SPFPP Episode 157: The Number 1 Dating Site for People with HSV

Do dating sites exclusively designed for people living with herpes do more harm than good? Do they do anything at all? Honestly, it's a matter of perception. How we use the resources we have access to determine their value in this case, not the other way around.

The sites that don't encourage forthcoming about STI status don't overtly perpetuate stigma like their counterparts, but they stigmatize. It is a universal fact that people link up through these dating apps and they engage in sex, but where are tools and resources to help facilitate safer sex conversations?

These are things that warrant ongoing discussion, but after a poll, Instagram actually came up a lot in terms of being the number 1 dating site for people with HSV, which I go deeper into explaining how we can make ANY space we occupy the number 1 dating site PERIOD.

Episode 157 Transcript

Birthdays, Grief, and the Fight for Existence

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People connects people who've experienced the trauma of a positive STI diagnosis to mental health resources. I don't know where that pause came from, but I'm also hungover. Yesterday was my birthday. I am 32 years old. I'm recording this podcast on Wednesday, November 11th. Happy Veterans Day to all the veterans out there supporting this podcast. If you are a listener, you can follow me on social media on my chest, specifically Instagram. That's where I'm most active. And you can join the Something Positive for Positive People podcast community, which is at 28 people right now. I am only announcing that on the podcast. I'm not promoting it anywhere else.

Courtney Brame: Am I telling people who message me if you listen to the podcast the common ground is that you heard one of these recent episodes where I talk about there being a group solely for the purpose of people who listen to this podcast connecting. This podcast episode is going to touch on the number one dating site for people who have HSV. I looked- it wasn't a poll. I just asked Instagram what the best dating site was and a few different resources came up of course some of the well-known popular ones and then some of the less common ones and then there's the one that I was actually looking for that came up and I'm going to let you know about that and why first I want to just share that I am so appreciative of all of the happy birthday wishes and the thoughtful messages that I've received.

Courtney Brame: It was overwhelming. I don't know that I saw all of them. I was trying to minimize my screen time. I wanted for my 32nd birthday to be a reflection of something that I've really struggled to let go of u over the years. And when that thing that I've tried to let go of I thought didn't even impact me at all, it does. And around my birthday every year, I get really weird and the only thing to really take my mind off of whatever that weird feeling has been was me being around other people. 2020 has been a year where we can't congregate in large groups. I mean, we can, but we shouldn't. And so, I had an excuse to do that, to be alone and really sit with this feeling that I thought that I addressed last year and the year before, which was about my grandmother.

Courtney Brame: So my grandmother on my dad's side. So my dad's mother, she was a very important role in my life in coming to be. and I probably shouldn't know the story, but I mentioned it on the last podcast episode because I didn't redo it and cut that out or edit it at all, it's there. So I feel like I should probably elaborate on that a little bit more. So, my mother had me when she was 18. Her and my dad were both, I guess she got pregnant at 17, and my mother's parents at the time, they wanted her to have an abortion. So, my mom left and went to my grandmother's on my dad's side place, and she stayed with her. My grandmother talked to her and kept her grounded.

Courtney Brame: I don't know everything about the story, but I know enough to have drawn the conclusion. And so objectively I felt like my grandmother on my dad's side was directly the reason why I'm here. And so ironically, 13 years after my conception, my grandmother had passed away. I don't really know. there's a bunch of s*** around that, but she on my… she didn't pass away on my 13th birthday. Her funeral was my 13th birthday. And I remember this day so vividly leading up to it. I remember where I was when I found out she died. I lived at 1706 Dow Drive in Dellwood, Missouri. I was in a bathtub.

Courtney Brame: I was taking a bath and I remember my mom was crying and she told me my grandma died and I remember just being in the tub and she told me and I was like I don't know I don't know that I really processed it. I remember hearing it and then I remember going to the wake and the funeral I looked in the wake in the casket and I was “this ain't my f** grandma”. Kind of… I laughed. I was like that ain't her. And I think I was in this denial stage for a while.

