failure, all of these negative things, these negative things, and the word negativity just means absence
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Courtney Brame: and anything negative. If we look at it from an atomic structure, negative
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Courtney Brame: negative particles are light of light are electrons, and they have a negative charge. And what happens is they're constantly in motion, and they are attracted to and drawn to a positive charge, and our identification with whatever that positive charge, the proton positive just means presence. So absence is seeking presence, and that infinite potential and positive energy when combined, are what shapes our reality.
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Courtney Brame: And I've been living like this and trying to formulate the language, to be able to communicate it to people. And I really believe that, you know, if I were to have, like a higher sense of purpose outside of supporting people navigating herpes stigma, that might be it
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Courtney Brame: because what it is is for me to just chip away and chisel off that calcified shit around me that is dimming the light that welcomes and draws in people who may be fragmented themselves and over identified with the version of them that is trapped in herpes stigma. And maybe it's through that, and collecting.
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Courtney Brame: connecting with y'all at this level.
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Courtney Brame: through just my constant holding of rhythm, and just producing the content that people find, and they find themselves in the orbit of Courtney, and something positive for positive people. The workshops, the advocacy, the social media posts, like the more that I pour my presence into these unique expressions of being able to be witnessed. I think that what happens is
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Courtney Brame: that's where that healing continues to take place.
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Courtney Brame: And for so long I've worried about not being liked. And I think that that's probably been the biggest lesson out of all of this is because I can't control narratives. I can't control how people see me. But what I can't control is what I can't control.
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Courtney Brame: And that's what I that's how I show up.
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Courtney Brame: It's identifying with my the soul that I am.
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Courtney Brame: and leading. With that I genuinely believe.
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Courtney Brame: When you lead with the spirit and the needs of the spirit, the body takes care of itself.
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Courtney Brame: and if the body takes care of itself, everything surrounding the body begins to conform and adapt to your Certainty about yourself, your self Certainty.
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Courtney Brame: and I got more self certainty now than I ever have before I had it, and I thought that I was supposed to do something else because of my external circumstances.
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Courtney Brame: You know I was hell bent on choosing and and being empowered by choice to step away from my very life, force my very life. Source.
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Courtney Brame: What my purpose is, what my proton is like. I look at atoms, and we are trillions and trillions of atoms made up of the energy, the vitality of the nervous system, electrical current, the bones, the blood, the fluids that run through us, the skin, the muscle, everything. So why wouldn't we exist in such a way that on a microscopic level we exist.
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Courtney Brame: And since doing this, I've drawn in people experiences things that have infinite potential. And it's really about the level of presence that you pour into the thing. So when I say, do nothing, it's more so, not being responsive or reactive to things that
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Courtney Brame: draw you away from what your center is, and I've learned that my center is to be a living presence in this negative space of herpes stigma
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Courtney Brame: and becoming more of someone who's able to take that, that the energy, the infinite, seemingly infinite vitality that comes from me as conscious awareness as a neutron
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Courtney Brame: that has choice of engagement with my
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Courtney Brame: infinite energy source to bring presence and aligned engagement to the negativity that surrounds me. So I'm in this space of herpes stigma.
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Courtney Brame: and my role is to pump out presence into this space.
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Courtney Brame: to give presents to those who maybe are
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Courtney Brame: fragmented into that negative state of mind where? Oh, you know I'm only going to go downhill. My energy is negative because I have herpes. And this is what my life is going to look like. I'm supposed to be someone that
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Courtney Brame: exemplifies that something different.
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Courtney Brame: something positive for positive people. I didn't know what the fuck this name meant when I came up with it. I just thought it made sense. Oh, I'm just doing something positive for people who are positive.
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Courtney Brame: something positive for positive people just sounded better than that.
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Courtney Brame: And so I'm I'm here, and I ain't going nowhere again.
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Courtney Brame: You know why I was depressed. I'll use that. It's because I got away from what I know I was supposed to be doing. I got away from being the person that I worked so fucking hard to become.
