SPFPP 383: My Story
For timeline referencee, I got my herpes diagnosis I believe in March 2013, and I didn’t start the SPFPP Podcast until 2017. Here, in this episode, I give the pre-SPFPP Courtney you hear in podcasts so hopefully this helps ask general questions people have about my personal experience. I struggled with my relationships during that time, was in unhealthy relationships, feared rejection, and while herpes is a big part of my life now because of what I do here, I think it still was a big part of my life, only out of avoidance of it.
I interconnect some hindsight and metaphors from my life about how I think the way I was impacted my experience not just with herpes, but with the stigma which encompasses mind, emotions, and spirit, but most importantly, the identity. Identification with mind, body, emotions, experiences, it’s difficult to get the quick message of our life experiences nudging us into alignment when we aren’t connected to it. I talk about how Yoga helped me detach my identity from the five sense self to something greater and in that path, I’ve found peace with not just my diagnosis but all the intangible parts of what it represented as well. Relationships, my relationship with sex, being on auto-pilot and in survival mode, how I ate, becoming stagnant, my environment, etc. Herpes was a physical expression of my nervous system trying to communicate with me about a need to change these other things about my life and it took me to receive the message where I was MOST identified, on my penis, for me to “get” the message.
As I brought my awareness there, I started to see where my awareness wasn’t, and that’s in the present moment. Since my diagnosis and now having created the resource I needed, what comes to me as the most valuable healing thing is the community we’ve built here at SPFPP. People here want to heal and support each other and sometimes go as far as to engage in their own form of advocacy as well. Hopefully this helps and if you’re someone wanting a support call this episode is a great starting point to maximize our time together and focusing on you!