00:05:00 Courtney Brame: I remember my aunt losing it, crying. I remember my dad hearing him cry for the first time. And it was just a chaotic day across the board. And it was my birthday, of course, and it was recognized, but I didn't want anyone to acknowledge that it was my birthday. I didn't want that to happen. We finished the services. We went back to my dad's place and that's where the family was and the family went over to my dad's house and we ate and talked and all of that stuff and somebody was like, "Yeah, little Courtney, come out here."

Courtney Brame: I'm little Courtney because my dad's Courtney and I got chills of discomfort when they had this cake. There was a cake there and everyone was singing happy birthday. And I just don't I'm getting** eerie feelings thinking about it. It's like we just buried my grandmother and you're singing happy birthday to me, nothing's wrong. And metaphorically this is how various communities have to navigate this kind of thing. You have to act like nothing's going on in order to get by. but that's a whole different conversation. I'm going to let this one be about me. So I* blowing out the candles. I remember my great grandmother was at the head of the table.

Courtney Brame: I can probably name about a dozen family members who were all there and just the attention was it was freezing like I froze. And so when that day was over that was it. my birthdays between then and maybe was when I moved to Houston? I was maybe 26. I had a great birthday. We got drunk and we went to an EDM type club and I just jumped around and was drunk and sweated and sang the words to songs that I didn't know all night. And that was probably one of my best birthdays because I was around a lot of people and distracted and under the influence and I didn't have to think about the fact that this was something that had bothered me. And I didn't know that it bothered me. I just knew that as far back as I can remember I didn't really like my birthday.

Courtney Brame: And I know that I got really annoyed easily, angry. These were all things that I would feel leading up to my birthday, probably starting around the end of September because my mom's birthday is at the end of September. So, after that ends, it's like my birthday's coming up now. And I didn't like talking about it. I don't like making plans for it, none of that. And I have good memories on my birthdays, but I know that this has been something that I've avoided, thinking about the feelings that come up when I think about my grandmother. Last year, when I turned 31, I acknowledged it and I thought that I let it go and it turns out I was really just avoiding it. and if you listen to the podcast, you'll know that there's a difference

Courtney Brame: avoidance and letting go. And that's what I was doing. I was avoiding it. This year I couldn't. I've been by myself more this year than I have my entire life. And it's been honestly pleasant. I feel a little hint of guilt for how good I've been doing throughout 2020. And even working on letting that go. So yesterday being my 32nd birthday, I wanted to, now that I have the knowledge and I've been in therapy and I understand the importance of looking at and expressing emotion, I wanted to be able to honor my grandmother because I've denied that she's even gone, that she's not even here.

Courtney Brame: And that shows up in so many different ways and it's only around this time of year. mind you, today's November 11th, my birthday is November 10th. So now that it's passed, it's passed. So the feelings would just be gone for whatever reason. So yesterday I decided I was going to take myself out to dinner. I wanted to go to this Cajun food restaurant here in St. Louis, Broadway Bar. Shout out to them. and it's Cajun seafood. It's bomb, It's bomb. So, I've been there before and I've only been for live music, but pandemic and all. They're just serving food. They did have two guys performing on stage and the seating was all social distanced and it was outdoors underneath one of those how you cover the outdoor patio and you just put some heaters up or something. It was like that. So, it was comfortable.

The Right to Exist: Winks from an Angel

00:10:00 Courtney Brame: all day I was making an effort to talk myself out of going to this place. I was like, man, that's a $15 Uber ride because I sold my car. I don't have my car anymore. and it's unnecessary. I can just cook at home. I order so I could go somewhere closer. And I just felt this voice in the back of my head just like trying to talk me out of going. So throughout the day, I'm getting phone calls and text messages and messages from people saying happy birthday and just reminding me that it's my birthday. A few of the messages, a few and this is not a coincidence, something along the lines of your existence. Thank you for being here. I'm so happy that you are here. And these kinds of messages like sent

Courtney Brame: something through my back and I've looked up the spiritual significance or what emotions are stored along the upper back and something came up about feeling like we don't belong here or not having a right to be here. something along those lines. I don't remember the exact wording but that s* hit me hard considering the backstory of essentially my mother's parents advocating or fighting for my mother to