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Courtney Brame: and I'll be damned if I ever let that shit happen again. I'll make the same mistake twice.
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Courtney Brame: and it might look different. It might come in a different skin suit. It might come with different consequences. It may have a different accent, but that's 1 thing about me is that I don't make the same mistakes twice.
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Courtney Brame: and I allow for myself to do that.
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Courtney Brame: I was so ready to do what I wanted to do.
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Courtney Brame: and when doing what I wanted to do, I think that that just created a whole nother, fragmented sense of self.
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Courtney Brame: of Courtney as something something else, something a version of me that was not in my purpose.
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Courtney Brame: a version of me that went off to try and generate new purpose, not to say that that is impossible. You know, when you make the decision and you do the things like. There's a formula for everything. There's a roadmap that's been blocked off for everything except what you are here on this fucking planet to be doing.
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Courtney Brame: and I'll never forget. It was in October 2022. It was this older black woman
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Courtney Brame: all around Halloween. I was dressed as Garnet. I think I was Garnet from Steven Universe, and she was like a witch. She had a little veil on.
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Courtney Brame: and we were talking at the bar for a little bit. She asked me. You know. What do you? What do you do? Why are you still here?
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Courtney Brame: I told her I was like I moved to Portland to get a $10,000, grant. I got this grant to run my nonprofit.
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Courtney Brame: She's like, Okay, well, what's next? I was like
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Courtney Brame: what you mean. She's like, well, why are you still here? I was like, damn!
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Courtney Brame: I think I said that too. I was like Damn! I never thought about that.
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Courtney Brame: And so
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Courtney Brame: I went to leave. I was ready to catch this bus and and go. She like disappeared for a minute, and my bus just didn't come, so I'm sitting down waiting on the next bus she comes out of the bathroom. She sits down next to me, and I remember she, looking dead in my fucking eyes like into my soul
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Courtney Brame: saw my soul. She put her hand on my shoulder, she said.
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Courtney Brame: your path is not an easy one, in fact, I don't even think you can call it a path at all.
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Courtney Brame: but I share the load with you.
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Courtney Brame: She took her hand off my shoulder. She got up and walked to the bathroom. I never saw that woman again.
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Courtney Brame: but her presence, her words they resonated, and they stuck with me. I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner 13 days ago. But I can tell you what this woman said to me 2 and a half years ago on Halloween. I can probably point her out if I saw her again.
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Courtney Brame: and that kind of impression that she made on me, that that's something that I I forgot until I needed to come back to it
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Courtney Brame: like this. Shit ain't no path.
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Courtney Brame: I'm not gonna get it right all the time.
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Courtney Brame: I'm gonna do things wrong. I'm gonna fall out of sync.
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Courtney Brame: But I do know that there are certain things that keep me grounded that keep me in place, that keep me being able to sustain and maintain this space, my presence.
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Courtney Brame: and it's sometimes do nothing.
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Courtney Brame: I can't tell you how many times I wanted to do what I wanted to do, but the reality was I needed to do nothing and then doing nothing. That's where I was able to hear that voice. Tell me, Courtney, you need to leave, and in March March. I think it was March 9th when I left from New Jersey, moved out of my ex-girlfriend's place. A voice told me, Courtney, you need to leave.
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Courtney Brame: That same voice told me on March 11, th or whatever day it was that I changed my flight. I canceled plans that I had. It's like Courtney. Move your flight up
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Courtney Brame: for me to get out of there, and
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Courtney Brame: I don't think there was no voice like you can't really describe what that is.
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Courtney Brame: That was alignment.
