SPFPP Episode 162: We ARE the Resource
The title speaks for itself. After so many individual interactions with people living with HSV, and then attending in person social groups for people with HSV, I notice that there's a major willingness to heal from the individual, and the attendees. The only difference is the risk-reward tolerance from person who will only speak to me as someone who's already made their status known, compared to the person willing to put themselves out there into the unknown with the exclusive sense of safety they created for themselves by being part of the community.
Within these communities, you find that there are many amazing stories from humans about their lived experiences as they relate to herpes and as they relate to life outside of herpes and in fact, people with herpes connect far deeper with one another based on non-herpes things in my experience.
A frustrating realization is that the CDC, with all its credibility, does not recommend herpes testing even if requested by a patient. Their reasoning is that behavior doesn't change after a person tests positive for herpes.
As someone who's interviewed about 200 people with herpes and had thousands of conversations with people living with it who've shared exactly how this has changed their behaviors 100% of the time, we gotta question the validity of their research here.
The healing in community vs individually has shown me one thing. Separate, we seek answers from "credible" resources easily accessible and low-risk of another human knowing our status. In community, we share resources as they parallel our own experiences and they circulate among the people directly impacted who also have stake in the accuracy of information given we can challenge it with our experiences and just ask the group. So we ARE the resource.