Courtney Brame: gotten an abortion and then for my grandmother to have essentially I don't know but I can only imagine protecting my mom from her parents right so as I sat through and read those messages I was like okay I need to do this I really need to honor and look at the experiences that I had with my grandmother and

Courtney Brame: here's one of the signs that took place that I was on the right track. My dad's dad, who was at one point married to my grandmother I'm speaking of, he had called me. I missed his call. I always talk to him on Sundays. I call him on Sundays or we miss each other and we don't hear from each other for a while. But I noticed I had missed a call from him. So I picked up and hurried up and called him right back and he was like, "Where you at?"

Courtney Brame: I was like, I'm at home. "I'm about to come over and see you." I like, "What?" My grandfather lives in Philadelphia and he just happens to be in St. Louis. He ain't giving me no kind of heads up he was going to be here. He always calls me on my birthday. He knows when it's my birthday, but he was just in St. Louis from Philadelphia. And so, he comes over and we are talking for a bit. He's like, "Yeah, how you feeling? How old are you?" What? 30. I'm 32. So, as we're sitting there and we're talking, I just decide to tell him. I said, "I get really weird, frustrated, annoyed, something around the time of my birthday every year. And I think it has to do with my grandmother's funeral having been on my 13th birthday. I don't know if you remember that or not.”

Courtney Brame: And he just looked at me. He was like, " you was her heart. that." I was like, "Yeah, probably cuz I was the first born." And he was like, "No, she had to fight for you." I was like, "What you mean?" He was like, "I run my mouth too much." And then changed the subject. I was like, "You mother man." So that was the end of that part of The rest of the conversation is completely irrelevant to the story, but that was something that really validated the story that My mom told me everything. And I'm going to have lunch with her today and we'll talk more about it, I guess. As a way of me being able to really let this go. I talked to my mom's dad I think before that and I told him the same thing.

Courtney Brame: thing. I was like, I get real we worried about around the time of my birthday, which is the same day of my grandmother's funeral. And he was just telling me, yeah, he had a similar experience with someone in his own life. And it was really validating to hear that as well, I mean, I didn't address him or call him out being like, "Yeah, you want my mom to get an abortion? that's necessary for me." Perhaps that's a conversation for another day.

00:15:00 Courtney Brame: maybe even in person. But I get it. I understand, the embarrassment of your only child, your daughter, and her having especially unprotected sex, especially out of wedlock and all that, traditional stuff that takes place. And all of this backstory, even as I'm saying it now, it really contributes to why it is so important to me to continue to facilitate whatever it is that's happening through Something Positive for Positive People. because it does touch on these kinds of things, especially in the Black community. all the shame and secrecy and embarrassment that comes from decisions that are made just due to a lack of resources or an absence of resources or education even.

Courtney Brame: So, I mean, imagine, yeah, if my mom had more resources and education, she probably would have been on birth control and I would have just had to be here another way or wouldn't be here at all, whatever the case may be. But it's the importance of that accessibility, like being able to make the choices because abortion wouldn't even be on a table had access to these resources been available. and if she had the education to make whatever decision she needed to make for herself, none of that would have even happened. And perhaps this shapes how I view my grandparents now, too. because I've known this story for a while, and I know that I don't treat my grandparents most people treat their grandparents. My dad's mom got the best of me compared to my mom's parents. And I know that.

Courtney Brame: I recognize it now. It's just that I notice it in my behavior with the frequency of calls. I call my grandmother all the time. And with my grandparents now, I think I can hear from them once a month and be And just having gone through what events occurred yesterday and letting this go, I recognize that I can do that. I'm in a much more empowered place. So let me… I guess finish.

Courtney Brame: What else I'm trying to say so that I can get to what everybody came here for. My trip to the restaurant, I knew what I wanted cuz I looked at the menu at 10:00 a.m. I was like, "Yeah, I'm eating this. I'm going to get the crab cakes. I'mma get the voodoo shrimp and I'mma get the shrimp and grits or this sampler of their gumbo, red beans and rice, jambalayia, and there's a crawfish bisque or something or fine something Cajun, I don't remember. So, I get to the restaurant and I'm seated. I'm close to the stage so I can see the live band perform. And I ordered myself a drink and I ordered the two appetizers, the crab cakes and the voodoo shrimp. So, and I look at the crab cakes and I see what looks like an onion ring at the bottom of the crab cake. So, it's like a crab cake piled on top of an onion ring.