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Courtney Brame: The more we practice, you know, making the decisions that are aligned with our beliefs and our behaviors, and my beliefs and behaviors were very unclear. They were unclear prior to my breakup, and I think that the breakup itself isn't what caused what the equivalent of stars using our sun, for example, the sun experiences. What's happening in that star is that there's a lot of friction. There's pressure. There's heat. There's a lot of stuff that's happening in there
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Courtney Brame: that is producing helium helium, 1, 2, 3, 4, and I don't know exactly what else there is, but I know that that's 1 of the things that's being created by the sun if the sun were ever to go. Oh, shit! You know Courtney's a little bit cold. Let me get a little bit closer to him that would fuck up the entire solar system orbit.
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Courtney Brame: and that's the equivalent of what I did.
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Courtney Brame: You know. I fucked up my whole solar system orbit, and the way that things were falling into place for me, the gravity that I had sustained for so long, where something positive was starting to get profitable, where people were getting more supported where surveys were coming in left and right, where opportunities were presenting themselves.
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Courtney Brame: I did what I wanted to do.
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Courtney Brame: and I don't give a fuck. How this sounds I don't care how arrogant it sounds, but I think that if everyone were to model themselves as a star as the sun, you know you show up, and you produce what you're supposed to produce.
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Courtney Brame: You be and become what you're supposed to become. This isn't selfish.
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Courtney Brame: The sun has the gravity of 9 planets
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Courtney Brame: and the asteroid belts and moons. And like we get light, we get life, we get warmth.
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Courtney Brame: These are not the primary focus right like these incredible things for me aren't what the sun's focus is.
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Courtney Brame: And it's the same thing here. The
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Courtney Brame: becoming, the being is just for me like looking to expand my own consciousness. How deep can I go? How far can I expand just through depth, through that quality of stillness, and maintaining my own rhythm of doing what I know I'm supposed to be fucking, doing.
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Courtney Brame: and in turn someone may hear a quote that resonates with them. Maybe you go off. And you start your own. Podcast maybe you decide what advocacy looks like for you. Maybe you disclose to that partner using the stars framework that you heard about on here, and that partner becomes a marriage and becomes a family. And you have children together, and you create new life, and that new life later on becomes someone that wins a Nobel peace Prize and changes the fucking world.
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Courtney Brame: But I can't be like, oh, those people! They belong together! Let me let me try and make this happen, because in trying to make anything happen, I fuck up everything else that's not happening.
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Courtney Brame: that I'm not giving my presence and attention to. So I have to be present to what my purpose is. The story of Adam and Eve is a great example, because Adam's job was to tend to the garden.
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Courtney Brame: If Adam tended to the garden, you know we got vegetation. You see, the animals and the garden spreads, and more people animals think. Well, no people but more animals come. Different types of flowers can come, and maybe that's what Adam was. Maybe Adam was. The sun
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Courtney Brame: shining and doing what he was supposed to do, and then he caught a clip of E, and then just was like, Oh, let me let me let me go over here. No, I can't let myself get sidetracked and distracted anymore.
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Courtney Brame: And I'm I'm
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Courtney Brame: looking at that like even as I say it out loud, man like I I recognize where
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Courtney Brame: I recognize where I went wrong and boom depression.
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Courtney Brame: And let me tell y'all what depression feels like, because I didn't know it until I I came out of the other side of it for the last 3 weeks that break that I was on
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Courtney Brame: from work. I prioritize rest and play, and now I have a great idea of what that balance looks like, and it's a trifecta of work, play, rest.
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Courtney Brame: So I immerse myself into play, and I immerse myself into rest. And now it's time to get back to work. But in a way that is going to be a lot more balanced.
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Courtney Brame: So with the balance of work, play, and rest. Now, like over these last 3 weeks I've been able to see that stagnance, stagnance is something that causes depression for me because there was no motion. I wasn't able to do anything. I was still hyper focused on. How can I do the bare minimum? How can I do something. But then, when I got it was July second when I got to my place, and I saw that I wasn't going to be able to get that thing that reminded me of my grandmother, because the apartment was fucking destroyed
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Courtney Brame: on top of finding out that my great grandma, who's my grandmother's mother, was in the hospital.
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Courtney Brame: I just fucking broke down. I fucking broke down y'all.
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Courtney Brame: and that was what made me just post. I ain't wanna put my face in it. I didn't wanna make a video. I just wrote in my notes taking a break. Everything that's in the calendar is still happening. Thank you for
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Courtney Brame: your patience.
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Courtney Brame: because also around that I was still trying to maintain what I was doing for the last 8 years at a time where I was not fucking. Okay.
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Courtney Brame: I was fucking up in my workshops that I was presenting.
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Courtney Brame: you know. People asked me for something, and I gave them something else
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Courtney Brame: I needed to do reschedules because I was bouncing around and I was on the phone too long with someone that I needed to call to get bills canceled and share. Hey? My place was hit by a tornado. Hey? My place was hit by a tornado like saying that shit I was I I was checked out like I had to just do what was necessary and the bare minimum of things.
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Courtney Brame: And I recognize, like, that's what that was.
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Courtney Brame: And even now, because I'm saying this, I think about when I tried to record self podcast episodes. So for those who don't know, I've had another podcast called self. And that's really just been my out loud, self-reflective journal.
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Courtney Brame: and I've separated myself into that because I didn't think that it was something that belonged here and turns out the way that I'm talking right now. That's something that I would normally have put on that podcast but I don't need to continue to fragment myself. I changed my Instagram handle to Courtney brain my 1st and last name. I changed my Tiktok handle to Courtneybrain with an underscore at the end.
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Courtney Brame: because I don't want to fucking hide anymore. I don't want to fragment myself. I have a lot of identifiers that have manifest as vehicles of expression and communication through this body through this plane of existence that I operate on.
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Courtney Brame: But my nervous system's mission is the same.
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Courtney Brame: My soul's mission is the same. To utilize that nervous system as a guide, as a way of understanding, and the more still I am, the less I do, the more I can pick up on the signals of what direction to go.
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Courtney Brame: And it's that caliber of presence that I'm bringing to something positive for positive people. As I integrate these aspects of myself into alignment with what my spirit is, and I think that that's what people mean when they say, get a relationship with God.
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Courtney Brame: My beliefs are to be challenged.
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Courtney Brame: to be liberated, and in doing so for myself, I think that what that does is it inherently liberates and challenges others as well.
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Courtney Brame: That's what I believe.
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Courtney Brame: These are my values.
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Courtney Brame: This was something that my ex challenged me on. She's like, what are your values like? What do you care about? What do you want? And I don't want anything. All this shit is temporary.
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Courtney Brame: I enjoy. I like the things that come into my life as a result of me being who I am
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Courtney Brame: as a result of being able to be seen and experienced. And okay, just as I am.
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Courtney Brame: You know, some people may appreciate me for my body. Some people may appreciate me sexually, or for what I do for them, or for words that I say. But all of these are just expressions of the soul
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Courtney Brame: that this body and shit is going to expire, and I think that the more that I hold rhythm and hold true to what it is that I'm here to do
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Courtney Brame: the more of the imprint that happens on the collective consciousness, like when I die. Whatever rhythm that I held in that moment is what stays as the blueprint of consciousness, and my soul goes on to
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Courtney Brame: whatever.
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Courtney Brame: And the more rhythm that holds, I got some like. I probably shouldn't talk about this part yet, but the atomic language, using atoms and shit like I am right now. This is something that I am working on defining. I got a glossary and everything.
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Courtney Brame: and I'm excited about it. I'm excited to be able to share it, but not not before it's ready. It's it's cooking up.
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Courtney Brame: But I do believe, you know, that these bodies and everything like it's temporary.
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Courtney Brame: you know, the more that we hold true to who we are and become, who we're supposed to be and inspire, that in others. The more we project and progress consciousness forward collectively, so that more uniqueness, more
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Courtney Brame: beauty, more creativity, can manifest itself through what we call God, what is also known as the quantum realm.