Courtney Brame: So, I take my fork and my knife and I cut through the middle of it and I put a piece of it in my mouth and I bite into it and there's crab cake texture and then crunchy texture and my f* eyes start watering y'all. I'm about to cry when I bite into this crab cake. Yes, it was that good. But also, this taste was so familiar. Before I even could think of the words, I knew what it was. It was fried green tomatoes were at the bottom of these crab cakes. My grandmother would always make fried green tomatoes. I did not see fried green tomatoes when I was ordering the food when I looked at the menu online when I looked at the menu when I got there. But fried green tomatoes were on these** crab cakes and I didn't even know and I felt compelled to get these crab cakes.

Courtney Brame: So I bite into it and I'm fighting tears because I don't want to cry in the restaurant. Yes, my birthday and I had my one drink. I'm a lightweight now. So I'm just like fighting this tear from rolling down my eye and I felt such a sense of peace to just have had that. And I went and looked at the menu again to make sure enough, at the end of the line where it's describing the crab cakes, green fried green tomato. My grandmother loved these things. And she'd cook them all the time. I remember "What you making, grandma?" " I'm about to make some fried green tomatoes." And I didn't think I liked them at the time, but that s*** hit different when you got certain memories associated to it.

00:20:00 Courtney Brame: And so I enjoyed these crab cakes. I enjoyed the fried green tomato. I enjoyed the symbolism that came with them and just how at peace I was. I felt like everything throughout the day that happened led me to that point of clarity that I don't f****** know what happens in the afterlife or if I even believe in the afterlife. In my mind, we're all God came here and was like, what? I'm gonna create this environment and had to walk through every step of every being's existence because the concept of time, space, and reality don't apply to the universe or God or infinite, whatever it is you want to call it. And essentially, we are all alone, but we have the experience or the illusion of interaction. and we just kind of forget that in our human form.

Courtney Brame: But yeah, if you want to talk about that more, invite me on your spiritual podcast. We can go real deep there. But yeah, I have a whole bunch of hypothetical beliefs about that. But it was just like even though she's not here, she put something in me planted a seed or watered a seed or it's looked out for me cuz I mean even when she died she left everybody in my immediate family that was close to her and her will and we all got money and whatnot.

Courtney Brame: But that was probably the first time I recognized it damn my grandma ain't even here and she looking out for me. And here I am at 32, I was 12 when she passed away. And even all these years later, I get a little sign or something that's like, no, you ain't you I'm still with you some kind of way. And this woman was with me from conception to when I'm 32. Her physical presence is not here anymore, but she lives through me. And I can honestly say that now, I realize that while my grandmother might have had her own health issues, mental health stuff that she was going on, she had going on, like I also learned that she was a business owner.

Courtney Brame: And I learned that, she made sacrifices to pass the baton to her offspring, her seed, so that we can make it a little bit further than she did. And I feel that it really charges me and it makes me feel really powerful. It makes me feel like I belong here. That's what it makes me feel like. It really makes me feel like that those ideas of, the feelings of not belonging or having to constantly prove that I do belong here and prove my worth through being good, quote unquote, and making my own sacrifices of I wouldn't do toxic*. In fact, I do do toxic s***. Y'all just don't know about it.

Courtney Brame: some of it's fun, some of it hurts people. I don't want to hurt people. But I just feel now that this rationalizes for me my constant need to be accepted and tying this into my herpes diagnosis because again, my therapist was like, I don't think you've accepted your herpes diagnosis. And I was like, nah, f you. And here we are even now I'm coming up with this stuff on my own. My therapist wasn't there at that moment. He set the foundation by saying hey go do something for yourself like celebrate and the successes. I let him know about my grandma and everything. And his words were just to go by myself- do something alone.

Courtney Brame: And I think that that created the space for me to welcome in something that's already been there and just had a faint whisper in my consciousness of, think about your grandma. You deserve to be here. And that being sort of the activating link for me to make the connection cuz I do deserve to be here. Anyone who's here deserves to be here. You don't know the backstory. You don't know what happened before you were born or before you were conceived. You don't know the relationship dynamic between your parents or grandparents and what they were dealing with in their environment, the society that they grew up in, what's not acceptable, what kind of shame was there, none of that matters because we're here.

00:25:00 Courtney Brame: And as I mentioned in relation to my herpes diagnosis and how I feel about rejection, you can't tell me s*** at this point because the ultimate rejection would have been at that point ejection. my god, that is a terrible thing to do but it's the reality of it. There are things worse to me than being rejected. And in fact, I can even flip it to me being rejected being the best thing that could happen to me or happen to a person. Why? Because of the kinds of situations that you may avoid throughout your existence. s***. Imagine being rejected by somebody who is abusive or I could have grown up in an unloving household, I guess, where I was rejected by my

Courtney Brame: on a regular basis, but they just could beat the s** out of me or neglect me or torture me or whatever it is that fortunately I would never know to be something that could have happened to me. In order for a light to shine this bright, I think that it has to have a willingness at least to explore its darkest shadows. And to be able to say the statement out loud, my grandparents didn't want me or that my mom contemplated the idea of not having me. That's pretty f**** dark. My mom and I have an amazing relationship. So, we have talked about this. And I know where her head was at. I know what her intentions were. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here to argue this. Right. So,

Courtney Brame: I have this in me to defy this idea that I don't belong here. My response to that: Prove you belong here. I ain't got to prove s***, first of all. And this is something that I've had to learn through life, through looking at these things that most people are afraid of looking at because when you look at them, you can heal them. There's an inherent desire to either run the f*** away from it or put the pieces back together. And I'll say this again, we're all mirrors for each other. And the clearer my mirror can be for you, the more of yourself you can see and decide, okay, there's a little bit of a smidge there. Let me address that.

Courtney Brame: and you can clear up your mirror for others. And that's what we are to one another on this plane of existence. In reality, this is how we serve each other. We do this. We show one another who we really are. And that's the ultimate gift you can give to a person. That's the ultimate intimacy to be seen by someone else and to see yourself in another person or to be experienced, to be that's why we're here to experience and be experienced with one another. And so I'm letting go of this idea that I don't belong here. I don't deserve to be here. And that's been an unchallenged belief that I've held in my subconscious.

Courtney Brame: And that's why I can't let something like a f*** herpes diagnosis keep me from dating or living my life or socializing or being around people or just** doing what I want to do. This will not be The only thing that can hold me back is me. And that's what's been happening from the time I was 13. I just didn't f** know it. And the more I learned about the shadow and the unconscious mind and our belief systems and how we challenge them with our behaviors, the more I believe it. And the more I can persuade other people to be willing to look at this themselves. I can tell you till I'm blowing the face, Don't let this hold you back. But if you have such deep down values and beliefs within you that you're aware of and you choose not to look at, I can't help you.

Courtney Brame: I will not be able to do it for you. I will not invest the energy into trying to convince you to look at something that you are able to see but just don't want to look at because there's someone out there right now who is looking at it and just doesn't know what to do. They don't know how to interpret it. They don't know what it means. They don't have guidance. They don't have the resources. So, it's important to me to invest more of my energy into resources that are going to connect me and Something Positive for Positive People, even resources to these people so that they can heal. This is about healing. This ain't about feeling sorry for yourself. It's not about comparing yourself to other people. This is my individual journey. I put this on display throughout the podcast episodes.

00:30:00 Courtney Brame: So, if you've been sticking around, you've been listening, then I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being a part of this. Thank you for allowing yourself to see yourself. Herpes in itself is a trigger word for us as people who have tested positive and found this podcast, but it isn't a trigger is just something worth looking at. It doesn't mean it’s a bad thing. It doesn't mean it’s a good thing. It means, hey, there's something here being activated worth looking at. So, when you find yourself in a triggered state, in my case it was weird around my birthday, go deeper. What is it that happened around my birthday? What was it? My grandmother's funeral one year.