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Courtney Brame: And so I.
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Courtney Brame: This has really been a detachment exercise for me, detaching from all of these identities and labels and physicalities of things, to do things that nurture my spirit.
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Courtney Brame: to have conversations, to use language, to experience, touch, and to experience intimacy in a way that
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Courtney Brame: nurtures what my soul's desires are like my soul has.
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Courtney Brame: I am the soul having those desires, and it's not about what Courtney wants.
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Courtney Brame: It's not. And I wanted to have a family
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Courtney Brame: like I really saw that for myself, I saw Courtney, Jr. You know I saw all these things, and not to say that that still can't happen. You know, whoever that ends up happening with. But I recognize that that's not supposed to be what my presence is right now.
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Courtney Brame: and the more that I sit back, the more I do nothing, the more clearly I can see where my presence is required and what to engage with. I've been drawn to New York since 2023 when I came to visit, and I was living in Portland, Oregon, at the time I went back to Portland, and I looked around, and I was just sad. My nervous system was communicating something to me that I couldn't ignore, and that same thing that was being communicated to me when I went back to Portland is the same thing that happened when I moved to St. Louis.
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Courtney Brame: and I was forcefully trying to maintain my upright posture when what was happening is the environment that I was in was bringing me into a fetal position
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Courtney Brame: soon as I got to Brooklyn. Soon as I got here to New York, my shit just opened up. Naturally there was no resistance, and these are the kinds of things that I hope to be able to teach through my existence, my being for people to be able to open up and be able to listen to what their own nervous system is saying, to be able to not necessarily have to regulate, but to recognize, to remember, recall, like. Here's where I need to be
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Courtney Brame: to remember that shit
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Courtney Brame: like. Remember that we are whatever stars are made of those particles of light protons, electrons, neutrons.
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Courtney Brame: and to live our lives in such a way that aligns with what we know. We're here to do what we know we're here to be what garden we're supposed to tend to.
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Courtney Brame: so that we can with our own light, begin to inspire that light in other people, so that we just shine a fucking whole as universe of universes in a reality that is progressing toward more of that more light, less darkness, because there's a lot of darkness right now, and all that shit does? Is it just calcifies over creativity, over curiosity.
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Courtney Brame: over community, over choice, over consistency over connection.
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Courtney Brame: And I see myself as somebody who's breaking free of that who's broken free of that now, like again, like my greatest calcification, has been giving a fuck about what other people think of me, and wanting to be like. I don't give a fuck. Now, the the greatest thing to come out of this, the friction and tension and the pressure that's come from me trying to process all of this shit that's been happening over the last 6 months.
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Courtney Brame: I'm letting that go.
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Courtney Brame: It's shaped me. It's shaped my the soul that I am, and I feel different.
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Courtney Brame: I'm not the same person I haven't gone back to who I was prior to my breakup, or who I was prior to my relationship like this is something new.
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Courtney Brame: maybe something that predates, you know. Even my birth, like my grandmother, saw something in me, my, my dad's mom
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Courtney Brame: fault for me to be here.
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Courtney Brame: She saw something in me that nobody else see.
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Courtney Brame: and I've spent my entire fucking existence trying to prove to the world that I deserve to be here because the immediate people around
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Courtney Brame: my conception didn't think I did.
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Courtney Brame: And now I'm here and I'm shining an undeniable fucking light.
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Courtney Brame: despite the challenges that have come despite the obstacles.
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Courtney Brame: and I ain't letting nobody down that shit no more.
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Courtney Brame: You shouldn't. Even you shouldn't let Herpes stigma like this is bigger than herpes. There's so much going on out here in the world.
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Courtney Brame: You open your phone, the social media. You'll go from seeing
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Courtney Brame: a food pick a inspirational quote, a bomb being dropped on kids, some titties, somebody's onlyfans or venmo
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Courtney Brame: to a cat video.