Courtney Brame: What's the connection there? Why do I hold on to these feelings? Ultimately it comes down to anger at my mom's parents for not wanting me here. And then it comes down to sadness because the one person who really wanted me here is gone. I don't have that anymore. The clarity that came from the healing was biting into that crab cake with the green tomato and the fried green tomato underneath it. And that was just like my grandmother winked at me. That's what that was. I got the wink from an angel in that moment and just felt this sense of peace and acceptance and I can trust myself.

Courtney Brame: I can't say this enough. 2021 for Something Positive for Positive People is about to be the s***, and that's because I trust myself more now than I did before this happened. And even leading up to this, I kind of wavered back and forth on whether or not I could trust myself. And here I am with this final validation of this thing that I've held on to that occurred before I was even born that was just kind of in me and then activated when I was 13 and I'm here just now being able to look at and heal it at 32.

Courtney Brame: I just cleaned my mirror and the smudges on it so that I can best show you who you are. Show you yourself through my existence. And I no longer feel the need to Prove that I deserve to be here because You do. We all do. And when you got to prove that** to anybody, our very existence is validation that we deserve to be here where we are. Which is a very good segue into the number one dating site for people with herpes.

Trauma Bonding and The Illusion of the "Number One" Dating Site

Courtney Brame: being wherever the f*** you are. Wherever you choose, however, you choose to interact with and engage with people, because you will see yourself through the experiences of other people. You'll come to know yourself as you interact with other people. So, your best dating resource or website, whatever, is going to be what you interact with, who you interact with, how you interact with it, and your perception of it, your interpretation of what it means in regards to your identity and who you are. We know about dating sites. I don't have to say any of their names because they're not at this point.

Courtney Brame: y'all gonna have to pay me to mention If y'all come up in an interview, I'll let it slide. But at this point, for me to mention your name, you have to make a donation. You're going to have to come up with some kind of partnership. But the dating sites that work best for people are the ones consistently at least where the people are confident in themselves, have a sense of self to the point where they can go on there and just date. It's not about the herpes because dating with herpes is just dating. So there is no number one dating site for people with herpes. Is your mind blown yet? Yourself where you show up. This is where your options are. This is where you choose and are chosen.

00:35:00 Courtney Brame: There's no beef with a particular dating site. We don't need to go into their name because I'm sure y'all already know the one that I'm talking about because in my experience, I'm going to share my experience with it and yours may be different. When I first got there, it was great. I think that this type of dating site is great for people to connect with, and coming from a place of being diagnosed and told that, " everybody has herpes."

Courtney Brame: and then you not knowing a single f** person who has herpes. Finding a dating site for people who have herpes and seeing the number right there on the homepage, how many millions of people are on that website gives you a sense of comfort, relief. I can just get on here and it'll take all my troubles away. If I want to interact with people, it'll be $30 a month unless I sign up for a longer term contract and then I'm paying to message people back and forth for however much time. And it's just like a pool of that. That's your dating pool now because now this appears to be your only option because no one's telling you otherwise.

Courtney Brame: And when you go into the resources that they have, it even seems limited from my perspective at least because whenever I get into that positive s*** or whenever I try to say what I'm saying here on these podcasts and I try to spread this message to the audience that it is intended for the same audience where I found that there were people blogging about wanting to kill themselves. This is where my voice is limited. This is where I go from if I just say, "Man, having herpes sucks." I get 200 plus views on one of those kinds of blog posts. But then when I go, hey, there's these resources out there. If you go to Instagram and you search the hashtag herpes, you'll find all these support pages. You can find support groups. You can find additional information. You can find community support local resources in your area and just other options.

Courtney Brame: You don't have to live in this exclusive pool where you have to pay money to maybe find someone who may be interested in you, who may be compatible, who may be close to you. Those kinds of things get eight views. And it seems like once they find that I've posted something like that, I'm cut off. And I've seen the same thing happen in some different herpes support groups where if I post some positive stuff, if I post some uplifting, hey guys, I'm learning that sexual health and mental health have a very powerful connection. So if you want to connect with mental health resources, I encourage it. That kind of s*** gets reported as spam and self-promotion.

Courtney Brame: and I'm cut off from being able to speak in regards to anything that doesn't uphold and perpetuate stigma in a way that makes people feel dependent on whatever that environment is that they're in. Again, I want to make this clear. That is a great resource to have right away because immediately you get a sense of comfort solely relying on that resource solely, being there and there doesn't seem to be, at least at the time I was on there, any intention of getting people off of the site.

Courtney Brame: people who are on exclusive HSV dating sites still have whatever issues that went unaddressed prior to their diagnosis. There's still the possibility of manipulation. There's still a possibility of being ghosted, not being collab compatible, not wanting kids versus someone who does. And then we get into these places where we don't quite know what we want. So, we're willing to improvise. And that improvisation can be so heavily amplified by the fact that we have a positive HSV status and we think no one's ever going to be with us. We feel like our options are limited to just another person with herpes who just will look at us or acknowledge our existence.

00:40:00 Courtney Brame: We can't navigate life on a day-to-day basis trying to prove that it's worth us being here. We cannot live our lives that way. We should not live our lives that way. And this environment has been set up systemically really And it's a system. Doctors diagnose us and send us on our way to find whatever we find. And when you Google herpes or you Google how am I going to date with herpes, these are the first things that join our website. We got a million people on here. And if you pay us $30 a month, then you can message them. And if you can't, then you hope good luck getting messaged by somebody who is paid.

Courtney Brame: And I have a problem with there not being any seemingly on the surface any intention of giving people the tools that they need in order to navigate the stigma. And I say that because that is exactly what Something Positive for Positive People is doing. I don't care about ending stigma. I damn sure don't want to see it being upheld to where it perpetuates the people who are even on these sites who openly say I want to kill themselves. What resources are being provided to these people who are struggling with their mental health? Here's a dating site. Just pay us $30 a month. We'll take all your troubles away by you, maybe by matching with someone and meeting them and then they'll take your troubles away.

Courtney Brame: it puts a lot of the burden of healing onto the individual who may not even recognize that they're hurt or the individual who's not willing to or unable to or incapable of just looking and seeing themselves in the way that we all should see ourselves just as human see what needs to be healed. We have scars, we have scrapes and scratches and smudges on our mirrors. And it takes for us to come into contact with resources and people who are going to show us that and give us the tools to deal with it, heal with it. So for me to be able to come into that space and like I said, I've connected with a lot of people. I've connected with groups off and through there.

Courtney Brame: Thank God because I don't know that I would have been willing to wean myself off of this drug because it was a drug to me. I liked myself significantly more around this group of people who knew I had herpes that were complete strangers to me than I did around the people who I grew up with, who I played football with, who I saw every day. And had I not been willing to look at that and challenge that, I would have been way deeper in that addiction. Cuz it's addicting to be able to go and get yourself validated by people who are, in the same boat as you and comfortable being in the same boat as How far are we going to go though? That's not what my grandmother would have wanted for me. My grandmother would have wanted me to challenge that.

Courtney Brame: She would have wanted me to continue to challenge the challenges that I'm facing. I'm not a victim. Even probably when I was in my mom's belly, there was something instilled in me from my grandma that made me Fight for love or fight to, kick and let her know, hey, I'm here. I'm alive. Hey, hey, just let me come out. Just this is me trying to tie this all together in a reasonable way. But I did enjoy and appreciate all of the different responses that I got in regards to this dating site. because I'm not the only person who feels that dating sites exclusive to people with herpes perpetuate stigma. And to me, the pillars of stigma reside right there at the intersection of sexual health and mental health. That's where stigma is.

Courtney Brame: And until we find a way to bring the two together through resources like Something Positive for Positive People, we're going to be stuck here flat out. the people who listen to this podcast, who engage with the resources, we are the ones who are exposing and shining a light to that intersection because this is where we intervene.