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Courtney Brame: And we over here worried about herpes. Notice I didn't even fucking speak about my herpes diagnosis. In this
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Courtney Brame: I talked about my work with other people living with herpes.
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Courtney Brame: I talked about the importance of me being able to produce and maintain this space so that it is something that does continue to inspire light. But I can't do that if I'm not sharing my own experiences as well.
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Courtney Brame: and I recognize that like, I hold this space, and I've hidden behind other people's willingness to share their own experiences.
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Courtney Brame: And that's not. That's not enough. I've done that for 8 years with minimal, you know, I've shared a little bit about my own personal experiences, you know, cautiously.
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Courtney Brame: May, being mindful not to include partners, names, or anything like that, except for when I was in, you know the relationship that I thought was, gonna be it.
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Courtney Brame: that was it. It was supposed to be it. But it
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Courtney Brame: it's not, I mean, that's not it.
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Courtney Brame: And it's taken me a really long time to get comfortable with talking about that, and I'm glad I waited, because I don't know that I would have been able to speak to it with such certainty. I don't 100% understand or know why she broke up with me.
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Courtney Brame: But she did.
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Courtney Brame: and that's what I gotta go with like. I gotta just close the door, and no closure is closure doesn't make sense to me from the last conversation that we have, which I'm sure she probably doesn't even remember what that was. But I I think about you know what the last conversation I had with her. Dad, he told me, said, You know best thing you can do is leave her alone. Don't talk to her.
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Courtney Brame: said that.
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Courtney Brame: and despite how much that that pains me to have things that are unsaid, to have been able to process things to want to, you know. Say, Hey, look like you. You were right about these things like I want to show you.
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Courtney Brame: and also to be like yo quit talking shit.
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Courtney Brame: but the best thing I can do is do nothing, and be be me.
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Courtney Brame: Be that which I'm becoming, so that I can inspire that in other people as well.
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Courtney Brame: So this is sort of my my declaration of
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Courtney Brame: that felt like it was about to come out so fucking smooth, whatever it was. But I ain't got it. I don't know what it'd be. But my declaration of of
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Courtney Brame: remembrance.
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Courtney Brame: Podcast title, declaration of remembrance and I hope that this serves as a reminder of y'all
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Courtney Brame: as a reminder to y'all to like. Who were you before your herpes diagnosis? Who are you becoming before your herpes diagnosis. What? What hobbies like? I think that I supported someone in saving their life because I asked this question. You know, hey? I noticed that you play guitar like, when's the last time you played? He's like, Oh, man, it's been a while. It's like, Oh, you're pretty good at it.
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Courtney Brame: What what happens when you play like? What do you feel? And this was someone who was talking about ending his life.
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Courtney Brame: He started playing his guitar again.
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Courtney Brame: Right. So maybe that's his purse. I don't know where he is. I don't know what he's doing. Hopefully, he's still playing his guitar somewhere.
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Courtney Brame: and sometimes I need the reminder that I need to play my guitar.
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Courtney Brame: I need to. I don't have a guitar. I don't mean that literally, what I mean is figuratively
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Courtney Brame: producing this podcast taking care of the something positive for positive people behind the scenes. Stuff supporting people.
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Courtney Brame: scheduling these support calls doing my advocacy, hosting these workshops and stand in alignment, and being able to say no to things that are not
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Courtney Brame: what I know I'm supposed to be fucking doing.
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Courtney Brame: I was my most magnetic, gravitational, and attractive. When I was doing my fucking shit.
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Courtney Brame: and then I started to deviate from that.
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Courtney Brame: and I remember the times where these are very noticeable experiences I had where I started to deviate.
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Courtney Brame: No, Mas, no, Mas won't happen again like I said, I don't make the same mistake twice. So this is my declaration of remembrance, and being able to remind myself and see the world around me beginning to fucking, fall into orbit like fall into its own orientation to me rather than me, orienting to it.