Courtney Brame: We intervene at the point of mental and sexual health because we can directly say through our experiences that getting a positive diagnosis changed us. It did something to us. Whereas the CDC doesn't recommend HSV testing at all because if a person tests positive, their behavior doesn't change. That's b***** to me and I cannot prove it because I don't have enough people who are willing to step up and say that. And I also don't know this is going to be a long-term type of study and all of that and I don't have the money, the resources to do it. I got the energy for it, but we ain't there yet. I got to do one thing at a time. That's another idea. I really want to challenge that because basically again it's another pillar of stigma holding this up everybody has herpes. If everybody has herpes, why is there a stigma?

00:45:00 Courtney Brame: Why are we the minority being picked on in the media by the Tinder blog, by other people who just feel like it's okay to make these** herpes jokes that trigger a person's mental health state into a negative place. I've done surveys where people have said that they've attempted suicide because of their herpes diagnosis, who have been in a deep dark depression because of their herpes diagnosis, who have been and in who've cut themselves, who've hurt themselves, who obsessively drink and do drugs because of their herpes diagnosis.

Courtney Brame: And this goes beyond herpes, of course. It expands into sex education and our sexual health and our access to education and resources in our community. look at me and how my mom My mom didn't have access to birth control. Or maybe she did, but her parents weren't going to let her. And this is one of those community things. This is how children are brought up and raised and talked to about sex and their sexual health and the fact that things have to be done in the dark. Something's going to eventually get out. So, we have to be able and willing to look at ourselves. We have to see ourselves.

Courtney Brame: We have to be willing to heal ourselves. Otherwise, we're going to do this trauma That's a new word for Trauma bonding where, it's a* dating pool of trauma bonding. We've gone through the trauma of an STI diagnosis. Let's f***. Let's meet. Let's be together. And I said, I indulged in this s*** when I found it. I was happy to fly to New York, fly people to St. Louis, be in Texas, take long drives. I was there.

Courtney Brame: But I very easily could have just gotten stuck and there was just a call in me to something different when I saw how many people wanted to take their lives. And I guess that now that I've done this healing through my exploration of my relationship with my grandmother and my mom and my family. I now understand more why I get angry when a person hints at suicide. not being here anymore because that's somebody else's** spot. Why'd you take this spot if you don't want it? And I don't care how cruel that is. Like I said, I'm not fighting for people's approval anymore. it angers me when a person says they want to commit suicide. My sister said it, and it angers me. I know people who have committed suicide.

Courtney Brame: I know survivors of suicide and I feel for them because they were taken from home. This episode got way darker than it was supposed to. But yeah, closing this out. The number one dating site for people with herpes has actually been shown to be Instagram because I think personally like that's our vehicle of self-expression. We put ourselves on display for others to see us and it draws people in and we see ourselves through the herpes posts and pages and resources. These people who are creating what they needed and it's** beautiful. People are creating what they need at the time of their diagnosis for others to find it at their point of their diagnosis.

Courtney Brame: and we're connecting with each other that may be the spark of the flame. But whatever it is that fuels us, the metaphorical gasoline in us is our personalities, our values, boundaries, hobbies, interests, curiosities, that's where we burn bright and we can merge flames through that kind of connection. So herpes is the spark, the gasoline or lighter fluids, whatever. That's all the other things that come with that. Not just our traumas, but our healing, our personalities, our character, who we are. See what happens when you put yourself out there, you challenge yourself to see yourself. You challenge yourself to be seen by others.

00:50:00 Courtney Brame: And the more comfortable you get with that, any dating site can be the number one dating site aside, again, dating with herpes is just like dating. Don't limit yourself. Be willing to step into those dark corners of your mind and your existence and your shadows.

Courtney Brame: and know that when you come out of that b****, you're the light. That's what happens. You walk through the shadows and you learn that's the light. You don't look for You are the light. And being in the shadows is what teaches us that. I'm going to go ahead and just close this out here. I think that this was useful to someone. I hope that this message does reach you and that it reaches you at the right time and it reaches you in the right Closing out like I normally do just does not fit right here at all. But I feel like I need to say it to be consistent. Till next time, stay sex positive.

Meeting ended after 00:51:57