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Courtney Brame: and
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Courtney Brame: ain't no more of me as the sun, metaphorically being like, Oh, my God, Jonathan, he's cold! He's going to freeze to death. Let me get a little bit closer and shine my heat on him. Oh, shit! The rest of the planets fell off orbit. Let me get back in place.
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Courtney Brame: No, I'm gonna stay my eyes right where I'm at, and I'm going to
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Courtney Brame: be who it is that I need to be, and in the spaces that I enter like, maintain and hold that rhythm, remind myself who I am.
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Courtney Brame: remind myself what it is, and I'm here for what I do.
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Courtney Brame: and keep that balance between work, play, and rest.
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Courtney Brame: So this is again my declaration of remembrance. This is my accountability episode, like, I want to continue to maintain that rhythm in this space, and give y'all something to constantly look forward to when you come here, and for y'all to just be clear on what it is like. I have such clarity
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Courtney Brame: now around, not just what it is that I'm doing, but also who I am as a whole.
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Courtney Brame: and what's fascinating to me is I haven't had to change anything. I just had to accept some things that I was looking for acceptance from other people for. And you ain't gonna always get that.
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Courtney Brame: And that's okay.
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Courtney Brame: Alright.
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Courtney Brame: So till next time, y'all stay present something positive for positive people. It's a nonprofit. The podcast, if you can leave a comment, if you can leave a rating and a review that helps so that I don't have to have these moments where I'm like, oh, you know, maybe people are tired of me talking about herpes. I should do something different, so I can stop doing that shit if y'all decide that you want to get involved some kind of way. We can always use money.
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Courtney Brame: I can always use money to be able to pour more into this, it would be really lovely to have a podcast recording studio. So I'm not using zoom and got this blurry ass picture. And I could be able to make graphics. And when I have guests that want to be on camera, we can have them on and just have more engagement and expand this community a little bit more.
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Courtney Brame: I don't know how far away we are from that, but I'm working. I'm doing what I can. I'm doing what I know, and I'm making it work so thank y'all till next time
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Courtney Brame: already said till next time. I shouldn't say I shouldn't say it twice.
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Courtney Brame: But yeah, just last thing, too, man. I mentioned the depression thing, and I want to just say I'm good.
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Courtney Brame: I'm good. I think. This morning was when I was able to just name it and say, that was depression, and I want to shout out the Jordan Harbinger show his most recent interview with Charlamagne. The Guy Charlamagne has been talking a lot about mental health, especially in the black community, and I think it was that episode where some things clicked for me when he was able to say he was depressed, even though he was getting that unemployment. He was on that last month of unemployment before his big break came.
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Courtney Brame: And that's what it kind of feels like for me. Fucking tornado came and took my home and left me with a decent insurance check for me to be able to get my ass here and get this new desk, and to be able to bring things from people around me and utilize my support systems for giving me places to stay for giving me clothing.
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Courtney Brame: for giving me food, for feeding me, for sheltering me.
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Courtney Brame: Fuck, man like I. I cannot have more gratitude than what I have right now, and
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Courtney Brame: it's all been here the whole time, and I had been seeking it so hard from a place that
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Courtney Brame: wasn't capable of giving me that which I already have had around me.
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Courtney Brame: and I wasn't able to express gratitude because so much of my focus was on making a person making a place, making a space, making a theme.
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Courtney Brame: my everything, and that that has an intense amount of attachment to it.
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Courtney Brame: And I'm not an attached person. I've done a lot of fucking work on myself through Yoga, through relationships, through my career, through my passions.
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Courtney Brame: to come to become the kind of person
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Courtney Brame: who is able to live in truth in reality.
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Courtney Brame: and can't nobody, can't nobody tell me that my truth ain't my truth no more?
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Courtney Brame: Alright, and I hope that that's the same case for y'all as well. Don't let nobody deviate you from your truth unless you were presented with factual information that warrants the change.
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Courtney Brame: Okay, think that was the last thing I meant to say, am I sure? Yeah.
